Nothing But Lies

by Lyndon Stacey

  ‘But I’m her older sister. I should have look after her.’

  ‘She’s not a little girl anymore. She’s a grown woman, Tami. You tried to help her but she went her own way. You have nothing to feel guilty about.’

  Tamiko sighed.

  ‘You are right, I know it, but I can’t stop thinking there must have been something I could have done. If she didn’t go to meet Samir today …’

  ‘You weren’t even there when she left. Besides, we don’t know for sure that’s what she did,’ Daniel pointed out.

  ‘But where else?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know. Hopefully she’ll be able to tell us herself.’

  ‘But what if she can’t – what if …?’ Tamiko’s eyes filled with tears.

  ‘All we can do is wait,’ Daniel told her gently. ‘Don’t torture yourself.’

  It was another two hours before there was any news, by which time Tamiko’s nerves were stretched to breaking point. On the advice of a nurse, they had all relocated to a family room, where comfortable chairs, magazines and a drinks machine were available. There was also a selection of toys for Jahan to play with, of which, after an initial period of uncertainty, he took full advantage.

  Daniel, Jo-Ji and Tamiko sat in silence watching him, having long exhausted the unrewarding cycle of suppositions surrounding Hana’s accident.

  It was a testament to the state of her nerves that when the door finally opened, Tamiko visibly jumped.

  Tall and fiftyish, with thinning grey hair and a deeply lined face, the surgeon who stood in the doorway had clearly come straight from the operating theatre. His hands looked soft and slightly reddened – vigorously scrubbed, Daniel supposed.

  ‘Miss Yoshida?’

  ‘Yes?’ Tamiko stood up. ‘Please – how is my sister?’

  ‘We’ve managed to stop the bleeding and I think, for the moment, she’s stable, but you must understand that the force of the collision must have been considerable. Unfortunately the impact appears to have been from the side where the whiplash effect is most dangerous. At the side the neck is largely unsupported by muscle and therefore extremely susceptible to damage. Your sister’s injuries are complex and she will need further surgery.’ He paused and rubbed one eye wearily with the heel of his hand. ‘It’s striking a balance between the treatment she needs and what her body can sustain at this point.’

  Tamiko was frowning as she tried to take in what she was being told.

  ‘But she will be all right?’

  The surgeon compressed his lips and lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness.

  ‘I’d like to be able to reassure you but the truth is, we just don’t know. It’s too early to be able to make any predictions. She has youth on her side but sometimes that’s just not enough. I’m sorry. We can only wait and see.’

  ‘Can I see her?’ The tremor in Tamiko’s voice showed how close she was to breaking down. Jo-Ji moved close and put his arm round her shoulders.

  ‘Yes.’ The surgeon nodded. ‘But she is very sleepy and needs to rest. She may not show any signs of response. Please be quiet and don’t agitate her.’ He stood aside and motioned to where a nurse stood waiting. ‘Melinda will take you down when you’re ready.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Tamiko hurried forward but turned in the doorway as Daniel spoke her name.

  ‘Shall I bring Jahan?’

  She looked across to where the boy sat, surrounded by discarded toys, his big, dark-lashed eyes following her every move.

  ‘Yes, I think so. To see might help him understand – unless …?’ She shot a questioning look towards the surgeon, who nodded.

  ‘It’s up to you. You know the child, but I think it is probably a good idea.’

  The room to which Hana had been transferred was part of the intensive care unit. Another nurse stood beside the bed, intent upon the monitors, but when they were shown in she stood back to let Tamiko draw close to her sister.

  From his position near the door, Daniel could see little other than medical paraphernalia. A frame kept the sheets raised off the lower part of Hana’s body and a myriad of tubes and sensors ran from the bed to various drip stands. At the head of the bed the ubiquitous bleeping monitors bore witness to a life on hold.

  Tamiko leaned over the bed and kissed her sister, her gleaming black bob swinging forward to hide her face. Jo-Ji held his fiancé’s hand, comforting by his presence.

