SAM
Vic and I were knocking back a coffee while the set was being re-dressed. So far that morning the shoot seemed to be ticking over well. Worryingly well. We stood side by side, having reviewed proceedings on the call sheet, and scanned the set for problems but there just weren’t any. Everything had been set up quickly; they were ticking off the shot list ahead of schedule. All going well they would be wrapping shortly after lunch.
‘So . . . how’s that hot photographer?’ Vic said.
‘Ed?’
‘Duh! Of course I mean him.’
‘Apparently he’s having a great time – he’s on that job in Scotland that Katherine’s doing, remember?’
‘Oh yeah, I’d forgotten that. Apparently? What does that mean? You don’t think he actually is?’
‘I’m sure he is. I just haven’t heard it from him directly, that’s all.’
Vic nudged me with her elbow.
‘Do I detect a note of jealousy in your voice? Huh? Huh?’
I frowned at her, annoyed that she was making me blush. She was grinning away like a schoolgirl at me.
‘Of course not!’
‘Sure, Sam!’
She started giggling in a very aggravating way. I was about to set her straight – not least of all fill her in with all the excitement of Charlie – when I felt my phone buzzing from inside my Puffa. I took it out. Vic had time to wind me up so I had time to check my phone. It was Claudia. Claudia? I was confused, couldn’t even think what time of the day it was for a moment, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t a time Claudia normally phoned. What did she want?
‘Mind if I take this?’ I waved it at Vic.
Vic was rosy with laughing and waved her consent to me.
‘Claudia?’
‘Sam? It’s Mara. She’s had an accident.’
*
Claudia was waiting for me at the main reception, her face ashen, and I upped my walk to a fast trot to hug her.
‘She’s this way.’ Claudia took my arm and led me to the lifts.
‘Is she in A&E?’
‘No, ICU.’
‘ICU? That means it’s serious, right?’
‘Yes, it does, Sam. A lorry cut in front of her, and she couldn’t stop in time and went into the side of it.’
‘But she couldn’t have been going very fast – Mara never goes fast!’
‘Well, she was going fast enough to put herself into intensive care.’
The lift pinged at us, strangely cheery, when we reached our floor. Claudia led the way down a wide corridor, dodging dazed patients, visitors and brisk-stepping medics. Every step I took down that corridor became more surreal and the chill that had started in my heart when I got the phone call spread down every limb as I walked, until my whole body was fizzing with cold. I realised, as I walked through the decisive doors of ICU, that this must be what proper fear feels like.
Kate was sitting miserably on a plastic chair in the waiting room and I embraced her clumsily.
‘Don’t you bloody start!’ Kate reached out and wiped her hand down my cheek.
‘Sorry.’ I dragged my hand across my snotty nose and Claudia silently handed me a tissue.
‘Have you seen her yet?’
‘No. They’re doing stuff to her.’
I pushed aside the images my mind conjured of a bloodied Mara being subjected to urgent medical pokings and proddings.
‘How did you hear?’ I asked.
‘Dad called me – the police had called him.’
I looked around the waiting room, wondering if I’d missed him.
‘He’s at home, the miserable sod. Hates hospitals.’ Kate sighed. ‘But he’d just need looking after if he was here. I’d much rather have you guys.’
‘What about Ed, does he know yet?’
‘Yes, I managed to speak to him. He’s coming as soon as he can. Maybe even getting here tomorrow morning.’ She took her phone out of her pocket and looked at it absently. ‘There’s no signal in here so I’m not sure what he’s managed to do.’
We sat and flicked through magazines without really seeing them and took turns visiting the yellow café on the ground floor to drink tea and choke down dry sandwiches. Hours passed but we lost track of time, suspended in that ziplocked, humming, fluorescent building. All that mattered was seeing Mara. Nothing else, nothing else. By the time the beautiful, quietly competent Asian doctor came out to speak with us we were grey in the face from the suspense.
‘Which one of you is Kate?’
‘I am.’ Kate was suddenly alert, her brown eyes not leaving the doctor for a moment.
I shuffled down a couple of seats to give him the seat next to Kate.
‘Thank you for waiting,’ he began. ‘We believe she is stable now but we’re going to keep her sedated for the moment. The good news is her vital signs are all doing OK. They’re showing signs of being stressed but are within good levels. She has a broken collarbone but nothing else that we can see at the moment.’
‘At the moment?’ Kate’s forehead wrinkled with confusion.
‘Well, she may have other broken bones but we have been concentrating on more important issues – whether there is any internal bleeding and how severe her head injury is.’
Kate took a sharp intake of breath and her hand whipped up to her mouth.
The doctor’s eyes flickered slightly but he pressed on. ‘The good news is that she was wearing a helmet that was securely fitted so that would have taken a lot of the impact. We’ve done an MRI scan and that doesn’t show any bleeding, just swelling, and we would expect her to have some swelling, after all she’s had a bang on her head. Just like when you bang your finger, it’ll swell.’ The doctor mimed banging his finger with a hammer, with all of us following the arc of his hand mutely.
‘The important thing is that it doesn’t swell any further. At the moment we have her sedated to rest her brain. The swelling appears to have reached its peak but we don’t want it to go any further. We may have to put her into an induced coma if it progresses but we are hopeful we won’t need to go down that route.’
Blah, blah, blah, coma was all I heard. I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. It couldn’t be possible. Mara in a coma? Please God, no.
‘. . . and so you can come in and see her briefly, one at a time. We will call your father if anything serious happens overnight but hopefully we won’t be in touch and she may even be out of sedation as early as tomorrow.’ He stood up, patients to see, things to do.
‘Call me if you need to,’ Kate cut in, standing with the doctor and placing a small hand on his arm. ‘Don’t bother Dad, he won’t be able to handle it.’
The doctor looked unsure. ‘It is usual to keep in contact with a patient’s parent if they don’t have a partner.’
‘Can you see him here?’ Kate motioned to the waiting room. ‘He really isn’t that strong, Doctor. I’ll keep him informed but me, my brother and Mara’s friends are her main supporters.’
‘All right then.’ He looked doubtful but made a quick note on the chart he was carrying.
And he took Kate through the carefully controlled doors into the inner sanctum, the sound of life-support machines cheeping terrifyingly, before the heavy doors swished shut behind them.
When it was my turn, I stood next to Mara’s bed and held her hand. I was glad to feel it was warm. Machines beeped, monitors tracked her heart rate, plastic tubes ran into her arm, a ventilator covered her nose and mouth. It was like watching TV. But not. Mara wasn’t an actor, this was real life, and I was suddenly angry. This was a person, a really, really special person, lying here. And she shouldn’t be! At that moment I would have gone into battle with any demon to save Mara’s life, I felt so fiercely protective of it.
‘Don’t worry, Mars, we’ve got everything under control. You’re going to be fine,’ I whispered to her from where I stood, too afraid to get too close. Could I kiss her head? I wavered, unsure, but then a nurse bustled up and asked me to leave, and I returned to Claudia and Kate in the waiting room. They were jacketed and ready to go. It wasn’t until we reached the front doors and my phone began chiming with missed-call alerts that I remembered about the gig with Charlie.