by Hannah Pearl
Alice was giggling, and having a great time. Jake looked slightly winded, and as he stood up he groaned and stretched out his back. I heard it cracking into place. ‘I think you need a soak in the bath more than I do,’ I said, walking over and giving Alice a kiss on the top of her head.
‘Do I get one of those too?’ Jake asked, so I kissed the top of his head as well. Alice giggled.
‘My daddy got me a bike for my birthday,’ she told me.
‘I didn’t know it was your birthday, sweetie,’ I said to her, looking up at Jake.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have told you.’
‘I’m four now,’ Alice said, lifting her hand and showing me three fingers.
‘If it’s okay with your mummy maybe I can come over one day soon and we can celebrate,’ I said.
‘We’ve got cake,’ Alice said.
‘I wasn’t allowed to help bake it,’ Jake added.
Alice began to pedal off down the road, and Jake chased after her, calling over his shoulder that he would see me soon. I opened my door, feeling more cheerful for having watched the loving interaction between Jake and his niece. I was bending down to pick up some post when I heard a crash. The sounds of metal crumpling like an empty tin can, and glass shattering held me momentarily frozen, before I dropped the envelopes and ran to the road.
I breathed a sigh of relief when I saw Alice still sat on her little bike, though she was in the gutter by the road, but my stomach flipped when I realised that I couldn’t see Jake next to her. I picked Alice up and she complained that I had lifted her from her beloved wheels. I reached down and picked the bike up too, carrying them into the middle of the road with me to find Jake.
The car, a black Volvo, was pulled up, it’s front end at ninety degrees facing the kerb opposite. The fender nearest me was folded into a concertina, and the shattered glass of the headlight was scattered across the asphalt. The driver opened his door and got out without pausing to switch off the engine. He dashed around the bonnet, and we both saw Jake lying on the ground, his arm stretched out at an odd angle. There was blood over his face, and I could see dark stains on the road, which I assumed were probably from him too.
Alice started screaming, and I was torn between looking after her and trying to see if I could help Jake. Alice started twisting and wailing in my arms and I tried to hush her. I could hear someone talking loudly on a mobile and realised that the driver was requesting an ambulance. I turned back to Jake, to see the driver drop to one knee next to him and put his ear close to Jake’s face.
‘He’s breathing,’ he said into the phone, ‘but he’s not conscious.’
With Alice still squirming, I stepped closer and knelt next to him but I didn’t know what to do. I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to move him into the recovery position, especially given how twisted his arm was. The driver, who must have been in his early forties but had aged ten years just in the last few seconds, seemed as disturbed as I felt. He had just a scattering of sandy coloured hair left on his head, but he was in danger of losing that too if he didn’t stop running his hands through it and tugging on it.
He looked up at me and said, ‘I didn’t see him, he came diving in front of the car.’ He shrugged his shoulders and shook his head to try to express his shock at hitting another human body. He was wearing sunglasses, and he pushed them up so they rested on his bald forehead. His grey eyes held mine, and I could see him blink back tears.
I wanted to reassure him, but I couldn’t find any words. A siren shattered the quiet, and Alice started to sob again. I carried her back to the safety of the pavement and held her against me, both of us crying, as the ambulance pulled to a stop next to Jake. The paramedics got out and began to work on him. Within minutes a police car had parked behind the Volvo and the driver was sat inside.
The next few minutes passed in a blur. I was vaguely aware of telling the police that I’d heard the crash but not seen what had happened. They took my contact details and left me to look after Alice. The driver was subjected to a more intense discussion. Even in my distracted state I noticed him being breathalysed. I doubted that he’d be over the limit though, he’d seemed stone cold sober to me on the road, just shaken as hell, and I couldn’t blame him for that. I was too.
The paramedics lifted Jake onto a stretcher and carried him into the ambulance. Alice stretched out towards him and started crying again. I held her close and walked towards the vehicle, but the paramedic stopped me with his hand. ‘Sorry, love, we need the room to work on him, and if you don’t mind me saying, I’m not sure she needs to see that.’ He gestured at Alice who was by now sobbing so hard her eyes and nose streamed.
