After the Storm (31 page)

‘You must save him. I can’t lose him!’

‘Get me a clean cloth now, a clean altar cloth,’ John Morgan said to a man in a blue shirt standing close behind Anna. A third man was using his mobile to call for help.

‘We can’t wait,’ John Morgan said. ‘We need to get him to Oaks straightaway. We’ll use my car.’

‘What’s Oaks?’ she said frantically.

‘It’s the only hospital on the island.’

The third man helped Anna to her feet and led her out of the alley. She was trembling and she leaned on him.

‘You have to save him, please, please save him,’ she said.

‘I reckon we can,’ he said trying to soothe her, although he thought that the cut looked deep.

‘And you’re not cut anywhere?’ He scanned her face and neck and torso. She had blood on her hands and on the front of her T-shirt but it was Rob’s blood. She shook her head.

‘He held a knife to my throat. Rob jumped him and he stabbed him.’

‘Who did this?’

‘Teyo. Oh God he must have been following us.’

The second man had come back holding some pristine altar cloths. He handed these to John Morgan. The pastor folded one and held it against Rob’s stomach, putting pressure against the stab wound. Rob was still conscious but his body had gone into shock, his face was grey and sweaty and he could say nothing.

‘We’re gonna take you to the hospital now,’ John Morgan said.

They helped Rob to his feet and they half-carried half-dragged him out of the alley and towards the car. Morgan threw his car keys to the man in the blue shirt.

‘You drive. I’ll sit in the back with him.’

‘Where’s the hospital?’ Anna asked.

‘Coxen Hole,’ the driver said starting the engine.

Rob was lying on the back seat of the car with his head on John Morgan’s lap. Anna was sitting up front. She was leaning forward and watching intently as the driver tried to overtake a lorry and then a bus on the road out of Oak Ridge. They were making slow progress.

‘How long will it take us?’

‘It’s about eighteen miles to Coxen Hole.’

She remembered how long it had taken on the bus; those wretched winding roads.

‘And it’s a proper hospital?’

‘There’s intensive care there. They’ll be able to help him,’ he said.

In the back of the car John Morgan picked up a second white altar cloth. The first one was already soaked with Rob’s blood. He folded the new cloth and kept the pressure on the wound.

‘Did someone ring ahead to say we’re on our way?’ Morgan asked.

‘Yep, Tam called and they’ll be waiting for us.’

‘You hang in there buddy,’ Morgan said.

There was no sound from Rob. A quiet moan escaped from Anna. In her mind she kept remembering the account she had read of John Lennon’s shooting. Rob idolised John Lennon, the man, his music and his ideas. He had given her a book about Lennon last Christmas. She had read the book to please him but the description of Lennon’s death had been deeply upsetting. The deranged fan Chapman had fired five bullets into John Lennon’s back as he walked towards the entrance of the Dakota building where he lived. Four of the bullets went into his body. They were the kind of bullets that expanded when they entered the body. What a truly evil invention that was, bullets that expanded to cause maximum damage to tender human tissue. The first policemen at the scene had carried John and laid him on the back seat of their squad car as they couldn’t wait for an ambulance. John Lennon had no chance. Someone said that if the shooting had taken place in an operating theatre with surgeons standing around they could not have saved him. He lost 80 per cent of his blood. Dead before he reached the hospital. She must not think about this, she really must not. When would they get to the hospital? She started to wring her hands.

It took them forty desperate minutes to get to Coxen Hole and another five before they pulled up in front of Oaks Hospital, a faded 1970s two storey building. A doctor, two orderlies and a nurse were waiting for them with a trolley. They approached the car and lifted Rob from the back seat onto the trolley. He was semi-conscious now. The doctor lifted the blood-soaked altar cloth from his stomach and looked at the wound.

‘Straight to theatre,’ he said.

They wheeled the trolley up the ramp and into the hospital and John Morgan led Anna into the waiting area on the ground floor.

