Conviction(92)

Again. I go for the nod.

She leads me along the corridor and swipes a card through a set of doors, which takes us into a small space with just a pump bottle of hand sanitiser hanging from a stainless steel basket on the wall. We both coat our hands in the stuff.

“Now I don’t want you to panic when you see her Mr. Reed.”

“Please call me, Conner,” I croak, my voice sounding nothing like my own.

She nods and rubs my arm in a manner that Sandra would use.

“She took a bit of a beating tonight, Conner. She’s been punched and kicked in the face, head and back. Whoever did this, meant to get a message across.”

The strangest sensation passes over me. Like pins and needles, instantly, from my head to my toes. My scalp prickles and the hairs all over my body stand on end. This doesn’t sit right with me. My fans would never do something like this… never.

Angie presses the button that opens the next set of doors.

“Don’t be concerned with the machinery, it’s just to monitor that she’s doing okay. She’s breathing by herself, so not on a ventilator or anything.”

The area is big. There’s a nurses station in the middle, with four beds around it, further down are four rooms. We keep moving until we reach the first room. This is good, I remember reading or seeing on one of those reality hospital shows that the sicker you are, the closer they keep you to the nurse’s station, so the first room is good.

We turn into the room. I make a noise. I don’t know what it is.

If complete and total desolation, heartbreak, guilt and sorrow had a sound that might be it.

Angie takes my hand and moves me toward the bed. I sob. Angie squeezes my hand tighter.

She looks like a child. A bruised, broken and battered child.

The left side of her head is shaved and she has a row of staples running through the middle of the shaved area. Twelve, there’s twelve staples. Meebs was born on the twelfth.

Her right eye is purple and so swollen that even if she opened it, she wouldn’t be able to see out of it. Pretty much the whole right side of her face is bruised.

She has a blood pressure cuff around her right arm, one of those peg things on her finger and a drip, feeding liquid into the back of her left hand.

Two little tubes are blowing oxygen up her nose.

This is so unfair. Why do this to her?

She’s the girl that catches spiders and sets them free. She’d rather swerve into oncoming traffic than hit a bird, rabbit or fox on the road. She goes out of her way to never hurt anyone.

I sit down in the chair at the side of her bed. Leaning forward I kiss her forehead as there doesn’t appear to be any bruises there. I take her right hand in mine, lay my head on her belly and I cry. Angie remains silent while she rubs and pats my back, just letting me cry.

When my tears slow down, she says very quietly, “I’m going to leave you alone for a bit. I’ll go and explain to your family and friends what’s going on. Sit yourself in that big chair and try and get some sleep.”

“Thanks Angie, thanks for everything.”

“You’re very welcome, Conner. I’ll come back and see you both later.”

I hold her right hand in both of mine, rest my head down next to hers and close my eyes.

I need to make a call to Tom Brady, the private investigator my dad put me on to. I’m not leaving a stone unturned. I’m gonna find the f*ckers that did this and I’m gonna make them pay.





Nina



“Yes please, and onion, loads of onion,” I tell Conner.

He finally went home last night after sleeping at the hospital for four nights.

He had me moved up to a private room, but it’s still a hospital, not the bloody Ritz. So why he wants to stay here when there’s a perfectly good bed at home is beyond me, although it has been nice having him around. I’m hoping that I can leave before the weekend. The doctors are happy with the way my head injury is healing and we’re just waiting to speak to a consultant about the baby. The baby’s safe, we’ve been assured of that and at the end of the day, that’s all that really matters.

I don’t remember the attack. I remember being in the wine bar with Soph and then that’s about it until I started to wake up after my surgery.

I somehow knew I was in a hospital and I knew Conner was there, so I just focused on breathing in and out and tried to remain calm. I could hear the machines and various voices and just allowed my body to recover from the effects of the anaesthetics and brain surgery. By Monday morning, I was back with it. In fact, I was probably more with it than Conner.

He was sleeping when I first woke up fully, his head resting on my shoulder, curled on his side beside me on the bed. I worked out straight away that I wasn’t in your average hospital room and the bed was huge, almost a double. Next time I opened my eyes, he was awake and looking at me.

“You look like shit,” I whispered.

“While you are the most beautiful thing I have ever laid eyes on.” It hurt to smile, but I gave it my best shot regardless. I also had tears, I didn’t cry as such, but both Conner and I had tears that rolled down our cheeks. We sat silently for a few minutes, smile crying at each other.

“Meebs?” Conner’s voice sounds over my phone, which I have on speaker.

“Sorry, what?”