“I’m fine, girls, don’t you worry about me,” he said, his voice shaken but determined. “Your Auntie Carole and her friend Tom are going to help me get up on my feet and then I’ll be as right as rain, won’t I Carole?”
“Of course he will,” Carole said, throwing her nieces a wink of reassurance. “But I bet your grandpa will want a nice cold drink once we get up him on his feet. Why don’t you two girls go with your daddy and fetch that for him? That would be a really big help.”
Carole was grateful when James caught her drift and steered the girls away from the dance floor and towards the bar. Thelast thing she wanted was them seeing their beloved grandfather wincing in pain as they hauled him upright—or worse, falling over again if it turned out he’d also sustained an injury to his legs or feet that he hadn’t yet registered.
“Okay, let’s do this on my count, okay?” Carole said. “Tom, are you ready?”
Tom placed his arms around Frederick’s waist, bracing him for the move. “I’m ready.”
“Dad, are you ready?”
Her father nodded.
“Okay, one, two,three.”
With Carole and Tom’s help, Frederick launched himself to his feet with a grunt of pain and then sank into the chair that was waiting for him. Nina continued dabbing at his bleeding head wound while Carole looked in dismay at his wrist.
“I think we need to get you to a hospital, Dad,” she said.
Frederick nodded, now looking more annoyed than disoriented. “I think you’re right. I’m sure it’s broken.”
“I’ll phone for an ambulance,” Jane said, already on her phone.
“I think this cut is superficial,” Nina said, accepting a handful of fresh tissues from a member of staff to apply to Frederick’s head wound. “But it is bleeding badly.”
“Do you feel sick or woozy, Dad?”
“Not sick, no. I do feel dizzy. though. But that’s just to be expected after what happened.”
“We’re here to help however we can,” said the hotel manager, or supervisor, or whoever he was.
“The emergency operator says it will be at least an hour before they can get an ambulance to us,” Jane said with dismay, tilting the phone away from her mouth while she spoke to Carole.
“I’ll drive us there,” Tom said.
“No, son, I don’t want your night being wasted,” Frederick said, a grimace on his face. “We can phone a taxi to take us to the hospital, can’t we Nina?”
“Me driving you there is the quickest option,” Tom said. “I haven’t had anything to drink and my car’s parked right outside. It’s a Saturday night and there’s no telling how long it might take for a taxi to get here.”
“They can take a while to arrive, I’m afraid,” the hotel manager said. “Out here in this rural area, they don’t just turn up straight away on demand.”
“That settles it,” Tom said. “Carole, why don’t you grab our jackets from the cloakroom and I’ll bring the car round to the front doors.”
Carole threw him a grateful look, relieved that they’d be able to get her father to the hospital so quickly. “Thank you, Tom.”
He smiled and then turned to Nina and Jane. “Are you two okay helping Frederick out to the exits?”
“I can walk just fine,” Frederick said.
“Because you hit your head, we’d prefer you to use this,” the hotel manager said, pointing to a collapsible wheelchair another member of staff was already steering in their direction. “It’s a relatively long walk from this part of the hotel to the main exit, and this will make it easier for you, sir.”
Her father seemed about to protest that he didn’t need a wheelchair, but a sharp look from Nina silenced him. Carole left Jane and her mother to accompany her father to the doors while she went to fetch everyone’s jackets and other belongings.
As her father was wheeled out of the function room, she saw her father kiss his granddaughters goodbye and reassure them that he was just fine and would see them later.
“We’ll take the girls home,” Jane told Carole in the hotel lobby. “If Dad needs anything brought from the house once he’s at the hospital, I can drive to Hamblehurst and pick it up.”
“Thanks,” Carole said, giving her sister a quick hug. “I’ll let you know once we get there.”
