The Harder They Fall (12 page)

“Not that Shaunna, silly,” he said. He sounded drunk. Andy put it down to the deliria and held a glass of water to his brother’s lips.

“Here. Drink some of this,” he said, gently tipping the glass with one hand, and holding Dan’s head up with the other. “You’re seriously dehydrated. That’s why you’re on a drip.”

Dan lifted his heavy eyelids and glanced around the room, then closed them again. He spluttered against the flow of water.

“Where’s Adele?” he slurred.

“At home. I’ve phoned her and everything’s OK.”

“When’s she coming to visit?”

“She’s not, bro. We’re in Kathmandu, remember?”

“Ah yeah.” Dan managed a weak laugh. “What about Kris? He’ll be here later. Does he know?”

“That you’re in hospital, or that he’ll have to catch a plane to come and see you?” He ought not to mock him in his state, but he couldn’t help it. It was probably a response to the stress, or shock, or whatever it was he was feeling now that was making him lightheaded and causing his to heart flutter, just so long as it wasn’t the same virus Dan had, as he was now asleep again, the water gurgling against his oesophagus and making him sound like he was snoring. Andy rested his back against the chair and slowly exhaled. He was shattered.

Dan was out of immediate danger, so there was no reason for him to stay, and certainly no chance of him accidentally getting any sleep here. Quietly, he pulled himself to a standing position, stretched his aching legs, and made his way back outside, surprised and pleased to see Bhagwan, patiently waiting by his pickup truck and chatting to a man in a blue uniform. As he approached, the two men hurriedly finished their conversation, not that it would have made any difference if they’d been overheard.

“Another of your cousins?” Andy asked.

“Ah, no. Not this time,” Bhagwan said, climbing into the truck and starting the engine. Andy got in the other side and glanced across, noting that his companion was cagey. He was too tired to even begin to contemplate what they might have been talking about before, but there was evidently something amiss.

“How is your brother?” Bhagwan asked, taking more care with his driving currently than he had given to it going up and down the mountain pass.

“Much better, now he’s got some fluids in him. I’m not sure if he’ll be up to flying home tomorrow, though.”

“Do not worry, Andy. This is the best hospital in all of Kathmandu.” He reached across and patted Andy’s arm, then sped off towards the hotel, glad that soon he would be on his way back home for a good night’s sleep with his wonderful family.

The next morning Dan was brighter and making more sense; however, the doctor explained that his condition had deteriorated, which made little sense and his English (he too was German and it was one of twelve languages he understood, to varying degrees) was not good enough to explain.

“One minute,” he said, and left the room, returning soon after with another doctor who translated on his behalf. The gist was that although Dan was no longer dehydrated, his white cell count had declined further and they hadn’t been able to identify the virus. He was now on intravenous antibiotics, to treat any underlying infection, but that was as much as they could do. Andy thanked them for explaining, then followed them out of the room.

“Excuse me, but when do you think my brother will be well enough to fly home?” he asked. The doctor who spoke English was about to translate, but the other doctor understood the question and answered for himself.

“Not for many days. Too dangerous for airline, not your brother.”

Andy nodded an acknowledgement and returned to Dan.

“Looks like we’re staying a bit longer than planned,” he told him, expecting an outburst, but receiving only a half-hearted ‘OK’. He probably didn’t comprehend what he’d just been told, Andy thought. Regardless, it was time to call Jess and tell her what was going on. He always tried to avoid doing this when he was away, because she could be quite snappy on the phone, but with their return home an unknown he had to brave the storm.

“I’m just popping back to the hotel,” he said. “Won’t be long.” Dan didn’t respond and looked like he might be asleep again, so Andy left and told a member of staff, just in case.