  After a bit, Tamiko motioned Daniel forward and, with a word of encouragement, he led Jahan towards the bed. A small plastic footstool stood against the wall and Jo-Ji moved it closer so the boy could be lifted to stand on it.

  Silently Jahan stared at his mother with wondering eyes, from his viewpoint not seeing, as Daniel did, a face that told the before and after story, but only her good side, where the sweep of her lashes lay against the smooth skin of her cheek, and only the swathes of bandage that hid most of her dark hair told of the damage within. The other side of her face was almost unrecognisable with a swollen, discoloured eye, bruised and abraded cheekbone and a badly cut lip just visible through the oxygen mask. Her olive complexion was pallid and a brace supported her damaged neck.

  Jahan put a small hand towards her and pointed. ‘Mummy asleep,’ he said turning to Tamiko.

  ‘She is, darling. She has to sleep much, so she can get better,’ Tamiko told him, her eyes filling with tears.

  ‘How about we leave Mummy to sleep and go and find some ice cream?’ Daniel suggested, and was relieved to see Jahan’s attention instantly diverted by the idea. In his time on the force he had seen the devastation caused by countless RTAs and he knew from sad experience that the outcome of side impacts was rarely good. The surgeon’s words had confirmed his suspicion that Hana’s neck was broken. She was lucky to have survived this long; most didn’t. As he turned away, he caught Jo-Ji’s eye and saw the same knowledge there.

  As the afternoon wore on, Daniel began to worry about Taz, shut up in the cottage, and when a kindly nurse offered to make up a bed for Jahan, who was finding it increasingly difficult to stay awake, he sought Tamiko out at her sister’s bedside and announced his intention of returning home to let the dog out.

  ‘Do you want me to see to the horses, too?’ he asked.

  ‘Daniel, would you?’ she exclaimed in quick gratitude.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Can you remember how …?’

  ‘I’ll manage. Don’t you worry.’

  It was a relief to leave behind the emotionally charged atmosphere of the hospital and emerge into the warm breeze of the August evening. As always, there was a moment of readjustment as the sounds of the city replaced the electronic rhythms of the intensive care unit; it took that fraction of a second to realise that outside, life continued as normal, oblivious to the heartache and drama within the hospital walls. Daniel often thought that brief period of transition was like coming out of a cinema after a deeply absorbing film.

  He reached his car, removed a parking ticket from beneath the windscreen wiper, then slumped into the driver’s seat, pulled the door shut and closed his eyes. The penalty notice wasn’t unexpected and hardly important in the scheme of things; an insignificant pinprick in a day of raw hurt.

  On his own, he could finally allow his mind to run along the avenues it had been pulling towards, ever since news of Hana’s accident had reached them. Because of having to keep Jahan occupied, Daniel had had no chance for more than a word or two with Jo-Ji, and that in Tamiko’s hearing, but he would have laid a sizeable bet on Jo-Ji’s thoughts running along the same lines. Was Hana’s accident just that – an accident – or had Samir Jafari, unable to accept that she would actually leave him, lost control and taken his revenge? If Tamiko’s sister was to be believed, it would have been by no means the first time he had resorted to violence when his will was crossed.

  Daniel sighed and started the car. Until they had more details, conjecture was pointless. The police had first-hand knowledge of
Jafari and doubtless they would be pursuing the same line of thought. Indeed, if there was sufficient cause to suspect that the collision was anything but accidental, they might already have pulled Hana’s ex-partner in for questioning.

  That they hadn’t became immediately obvious on Daniel’s return to the cottage, because the first thing he saw was Jafari’s white van parked in the lane and the man himself standing in the front garden peering into the ground floor windows.

  When Daniel parked and got out of his car, he could hear Taz’s deep voice from inside the cottage, warning the trespasser, in no uncertain manner, that he’d better stay away.

  As Daniel approached, Jafari turned to meet him, spreading his hands in a placating manner.

  ‘I ain’t done nuffing,’ he said, before Daniel had a chance to demand what he was doing there. ‘I just wanted to talk.’

  ‘You were told to stay away. She doesn’t want to see you,’ Daniel stated.

