Nothing ever changed at Darnton Station. The tap over the kitchen sink was still dripping, there was still no loo paper in the ladies’ toilet, and chronic understaffing meant Jem was on the RRV again. She took its keys from the safe and dumped her helmet bag and high-vis jacket on its front seat. Unsure of the state of the roads, she had set off early that morning, and she had another half-hour to kill before she needed to sign on. She relocked the car and rested her hands on the car’s cold bonnet, listening to the loose panel flapping on the roof and a fox yapping on a nearby street. She had been nervous about work since waking, her stomach too unsettled to tolerate her mug of tea, and her fingers mucking up the buttons on her shirt as she tried to fasten it. While she had always subscribed to the “getting back on the horse that threw you” theory, she wondered whether she might have been better leaving the damn thing in the stable for the rest of the week, although fretting about her shift was at least taking her mind off what she might say to Rosie that evening.
“Too bloody late to change anything now,” she said, and shoved herself off the RRV.
The scent of frying bacon greeted her as she entered the main station, which was odd, given the absence of ambulances in the garage. She followed her nose regardless, taking a single step across the crew room threshold before Dougie swept her up in a bear hug.
“Morning, flower,” he said as Bob wandered out of the kitchen brandishing a spatula. “We thought you might like some company, so we swapped onto the sixes.”
“And brought breakfast,” Bob added.
She kissed Dougie’s cheek. “Thank you. Have I ever told you that I love you both?”
Bob blushed, and Dougie linked arms with her, ushering her to a table set with mismatched plates and mugs. Neighbouring Crofton Station had lost its stove after a near miss involving an absentminded crew, a forgotten pizza, and rather a lot of smoke alarms going off, but the management had never followed up on their threat to replace Darnton’s with microwaves. As Dougie brought in tea and toast, Bob filled Jem’s plate with bacon and eggs and tucked a paper towel into the neck of her shirt.
“In case you’re as messy an eater as Dougie is,” he said.
She smiled, her collywobbles kicked into touch by her first mouthful of smoky bacon. Almost everyone on the service complained about the job; about the late finishes, the overwhelming volume of calls, the morons and frequent fliers, the verbal and physical abuse, and the fleet of knackered vehicles, but those who stuck it out became a part of the best kind of family.
“Did I miss anything?” she asked, slapping together an egg white and tomato sauce butty and laughing at Bob’s appalled reaction. She took a bite and spoke around it. “Hey, don’t knock it if you’ve never tried it.”
“I never want to try it, and no, I don’t think so,” he said.
“Broke-Back Brenda’s dead,” Dougie offered.
Jem put down her sandwich. “Get out! Really?” Brenda had been one of their most persistent and unpleasant morphine chasers. “What got her in the end?”
“She choked to death on an egg white and ketchup butty,” Bob said.
Jem flicked a piece of crust at him. “Poor Brenda. I’ll sort of miss her. She had a very creative vocabulary.”
“And a nice cat,” Dougie said.
Bob raised his mug. “To Brenda and Mr. Bigglesworth.”
Dougie grinned and knuckled Jem’s chin. “Bet you’re glad to be back, aren’t you?”
They signed on together, checking through the updated road closures and flood warnings as the banks of yet another local river capitulated to the rain.
“They’ll have to issue us with bloody scuba gear if this carries on,” Bob said. “Oh, here we go.” Their terminal began to bleep, and he read the job details aloud for Jem’s benefit. “Male, twenty-two. Car stalled in flood. Shivering and feels faint.”
“Go save a life, boys,” Jem said and opened the garage door for them.
* * *
The daily briefing broke apart in dribs and drabs, a handful of officers sticking around to compare assignments or attempt swaps, while the majority went straight out to bagsy the cars least likely to smell of stale kebabs. Rosie stayed in her seat, her notepad blank aside from a doodle of a rowing boat with a flashing beacon on it. When the sarge had thrown the briefing open for questions, Smiffy had asked whether there were any plans to provide officers with Jet Skis. Everyone except his van was running solo, and a third of the shift hadn’t yet made it to the station.