Once again, it took several attempts to get a reply, on both the house and Jess’s mobile phone, which made Andy wonder if it was still because of the phone system, seeing as he’d also struggled to get through to Adele. Alan assured him that the phones were working perfectly well, an argument sustained by the fact that he’d had far fewer problems when he’d called Josh a couple of days ago. When he finally got through to her, she sounded distracted and didn’t have anything horrible to say, which turned out to be worse than if she’d laid into him the way she usually did, as this was a fairly good indication that he was going to get the full brunt of her wrath when he got back, whenever that might be. The way it was looking, they wouldn’t make it home for Eleanor’s wedding either, and she was equally formidable when roused. Andy started the walk back to the hospital, now so used to the rain that he didn’t even notice it, although he was very aware of how hungry he was and decided to stop off for something to eat and drink on the way. The place he had in mind was one he’d frequented on his last stay, which these days was a modern-looking internet café, and if he’d known in advance, he’d have just sent Jess an email. Anyway, the deed was done, but he was pining for a bit of England, so he paid for half an hour’s internet access and went straight to the BBC website, overjoyed at the site of that familiar logo at the top of the screen.

The default loading page was the international news section, and his cursor was hovering over the UK news button when he spotted the headline.

“Ah, crap,” he said aloud. Now he knew why Bhagwan and the other man had stopped talking the previous night. Two dead, several more in a critical condition, all with an unidentified virus contracted in Middle East. OK, so this wasn’t the Middle East, but it was too close and the description of symptoms too similar to be pure coincidence. Andy read the whole report, clicked through all the associated links, then searched for more articles on other sites, meeting the same information over and again. Suddenly his worries about Jess, and missing Eleanor’s wedding, weren’t quite so significant. He sat for five minutes or so, doing little more than sipping his coffee and staring at the same list of search results, before deciding to send Josh a message to explain in more detail what the situation was. He would know how best to tell Adele and the others, if the time came. As Andy typed, the emotion swelled within him, a mix of anger and grief, for he sensed that whatever the outcome of this journey, things were changing. His email to Josh was raw and honest, perhaps a little more so than he’d intended, but he needed to put this feeling into words, or else he would not have the strength to go back to Dan. At the end, he clicked ‘send’ without reading back over what he had written, for fear that he might regret any of it. He gulped down the rest of his now cold coffee and made his way back to the hospital, where Dan was awake and eating his first meal in almost a week; he instantly perked up at the sight of his brother.

“Wow, you must be feeling better,” Andy said lightly, as if he hadn’t just read all those terrifying news reports and sent a virtual confession to Josh. “What you eating?”

“Dunno,” Dan replied through a mouthful of brown stuff. “Kind of tastes like spicy mud, but I don’t care. I’m starving.”

“No surprises there,” Andy grinned, going to take a tiny morsel off the edge of the plate. Dan poked his hand with the fork.

“You’d steal food from a dying man, you would,” he said jokily, so engrossed in his meal that thankfully he didn’t see the reaction his remark had evoked. Andy pushed the thought from his mind and resumed his position on the rickety wooden chair.

“I phoned Jess earlier. Told her what was going on,” he said.

“Have you told Adele?”

“Yeah. I’ll have to call her again later and give her an update.” Andy checked the time on his phone, which he was carrying only for that purpose, as it didn’t appear to work in Nepal. “Our plane leaves in twenty-four minutes, incidentally.”

“I reckon I could’ve coped with flying home.”

“Probably, but the doctors said the airline wouldn’t let you on-board with an unknown virus.”

“Especially one that’s potentially fatal,” Dan finished for him. Andy examined the floor. “It’s all over the news, the nurse said, and I can tell by the way you’re acting that you knew this already.”

“Only just,” Andy defended himself. “I read it on the BBC website on the way here. I wasn’t going to tell you, because…” He couldn’t go any further without giving away how he was feeling: that Dan was ill because of him and he was so dreadfully sorry. But they were brothers; if they were similar enough in looks to be mistaken for each other, then it stood to reason that they were similar in mind and soul too.

“Because you didn’t want to worry me,” Dan said, giving him the easy way out.

“That’s right,” Andy said, both knowing the truth.

“The doctor says the antibiotics are doing something. My temperature’s back to normal,” Dan added, finishing the last of his food and pushing the plate away. He picked up his empty water glass and peered inside it dolefully. Andy filled it for him and he raised it in thanks. “And I’ve stopped hallucinating, I’m glad to say. That’s definitely not something I want to go through again.”

