As I get closer I freeze. I see the movement of breath on the still pool around him, slow and faint but still there. Blood puddling around his upper chest and face but he’s alive.
I look back up to the scaffold behind us. I’d guess it was a fifteen-foot unprotected fall onto concrete. His body position shows he didn’t have time to protect his head before he hit. I can’t be certain, of course, but I’d imagine his ribs will be completely shattered, his collarbone broken; there will be internal bleeding, organ damage.
I can’t see the extent of his head wound as it’s hidden against the concrete. Confident I’m safe for the moment, I crouch next to him. His eyes remain closed as I lean in and with extreme caution take a pulse from his free wrist. I watch his eyelids for movement but the papery skin does not stir. The pulse I feel is weak but it’s there. It’s unlikely he’ll be leaping up to do anything at this point, though. I let out a breath. Safe for now.
I set his hand back on the snow gently and look to his pelvis. I’d be amazed if it wasn’t fractured. If he stands any hope of surviving this, I’ll need to stabilize it. And I need to move him into a recovery position so he doesn’t choke on his own blood. I need to get him to ICU as soon as possible. I need an ambulance. I need the police. But I have no phone and I’m trapped in the middle of nowhere. The nearest house is a good twenty-minute walk on legs that are already trembling, and that’s if anybody’s even home.
But Matthew must have driven us here. I can drive. I check his trouser pockets for keys. Nothing. I stare down at his broken body. What can I do? I choke back a sob. What am I supposed to do?
I take one last look at his body and make a decision. Shotgun in hand, I go around the house to the front door.
In the study I find Matthew’s canvas bag, open, as expected, its contents neatly packed: a bunch of zip ties, a box of cartridges, my pager, Stephen’s mobile phone, a change of clothes, a serrated knife, and then, in a small Ziploc bag, I find my iPhone. What was he planning to do with it? I wonder. Send some messages and plant it next to my corpse? I root into the bag’s side pocket and find Rhoda’s car keys. He must have parked by the other entrance, where I parked the rental car before, hidden from the road.
Clumsily I tear open the plastic bag with numb fingers and fish out my phone. I push on the power button and wait. I need to call an ambulance. I can’t risk moving him myself, he might not make it. I won’t have his death on my conscience. The dark screen brightens and the apple logo appears. I’ll call 999, get someone here as soon as possible.
And then I pause. I think of the press swarming, I think of the photos, the headlines, the inquest, my family, and another tenet of the physician’s pledge occurs to me:
I WILL ATTEND TO MY OWN HEALTH, WELL-BEING, AND ABILITIES IN ORDER TO PROVIDE CARE OF THE HIGHEST STANDARD.
My own health and well-being.I look down at my burnt and bleeding hands, my breath coming in snagging rasps. I turn my phone off as soon as the home screen appears. I need to sort out my own health and well-being first. I need to look after myself.
I look around the room. I walk over to the handwritten note and pick it up from the floor. I deliberately do not read the dark black swirls of “my” writing before folding it up and slipping it safely into my coat pocket.
I bend and scoop up two fresh red cartridges from the parquet with my one good hand. I crack open the shotgun like Dad used to show me, tip out the spent cartridges, and slide two new ones in. I click the gun back together, grab the canvas bag, and head back outside.
I slump down in front of him, on the cold stone step leading up onto the lawn, and watch him. The winter sun warm on my back, his breathing body sprawled before me, my gun trained on him. And I wait.
He could almost be sleeping, except for the warm wet pool of blood around him. His features, so hard and filled with rage before, have dissolved back into Matthew’s pleasingly handsome face. His breath is irregular; he doesn’t have long left—he’ll die of his massive injuries.
I know I’m in shock, colored specks flutter across my vision. I find my mind wandering and I wonder what his life could have been like if things had been different. Without his condition. I try to imagine the wife he could have had, the kids, the Christmases, the birthdays celebrated with rooms full of friends.
A muscle quakes under his eye, a synapse firing, electrical impulses going awry—God knows what is happening inside his brain right now. I hope his dreams are sweet, I hope he can’t remember the awful things he has done.
And just as I think it, his eyes flick open. I gasp.
He blinks, his eyes gradually finding me.
48
THE MAN
A figure slowly comes into focus in front of me, a woman perched on a snowy step.
There is pain, sharp but distant inside me; my cheek is pressed hard against the cold ground. I let my eyes look down to the darkness beneath me, deep red and wet. Blood, perhaps mine. The thought scares me, so I pass over it. I try to move away from the redness but my muscles won’t respond. I can’t move myself.
What’s happening?
I search for the figure on the step again, and she sharpens into focus. A young woman, pretty but disheveled, her hair in disarray, a smear of red down her cheek.
Maybe this is a dream, I think, because I can’t remember where I am, or how I got here.
She’s watching me intently, her eyes wide and wet but alert, and I notice something grasped tightly in her hands, her knuckles whitening around it.
This doesn’t feel like a dream. My eyes go back to her face.
What’s going on? What’s happened between us?
She looks terrified, terrified of something, maybe me.