“You okay?” Kash said from somewhere behind her. He had started to leave with the crowd and then noticed she hadn’t moved.
“Yeah.” Even to her own ears she sounded unconvincing.
“Worried about meeting Jem?”
“Yep,” she said without equivocating. She desperately wanted to sit down and speak to Jem properly, to have a chance to state her case and try to sort out whatever had gone awry between them. The three-in-the-morning terrors had got to her, though, planting an insidious little niggle that kept telling her Jem’s mind was made up and this would probably be the last time she would see her. No matter what she did, she couldn’t shake it off, and it was making her feel sick.
Kash retook his seat. They had never had a very tactile partnership, but he put his hand on her arm. “How about I buy you a brew later?”
“Definitely. Text me in a few hours and let me know where you’re at.”
Left alone, she took out her phone, reminded of something else that had kept her tossing and turning through the early hours. Tahlia Mansoor’s photo was still open in her gallery, the phone’s screen smudged by her repeated efforts to enlarge or zoom in on the image, as if a clearer view of the school badge or the stitching on Tahlia’s blazer might somehow tell her where Tahlia was. As the screen timed out and locked itself, she pushed back her chair and headed for Major Crimes.
She found Ray first, sitting in his customary spot by the open window and blowing vape smoke through the crack.
“She’s in the loo,” he said, sending a sweet smell of cherries towards her. “You better get a wriggle on, though. She’s interviewing Galpin in ten.”
Knowing how long Steph could take touching up her makeup, Rosie went straight into the ladies’ toilet. As predicted, Steph was leaning over the sink, reapplying mascara in the cleaner section of the mirror. She spotted Rosie immediately, but the twirl of her brush never faltered.
“Admit it,” she said, setting the brush aside and uncapping a lipstick. “Your memories of this countertop are as fond as mine.”
Rosie followed her gaze to the space beside the sink, but that night alone with Steph in the office might as well have been a lifetime ago, and the mention of it evoked the emotional equivalent of a shrug.
“I need to speak to you about Tahlia Mansoor,” she said.
Steph rolled her lips together, evening the spread of dark red. “What about her?”
“I think there’s a possibility she might be able to identify Frank Galpin’s mother.” Rosie phrased the statement carefully, couching it in uncertainty in an attempt to placate Steph, but Steph slammed down her lipstick and turned to face her.
“I’m not having this discussion again, Roz.”
“Did you even bother to watch the video?” Rosie snapped, her mood as brittle as Steph’s. “That woman recognised Tahlia. You can see it clear as day in her reaction, which means there’s a chance they met face-to-face. We know what these arseholes are capable of, Steph. We need to find this kid before they do.”
“Who do you mean by we?” Steph asked. “There is no we. It’s my team working this case, and we’ll be spending the day interviewing Frank Galpin and Adrian Peel, not chasing after a girl who may have no connection whatsoever to the investigation.” She threw her makeup into its pouch and yanked the zip closed. “Shouldn’t you be out with the rest of your mob, filling sandbags or something?”
Rosie didn’t waste her breath on an answer. She walked out of the room and shut the door behind her.
* * *
The Entonox mouthpiece made an obscene farting sound as the child sucked on it, the noise and the hit of pain-relieving gas sending him into a fit of giggles.
“You’re doing brilliantly,” Jem said, rechecking the splint around his fractured leg. “That’s it, pretend you’re sucking up a really thick milkshake. What’s your favourite flavour?”
“Chicken nuggets and chips,” he said and took a puff that made him reel like a first-time drunk.
“The ambulance is here,” his teacher told Jem. “And his mum is going straight to the hospital.”
“Great, thanks.” Jem waved at the approaching crew, both of whom were wearing hooded coats and wellies. “How bad is it out there?” she asked, meeting them halfway. She had been waiting for backup for over an hour, and three of the school’s playing fields had been under water on her arrival.