‘Which hospital are you taking him to?’ I asked.
‘We’ll be at the General within about five minutes with the blue lights going so you look after your little one and we’ll see you there. Try not to worry,’ he said, turning his back to us, slamming the door and speeding off in a haze of noise, lights and exhaust fumes.
The police officer took my telephone number and told me that I was free to take Alice home. I didn’t have keys to her house, so I took her to mine. I rang Bea, but Alice was crying in the background and I could hear Bea getting more and more distressed as I spoke. I picked up the remote control and flicked through the channels until I found a TV programme with some brightly coloured puppets flinging slime at each other. I didn’t recognise them but Alice immediately calmed down, and so did Bea once she could hear that her little girl was okay.
‘Are you all right to watch Alice for a few hours?’ she asked me.
I assured her that I was, and she promised to ring me from the hospital when she had any news. Alice was engrossed in the programme, so I took a few minutes to try and calm myself down. My pulse had almost returned to a normal rate, and my hands had stopped shaking, when Alice called out to tell me that she was hungry.
My fridge was almost empty, but I had some flatbreads in the cupboard, some pasta sauce and some cheese, so we stood side by side at the table making our pizzas and choosing toppings. I had sweetcorn and mushroom. Alice had raisins and carrots. I wasn’t sure how that would work out, but she was adamant, as only a small child can be, and as it distracted her from thinking about Jake, I let her try it. She could always pick them off later if she didn’t like it, or eat mine. I wasn’t sure I could stomach any food until I heard how Jake was.
I kept checking my mobile, but by seven o’clock there was still no news from Bea. I rang the hospital but as I wasn’t family they couldn’t tell me anything. In the background I heard Alice’s programme end, and the screen went blue. She looked at me with her big blue eyes, and yawned. Despite the churning in my stomach, I tried to hide it to keep her as calm as I could. She was covered in pizza sauce, and there was a greasy splodge on her T-shirt where the raisins had fallen off as she ate.
‘How about you have your bath here,’ I suggested. She shook her head, and her curls flew from side to side. I saw her lips purse, and I knew that I had moments to salvage it before she started weeping again. ‘I’ve got bubbles,’ I told her. ‘Let’s go and make bubble splat pies.’ I tried to smile, and it must have looked passable, because she took my hand and came with me.
I ran her a deep, deep bath, and she played happily for half an hour. We took it in turns to pile bubbles in our hands, then clap and see how far we could make the bubbles fly. Alice laughed especially hard when she made them fly all over my once dry clothes.
I got her out, wrapped her up in a towel and realised that I didn’t have any clean clothes to put her in. She wanted to put her dirty T-shirt back on, but eventually I realised that if I turned things into a game, she was much more likely to let me do as I needed. It was hard to act cheerful when I couldn’t tear my mind away from worrying about Jake, but thankfully Alice seemed unaware of all the drama and I knew she needed me to look after her so I tried to concentrate on what I could usefully do. I put one of my T-shirts on my bed and told her I hoped no one pu
t it on. She giggled as I turned my back, and when I turned back again she was wearing it and laughing at me. It came down to her ankles, but at least it was clean.
Likewise, I got her a fresh toothbrush out of the cupboard and she let me brush her teeth as I pretended to be looking to see if she’d hidden her pizza in her cheeks. I tucked her into my bed and remembered that despite being an English teacher, the only books in my flat were those suitable for older children and adults, so I made up a story about a superhero called Alice, who could fly and never had to eat her broccoli, and eventually after three renditions of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’, Alice fell asleep.
There were still no messages on my mobile, and by now I was getting frantic, so I phoned the hospital again. Still they were unable to tell me anything. The panic bubbled away in the pit of my stomach until I felt sick.
I wanted a glass of wine, but given that I was looking after Alice I decided that I’d better stick to tea. Even avoiding caffeine and choosing camomile didn’t really help to settle my nerves. I picked up my phone and was about to ring Bea again when there was a knock at my door.
