Slaughter's hound

21

The corridor looked no longer than the Marianas Trench. It didn’t help that I’d been operated on by some fiend who’d replaced every last bone with a strand of hot cotton wool, which left me zig-zagging a course between wheelchairs and beds, stern-faced nurses and blank-eyed porters. Dizzy, weak and sick, the polished floor lurching up then falling away.

The elevator lobby was a safe haven. I propped myself between two doors and dry-swallowed one of the Dilaudids waiting for the lift to arrive. My vision seemed to be getting worse. Not only was everything shorter and narrower due to the patch on my left eye, but I was suffering a kind of blurring in the good one. Or maybe that was just the artist’s impression of a fiery sunset hanging on the opposite wall, a vermillion blaze that did my thumping headache no favours.

Three minutes burned up already. The elevator door dinged, then opened. I staggered inside. The doors closed and the floor rose and I stared at the fuzzy reflection in the mirror, something that looked a lot like the Elephant Man after fifteen rounds with Jake La Motta. I found myself wondering why they put mirrors into elevators and decided it was for the claustrophobics, fully aware that I was trying to distract myself from the dread slithering up my spine at the prospect of what lay three floors above, a tangerine-sized lump bleeding into his brain pan.

By the time I left the elevator and stepped out onto the ICU floor, the Dilaudid had gone off like a depth-charge. I was queasy below and woozy upstairs, giddy as a three-legged donkey on wet cobbles. I went through to a waiting area of low chairs, low tables and people who paced, fretted or wept quietly. No worst there is none, Hopkins reckoned, although he’d never had a child comatose in ICU. You could taste the desperation on the dead air. Salty, like an offshore mist in the early dawn.

Two of the people were Dee and an angular guy in his early forties, sandy hair brushed across his forehead, wide eyes. A chin like a soft-boiled egg. He was wide in the shoulders and wore a mauve shirt under a checked sports jacket with leather patches at the elbows.

She saw me coming. Closed her eyes, allowed her chin slump forward onto her chest. Then she turned her head away and held up a hand to ward me off.

‘Don’t even come near me,’ she said. Sounding dull, raspy. The guy unfolded from his seat and got up in stages. I had to peek under his armpit to speak to Dee.

‘Whatever they told you, it’s not true.’ My own voice was a croak. ‘We were rammed, ran off the road.’

‘Jesus, Harry. Do you really think I give a fuck how it happened?’

She had a point. I looked up at the guy. ‘Hey, d’you mind? I’m trying to talk about our son here.’

‘She says she doesn’t want you near her.’ He sounded smooth, controlled. Or maybe it was just that he didn’t rasp or croak. He pointed over my shoulder. ‘Why don’t you sit over there? There’s a seat free.’

‘Why don’t you sit over there?’

‘I’m already here,’ he said.

‘I don’t know who the fuck you think you are,’ I said, ‘but-’

‘Frank.’

‘Right.’

I gave Frank some fish-eye. By now someone had iced the cobbles and the donkey was down to two legs. I tilted my head to peek under his armpit again and the room swam away, seemed to loop around on itself, then settled down into a whirlpool groove. Frank put out a hand, maybe to steady me, maybe to fend me off, as I began to topple in towards Dee. I swiped at it, missed, and wound up with my jaw planted on Frank’s chest.

Dee whipped around, using the heels of her palms to swab her cheeks. Eyes red-limned and raw. A mascara tear-streak had curved outside her right cheekbone to head for her ear. ‘Christ’s sakes, Harry, I’m trying to fucking pray here.’

I’ve had worse moments, although most of those were idled away in front of a gun. ‘Pray?’

It was bad, then. I struggled away from Frank, which is to say he stood me upright, just as a barrel-shaped Sikh doctor came through the double swing-doors at the end of the room. Every head turned but he barrelled straight for us, a clipboard tucked under one arm. I don’t know why, he didn’t refer to it once. Dee stood up, a hand to her mouth. Frank put an arm around her. He looked solid, dependable, so I lurched up against him.

‘Mizz Gorman?’ the Sikh said.

She nodded. He took a deep breath. ‘I am very sorry,’ he said, not so much rolling his Rs as bowling them at skittles, ‘but I have very little to report. No significant change, yes.’

‘O Christ,’ Dee whimpered.

The Sikh held up a forefinger. ‘This means, you understand, that he has no deterioration. But soon he will need the transfusion. He has lost a lot of blood.’ A hint of reproach, as if it were Ben’s fault. ‘The boy has had two transfusions in four hours. At this rate …’ He tailed off with a shrug, turning his palm upwards.

From behind her hand Dee emitted a sound that was somewhere between sob and stifled screech. Frank squeezed her shoulders. The Sikh glanced from one to the other as if waiting for applause.

‘So give him the transfusion,’ I said.

‘It’s not that simple,’ Frank said over his shoulder.

The Sikh looked at me for the first time. ‘Who is this?’ he said.

‘The father,’ Frank said.

There followed a conversation I didn’t fully follow, its natural flow clogged up with AB negatives, anti-Ds, antigen factors and incompatibilities, but as the room swirled away, then came rushing back, I realised they were all staring at me, waiting for an answer.

‘What the fuck are we waiting for?’ I said, ripping the dressing off my forearm. Drops of blood flew, spattering the tiles, the Sikh’s penny loafers.

The effort, or the momentum, tugged me sideways. Frank half-turned to grab at me. The donkey, down to one leg, gave one last kick.

I don’t remember making it all the way down.