  ‘Ah, but that’s not true. She does. I’ve seen her and she’s realised she was wrong. She’s gonna come back with me.’

  ‘You’ve seen her? When?’

  ‘Earlier this morning. She gave you the slip, didn’t she? Didn’t you wonder where she’d gone? She was with me, wasn’t she? You tried to stop her but I knew she wanted to come back to me. She don’t know nuffing else, does she? She’s lost without me.’

  ‘Then why did she run away in the first place?’ Daniel asked, his mind busy with a dilemma. ‘And where is she now?’

  For the first time, Jafari showed doubt. ‘She came back to get the boy,’ he stated.

  ‘When did you last see her?’

  ‘This morning, I told you! Why all the fuckin questions? She wants to be with me and there’s nothing you can do to stop her.’

  ‘True. But if that’s the case, what are you doing here?’

  ‘Come to pick her up, didn’t I?’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘Why? Where is she? What have you done with her?’ He started to bristle with suspicion.

  Either Jafari was a consummate actor or he was completely ignorant of what had happened to Hana that morning. Daniel didn’t know him well enough to be sure, and although on the surface he appeared to have all the subtlety of the proverbial bull in the china emporium, he suspected there might well be a strong vein of cunning in the man. It was just possible that his presence at the cottage, demanding to know her whereabouts, was part of a bluff to conceal his part in the ‘accident’ that had all but killed her, but Daniel thought it unlikely. He decided to trust his instincts.

  ‘I’m afraid Hana has been involved in an accident,’ he said, watching the other man closely. ‘I’m sorry. She’s been taken to Bristol Hospital. I’m afraid she’s in a bad way.’

  ‘You’re lying! I just saw her this morning.’

  ‘It must have happened on her way home, then. We’ve been at the hospital all afternoon.’

  ‘And the boy? Where’s my boy?’

  ‘He’s at the hospital, too. He’s OK. He wasn’t in the car with her but of course, if you saw her this morning, you’d know that.’

  ‘What hospital? Where is it?’

  ‘Bristol.’

  ‘If I find out you’re lying …’ Jafari didn’t complete the threat, but his narrowed eyes and tight lips conveyed the message.

  ‘For God’s sake, man! Why would I lie about something like that?’

  ‘To keep me away from her.’

  ‘What – for all of an hour or two? What would be the point?’

  Casting him a glance of deep dislike, Jafari muttered something unintelligible, pushed past Daniel and headed for his van.

  ‘The police are there, waiting to talk to her,’ Daniel called, just to be sure Jafari didn’t entertain any ideas of causing trouble at the hospital. With that thought in mind, he took out his mobile and called Jo-Ji to warn him of Jafari’s impending arrival, before addressing himself to the business of seeing to the animals.

  It was mid-evening before Daniel returned to the hospital, by which time he had brought the horses in from the field and fed them, exercised all the dogs, and even fed the cats, who managed to put aside their lingering distrust of him just enough to accept the food he put down, although Shinju still watched him closely with her deep-blue Siamese eyes and wouldn’t settle to eat until he had left the kitchen.

  At the hospital he found everything much as he had left it, the warmth, noise and emotional intensity wrapping around him like an unwanted blanket as soon as he entered the building.

  He found Tamiko still at Hana’s bedside. She greeted Daniel with an attempt at a smile and the information that her sister’s condition was unchanged, and said that Jo-Ji was checking on Jahan.

  ‘Did Jafari turn up?’ Daniel asked softly.

  ‘Yes, he did. He wants to see Hana but they don’t let him in. Then he wants to know where Jahan is but Jo-Ji had warn the police and nurses, and they keep him away. The police now take him to ask questions about the accident.’ She raised worried eyes to Daniel’s. ‘You don’t think it was him who hurt Hana, do you?’

  ‘Actually, I don’t. I would swear he was genuinely shocked when I told him what had happened. But I could be wrong, and obviously the police have to question him. At least it keeps him out of the way for a bit,’ he added. ‘Can I get you anything? A coffee, or tea? Something to eat? You look exhausted.’

  ‘No, thank you. I had a drink not long ago. Are the horses OK?’