Chapter Fourteen
I let Bea in and got her settled on the sofa. Her usually immaculate hair was pulled back into a scruffy bun, and she had bags under her eyes. I walked into the kitchen and fetched her a glass of wine. She took a long drink, then sighed.
‘Thanks, Evie, I needed that,’ she said. ‘And thanks for watching Alice.’
‘She was as good as gold,’ I assured her, then stood up and waved her to come and peep into my bedroom. Alice was fast asleep in my bed clutching my old teddy bear. Bea looked like she needed to join her.
We walked back to the living room and Bea dropped back onto the sofa. ‘Do you mind if Alice stays a bit longer?’ she asked.
‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘How is Jake doing?’
Bea rubbed her face with her hands. She took a deep breath and I saw her shoulders relax and drop from their hunched position up by her neck. Perhaps she could think about him again now that she knew that Alice was okay. ‘He had a dislocated shoulder, which they’ve re-set, and he has a broken wrist they had to pin. He is going to be in plaster for the next six weeks. He also got knocked out, so he has to stay in overnight because he had lost consciousness at the scene, but the doctor assured me that head injuries often bleed a lot and look worse than they in fact are, so I’m hoping that he’ll be home again tomorrow.’
‘If there is anything I can do to help, please just let me know,’ I told her, and she nodded her head.
‘I’m afraid I’ll have to,’ she said. ‘Jake needs his pyjamas and a washbag. I told him I’d go home and get them.’ She motioned to a bag at her feet. ‘I wanted to go back and take these to him, but I had to see Alice first. I knew she was fine here with you, but after the shock of seeing Jake covered in blood, I just had to see my baby too.’
‘Have you eaten?’ I asked her. She shook her head. I walked back into the kitchen, found the pizza that I hadn’t been able to manage and set it to warm up. ‘You stay here,’ I told her. ‘The food will be ready in five minutes. I’ll put another fresh T-shirt out for you, and you can sleep next to Alice. I’ll take the clothes to Jake and when I get back I can sleep on the sofa.’
‘I can’t ask you to do that,’ Bea said, but she yawned as she said it and looked longingly in the direction of my bedroom.
‘You’re not asking, I’m offering, and you need to rest. Alice will need you tomorrow, and so will Jake by the sounds of things.’ I grabbed my jacket and car keys. ‘Help yourself to anything you need. Alice used the new pink toothbrush in the bathroom, and there are clean towels in the cupboard.’
It was late evening by the time I pulled into the car park and I had my choice of spaces. I guess I’d missed visiting hours and hoped that they would let me in to see Jake. I followed the directions Bea had given me and found his ward up three flights of stairs and down several long corridors. The doors to the ward were closed, so I knocked. A nurse opened them and pointed to a board that displayed the times when they accepted visitors, but I held up my bag and told her I was only there to drop something off. I breathed a huge sigh of relief when she let me in.
Jake was sat up in bed, fiddling with a television mounted onto a thin metal stand. It had a phone on one side, and looked like a space age communication unit. I handed him his bag and leaned over and kissed his cheek. His stubble grazed my lips, and up close I could see how pale he was. I pulled him against me for a proper hug, and he winced as I accidentally brushed his injured shoulder.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, pulling away.
He held onto my hand. ‘Nothing to be sorry for,’ he said.
‘What happened?’ I asked him, taking back my hand and sitting on the chair next to his bed. I hoped he couldn’t tell how much I’d wanted to keep hold of his hand. ‘I was just closing my door and I heard the crash but I didn’t see anything.’
‘It’s a bit fuzzy,’ he told me. ‘It all happened so fast, but as far as I can remember, Alice was sat on the kerb on her little bike. We were waiting for the car to pass, but it was going really slowly as it neared the speed bump, which was lucky for me as it turned out.’
I looked at the cast on his arm and the thin lines of red dots of blood marking the graze on his forehead where he had hit the ground. I thought about how bad it could have been had the car been travelling any faster and found myself feeling sick.
