Because of Frankie.
As the shock diluted into his bloodstream and faded away completely, it was replaced by a fury so alive with hatred that it seemed electrical in nature, sparking through his system and making his flesh tingle. He started for home again, wondering how he would ever explain to his family that, for the second time this week, chips were cancelled.
“What do you mean you’re going to the hospital?” Pen asked him incredulously.
“I need to go check on someone. The girl from the chip shop told me where Frankie lives, and I think he’s hurt her because of it.”
Pen almost spat the red wine she was drinking and had to swallow it carefully to avoid choking. “He’s put the girl in hospital? Jesus Christ!”
“And it might be my fault, which is why I need to go.”
Pen collapsed onto the sofa. “Crazy… This whole thing is just crazy.”
Andrew sat down beside his wife and put an arm around her. “I know, but perhaps this girl will press charges and Frankie will go away again. Lord knows he deserves it.”
“You want me to come with you?”
Andrew shook his head. “No, it wouldn’t be fair to Charlie. She probably won’t want to see me, let alone my family. You stay here and look after Bex. I think she’s more upset about this situation than she lets on.”
“Okay,” said Pen. “Give this Charlie my best, okay?”
Andrew kissed his wife goodbye and left the house. The hospital was five or six miles away so he would need to take his car to get there. Hopefully, now that it was dark, the graffiti written all over it would not be visible. He pulled out his car keys and pressed the alarm fob. The lights flashed twice.
To the pedo-mobile, thought Andrew wryly as he looked at the once-beautiful machine. He pulled open the door and hopped inside behind the wheel, plonking his butt down onto the leather driver’s seat. The ignition started as soon as he turned the key, and the car was already moving when he began to fumble for his seatbelt. His eye was off the road for only a few seconds, but it was long enough to miss sight of the person standing in the road.
At only 20mph, the car was moving fast enough to launch the person up onto the bonnet and then tumbling back down to the road.
Andrew stamped on the brakes.
The tyres squealed.
The car stopped.
He stared out at the body on the road and could not believe it. His world got worse with every passing second. He pressed the release on his seat belt and shoved open the door, stepping shakily into the frosty, cold air.
He had run down a young boy, unconscious and bleeding in the road. Glass covered the asphalt with shards of glass that now sparkled in the car’s headlamps like alligator teeth. Andrew rushed over to the boy and dropped down to his knees, ignoring the stabbing pains caused by the unforgiving tarmac.
“Are you okay?”
Stupid question.
“Everything is going to be okay. I’m going take you to the hospital.”
I was on my way there anyway, Andrew thought grimly. To see another young kid that got hurt because of me. I’m going to hell.
Andrew sprung up off his knees and went and opened the rear passenger door of the car. Then he went back over to the injured boy, kneeled beside him, and threaded his arms underneath his shoulders to hoist him up. The weight was substantial, but thankfully the boy was pretty lean. Andrew was just about able to carry him over to the back seat of the car without running out of steam. He placed the boy down gently and bent his legs at the knee so that the door had room to close. Before Andrew had a chance to close it, the boy opened his eyes and started to moan.
“Hey there,” said Andrew softly. “My name is Andrew. You’ve been in a little accident, but everything is going to be okay. I’m taking you to the hospital right now. Can you tell me your name?”
The boy carried on moaning for a few moments more but eventually managed to answer Andrew’s question. He said his name was Davie.
8
Andrew reached the hospital in less than ten minutes, screeching to a halt outside the entrance to the A & E department. There was no one around, and he had to cry out for someone to come and help him. It wasn’t long before a male nurse and a couple of orderlies appeared outside, hurrying to see what the emergency was.
The orderlies quickly retrieved a gurney, and together with the male nurse, managed to hoist Davie out of the car and onto the wheeled bed. Without hesitation, they then disappeared inside the hospital with Davie, leaving Andrew alone with the male nurse.
“Do you know the boy?” the nurse asked him.
Andrew shook his head. “Said his name was Davie, but I’ve never met him before.”
The nurse put a hand on Andrew’s back and ushered him inside. “We’ll take good care of him, sir. For now, we’ll need you to answer a few questions so that we can assess the extent of his injuries. You may have to make a report to the police as well. I assume it was you that hit him?”
It mortified Andrew to hear it out loud, but he had no choice except to nod–yes, he had hit the boy. Had run him right over because he hadn’t been paying attention.
I ran down somebody’s son.
The nurse led Andrew over to a grouping of cheap plastic chairs that were bolted to the floor in uniform rows. “Take a seat, sir. We’ll keep you updated on his condition. Is there someone you’d like us to call?”
Andrew thought about Pen and Bex, but then found someone else popping into his head. “I need to see someone else that is already here. A girl named Charlie. She got burned today by a deep fat fryer.”
The nurse raised an eyebrow. “I think I recall someone coming in with those injuries. What relation are you?”
Andrew looked down at the floor, examining the various old stains that adorned the beige tiles. “I’m… a friend.”
“Okay, I’ll see what I can find out for you.”
