Damn, Jesus was mean.
‘What?’ I mumbled groggily, my voice still croaky and thick with sleep. ‘What’s going on? What’s happening?’ I pushed myself upright, realising I’d fallen asleep at the desk with my noggin cradled in the makeshift cushion of my arms. My vision was still foggy, but as I repeatedly blinked, it began to clear. I recognised Bill standing there, dressed in the most hideous pair of pyjamas I had ever seen, burgundy and white stripes. Urgh. The sight alone was enough to make a woman retch. He looked like some kind of Christmas humbug.
‘Ruth, Ben isn’t well. I need you to drive us to A&E, now,’ he said, his voice moderately stable but certainly urgent.
‘What? I can’t drive. Why can’t you drive?’ I said with a groan, not really grasping the stress or hurry in Bill’s voice, honestly just wanting to go back to sleep.
‘Because I’ve had nearly a whole bottle of wine,’ he replied, matter-of-factly. Gosh, Bill really was knocking them back nowadays. ‘The ambulance won’t come for hours and also, you’re allowed to drive with a licence holder. If anyone asks, we’ll just say we forgot the learner plates, no one will bat an eye, I’m sure.’
‘At…’ I grabbed my phone to check the time, ‘two thirty on a Sunday morning?’
‘Ruth, please. He needs to go to the hospital.’
I groaned as my senses began to gradually return to me and I waved him off, asking for a moment. He hastily complied, stepping out of the shed into the cold. I tried to pull myself together the best I could, throwing on the first hoodie and pair of leggings I could lay my hands on. I followed Bill out to the car, where Ben was already waiting, strapped in the back seat like a child about to go on a family trip to Butlin’s.
‘Ben, love, what’s happened?’ I asked, climbing into the driver’s seat, as he sat there, clutching a bag of peas tightly to his forehead.
‘I fell,’ he replied simply.
‘Oh, you sausage,’ I said, probably with more nonchalance than Bill appreciated as he belted up in the passenger seat beside me. ‘Are you sure about this, Bill?’ I asked again, really not feeling confident about being behind the wheel of his car, the anxiousness already surging within me. ‘It’s been ages since Ben and I have been out in the car, I’m really out of practice.’
‘An ambulance would take too long,’ he repeated. ‘The roads will be quiet. Let’s go,’ he snapped.
I tried to recall everything Ben had taught me as I carefully edged out of the driveway, peeping and creeping even though the roads were mostly deserted at this hour, even in southeast London.Tentatively, I pressed the accelerator, only for the car to lurch forward with a jolt.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ I muttered with a scowl as I fiddled with the gearstick. ‘I’ve always been terrible at finding the bite, haven’t I, Ben?’
‘You have,’ he affirmed sedately from the back seat, while I tried to remember which one was the brake pedal. The one on the left, I think?
As I followed the map on my phone, trying to concentrate on both the directions to the hospital and the myriad of driving mantras swirling around in my head – ‘slow and steady’, ‘only drive to where your eyes can see’, ‘left is best’ – I realised I hadn’t given much thought to Ben. It was only as we pulled up at Charing Cross Hospital Accident and Emergency that I started to wonder why we were here. Had he hit his head when he had fallen? A concussion, maybe? How did he even fall in the first place? Why was Bill being so cagey about it?
Bill tenderly helped Ben out of the car while I headed to the car park to find a space. I was frankly amazed I’d managed to get us here in one piece and wasn’t about to push my luck by attempting to do something miraculous like parallel park. Instead, I sought out the quietest spot at the very back of the car park, with plenty of room to reverse. Even then, I manoeuvred tentatively, finally parking in a way that I would describe as ‘good enough’. The lines are more suggestions anyway.
I stepped into the hospital grounds, the frankly aggressive and bombarding sensory explosion of A&E at this hour hit me: drunks yelling belligerently, a few pre-teens yacking up in kitchen bowls and two policemen restraining some kind of mythical being with the body of some ordinary man and head of a traffic cone.
But I couldn’t see Ben or Bill anywhere. How had they been seen so quickly at this time of night?
I considered sitting down to wait before realising the only spare seat was next to a very drunk and also very high Michael Jackson who would occasionally scream ‘Shamone’ before immediately retching into a bucket filled withsawdust.
As I approached the reception desk, I immediately clocked the receptionist with pursed lips and narrowed eyes. I recognised her as the kind of person who clearly valued brevity in conversation; I had seen many faces like hers before. The guy in front of me mumbled something under his breath to her, which to me sounded a like,It’s been up for more than four hours,before she curtly told him to take a seat. Then I was next in line.
‘Hi, my… friend, best friend…’ I paused, feeling just ‘friend’ was far too casual. ‘… just came in here with his partner while I was parking. His name is Ben, Ben Murphy. I don’t suppose you’d know where he is?’
She drew in a breath before a short snort, as if she was sizing me up, weighing the worth of my words. I realised the purple hoodie I had frantically grabbed in my scramble to get out of the door was one that had ‘Trauma Queen’ plastered over it, which may not be helping my case. Mind you, I’m sure A&E had seen worse and at least I wasn’t wearing Bill’s ghastly pyjamas.
‘They’ve taken him to the Constance Wood Ward. Ground floor, to your right.’
‘Oh, okay. Thank you,’ I said with a polite smile, though she didn’t return it.
By the time I reached the ward, I saw Bill standing outside one of the rooms, his arms folded tight and his expression, as per usual, stern, but he was still in those hideous pyjamas which made him look like an imprisoned elf exiled from Santa’s Grotto for trying to form a union. I raised a tentative hand in greeting as I approached. His facial muscles didn’t shift at all; not that he ever looked overjoyed to see me, but I was hoping he would show at least some sign of relief that I had found him in the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital.
‘What happened? How did he fall?’ I asked, peering into the room, trying to catch a glimpse of Ben through the glazed window but failing to ascertain the real severity of the situation.
‘He just fell,’ Bill replied, impassive and detached, his eyes still locked on the small, smudged portal into the hospital room.
‘Weird. So, he wasn’t feeling ill or nauseous or anything like that?’ I asked.
‘He just fell, Ruth,’ Bill repeated firmly, his eyes bulging a little and his jaw clenching.