“If you’ve got a couple of oars, a rudder, and a tiller stashed in your car, you’ll be fine,” the paramedic said. “Half the Crofton crews are stranded at home, and Pud brought a lilo and floated it around the car park.”
She laughed. “Outstanding. Right, let me tell you about our chap with the midshaft tib fib.”
She was wading through the car park, cursing herself for not remembering to pack her own wellies, when her radio buzzed.
“Kev wants to see you on station,” Ryan said. “Something about missing morphine.”
“Crap,” she whispered, off the channel. That was the last thing she needed. She hadn’t spoken to a union rep, she hadn’t prepared anything in her defence, and, to be frank, she had enough on her plate today. She thumbed her talk button. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Don’t be rushing in this weather,” he said, obviously reading between the lines. “And if a cardiac arrest comes in, it’s yours.”
In keeping with Jem’s general run of fortune, no emergency dire enough to warrant her attendance prevented her getting to Darnton, even with the roads snared up and traffic moving at a snail’s pace. Her boots squelched on the carpet as she walked toward Kev’s office, announcing her presence to all and sundry, and stopping her from hiding in the loo until Ryan managed to find her a job. She knocked on Kev’s door, listening for his customary “How do!” before she pushed it open.
“Oh.” She hesitated on the threshold. She had assumed he would be with Baxter, but Amira was the only other person in the office. “Sorry. Do you want me to wait in the crew room?”
“No, come on in.” Kev indicated the empty chair beside Amira. “How are you feeling?”
Scared shitless, she thought, and then realised he was asking after her health.
“Fine, thanks. I’m on a course of steroids, so I’m permanently starving, but I feel fine, thanks.” Giving up on coherence, she sank into the chair. “Do I need a union rep for this, Kev?”
“No, love.” He gestured to Amira, who twiddled with her mobile phone and then passed it to Jem. It was strange seeing her without Caitlin. All trace of the cocksure bully she had been in Caitlin’s company had vanished, and she couldn’t look Jem in the eye.
“I’m really sorry I didn’t tell anyone sooner,” she said. “But Cait can be—well, we’re supposed to be best mates, and you know what she can be like.”
Jem frowned, still attempting to make head or tail of the proceedings. A WhatsApp message from Caitlin filled the phone’s screen, the text almost lost in a sea of horrified emoticons: Fuck fuck fuck. Help!
“Scroll down,” Amira said, noting Jem’s confusion. “It’s all on there.”
Jem did as instructed, reading through the next handful of messages. “Blimey. This explains a lot.”
Amira shook her head. “She panicked, but that doesn’t excuse what any of us did.”
According to the texts, Caitlin had started her first shift on the RRV by losing the three vials of morphine in question when she’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book: driving off with them on the car’s roof after getting a job in the middle of completing her vehicle checks. Shunning Amira’s advice to come clean and tell a manager, she had instead schemed with Baxter to shift the blame on to Jem.
“Why the hell would Baxter agree to put himself in the middle of this?” Jem asked, but even as she hit the question mark, she had a light-bulb moment. “Ah. They’re a couple, aren’t they?”
“They met on a training day, and they’ve been seeing each other for about six months,” Amira confirmed. “He didn’t know Cait had sent the texts, and she didn’t know I’d kept them. I only found out what she’d done after you’d been dragged into the office, and she swore me to secrecy. I don’t have any excuses, though. I should have told you or Kev.”
Kev rustled the paperwork in front of him, looking even more worn out than usual. As a manager, he was happiest when the crews simply got on with things: started their shift on time, worked to the end of it without mucking anything up, and went home. While he’d had plenty of chats in his office with Jem, they had primarily been welfare checks after potentially traumatic jobs, rather than untangling her from some arse-backwards conspiracy.
“I’ve spoken to Caitlin and Baxter this morning,” he said. “Baxter admitted to falsifying the entry in the controlled drugs book, and Caitlin owned up to everything else. They’ve both gone off sick with stress, and they’ll face a proper disciplinary hearing, if or when they come back.”
