Calli managed to lift herself periodically out of the fog, only to fall back down into its waiting depths each time. Eventually, she gave up. The air around her seemed stale when she finally opened her eyes, discovering dim lights overhead and a white ceiling. For a moment, she faltered inwardly believing she was back in the dirty, decaying little house and the men had hurt her some more. The air smelled of unwashed male and it made her feel dismayed. Surely dying would be better than waking up to that again.
Her exploring hand touched fabric, which encroached over the sight in her right eye. When Calli felt the space it occupied, pain signals played tell-tale with her brain, waking her up further. Her head lay awkwardly on the soft substance underneath it, not the lumpy, aged cushions of the sofa but something else. Calli felt with her hand, stopping on a mound like a small egg protruding from the back of her head. It was so painful she couldn’t bear to let her fingers linger on it. She squeezed her eyes tight shut. Then she opened them again, managing finally to focus properly.
The room was clinically white and the sound of clicking and beeping assaulted Calli’s waking ears. Blinds were closed against the arresting sunshine trying to force its way through a wide window which occupied all of one side of the room and underneath it, the bowed, tousled head of Simon sat, joined to a body bent almost in half. He rubbed his long fingers over his eyes and sighing.
Calli looked at her hands in turn, recognising a cannula similar to the one used for the B12 infusion, secured to her left hand with a tape. When she turned both her hands over, she found them empty. “No, no” she began to cry, seeing the gouge and scratches from the broken end of the pin decorating the underneath of her left hand. She tried to sit up, frantically searching the bed with her fingers for her gran’s brooch. “He’s all I have,” she sobbed, her voice wobbling and shaking, cracking with the dull pain emanating from her windpipe and voice box.
“Shush, Cal, shush, it’s all ok now. You’re safe, baby. It’s all over.”
Simon tried to stroke her head with his giant hand, struggling to find an area which didn’t carry a cut or gouge in her flesh. “What’s the matter?” he asked, his face screwed up in concentration, desperately trying to emotionally reach the pained little girl in the huge white hospital bed. “What can I get you?”
“My man!” Calli wailed, still seeking with scratched fingers, snaking her hands underneath the sheets and searching fruitlessly. Comprehension dawned on Simon’s handsome face and he stood up, awkwardly scrabbling around in his trouser pocket.
“This?” he said triumphantly, holding out the metal warrior between finger and thumb. Calli’s bottom lip trembled as she held out her hand for him, watching as Simon carefully placed the soldier in the palm of her right hand, where the little man tipped awkwardly onto his helmet. Calli drew him close to her face, peering at him through her left eye and the part of her right which could see from under the shroud.
“He’s bent!” she said with indignation, touching him gingerly with the fingers of her left hand.
The soldier’s body arched backwards slightly, as though he was in the process of doing a high-jump, his body curving gracefully over an invisible bar. His face remained impassive but fierce despite his great trauma and there was a crusting of red stuff on the jagged end where the pin snapped off.
Calli exhaled and closed her eyes, laying her head carefully back on the pillows, fisting her fingers around her little hero.
“My mum’s brooch,” Simon said wistfully. “I’d forgotten she left it for you.”
Calli opened her eyes again, exhaustion weighing down on her heavily. “Why did you have him?” she asked, her words beginning to slur.
Simon pursed his lips, not sure how much to divulge or quite how much to assume his daughter recalled. The doctor warned him not to upset her. It was only by the grace of Alison that Simon was allowed in with her at all. The state care worker, Mary, argued vehemently against it. The adults had taken turns to sit with the girl’s comatose body. It was pure chance she had woken up with her father there. Perhaps. Was anything ever really chance or coincidence?
Simon took a deep breath. Calli seemed extraordinarily calm now he had produced the brooch. He took a risk. “Jim rugby tackled you after you...after you stabbed Pete. You hit your head and passed out. I managed to get to you and...it was stupid really, they were trying to work out what you’d done to him and I saw your hand was gripped real tight. I took the trinket and put it in my pocket. I wasn’t thinking straight. I just didn’t want you charged with attempted murder and...I guess I hid the evidence.”
Simon bit his bottom lip guiltily between his teeth. He looked like a little boy, caught stealing biscuits. Calli first looked horrified and then wanted to laugh. The chuckle she let loose hurt her head, vibrating the awful pain back like a recalled tidal wave.
“So the perfect cop isn’t so perfect after all?”
Simon screwed up his nose and nodded. “Not where my kid’s concerned.”
“You’ll get fired,” Calli said, losing the end of whatever she was going to say, in a mist which descended over her eyes in a mesmerising white dance.
“Na,” Simon whispered. “I’ve already quit.”