Page 83 of Romantic Hero
After an X-ray, in which it is confirmed that I have a small fracture in my ankle, I’m wheeled to another area to wait for a doctor who can prescribe something stronger for the pain.
‘Go get yourself a coffee,’ I say to River. ‘Get some air.’
He shakes his head. ‘I’m good to stay with you.’
‘Seriously, save yourself. This is miserable.’ I point at a poster on the wall. ‘I’ll be fine. I’ll read this lovely piece about how to wash my hands for the tenth time.’
‘I’m not leaving you, Gertie.’
I glance across at him. ‘We both know that’s not true.’
He looks down at his knees before standing up. ‘You want anything?’
‘A water would be great, thank you.’
‘Coming up,’ he says, striding down the corridor, every single person he passes looking up at him in astonishment.
Once he’s disappeared from view, I swallow hard and tap my fingers against my thighs impatiently. I’m on edge, not only because of the pain, but because I haven’t been inside this hospital in four years. Not since I raced here after I got the call from the police that Josie had been in an accident. Just the scent of it here – the desperate, antiseptic, clinical stink is making me feel like I’m going to vomit all over again.
From the other side of the curtain I hear a loud beeping as someone yells, ‘Crash call!’
‘No, no, no,’ I whisper, immediately starting to tremble, my breath lodging in my throat. I cover my ears with my hands in an attempt to block it all out but I’m immediately thrown back to the afternoon she died. The incessant beeping, the hysterical crying, the panic on Mum’s face, the stillness on Dad’s, the indignant disbelief at what was happening.
I squeeze my eyes shut, forcing my brain to latch on to something, anything other than the memory of that night.
Please, please, please.
To my relief I catch on to a memory of something I’ve not thought about in years. We were around nine or ten. Josie and I had just pulled another one of her dumb pranks on Mum and Dad. Dabbing food colouring around the rim of the tap in the kitchen sink, so that the water would come out green. We’d giggled from behind the door as we listened to our parents puzzle over the suddenly toxic water. When Dad audibly worried it might be something to do with our next-door neighbour’s massive aquarium and put on his shoes to go and investigate, we lost it, revealing ourselves to be the architects of the escapade. It was so silly. I remember the four of us laughing in the kitchen and Josie looking around at us all, a jubilant grin on her face, so proud of her handiwork.
‘Gertie?’
I’m pulled out of the memory by River, who is standing in front of me, holding out a bottle of water.
The beeping has stopped, the ward restored to a likely temporary calm. The shaking has abated.
‘Can I borrow your phone?’ I ask, lamenting the fact that mine is still in its tub-of-rice coma.
‘Sure.’ He digs into his jeans pocket and fishes out the cheap cell phone we got for him.
I dial the number I have known off by heart since I was eight years old.
After two rings it connects.
‘Hello?’
‘Mum?’ I ask, my voice wobbling.
‘Gertie, love? Is that you?Greg, it’s our Gertie. It is! I will, I will, hang on.I’ve put you on speakerphone, love, so your dad can hear too. Are you all right? Are you crying? What’s the matter?’
‘I hurt my foot,’ I tell her, tears immediately spilling over at the familiar kindness in her voice. ‘I’m fine. It’s nothing serious. But I’m just at the hospital and it made me think of Jo.’
The pair of them go quiet on the other end.
I take a deep breath.
‘It made me remember those rubbish pranks she used to play. Like the time she made Auntie Mags a vodka and coke but used vinegar instead of vodka. Or that time she bought Dad a pair of orange velvet trousers for his birthday for a joke but pretended they were a real gift.’
‘Those bloody trousers,’ Dad says, a smile in his voice.