Andrew thanked the man and leaned back in the chair. The bruising on his ribs throbbed as his chest compressed against the hard, uncomfortable backrest. The small waiting room was empty of people and the other chairs contained nothing other than discarded magazines and folded newspapers. Apparently, weekday evenings were not peak time for injures.
So the only two people admitted are both probably here because of me. Way to do my bit for national health.
Five minutes later, a young lady in a white tunic came and sat beside Andrew. She asked him a series of questions about the incident involving the boy and wrote down his replies on a printed form. Once she reached the end of the questionnaire, she smiled at Andrew and disappeared back into the staff only area of the hospital. Waiting for further news was a torment that he could hardly bear. For all he knew, right now, the young boy he’d hit could have permanent injuries.
The over-sized clock on the waiting room wall moved along almost one full hour before someone else came to speak to him. It was the same male nurse who had met him in the car park. He sat next to Andrew. “How are you doing?”
“Not bad, considering. Any news?”
The nurse smiled and nodded. “The boy you ran into is going to be fine. He has some mild bruising on his ribs and a concussion from where his head hit the windscreen, or perhaps the road. Either way, he’ll be fine after an extended rest. He was awake for a while, but he’s sleeping at the moment.”
Andrew let all of the air out of his lungs in a great big hiss. “Thank God. Did you let his family know?”
“No,” said the nurse. “He wouldn’t give us anyone to contact. He just told us to let him know when it was all right for him to leave.”
“That’s strange. Well, when he wakes up, let him know I’m happy to drive him home.”
“I’ll tell him. Now about this girl you said you wanted to check on. I located her in the burns ward. She’s going to be okay, but the damage to her arm is… severe.”
“Permanent?” Andrew didn’t really want to hear the answer.
The nurse nodded grimly. “She h
as second-degree burns from above her elbow all the way down her arm. She’s in a great deal of pain, so she’s been put on morphine.”
Andrew found himself unable to breathe, his bodily functions temporarily halted by the horror he was feeling.
“She’s asked to see you,” the nurse told him.
Andrew looked at the man. “Really?”
The nurse nodded and stood up. “I’ll take you there now. She’ll probably be asleep once the treatment takes hold.”
Andrew stood up and followed the nurse. They passed through the waiting room for regular admittance, which was a great deal busier than the empty emergency room he had been seated in, and then continued on to the treatment wards. They took an elevator up to the second floor and passed by the mournfully silent Oncology Department. Then they reached the Burns Unit.
The nurse pushed open one of the swinging double doors and stood aside for Andrew to enter. The first thing he noticed as he walked into the room was the suffocating odour of antiseptic creams and alcohol. The ward was cramped, divided into cubicles on both sides.
“She’s in bed number three,” said the nurse, pointing up ahead.
Andrew thanked the man and headed for Charlie’s cubicle–a set of canvass walls and a blue nylon curtain for the door. Andrew pulled aside the curtain and stepped inside. Charlie was staring right at him when he entered.
“Hi, Charlie,” he said, looking left and right for a chair to sit on. Before he found one, his eyes fixated on the thick white bandages that covered her entire left arm. He quickly broke his stare and perched himself down on a nearby chair. It was a lot comfier than the ones they had in the waiting room. “How are you doing?”
She shook her head at him wearily, obviously tired and a little out of it from the morphine that was entering through the drip on her uninjured arm. “I’ve been better.”
“I’m really sorry you got hurt,” said Andrew. “Are your parents coming?”
Charlie’s voice was croaky when she spoke. “Someone’s contacting them now. How come you got here so fast?”
“I ran someone over. I was already heading here to see how you were, but I guess that made me drive a little faster. I knew you’d been hurt because I was coming to the chip shop just after it happened.”
Charlie let out a little laugh. It was a sleepy sound. “You hit someone?”
Andrew laughed a little too. “Yeah, if you can believe it. He’s going to be fine. Which just leaves the question: what exactly happened to you?”
Charlie turned her head and looked away from him. Her eyes eventually focused on her bandaged arm. The sight seemed to upset her a great deal. “What you think?”
Andrew leaned forward on his chair. “Frankie?”
“He knew I spoke to you.”
Guilt took root in Andrew’s gut and started eating away at him from within, gnawing with its vicious little teeth. “I’m so sorry. I went and had it out with him this afternoon. Your friend was with him, and I mentioned your name. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, you have to believe me. I was just trying to protect my…” Andrew’s voice trailed off. This girl in front of him would be scarred for life. There were no excuses she needed to hear from him. None would be good enough.
“I don’t want you to ever bother me again,” said Charlie in a voice that was forceful despite her dreary, drug-addled tone. “This happened because of you.”
“This happened because of Frankie. I know I dragged you into this, but it’s him that needs to pay. We need to tell the police.”
Charlie shook her head. “Frankie is a psychopath.”
“I know. That’s why I need you to have him arrested. I need to make sure he’s stopped before… before…”
“Before he does the same to your family?”
Andrew felt sick at the thought. Earlier on, he’d been convinced that Frankie’s bark was bigger than his bite, but after the callous attack on this innocent young girl, he wasn’t so sure anymore.