They sat together on hard hospital chairs under fluorescent strip lights. He could see that Anna was shivering from deep shock. He got a blanket from a nurse and put it around her shoulders. Then he walked over to the drinks machine and got them both coffees, putting sugar into Anna’s. She cradled the cup in her hands and kept saying that it was Teyo who had stabbed Rob. She described how he’d grabbed her from behind and how Rob had leaped to save her. She was reliving that moment again and again. John Morgan sat with her and listened and nodded. He had heard stories about this Teyo from his congregation, but he had not got to the alley in time to see the man who had attacked Anna and Rob. He believed her though. He knew that some of his flock were afraid of Teyo, saying he was not an islander; he was a bad one from the mainland. Morgan had put a call into the police an hour ago but so far no-one had turned up at the hospital. It was a long and grim wait.

Inside the operating theatre Rob had been put under anaesthetic and the surgeon had repaired the cuts in his gut. The knife had gone in deep and then been twisted. There was extensive damage to his intestines and he had lost a lot of blood and needed a transfusion. The surgeon had sewn up the wound. His fear was that an infection might take hold because the contents of Rob’s gut had spilled into a sterile area. They would have to keep him in and be alert to any signs of septicaemia or peritonitis. For now the immediate danger was over and the surgeon was satisfied that he had stopped the internal bleeding.

It was an hour later when a lone policeman walked into Oaks Hospital and asked for John Morgan. An orderly came over and Anna and Morgan were shown into a small room which the hospital kept for family members who were going to be told bad news. Anna’s first thought was why was there only one policeman? That couldn’t be right could it? There should be two policemen, so that they could corroborate what was said. Straightaway her suspicions were alerted. The policeman took out a pad and started to ask questions. His English was not good. Anna described in a faltering voice what had happened. She said twice that it was Teyo who had stabbed Rob. The policeman looked at her with an impassive face and wrote something down. He turned to John Morgan and asked him if he had seen Teyo with his own eyes. Morgan responded that no, when he reached the alley there were only Rob and Anna there. But there was no reason to doubt Anna’s account was there? She had been up close and personal. The policeman stood up and put his pad away.

‘Thank you for the information,’ he said.

‘What happens now?’ Anna asked.

‘I report these details back at base.’

He made for the door.

‘That’s it? But we need protection,’ Anna said.

The policeman stopped at the door and looked at her.

‘That man stabbed my boyfriend. He’s out there somewhere and he may come back to finish off the job. Can’t you see we’re in danger?’

‘He would be very foolish to come here,’ the policeman said.

With these words he turned and left them. John Morgan took her hand and squeezed it.

‘How could he go like that?’ she said.

‘I sometimes think this island is a moral quagmire,’ he said.

John Morgan led Anna over to the reception desk and the nurse told them that Rob was out of the theatre and she could go up now. Rob had been taken to a room on the second floor and a nurse would take her there. Morgan said he had to go as there was an evening service to conduct but he’d be back in the morning to see how they were doing. She went to shake his hand but he embraced her. She thanked him fervently.

‘You probably saved both our lives,’ she said.

He shushed her and then he was gone. She had a sick feeling that by naming Teyo to that policeman she had put herself and Rob into even greater danger.

The nurse took her up to the second floor. Rob had been put into one of the private rooms with an en-suite bathroom. He was lying unconscious on the hospital bed and was hooked up to two drips. A doctor was standing by him.

‘Come now, please sit here,’ the doctor said.

She sat down on the chair by the bed and the nurse left the room and closed the door.

‘He’s unconscious,’ she said and her voice was shaky.

‘It was a deep cut and he lost a lot of blood. We have sedated him.’

The doctor was speaking to her in a grave tone of voice and it scared her.

‘But he’s going to be all right?’

‘We stopped the internal bleeding. There is a risk of infection.’

‘But he will get better?’

‘We need to keep a close watch on him for the next few days.’

‘Can I touch him?’ she asked.

She followed the direction of the doctor’s eyes and saw that there was dried blood all over her T-shirt. It was Rob’s blood. And there was blood under her fingernails too. She remembered she had her clothes with her, in her rucksack.

‘If I shower and change can I hold his hand, please?’

‘Yes of course.’

The nurse had come back into the room.

