500 Miles from You (Scottish Bookshop #3)(40)
Perhaps she should say yes to Jake.
Chapter 35
Cormac was very much not having a brilliant time. He got up to use the bathroom—nobody really noticed, he thought, although he wondered if they would all start talking about him as soon as he crossed the room, which of course they did.
He glanced around the large space. Every table was taken up with glamorous people, lipstick shining, hair in bold geometric shapes or tumbling blond or in huge Afros, wearing incredible fashion and big colored glasses. Everyone was laughing and yelling at the top of their voices, or so it seemed. He recognized a few of the faces too; there was someone there who played a doctor on an incredibly popular medical television show that Cormac and Jake watched so they could slag off everything it got wrong about patient care and comment on how they were quite fond of the massive fires and car accidents and extremely not fond of the hard work afterward to get people from simply not being dead to living, functioning humans again.
Well, this was it, he supposed. He wasn’t, he thought, suited to being a Londoner after all. He wasn’t remotely cool enough: he didn’t have any facial hair, he didn’t have a bun, and his trousers weren’t remotely ridiculous enough.
He vowed to use the restroom—which was pitch black and covered in tiny spotlights and marble and stupidly fancy and impractical, which more or less summed up everything he was feeling—then make up an excuse and go, and he’d have to leave some money at the bar or something, or just pay cash, which would make him feel stupid and cheap, but what choice did he have, really, and okay, it was humiliating but it wasn’t, he told himself, as if he’d ever have to see any of these people again. He had never wanted to be sharing a quiet pint in Eck’s more.
He walked into the darkened lavatory, had a pee by touch mostly, then was just washing his hands when he heard a deep groan.
He stopped. There was nobody else in the bathroom, or at least nobody at the urinals.
The groan came again.
“Uh . . . hello?”
Silence. Then a weak moan.
Only one of the toilet cubicles had a closed door. A thought struck Cormac: What if it was people having sex in there? That’s what happened at these trendy, beautiful places, wasn’t it? It was probably two blokes having sex, and he was about to make a bad evening a million times worse by interrupting something and having everyone laugh at him for what a rube he was and how easily shocked.
It didn’t sound like a sexy groan, though. He took a deep breath, finished drying his hands, and called out one more time. “Hello? Are you okay?”
There was a long pause. Then: “Heeelllllppp meeee . . .”
The voice faded away. If this was a prank, it was a very strange one. But also, Cormac recognized the tone of voice. It was exactly what people said when they came into A&E or when he had had to free them from cars or under walls in the field. He’d heard it a million times.
He ducked into the cubicle next to the closed one and, hoping that expensive places cleaned their bathroom floors more thoroughly than cheap places, put his head down to the floor to look up under the partition.
He got an almighty shock: instead of the pair of feet he’d been expecting, a man’s head was lying inches from his, a pair of wide eyes, blown pupils, staring straight at him. It was so dark in there, Cormac used his phone flashlight and could see it already: clammy skin, trembling fingers.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he said. “Right. Hold on. Hold on, we’ll get you out of there.”
There was no room to crawl under the partition; he scrambled out and kicked the door open with one foot, a move he had practiced many times, it being an invaluable part of the paramedics’ arsenal. He also yelled loudly, although he couldn’t imagine anyone being able to hear him over the din of the terrible music and the vulgar self-aggrandizing shouting going on outside.
It was still pitch dark in the loo, though. He dragged the skinny figure through the door and out into the little hallway that led to the toilets. Several beautiful people stared at them suspiciously and stepped over the prone figure, but Cormac wasn’t paying any attention; he needed space and room to work.
“Move! Move!” he shouted. The man was foaming at the mouth and moving into a fit, and Cormac snapped his fingers at the bar staff, who immediately brought him the first-aid box.
“Call an ambulance,” he yelled, but several people already had their phones out. Most were calling. One or two were filming, but Cormac couldn’t think about that just then.
He put the man in the recovery position, opened his mouth, and took off his tie. Then, as the man started spasming, he cushioned his head and opened his top button.
“You’re fine,” he said, promising. “You’re going to be fine, you’re going to be safe. Hang on.”
The man had stopped thrashing but now seemed to be suffocating. He couldn’t catch his breath and turned a horrible shade of blue as his head went back, banging onto the ground. Someone in the room screamed; the music had been turned off and the beautiful young bar staff was standing around looking panicked.
Cormac immediately started doing mouth to mouth on the man, feeling for a pulse worriedly. He lifted his head briefly. “Have you got a defibrillator?”
Someone nodded and a yellow box was opened.
“Give it here . . . Is there a doctor around?”