“I’d get your family and just move,” said Charlie, suddenly sounding very sleepy. “I’m not… getting… involved.”
Andrew sat for a few moments, trying to formulate a counter-argument in his head but came up blank every time. Before he even came close to having something useful to say, Charlie had fallen unconscious in the grasp of morphine-soaked oblivion.
Andrew stood up. “I’m sorry,” he whispered as he left the cubicle.
Outside, the male nurse who had been waiting for him asked, “Everything okay?”
Andrew shook his head. “Not at all. Can you take me to the boy I ran over please? Seems I have a lot of apologising to do this evening.”
Andrew had to sit outside the recuperation ward for over an hour while Davie slept. He had sent a text to Pen during this time letting her know that the girl was okay and that he would be home soon. He didn’t tell her that he’d run over a young boy on the way to the hospital. That was a conversation for later.
A plump woman came out of the ward and smiled at Andrew on her way to the nurse’s station nearby. As she passed, she told him that, “The boy is awake now. You can go in.”
Andrew nodded his thanks and stood up. His knees clicked as they straightened out, and he suddenly felt sixty years old as he headed for the ward. Inside, there were a dozen separate beds, half of them empty. At the far end was the boy he’d hit, head wrapped in a bright-white bandage. Andrew walked over and stood at the end of the bed.
“How you doing?” asked Andrew. “You feeling okay?”
The boy’s eyes went very wide for a split-second, almost as if he recognised Andrew, but that seemed unlikely. “Y-yeah, thanks. Was it you that ran me over?”
Andrew nodded.
“Did you do it on purpose?”
“What?” Andrew’s mouth fell open. “Of course not. I never meant it at all. I’m really sorry this happened.”
The boy was silent for a moment as if trying to work something out in his head. “Okay. So you never wanted to hurt me?”
“Of course not. I’ve never even met you before. I’m sorry, okay?”
The boy nodded. “Thanks. I was probably to blame anyway. I was running across the road without looking.”
Andrew smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, whoever’s to blame it was just an accident. You’re going to be okay and that’s the main thing. I’m happy to give you a ride home when you’re ready, pal?”
“No, no, that’s okay. I’ll make it home on my own.”
“Don’t be silly,” said Andrew. “I hit you five miles from here. I’m not letting you make your own way home with a concussion.”
“But-”
“No arguments. I’ll go talk to the nurses now and see if we can break you out of here. Then we can go get McDonalds on the way home or something.”
The boy smiled. “They said I’m not allowed to eat for twenty-four hours.”
Andrew winked at the boy. “Who’s going to know?”
“Okay,” said Davie. “Thanks.”
“Sure thing. Where am I driving you to anyway?”
The boy seemed to hesitate before he answered. “T-Tanner’s Avenue.”
Andrew raised an eyebrow. “Tanner’s Avenue? Great… I know the place. I’ll be waiting outside for you, okay?”
Andrew left Davie alone and exited the ward, wondering whether or not coincidences really existed.
9
Davie was almost certain that the man waiting for him outside the ward was the very same guy who had been on his doorstep earlier arguing with Frankie. While not one hundred percent positive, Davie recognised that the man had the same neat brown hair and spindly posture.
He pulled on his jeans behind the plastic wraparound curtain of his cubicle, and every time he peeked through the gap in the sheet, he could see the man peering in at him through the long windows of the ward.
Waiting to batter me to death and finish what he started when he ran me down with his car.
Davie didn’t believe tha
t, though. The man–Andrew, was it?–didn’t seem to mean any harm. In fact, it didn’t seem like the man even knew who Davie was–or who his brother happened to be. Davie thought about the word coincidence and decided that it was the correct one for this situation. Still, what would happen when the man dropped him off at the same house he’d been at earlier?
There was no chance of him letting Davie make his own way home–he felt too responsible–so the best plan would be to have him stop and drop him off at the end of Tanner’s Avenue. Davie could pretend to walk to another house then go home when the coast was clear.
He pushed his feet into his worn trainers and suddenly felt dizzy. He fell back onto the bed and closed his eyes until the feeling passed. The bump on his head throbbed rhythmically and each time it, did he felt a little more nauseated. The thought of telling his mother, or Frankie that he’d been in an accident made him feel even more ill.
Frankie would go mad, especially if he found out who was responsible.
After a few moments of remaining still, the sickness went away, so Davie pulled aside the privacy curtain and stepped away from the bed. The man was still waiting outside and gave a little wave through the window. There was a young woman in a nurse’s uniform standing beside him.
Davie pushed through the ward’s double doors, and the nurse held something out to him–a small plastic container. “Take these pills every morning,” she said, “and at lunchtime. They should help with the headaches. You need absolute rest, so get yourself in bed, sweetheart, and don’t leave for anything, you hear? You have someone to look after you?”
Davie lied. “Yeah, my mum.”
“Let’s get you home, then,” said the man, wrapping an arm around Davie’s shoulders and ushering him away. It made Davie uncomfortable to be touched by an adult, but he did not resist.
Gripping Thrillers Page 21