Even if I’d been able, I wouldn’t have rushed to his side. Instead, I stood in the doorway, trying to decide whether I could see the rise and fall of his chest to indicate he was alive, or whether I was in luck and the vicious bastard had popped his clogs.
But tears had blurred my eyesight and it wasn’t until I had shuffled painfully across the room that I realised I was out of luck yet again. He was breathing. As I stood looking down at him, wondering what I should do, he opened his eyes and glared at me.
‘Wurg da bla.’
Had the beating I’d suffered affected my hearing? ‘What?’
He screwed up his face – no, half his face – then tried again. The strangled sounds made no sense. It took a while before clarity dawned on my pain wracked brain. A stroke… he’d had a stroke! He’d probably pushed his blood pressure up while he was beating the living crap out of me. Karma. The idea made me smile, then grimace and lift a finger to my burst lip.
‘Wurg da bla.’
I looked down at him and sneered. ‘Is that you saying sorry?’ I would have liked to have kicked him where it hurt and would have done if every movement didn’t cause me agony. My phone was on the counter. It took me several minutes to take photographs of the bruises that streaked and coloured my body, reaching painfully to document as many as possible. Only when I was done did I press triple nine.
Perhaps it was the way I spoke, my voice barely above a whisper, rather than what I said that had both police and two ambulances arriving not many minutes later. I struggled to the door in anticipation and stood braced in the doorway as they pulled up one in front of the other. The posse to my rescue.
They were gentle with me, helping me onto a trolley, wrapping me in a blanket. I hadn’t realised I was shivering till then, hadn’t realised I was crying until one of the paramedics wiped a cool cloth over my face. ‘Hush, don’t cry, you’re safe now.’
They must have given me something for the pain because next I knew, I was in a cubicle, surrounded on three sides by a white curtain, leads trailing from various parts of me to monitors that beeped reassuringly. There were voices but none I recognised, and none were directed my way.
When someone did come, a scrub-suited man who looked about sixteen and who introduced himself as Dr Peterson, the pain had returned. He checked my notes and peered knowledgeably at the monitors, as if to reassure himself, and perhaps me, that he knew what he was doing.
‘Despite everything,’ he said, ‘you’re probably concerned about your husband so I’ll set your mind at rest by saying he’s in a stable condition. The next twenty-four hours will be crucial.’ His rather cherub-like countenance was marred by a sudden frown. ‘Unfortunately, lying on that hard floor for the length of time he was, has resulted in some consequences for him.’
I could have told him that I didn’t care about Ivan’s condition, certainly wasn’t interested in any consequences, that all I wanted to do was get more of whatever drug they’d given me and drift off. When the doctor looked as if he was going to elaborate on my husband’s plight, I moved slightly, then groaned. No acting skills were required; the pain was incredible.
‘Okay,’ Peterson said. ‘Let’s concentrate on getting you sorted.’ He vanished, returning a moment later with a nurse in tow. There was some muttering, some fiddling with the intravenous line that was attached to my right arm, and then merciful relief.
Over the next few hours, as I drifted in and out of sleep, I was X-rayed, scanned, examined by people whose names and qualifications were heard in a drug-filled haze, suffered someone struggling to find a vein in my bruised arms from which they eventually drained what seemed like an awful lot of blood. Everything was explained to me in great detail that was forgotten as soon as heard. Finally, I was wheeled into a small, four-bedded room and helped across onto a bed.
A nurse bustled about, settling me, checking the monitors, asking me incessantly if there was anything I needed.
‘No,’ I said, not for the first time. ‘I’m okay, thank you.’ The buzz of whatever they’d given me earlier had worn off, but the vicious pain I’d experienced had eased to a dull ache. I needed to think; it was better to be alert.
The nurse fussed about a little longer, then apologetically said, ‘There’s a couple of coppers outside who want to have a word; do you think you’re up to it?’
Definitely better to be alert if I was going to speak to them. Not that I’d anything to worry about, nothing to hide. I was blameless in this. For a change, I was the victim.
They didn’t need to know that I planned to make Ivan pay for what he’d done to me. They didn’t need to know that at all.