‘Please let me stay here with him,’ Anna said.

‘You’d be more comfortable at a hotel. There’s one very close and—’

‘No, I can’t leave him. I must stay here. I must…’ Her voice was getting frantic.

‘Please calm yourself and wait here,’ the doctor said.

The doctor and the nurse left the room and she could hear them talking in the corridor outside the door. When they came back the doctor agreed that she could stay the night in Rob’s room. They brought a daybed for her to sleep on and an orderly set this up for her. The doctor left saying he’d be back later to check up on Rob. Anna turned to the nurse.

‘I’m going to shower now but I’m afraid to leave him on his own. Will you stay while I take a quick shower?’

The nurse nodded and sat by Rob’s bed while Anna went into the bathroom. There was a basin and a shower and two white towels on the rail. She left the bathroom door open so that she could see into the room and see over to Rob’s bed. She stood under the hot water and soaped herself thoroughly and quickly, scrubbing at her hands to get out the blood from under her fingernails. She stepped out and dried herself. There was a small white stool in the bathroom with chrome legs and she sat on this as she dried her legs and her feet. Then she changed into a complete set of clean clothes.

Back in the room she thanked the nurse and at last she was alone with Rob. She sat down by his bed, held his right hand and stroked it gently along the vein that ran from his wrist. The pulse in that vein seemed weak. She was pierced by a powerful stab of remorse as she looked at his pale face. After that came deep shame. She had become obsessed with Owen over the last few days and that must have caused Rob so much pain. She had thought that she might be in love with Owen. She remembered someone once saying that you fell in love when you were anxious. Well she had certainly been anxious for this whole holiday, from the moment they set foot on the boat. And Owen had grown bigger and bigger in her consciousness as the days had passed. It had started on the night of that storm when she was on watch with him and was scared they would drown. Anxious or not it was no excuse. She had behaved horribly, had hurt Rob deeply and had alienated Kimberly.

‘It was all a delusion darling,’ she said aloud knowing that Rob couldn’t hear her but hoping that he might.

Yes, it had all been a phantom that had fled the second she saw Rob lying and bleeding in the alley. He had leaped to save her from Teyo’s knife with no thought for his own safety. She had taken Rob’s love for granted. She sat and gazed at his dear face for a long time and stroked his hand.

‘Get well my darling and I’ll make it up to you, I promise I will.’

She got up and walked over to the window which overlooked the car park at the front of the hospital. It was up to her now to keep him safe from any further harm. Somehow she was going to have to stay awake all night. She opened the door onto the corridor and looked out. There was a nurse’s station further up the corridor and she could hear someone talking on the phone.

For the first few hours Anna felt comparatively safe. There were two nurses and the doctor on duty. One of the nurses would come in and check on Rob’s drips and vital signs every hour or so. At one point Rob gained consciousness briefly. His eyelids fluttered and opened. He said nothing, gazed up at Anna for a moment and then slid back into a kind of drugged sleep. She stood up and stretched and she noticed the closet by the door. She went over and pulled it open. Rob’s clothes had been folded and left in a plastic bag on the top shelf. His shoes were on the lower shelf. She picked up one of his shoes and saw there was blood on it and the blood had turned brown. She reached for the plastic bag on the upper shelf and opened that. His blood stained shirt was wrapped around his small fabric bag where he kept his dollars. She pulled the dollars out and they too were soaked with his blood. She pushed the dollars back into the bag and bundled up his shirt again and went and washed her hands thoroughly.

There was no phone in the room and the feeling was growing in her that she must tell her father what had happened. Someone from beyond the island needed to know that she and Rob were at risk. A nurse came in to check Rob again and Anna asked her where she could make a call. She was directed to a public phone under a hood at the end of the corridor. When the nurse had gone Anna found her wallet and left the room, locking it behind her. It was late now and there were few staff on duty and it didn’t feel safe to leave the door unlocked. She walked past the nurses’ station and reached the phone. To her relief she saw that it took credit cards. This might be a long and expensive call. It was late in England and the phone rang and rang before she heard her father’s sleepy but irritable voice on the end of the line.