“What a bloody mess,” Jem said. If it was up to her, they’d all shake hands and have done with it, but these things were never up to her.
Kev crammed his papers into a file and lobbed the file in a drawer. “It is, but it’s my mess to sort, and it’s a load off your mind. Caitlin was supposed to be on the car tonight, so you’ll have no one relieving you.”
Jem slapped her hands on the arms of her chair. “No worries,” she said. Water dripped from the cushion when she stood; she had been so stressed that she had forgotten to take her coat off. “Shit, sorry about that.”
Somewhat overlooked in the corner, Amira sniffed and cleared her throat. Tears had ruined her mascara, trailing black lines down her cheeks. “What’ll happen to me, Kev?”
Kev glanced at Jem, as if expecting her to turn her thumb up or down. She raised an eyebrow at him and then reached a decision in his stead. “Nowt,” she said. She didn’t need her pound of flesh. She was just relieved to have the issue resolved. “I’ll make a brew, and that’ll be the end of it. Is that all right with everyone?”
Evidently satisfied with her verdict, Kev passed her his mug. “Stick a couple of sugars in mine, love,” he said, and ripped open a packet of Jammie Dodgers.
* * *
Even if Rosie had neglected all her local knowledge and followed her phone’s wonky satnav, she still wouldn’t have been able to justify passing the old mill en route to yet another sandbag distribution assignment. After holding a brief, one-sided debate upon the matter and concluding that her sarge probably had better things to do than track her whereabouts, she decided to take the risk. Fifteen minutes later, she turned onto Bennett Street and almost collided with a wheelie bin floating down the road. The river at the back of the houses was well on its way to providing the neighbourhood with a spontaneous spring clean, and most of the local residents had piled their belongings on the upper floors and taken refuge in the closest secondary school.
The lack of parked cars made Rosie’s job easier, allowing her to circumnavigate the mill’s perimeter and confirm with near certainty that no suspicious vehicle was loitering in the vicinity. There were no dark-coloured SUVs with personalised plates or cars expensive enough to stick out like a sore thumb. The few vehicles she did pass were unoccupied scrap heap contenders, and at no point did she spot any signs of life beyond the security fence.
She stopped by the hoarding she had sneaked through five, or was it six days ago? So much had happened since her run-in with the spliff-smoking, unicorn-discussing trio that it was hard to conceive less than a week had passed. She itched to go inside the mill, to search for any indication that Tahlia might have been using it as a refuge, but her unauthorised detour had already taken too long and she couldn’t justify entering on foot. Intent on providing a visual deterrent for anyone who might be lurking, biding their time for their own illicit reconnoitre, she drove around the block once more before reluctantly rejoining the main road and the slow crawl of early commuters attempting to get home.
* * *
Water sloshed over the top of Jem’s boots as she waded up the avenue, counting the house numbers and trying not to drop any of her kit into the lively flow tugging at her legs. She had abandoned the RRV two streets away and asked Ryan to put HART on standby for a possible extrication. HART, equipped for water rescue, was in high demand, so pre-emptively adding her call to their list seemed prudent.
A high-pitched series of yells guided her to the right address, and she opened the front door after a perfunctory knock, walking into a living room ankle-deep in filthy water.
“Hello? Ambulance,” she called into the murk. The power had gone out across the area over an hour ago.
“Upstairs,” a woman replied. “Through the kitchen. Hurry!”
The beam of Jem’s torch guided her between a corner sofa and a coffee table bedecked with sodden leather placemats. Pumpkins and onions glided by as she entered the kitchen, and she almost skidded on a submerged potato.
“Shit,” she said, hefting her response bag back onto her shoulder and starting up the stairs. “Which room, love?” she shouted.
“Second—” the woman’s voice broke off to pant, “left.”
