“There’s a message for you at the desk – someone’s rang asking for you.”
I frown. I have an ear piece in and my phones with me. I’m easily contactable. One of the other guards is here so I nod to him to keep an eye on Blair and follow the nurse the twenty metres to the nurses’ station next to the start of the empty row of corridors which begin the new wing, awaiting its patients and the dignitaries who are about to arrive.
She hands me a phone and I take it, speaking my name.
“It wasn’t good enough, Ben. I’d get out if I was you.” I don’t recognise the voice because it’s been disguised but I recognise the words. Majjie.
The pause I take is a lost second. I’m thrown to the floor and my ears ring. Lights flash.
Explosion.
Flames and smoke start to lick. The sounds of sirens and alarms fill the air. It’s impossible to hear or speak anything else. I can’t hear. Can’t speak. It’s futile.
The telephone dangles from its cord, the nurse who passed it to me nowhere to be seen.
My body remembers what to do, how to move. Muscles have me up and on my feet, legs travelling in the direction of Blair, to the new wards where she and Isaac headed.
Feet pound. Left right. Left right. Breaths measured and controlled.
One goal.
Blair.
I ignore the voices in my ear, the instructions from our security. Smoke clouds my eyes, thick and heavy, flames lap the walls and the furniture. I recognise the type of explosion and I know there’s likely to be secondary bangs from the equipment that’s in here, the oxygen.
But it doesn’t matter if I die.
I’m just a number. An import. A Smith.
And there are millions of us.
I’m expendable.
But Blair is not.
Chapter Eighteen
It’s the dress I see first.
She chose a dress that was long, silver, beaded with things that shone. A princess dress for the children. Her right foot is there too, shoeless and bare and I can see blood.
The smoke’s thick and dense and making me cough and I know we have to get of here fast. Protocol would be to check for injuries, especially to her back and neck but my gut tells me we haven’t time. The beams and joists are making noises that tell me ceilings are about to fall so I scoop her up in my arms and head to the nearby exit.
She’s conscious, her arms wrapping around me.
“Isaac.” It’s one word, followed by a cough. Rubble crashes down around us. I hear crackling and the spitting of flames. Around us everything is black and grey and orange where it still burns. The floors is littered with shrapnel and broken pieces of what was equipment and furniture. We’re in the middle of one of the new wards, the single beds that are spaced apart blackened messes that smoulder, the smell putrid.
“We’ll get him out.” Empty promises always sound hollow. I haven’t seen him, don’t know where he is. Only Blair is in the room which leaves questions as to why, where the guard was that I left with her. There’s no sign of the nurses or the hospital patron I saw talking to them, just Blair in here.
I carry her down the fire escape, hearing my name and hers as we get lower. Firefighters congregate, shouting instructions, wanting to take her from me before I’m ready to let go. She’s precious and I can’t trust anyone. Not even a nurse.
Outside is a storm of sirens and blue lights. I move us as far away from the building as possible, choking on the frigid December air as its coldness hits my throat.
There are voices, my colleagues, Franklyn. Blair is taken from me as I double over and cough, retching. I watch as they put on an oxygen mask and start to look at her leg which is bloody and cut.
Shrapnel.
“The rest of the people inside?” I turn to Micky who looks as grim as fuck.
