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Come on. Come on. And just as I think it, Jo appears with two guys and a stretcher and, thank you, Lord, an IV drip. As they check his stats and fix up the IV, I tell them I work in the emergency department and what I’ve done so far, and soon we have him on the stretcher. The guys trot over the ground as we race along behind, manhandling him through the makeshift gate and into the back of the ambulance.
I climb in as Janus and Jo stare at me through the open back of the van. “We’re going to the ER in Brooklyn. I’ll see you there. Call Darren and Steve, and let them know we’ve found him.”
40
Fabian
For the first time, I’m not here because of something I’ve done to myself. But I also don’t get it: Didn’t I just die out on a wasteland right after an epiphany that my life wasn’t like this anymore? Didn’t I think that my visits to hospitals were a thing of the past? But the cold hard hit of relief inflates my chest. Unless this is some halfway house to the afterlife, I’ve not died just as I found something good in my life.
Someone squeezes my fingers, and my eyes fly down to my hands and then over to see Kate sitting there in scrubs, no less. I squeeze back and lift her fingers to my mouth.
“Do you think I’m going to spend the rest of my life in hospitals apologizing to you?”
This gets me a curl of her lips.
“What’s my prognosis?”
“We’ve operated on you. They nicked a blood vessel and we had to go in to control the bleeding. You also had a nasty head wound, but we’ve stitched that up too, given you blood, and you’re fine.”
I close my eyes. “That sounds good. That’s definitely very good.” I kiss her fingers again, lips against her knuckles. “I really don’t think this one was my fault, or at least not directly.”
She chews her lip. “What do you remember about last night?” There’s some expression on her face I don’t quite understand.
I shake my head. “I remember waking up in a squat this morning. Last night, not so much. I remember staggering along the road.” Lights flash through my head. “Cars. Meeting some people.” I frown. “It’s all mixed up with you somehow. Were you there?”
“I came home and found you spaced out in the apartment playing music at full volume.” She looks away.
I frown at her, and she starts a step-by-step account of last night and everything that’s happened since. As she runs through the story more and more flashbacks appear: Kate in my apartment in her lounge pants, a cup of coffee in her hand … dancing together … Kate bent over me on the floor. Then she tells me about what I said to her, and my whole body curls over, and I press my thumbs into the corner of my eyes.
“Please tell me I didn’t say that.” My throat tightens. “I’m so fucking sorry I said that to you. You have to know you’re not like that at all, not under the surface; you’re so full of life and strong, Kate, so sorted. I don’t feel I’m like that, and I’m scared, scared of fucking everything up, and when Josh died I just … Every day I could see the pain in your face, and I didn’t know how to help you.”
“You could have just talked to me.”
I look over at the hospital window. “It’s not my first instinct to do that. But I swear I’ll try harder in future. Forgive me?”
“I think we just deal with things in such very different ways and I …”
“We’ll learn,” I say, squeezing her fingers. “Learn how to adapt to each other. Yeah? That’s if you forgive me, of course.” I give her my best winning smile, and she laughs, nodding.
“I actually came back to the apartment this morning to sort things out with you, and then you were gone and I was worried. All your phones were there.” She shakes her head. “Everything was where I left it, and you never go out without at least one phone. I called Janus and Jo, and we called Steve and he did some asking around. Darren too.”
My God, these guys.
“I know I’ve said this to you before, and you’ve no reason to believe me more now than then, but I am so done with this, Kate. Just seeing all those people at the squat this morning—that’s not my life. The experimenting wasn’t really either, despite the relief it gave from the thoughts and the sheer barrage of bullshit in my head sometimes. I feel like I was trying to live Zach’s life for him, to honor him and his choices in some fucked-up way. Deal with the guilt that I got away, and he didn’t. I don’t know. But whatever, it’s not me now. Perhaps it never was. I’m going to get some counselling, see if I can’t unpack it all a little.”
She gives me a tired smile. “That sounds like a good decision. What happened on the wasteland this morning? Janus is beside himself. Me too actually if I’m honest for leaving you.”
Oh God. I groan. “I don’t know how I got there. I don’t remember leaving the apartment, but I woke up there this morning. I hung around for a bit, had coffee with one of the old-timers there, and then …” The whole odd conversation burns through me. “One of the guys followed me when I left. Things were swimming in and out; I wonder if they put something in my coffee. But, Kate, he said, ‘to mind my own business, to keep my nose out of South Africa.’ It’s something to do with the digging I’ve been doing on this job.”
Her eyes go wide. She gets up and paces away from the bed. “You said that my father’s company was involved in that. Please tell me this isn’t something to do with myfather?”
“I don’t know. I uncovered a huge amount of information about bribes from Xeracorp going back decades. They’ve been paying off politicians there for years.”
“I’m going to fucking kill him.” Then her face suddenly falls and her hands flutter to her cheeks. “Oh my God, I told him you could hack into anything. This is my fault.”
I frown at her. “When did you tell him that?”
“When I went to see him about Josh.” Her voice comes out small. “Oh, what did I do?”
