Seven Days of Us(76)

“Just did what anyone would have.”

“Well, none of us did! Where did you learn all that?”

“Waiting tables. First aid is mandatory. I never had to use it, though,” he said, smiling.

She looked at his hands and saw they were shaking. She could see the tiny cut on his palm now—the one he’d shown the paramedics, anxious that it might pose a risk of infection. He said he’d done it on a barbed-wire fence nearby, out in the dark on Christmas Day. She felt horribly responsible. What would Jesse’s American mother think? He’d come to Norfolk, cut his poor hand, and might now catch Haag—all because he was the only one with enough sense to help Olivia.

Nearby, she heard the senior paramedic calling “the red phone” at Norwich Hospital for advice, and rattling off cold medical terms: “Vomit following faint, BP one forty-ninety, appears hypoglycemic, high-risk Haag positive.” He walked farther down the drive, almost out of earshot, but she caught the words “body fluids,” “isolation,” “open wound,” and “medevac,” and her heart started thrumming even faster. She wondered how Olivia numbed herself to this stuff every day at work.

“Right,” said the paramedic, striding over. “We haven’t the facilities to test conclusively for Haag at Norwich, so we’re going to stabilize her there, then get straight to London. They’re preparing two RAF planes at Lakenheath,” he said, looking unduly excited. Norwich Hospital obviously hadn’t expected to put its Haag drill into practice.

“Two planes?” said Emma, feeling faint herself. “Why two? One for the rest of us?”

“No, you won’t be able to accompany her, I’m afraid.”

“What? But I’m her mother! I can’t stay here if she’s going to London!”

“Just until she’s had the all-clear. We’d ask you to stay in the house, but not to enter the room where she had the vomit. Presume she had her own bathroom?” he said, glancing up at Weyfield’s huge facade.

Emma agreed, although she had no intention of hanging around here. They would drive straight back to Gloucester Terrace the minute the ambulance had gone.

The paramedic turned to Jesse. “You’re higher risk, because of the contact with body fluids. Her vomit, I mean, with that cut on your hand. You need to come with us now. The second plane is for you.”





Phoebe


THE COAST ROAD, SHERINGHAM, 10:45 A.M.

? ? ?

Phoebe and Andrew managed to lock up Weyfield and bundle themselves into Andrew’s car in a record forty minutes, remembering Cocoa just in time. Emma had already hurtled on ahead in her Golf. She had decided that the three of them should stay at Gloucester Terrace until Olivia had tested for Haag.

“Shouldn’t we do as the paramedics said?” Andrew had asked. But Emma had overruled him, and he’d let her. It wasn’t like him not to put up a token fight.

“But what if she’s positive? Won’t we be in trouble for leaving?” Phoebe had asked. It was the first time she’d registered that they might all be in danger. She felt sick already.

“Cross that bridge when we come to it,” her mother had said, slamming her car door and reversing down the drive. She sounded firm, but Phoebe could see she was freaking out.

“So, Mademoiselle, now I know you don’t need a whole day to pack, can we make this a precedent?” said Andrew, as he revved round a corner. He always made jokes when bad things happened. It was his way of coping, and for now it suited Phoebe. She’d prefer to be here with her father, making bad jokes, than her mother, panicking. Or—worse—in the back of the ambulance with Olivia and Jesse. She felt bad for Jesse, though. She had to admit, he’d been amazing. The paramedic said his first aid had prevented Olivia choking on her vomit. She hoped Olivia would forgive her for telling them about Sean.

Andrew switched on the radio. “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” was playing—one of the songs from her first-dance shortlist. She realized that she hadn’t thought of George since Olivia’s collapse. The crisis of the morning seemed to have blasted everything else sideways. And actually, she was glad George hadn’t been around. She’d never seen him in an emergency, apart from the time his friend had staggered off the rugby pitch with a gory nose, and George had gone white and done nothing. If he couldn’t deal with that, she doubted he’d have been much use earlier. Andrew began humming along to the male parts in the song. “Curious lyrics, aren’t they?” he said.

“I’d been thinking of it as our first dance,” said Phoebe.

“First dance?”

“At the wedding. Me and George. The wedding that’s not happening.”

“Oh! Right, right. Well, I’m not sure about that. Isn’t it a sort of rapist ditty?”

She laughed.

“Rather camp, too, I’d have thought,” he said, and then hurriedly added: “I mean, not that George was camp—is camp.”

“It’s OK, Daddy. It’s not important now,” she said.

Andrew just nodded slightly, as they whipped round the roads to London.





Jesse


ROYAL AIR FORCE LAKENHEATH, NORFOLK, 12:13 P.M.

? ? ?

Ordinarily, Jesse would have been psyched to see inside a military plane. But this, he thought as they took off, was a long way from Top Gun. It was eerie to be the only passenger. If he’d known he’d wind up here, in a medevac bubble, he wondered if he’d have e-mailed Andrew at all. You still would have, he thought. You’d still have wanted to know him—to know them. He stared out the window at the British countryside below. The quilt of little green rectangles, stitched with hedges, looked so tame. He wished he could stay suspended up here forever, never to face everything on the ground. He willed Olivia to be OK. The last time he’d seen her, before she was wheeled into her plane, she’d been wrapped in a silver blanket, her face a dead grayish color. A doctor had been trying to give her a glucose drink. He was dressed in a full hazard suit, like everyone they’d encountered since leaving the ambulance. It was like they’d been thrown into a CSI episode—he and Olivia the victims. His ring finger found the cut on his palm. How could something so tiny, so insignificant, be so huge? Would everything be different if he hadn’t grabbed the fence at that exact place? The possibility that he really might have contracted Haag fluttered inside him. You had to do what you did, he told himself. You had no choice. You can handle this. Besides, if you’ve caught it, you won’t even know yet, so there’s no point worrying. He tried to practice his relaxation techniques, consciously softening his forehead, unclenching his jaw and hands. But a cold, creeping fear was fast replacing the adrenaline from before. He wanted to wash his hands—to bleach his hands. He realized his nail was in danger of gouging the cut deeper, making things even worse. Was the nausea welling up inside him nerves, or the start of something?