“Bad, were they?” Andy asked, grateful to his brother for what he was doing.

“You could say that. The worst one was when we were coming in to land. I was convinced, one hundred percent, that we were crashing. No word of a lie. It was only when you came back from wherever you’d been that I snapped out of it.”

“That must’ve been scary.”

“Tell me about it. And on the way back down from Syabru, I thought we were about to have a head-on collision with a lorry. Then I realised you were driving, so I knew it wasn’t real and just kept my eyes closed until it went away. Actually, now I think on, that’s far scarier: you driving a pickup truck down the Himalayas.”

Andy laughed, for real this time. “D’you want to hear something even scarier? You weren’t hallucinating!”

If there hadn’t been rails on either side of the bed, Dan may well have fallen off in disbelief, not only that Bhagwan had allowed Andy to drive, but that he’d got them safely back to Kathmandu.

“Well, I guess thanks are in order then,” he said, suddenly humbled by his true appreciation for what his brother had done. The rest of what they did was banter, but he could feel that there was a connection building between them that surpassed anything they’d had since childhood, in part down to the conversations he’d overheard on the journey back from the village. Before now, and Andy’s revelation about the incident with the lorry, he’d assumed that what he’d heard had all been in his mind. Now he knew it wasn’t, he also realised that there was something else he needed to do.

“What I said yesterday, about your feelings for Shaunna,” he started.

“No need to explain,” Andy stopped him. “You weren’t making a whole lot of sense—probably the fever or the meds.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. Yesterday I thought I was going to die. Today I’m sure I’ll be just fine, but either way I want to say something I should’ve said long ago.”

“We don’t need to drag the Shaunna thing up again, do we? I thought we’d dealt with it, after the stabbing and…everything.”

“I don’t mean that bit of it. That bit was—unfortunate. Not the greatest description, I know, but if you can keep your mouth shut, you’ll get why I’m saying that, if you haven’t already figured it out.”

Andy was entirely on Dan’s wavelength and could have predicted word for word what he was about to say. What he needed to do was stop him from saying it, because it should not be put into words.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said and quickly got up and left the room. Dan watched him leave and closed his eyes to rest.

Saturday morning: Eleanor got back home a little after ten o’clock, her plans to head out early and snag a dress for the reunion scuppered by a call from the husband of one of her patients, sent home to die and almost ready to face the inevitable. She wasn’t complaining, because this woman had been one of the very first to transfer to her books, their initial consultation ending with a referral for a routine mammogram, which, if conducted earlier, may have detected the abnormality soon enough for the treatment to stop it from spreading. Now she was in the last few days, her family travelling back from their various corners of both country and globe to say their goodbyes. Eleanor’s locum was on stand-by, but in this most emotional of times, it was she who could support them best and that is what she had promised to do.

Both of the boys were washed and dressed, and James was just adding the milk to a mug of tea he had prepared on hearing her car pull up outside. She accepted his offer of toast and went to change out of her nightdress (tucked into jeans and hidden under a hastily thrown-on sweater) and into something more suitable for a morning of traipsing in and out of changing rooms. She wasn’t looking forward to it, with a baby and an almost four-year-old in tow, but she was getting very excited about the party and it was spurring her on. She quickly ran a brush through her hair and went to the kitchen.

“When you have eaten,” James told her, “we will take the boys to your parents.”

“They’re probably out shopping themselves, I’m sure we’ll…”

“I have already phoned and arranged this with your mother,” he assured her.

“Oh! Well, I guess that’ll help me catch up a bit.” Eleanor talked as she chewed her way through the toast. “I’ve got so much to do before tonight. My hair’s a mess and I could do with a manicure, or some false nails, and I think my mascara’s dried up. I was going to get some this week anyway, and then I need to wax my legs. Actually, why don’t you drop me at the department store on the way? It’ll save tons of time and I might find everything I need all in one go.”