500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(4)

It was unheard of for a nurse to defy a doctor in this way, even if this particular doctor looked like he’d drawn his mustache on with a pen that morning.

“Step back!”

But she couldn’t; she could only stand, as if she had absolutely no idea where she was, her arms reaching out uselessly, muttering, “Kai . . . Kai . . .” into thin air, still believing fervently, even as the doctor looked at his watch, shook his head; even as the blood was no longer dripping on the floor, was getting ready to pool, to congeal. The only thread to life was her.

“I can just . . . try one more time . . .”

“GET HER OUT of here,” the young doctor was muttering as the porters tried to move the body onto the gurney. Several other medics appeared.

“Is next of kin here?” yelled one of them, and Lissa recognized in horror the people—perfectly nice, professional people—whom, in day-to-day life, she admired hugely. The transplant team.

“He’s not even dead, you vultures,” she found herself screaming, and Ashkan really did move then, bodily pulled her out of the ambulance as she swore and thrashed away. “He’s not even . . . !”

“I’m calling it,” said the doctor. “Take him to the HDU.”

This was where they held transplant patients, in a twilight world between life and death, just holding on for long enough to get the necessary signatures, to beg and plead that a life taken in vain would not be entirely in vain.

“18:38,” he said. “Can we move it fast? We’ve a . . .” And his voice sounded so very, very weary. “. . . hit-and-run incoming.”

Lissa collapsed onto the pavement as it started to rain and burst into tears, deep racking sobs. She was a professional, had been doing this for four years, had seen road accidents, murders, every kind of horrible thing it was possible to see.

But it was a boy she knew whose name was Kai who broke her, at 6:38 P.M., on a totally normal Tuesday night.





Chapter 4


Ashkan tried to move her.

“Mate,” he hissed under his breath. “Mate, you have to move. They’re going to haul you into the nutter room.”

There were no gentle words among the London Ambulance Service when it came to Occupational Health and the therapy unit. As far as they were concerned, ambulance paramedics were a gang of outlaws, pirates, screaming through the streets on a mission to save. Once you started wobbling the lip about it, like every other bugger would, well then. What was the point of you? Someone had to scrape people off the ground; someone had to hold the line. If you started crying and needing therapy and basket weaving, well, then you were no use. Nobody denied that it was a tough gig. That was the point of it. If you couldn’t hack it, you weren’t much use. A&E teams relied on each other like little else.

Lissa was finding it impossible even to get up, even as the rain crept down the collar of her heavy green jacket.

“Everything okay?” said Dev, the station controller, coming over, his kind face concerned, his glasses as usual up around his bald head—they were always wherever he wouldn’t be able to find them as soon as he needed them, including dangling around his neck or in his pocket.

“Fine!” said Ashkan breezily.

Lissa was aware they were there, that they were around, but somehow she couldn’t concentrate, couldn’t really focus on what they were asking of her or why she was sitting on wet pavement. It was like her body didn’t belong to her at all, like she was somewhere else and everything was going on without her and the person sitting on the wet pavement was somebody else.

Dev looked concerned. “Lissa? Were you on the hit-and-run?”

“She knew the lad,” said Ashkan. “Bad bloody luck. Bit of a shock.”

Lissa couldn’t even nod her head to respond. The police took her to the station to pick out the perpetrator from a lineup, and for a statement, which she gave blindly. Ashkan waited for her, even though his shift had ended.

“Come on,” said Ashkan gently. “Let’s fill you up with tea.”

He frog-marched her back to the hospital, and Lissa let him, as if her legs were moving without any input from her at all, as if they belonged to someone else.

The ground-floor canteen was quiet this time of night: on-duty doctors keeping an eye on their beepers and phones; one poor soul fast asleep by a potted plant, his head looking uncomfortable on a wicker divider; a clutch of porters playing cards; and a few nervous-looking family members, not sure they were in the right place, glancing around. The catering staff had gone for the day; it was just vending machines and hideous coffee in plastic cups with plastic stirrers. Ashkan brought back two teas and gave both of them to Lissa, pulling out his own flask of vegetable juice he squeezed himself. Ashkan took his health extremely seriously and usually headed straight for the gym at the end of his shift. Lissa had always teased him about how vain he was—he spent longer on his shiny black quiff than she did on her spirally curls, although, to be fair, they were liable to turn into frizz in the wet, so she just got them out of the way in a tight ponytail. Plus, the fewer things that stood out about her physically, the less abuse she normally had to take from people not quite in their right minds by the time they showed up at A&E.

Lissa took the tea, feeling it burn her fingers through the thin plastic—Ashkan was harshly opposed to single-use plastic, so his doing this was a clear sign of how concerned he was. She understood all of this—kind of—from a long, long way away. She could sense how worried he was. But somehow she just didn’t care. About anything. Because that boy was dead, and nothing mattered, and she felt half dead herself.