Multiple candles flickered as Jem pushed the door, the light dimming and then flaring to reveal a twenty-something Pakistani woman kneeling by the side of the bed. Heavily pregnant and clearly in the latter stages of labour, she murmured a grateful string of Urdu on seeing Jem.
“Hey, my name’s Jem.” The mattress springs creaked beneath the weight of the bags she threw onto it. “How many weeks along are you?”
“I’m Madina.” The woman managed a small wave. “Thirty-six plus five. He’s my first. My mum says boys are always impatient.”
Jem began to lay out the contents of her maternity pack. It didn’t take an obstetrician to see that Madina was on the verge of a home delivery; within a minute of one contraction ending, she began to pant through the next.
“Allah!” She lowered her forehead to the mattress, her fingers clawing at the bedding. “Hospital, now. Quick!”
Aware that nothing aside from the birth would be happening quickly, Jem pushed the Entonox mouthpiece to Madina’s lips. “Here, here, breathe on this. It’s for the pain. Big deep breaths, good, perfect.” She keyed her radio. “Hey, Ryan. Birth imminent. Backup and a midwife would be great, if you’ve got anything.”
“I have a paramedic solo on the way to you, ETA six, but ETA on HART is upward of an hour. I’ll give Maternity at West Penn a ring now.”
“That’s fine. Tell the solo to leave the bus next to my RRV, grab a torch, and wade down.”
“Will do. Good luck.”
She rolled her eyes and tossed the radio next to a pile of knitted baby clothes. Madina had sagged back against the wall, her brightly coloured salwar hobbling her at the ankles.
“How’s about we get you untangled from these, eh?” Jem said, unhooking one foot and then the other. She felt surprisingly sanguine for someone tasked with delivering a baby in a power cut, with flash floods crippling the region. Being on the RRV, she had seen an exponential rise in her tally of home births, and she usually enjoyed the experience, provided it was complication-free.
“I need the hospital,” Madina said. “He’s breech.”
Jem stopped shoving an incontinence sheet beneath Madina’s bottom. “Of course he is,” she said, grabbing the maternity notes and finding the date for a planned caesarean and an entry detailing a failed attempt to turn the baby. Fuck. She squeezed Madina’s hand. “We’ll manage, I promise.”
Anything else she might have said was lost beneath Madina’s screech of pain as a sudden gush of black-stained fluid saturated the sheet.
“Not here,” Madina cried. “Not here.”
“Hands and knees,” Jem said, almost dragging her into position. “That’s it, good girl. He’s going to need space to come out.”
“Hallo? Jem?” The hail preceded a pounding of boots up the stairs, and Jem smiled as Amira stuck her head around the door. “Holy shit,” Amira whispered as, right on cue, a tiny pair of legs presented themselves.
“My sentiments exactly,” Jem said, gauging the baby’s progress. “Grab the oxygen and the neonate bag and mask, and switch the pads on the defib. Just…just get everything ready, okay?” Using her forearm, she supported the baby’s torso, preparing to deliver his head. “You’re doing really well,” she said to Madina. “You’ve definitely got a boy.”
Madina managed a short gasp of laughter and then yelped and pushed the baby’s arms out. Jem swapped her hold, taking the baby by his feet and lifting them in an attempt to deliver the head. It had sounded so simple in the practice guidelines. In reality, it was akin to wrestling a slimy fish with its upper third stuck in a vice, and the head was not for shifting. She threw Amira a “what the fuck now?” glance, and Amira knelt beside them, obviously none the wiser but welcome moral support.
“Shit. Uh, give me a little push?” Jem said, and felt the head slip as Madina bore down. “Go on, go on, that’s it. I’ve almost got him.” Employing a few manoeuvres that certainly weren’t in the manual, she managed to manipulate the baby free, lowering him onto the dry towel Amira held out and then rubbing him vigorously. She rocked back on her heels, shaking her head in amazement as the baby wailed and punched the air.
“Is he okay?” Madina asked. Tethered in position by the umbilical cord, she couldn’t yet turn to see him.
