After You (Me Before You #2)(4)

‘Do we need a second team?’

‘Can you step back, please, sir? Right back?’

Another man’s voice: ‘I came outside for a smoke, and she dropped on to my bloody balcony. She nearly bloody landed on me.’

‘Well, there you go – it’s your lucky day. She didn’t.’

‘I got the shock of my life. You don’t expect people to just drop out of the bloody sky. Look at my chair. That was eight hundred pounds from the Conran Shop … Do you think I can claim for it?’

A brief silence.

‘You can do what you want, sir. Tell you what, you could charge her for cleaning the blood off your balcony while you’re at it. How about that?’

The first man’s eyes slide towards his colleague. Time slips, I tilt with it. I’ve fallen off a roof? My face is cold and I realize distantly that I’m starting to shake.

‘She’s going into shock, Sam.’

A van door slides open somewhere below. And then the board beneath me moves and briefly the pain the pain the pain – Everything turns black.

A siren and a swirl of blue. Always a siren in London. We are moving. Neon slides across the interior of the ambulance, hiccups and repeats, illuminating the unexpectedly packed interior, the man in the green uniform, who is tapping something into his phone, before turning to adjust the drip above my head. The pain has lessened – morphine? – but with consciousness comes growing terror. A giant airbag is inflating slowly inside me, steadily blocking out everything else. Oh, no. Oh, no.

‘Egcuse nge?’

It takes two goes for the man, his arm braced against the back of the cab, to hear me. He turns and stoops towards my face. He smells of lemons and he has missed a bit when shaving. ‘You okay there?’

‘Ang I –’

The man leans down. ‘Sorry. Hard to hear over the siren. We’ll be at the hospital soon.’ He places a hand on mine. It is dry and warm and reassuring. I’m suddenly panicked in case he decides to let go. ‘Just hang on in there. What’s our ETA, Donna?’

I can’t say the words. My tongue fills my mouth. My thoughts are muddled, overlapping. Did I move my arms when they picked me up? I lifted my right hand, didn’t I?

‘Ang I garalysed?’ It emerges as a whisper.

‘What?’ He drops his ear to somewhere near my mouth.

‘Garalysed? Ang I garalysed?’

‘Paralysed?’ The man hesitates, his eyes on mine, then turns and looks down at my legs. ‘Can you wiggle your toes?’

I try to remember how to move my feet. It seems to require several more leaps of concentration than it used to. The man reaches down and lightly touches my toe, as if to remind me where they are. ‘Try again. There you go.’

Pain shoots up both my legs. A gasp, possibly a sob. Mine.

‘You’re all right. Pain is good. I can’t say for sure, but I don’t think there’s any spinal injury. You’ve done your hip, and a few other bits besides.’

His eyes are on mine. Kind eyes. He seems to understand how much I need convincing. I feel his hand close on mine. I have never needed a human touch more.

‘Really. I’m pretty sure you’re not paralysed.’

‘Oh, thang Gog.’ I hear my voice, as if from afar. My eyes brim with tears. ‘Please don’ leggo ogme,’ I whisper.

He moves his face closer. ‘I am not letting go of you.’

I want to speak, but his face blurs, and I am gone again.

Afterwards they tell me I fell two floors of the five, busting through an awning, breaking my fall on a top-of-the-range outsized canvas and wicker-effect waterproof-cushioned sun-lounger on the balcony of Mr Antony Gardiner, a copyright lawyer, and neighbour I have never met. My hip smashed into two pieces and two of my ribs and my collarbone snapped straight through. I broke two fingers on my left hand, and a metatarsal, which poked through the skin of my foot and caused one of the medical students to faint. My X-rays are a source of some fascination.

I keep hearing the voice of the paramedic who treated me: You never know what will happen when you fall from a great height. I am apparently very lucky. They tell me this and wait, smiling, as if I should respond with a huge grin, or perhaps a little tap dance. I don’t feel lucky. I don’t feel anything. I doze and wake, and sometimes the view above me is the bright lights of an operating theatre, and then it is a quiet, still room. A nurse’s face. Snatches of conversation.

Did you see the mess the old woman on D4 made? That’s some end of a shift, eh?

You work up at the Princess Elizabeth, right? You can tell them we know how to run an ER. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.

You just rest now, Louisa. We’re taking care of everything. Just rest now.

The morphine makes me sleepy. They up my dose and it’s a welcome cold trickle of oblivion.

I open my eyes to find my mother at the end of my bed.

‘She’s awake. Bernard, she’s awake. Do we need to get the nurse?’

She’s changed the colour of her hair, I think distantly. And then: Oh. It’s my mother. My mother doesn’t talk to me any more.

‘Oh, thank God. Thank God.’ My mother reaches up and touches the crucifix around her neck. It reminds me of someone but I cannot think who. She leans forward and lightly strokes my cheek. For some reason this makes my eyes fill immediately with tears. ‘Oh, my little girl.’ She is leaning over me, as if to shelter me from further damage. I smell her perfume, as familiar as my own. ‘Oh, Lou.’ She mops my tears with a tissue. ‘I got the fright of my life when they called. Are you in pain? Do you need anything? Are you comfortable? What can I get you?’