  Daniel opened his mouth to answer but was forestalled by a low moan from the girl on the bed.

  ‘Hana!’ Tamiko breathed, getting to her feet and leaning over her sister. ‘Hana, can you hear me?’

  ‘Tami …’ Daniel spoke her name in warning, though he didn’t follow it up. His eyes were on the monitors and even as he registered that the displays were changing, Hana’s breathing altered, becoming uneven and harsh. Her body gave a slight jerk, the visible side of her face flinched, and then the displays flat-lined and an alarm sounded.

  ‘Hana?’ For a moment Tamiko was uncomprehending and as the sound of hurrying footsteps approached the door, Daniel took her arm and drew her away from her sister.

  ‘No!’ she struggled against him, hitting out at him.

  ‘Tami! They need space,’ he said urgently, catching at her free hand.

  Suddenly the room was full of people and noise, the bed was surrounded and a nurse was there, insisting that they stand back and give the medics room. A young doctor bent over Hana.

  ‘You need to wait outside,’ the nurse said, firmly but kindly, and with Daniel’s help, shepherded Tamiko through the open door and into the corridor beyond.

  For Daniel there was a kind of inevitability about what followed. He had seen it all before, even if he hadn’t been so closely involved on previous occasions. The frantic but controlled activity of the hospital staff, the sounds beyond the door as they tried to restore life, the way that everything happened in double-quick time, yet seemed also to be in slow-motion.

  Tamiko was staring at the closed door with wide, scared eyes and with his arm around her shoulders he could feel her trembling violently. There was nothing to say; reassurances were meaningless. In the next few minutes her sister would either live or die; they both knew it, and words of comfort would change nothing.

  It was ten minutes before the door opened, and the doctor’s expression was all that was needed to tell them that Hana had lost her fight for life.

  ‘No! …’ Tamiko began to sob and Daniel squeezed her shoulders.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor said. ‘There was nothing we could do. There was just too much … … It was hopeless.’

  ‘But she’s so young, …’ Tamiko said through her tears, as if that fact would prove his statement false. ‘She’s my little sister.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor said again. He looked tired and a little dispirited. ‘She had too many injuries. Internal injuries. We tried but there was nothing we could do.’ A pager cli
pped to his breast pocket began flashing and he glanced down but ignored it.

  ‘But it was so quick. A minute ago she was OK. She even make a noise.… ’

  ‘The machines were keeping her alive. I’m sorry. Had she survived, it’s very likely that her brain would have been damaged. There really was nothing we could do.’

  Tamiko took a shuddering, steadying breath. ‘Can I see her?’

  ‘In a minute. The nurse will tell you when. I’m so sorry,’ he repeated, and with a brief, sad smile, took a step backwards and then round them, disengaging himself from one tragedy and moving on to try and prevent another. Moments later he was striding away down the corridor, responding to his pager as he did so.

  Tamiko turned to look up at Daniel. Her eyes were swimming with unshed tears.

  ‘What am I going to do?’ she asked brokenly.

  ‘Come here, love,’ he said softly and gathered her close, shaken by the strength of his wish to protect and comfort her. She was still trembling and as she clung to Daniel she began to sob again silently. He stroked her back, resisting the urge to kiss the top of her head; saying instead, ‘Shall I text Joey?’

  Still clinging, she nodded, and he freed up one hand to remove his phone from the back pocket of his jeans.

  They were still in the corridor when Jo-Ji appeared, less than a minute later.

  ‘I was on my way,’ he explained. ‘I saw the doctor. Darling, I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Oh, Jo-Ji,’ she cried and left Daniel’s embrace for that of her fiancé. Jo-Ji held her tight, rubbing her back and touching his lips to her hair.

  The door behind them opened and two nurses came out, a third pausing in the doorway to tell them it was all right to go in now, if they wanted.

  Over the nurse’s shoulder Daniel could see Hana, free now of the tubes and wires, her face still and calm.

  Tamiko went hesitantly forward, Jo-Ji half a step behind, holding her hand. Daniel watched as they approached the bed and then he turned away. This was a family affair.