“There’s nothing wrong with his lungs, that’s for sure,” Jem said. She handed Amira a pair of scissors for the cord. “Are you doing the honours?”
Nodding, Amira picked up a couple of clamps, but then seemed to have second thoughts. “Will you show me?” she whispered. “I’ve never done it before.”
Jem sat by her side and took one of the clamps. “Course I will. It’s dead easy.”
Madina was watching everything over her shoulder, her gaze constantly coming to rest on her son as Amira cut the cord and swaddled him in a warm blanket. Finally able to move, she shuffled around until she was propped against the bed, and took hold of him. “He’s beautiful,” she said, busy counting fingers and toes.
“He is.” Jem stroked a tiny thumb and then started to laugh. “That’s the first water birth I’ve ever done.”
* * *
The song blasting from Rosie’s car radio almost overwhelmed the ring of her phone, until the Bluetooth kicked in and sent it through to hands-free. Spotting Jem’s name on the screen, she stopped singing mid-lyric.
“So much for taking my mind off things,” she said, and accepted the call.
“Hallo? Rosie?” Jem said, raising her voice above a rhythmic slosh of movement and her own laboured breaths.
Rosie pulled into a side street that wasn’t yet awash. “Hey, it’s me. Are you swimming?”
Jem huffed a wheezy chuckle. “Paddling, more like. I got stuck in Hearts Cross on a home birth. HART have just come out with a dinghy, but I need to get the RRV back to Darnton, so I’ll be late getting to yours. Is that okay?”
“It’s fine. I’m on my way home now.” Rosie checked the clock on her dash, calculating the time as a plan started to form. “Come whenever you can. I’ll be a while yet as well. The roads are carnage.”
The splashing stopped as Jem paused, gasping quietly. “Yeah, tell me about it,” she said, once she had the energy to reply. “I’m knee-deep on one at the moment.”
Rosie closed her eyes, reluctant to overstep the boundaries Jem had established, even if she didn’t understand them. “Just take your time,” she said. “And I’ll see you soon.”
She restarted her engine and made a U-turn, pausing to see whether common sense might kick her notion into a cocked hat. A bus went by at ten miles an hour, its passage sending waves onto the submerged pavement. It was heading toward Stanny Brook. She waited for it to pass and turned in the opposite direction.
In the hours since she had last driven down Bennett Street, most of its inhabitants seemed to have fled for higher ground. Here and there candles threw silhouettes against drawn curtains, but the majority of the houses were unlit, and the street itself was black as pitch. To her left, the old mill seemed even darker, a huge beast hunkered in her periphery, chucking out the occasional fridge or mangy armchair as the overflowing river freed the rubbish abandoned around it. She parked in the driest spot she could find and swapped her trainers for the wellies stashed in her boot. Raising her coat’s hood provided little protection, but she felt safer somehow with her face concealed, as if the monsters lurking in the mill might not be able to see her coming.
She made it to the hoarding before she conceded defeat and announced her presence to monsters real or imaginary by switching her torch on. Its beam cut a stark line above the multiple streams winding through the wasteland. The relentless pound of the river was too close for comfort, but she chose her route with care, traversing no man’s land without snapping anything, and locating the window she had previously used for access. A couple of the stacked crates had succumbed to the rising water, but she clamped her torch between her teeth and managed to hoist herself through.
“Now what?” she said, more to dispel the creeping fear than out of hope of inspiration. Her tendency to barrel straight in and ask questions later had brought her to the mill, but she couldn’t very well scour five storeys of dubious integrity on her own in the dark.
Aiming her torch at her wellies, she began to inspect the floor for fresh footprints, finding a track made by a heavyset pair of boots that had recently scuffed grip marks into the accumulated muck. For want of a better idea, she followed their path, skirting the perimeter to the farthest side, where something seemed to have caught the person’s interest; the prints circled a small section of a sheltered corner, the marks deepening at several points as if the person had crouched for a closer look. Whatever they might have found had since been removed, however, and Rosie kicked at the dirt, her frustration boiling over. As avoidance strategies went, this current escapade was an extreme one, even by her standards. She should be at home, putting the heating on, lighting a fire, and drinking inadvisable amounts of caffeine. She made an abrupt about-turn, resolved on going back and chewing off a couple of fingernails while she waited for Jem.