‘I messed up though and we were waiting by a dip in the kerb. I thought that would make it easier for Alice to cross, but she started to roll forward into the road just as the car got close to us, so I dived in front, pushed her back to the kerb, but got knocked flat on my backside for my troubles. I broke my wrist and dislocated my shoulder as I fell, then cracked my head on the road for good measure.’
‘I’m just relieved that you’re okay,’ I told him.
‘I have to stay in overnight in case of concussion,’ he told me, ‘but I don’t feel too bad right now. That may change when the painkillers they gave me wear off.’
I handed him the bag. ‘I’ve got your pyjamas,’ I said, but he pointed to the cast on his arm.
‘I’m not entirely sure how to put them on,’ he said.
I sat on the side of his bed, trying to weigh up whether I should offer to help him or not. I didn’t like to leave him to struggle, but the thought of taking off his hospital gown and re-dressing him felt so intimate. I imagined his bare chest, and how it would feel to slip the pyjama bottoms over his legs. I felt myself blush, and his smile grew wider. ‘I’m sure I’ll manage,’ he said, and I was surprised to find that I felt disappointed. ‘Unless you wanted to help?’
I shook my head and got up to go. ‘Please wait,’ Jake said, touching my hand again. ‘Just wait outside the curtain for a minute, please.’
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak. I was so relieved to see for myself that he was okay. I pulled the curtain around his cubicle to give him the privacy to change and listened to the swishing of fabric. I heard him puffing with the effort. He fell silent for a minute, and then I heard his voice, softly calling my name. I peeked back round the curtain to find him sat on his bed. He’d managed to get his pyjama bottoms up to his knees, I helped him stand and I pulled them up to cover his boxer shorts. He held on to my shoulders to steady himself.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I thought I could manage but as I bent over to pull them on I felt dizzy. Maybe it is lucky that I’m in here after all.’
I smiled and tied the drawstring at his waist. I slipped the hospital gown over his head and helped him get the pyjama top over his cast. He tried to do the buttons himself but I watched him wince as he used his left hand and stepped in front of him. He didn’t speak as I fastened the buttons, and when I finished I found that I couldn’t step away. Instead I brushed the hair from his eyes and placed a gentle kiss on his forehead.
He reached out and put his uninjured arm around my waist, pulling me closer again
st him. I tried to blink the tears from my eyes but I couldn’t stop them from falling. ‘I was so scared,’ I told him.
He buried his head against my stomach, and I stroked his hair, gently to avoid brushing against his injuries again, as my tears fell silently.
‘I’m okay,’ he reassured me. ‘A bit bruised but nothing that won’t heal.’
‘You were a hero,’ I told him, as I sniffed and tried to pull myself together.
‘Hardly,’ he said with a small snort. ‘I was the plonker who nearly let Alice roll into the road in front of a car.’
‘You were the one who risked your own life to pull her out of the way. Accidents happen,’ I told him, ‘but you stopped this one from being a damn sight worse.’
‘How is Alice?’ he asked.
‘She’s fine,’ I reassured him. ‘Not a scratch on her. I left her fast asleep in my flat, and Bea not far behind. I told Bea that I’d bring you the bag so she could rest, she looked done in, but the truth was I needed to see for myself that you were all right.’
Jake looked so vulnerable, sat on his hospital bed with the plaster cast immobilising his wrist. The dim lights of the corridor, made even more subdued by the curtains still pulled shut around us, left his face in shadow. His arm, still around my waist stretched up to stroke the back of my neck. I bent down so that he could reach me more easily, and he guided me down further, until he could reach me with his lips.
His kiss was tender and sweet. I returned it with a hunger that left me breathless. Jake leant back on his bed and I climbed on top, straddling him without breaking contact with our lips. He winced when his shoulder touched the bed, I started to pull back but he held onto me with his good arm and brought me down against him. Everything that had held us back before no longer seemed important. The only thing that mattered was that Jake was still alive and we were together.