She was midway across the rear wall, almost to the opening for the stairwell, when she saw the light. It vanished in a heartbeat, as if someone had switched on a torch but then extinguished it immediately. Without making a sound, Rosie panned her own torch in the same direction, finding nothing at first and then glancing the beam off a small scurrying figure. The figure froze in the light, bent low in an effort to remain concealed, before springing up and starting to run. The motion made the hood on his jacket fall back, but she couldn’t see his face, just short dark hair sticking out beneath a baseball cap.
“Hey! Stop!” Rosie yelled. “Stop! Police!” She set off after him, leaving the relative safety of the walls to sprint toward him in a direct line. Her torch beam jolted as she ran, giving her flashes of wooden planks and splintered glass. She heard a scuffle and a cry of distress, and paused to get her bearings before spotting her quarry picking himself up after a fall no more than twenty yards ahead.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she called, well within earshot. “I’m a police officer. I’m looking for Tahlia Mansoor.”
Her appeal fell on deaf ears; he was already moving, heading left, away from the access window. She chased after him, so close now that she could hear panicked gasps and the creak of the flooring beneath him. He dodged right and jumped clear, legs stretching and feet skidding, and she stopped dead, surrounded by streaks of worn yellow paint, and realising too late exactly where he had led her.
“Fuck! Fucking shit.”
The wood covering the trap cracked and then shattered beneath her weight, plunging her into the void. She cried out, her limbs flailing and then tensing for the impact, but she hit water rather than concrete, the air knocked from her as she was spun forward in a tumult of debris. Unable to see anything, she gasped, saturating her lungs, and reached for a surface that wasn’t there. She felt a cold draught and snatched a breath, only to have it punched out of her as the current tossed her around again.
Colliding with a solid wall slowed her progress, and she grappled for purchase, her fingers scraping the abrasive concrete. She righted herself, feet down, head above the water, and took huge hungry mouthfuls of air, but she quickly lost her hold, the flood reclaiming her and hurtling her along the wall in a relentless drive. She stopped suddenly, without warning or apparent reason, her right leg held static as her body twisted. Three seconds of grace was all she got before the pain hit her, a blast of agony in her right thigh that made her cry out and then vomit into the water.
“Oh God,” she whispered. Using one hand to steady herself, she pawed at the wall with the other, trying to find what was hurting her so badly. Her fingers closed around a length of rebar jutting from the concrete, and she tracked it to the point where it disappeared into the middle of her thigh. She could feel the warmth of her blood joining the current that was wrenching at her, and she bit through her lip as the motion repeatedly jarred the metal against her femur.
For an untold amount of time, all she could do was grip the wall and breathe through the pain. She began to shiver as the water lapped at her chest, sending ripples through her damaged muscles, and she sobbed quietly, unable to move yet unable to stay still.
“Please help me, please.” She kept her entreaty to a whisper, afraid to make anything worse by raising her voice, before an abrupt return to clarity overrode the shock. “Hey! Hey! Help!” she yelled. “Are you still up there? Can you hear me? My name’s Rosie, and I’m a police officer. I need your help, please!”
Daring to let go with one hand, she found the inner pocket where she’d stashed her mobile to keep it dry. She tapped its newly smashed screen, yelping in relief when it lit up, but its signal was nonexistent, denying her even the “emergency calls only” option.
“Shit. Shit.” Thrown into a blind panic, she tried to free her leg, managing to move it a fraction. When the pain came, it seemed to come from a distance. She dimly heard herself scream and saw the water twist and roil in the light from her phone. Then her forehead bounced off the concrete, and everything faded out.