TWENTY
How did you come to be here? Everything recently seems to be a blur of noise and lights and the stink of early evening. Even at the best of times, no one in the city is going to stop to ask ‘Are you OK?’ or ‘Are you lost?’ or ‘You seem hurt, is there anything I can do?’ The usual crush of people on a Sunday has thinned anyway, and nobody gives you a second glance when they’re already too busy hurrying past to get to their car or bus or train, to get away from the city, to get home to their family, to get out of this foul evening weather.
The gunshot wound throbs. You’ve never been shot before, though you’ve shot others on service in Kunduz Province. They told you it was nothing like you’d expect, and they were right. At the moment of impact, there had been no pain; it was instead as though you received a violent shove in the shoulder that spun you around. The landing’s window had loomed in front of you as you turned, and you raised your arms in an instinctive survival gesture before the frame and glass gave way and you tumbled over and through and down, down.
A drop of that distance into the rubbish skip might have killed you. That would have been a definitive end, no respite, no escape, no one else to go to. And you couldn’t allow that to happen, not now, not after getting this far. But the black bags of decaying waste were bloated, and cushioned your fall. The stench of rotting vegetables still clings to you now like some foul perfume. You could pass yourself off as one of the homeless vagrants who in the day clustered around the station steps for financial scraps, except that the rain has driven even them into deep cover.
Your first thought was to run for Caerdydd Canolog, the obvious escape route for a train out to Cefn Onn where your parents used to live. That childhood memory has brought you here as another kind of survival instinct. You can’t really remember how you got here from Guy’s apartment, the pain of your wound and the shock of the fall must have confused you up to this point. And now, faced with the stark reality of your impossible situation and the grey fa?ade of Cardiff Central, you’re able to compose yourself a bit, to reassess things.
You look up, half-blinded by the rain that tumbles at you ceaselessly. Huge capitals declare ‘Great Western Railway’, dwarfing the station’s newer name. Above these carved letters, the station clock shows 8.30 p.m.
Now that you’re here, you only know that there’s no way out for you. The rain lashes down pitilessly, a stinging wash of sound all around. The noise and fury of this downpour outside hides everything – your smell, your small, muffled noises of pain, the blood that soaks your blouse and skirt. Inside the building you will have no money, no cards, no hope of getting into a train carriage unobserved. You need to get back to the Bay. If your body can survive that far.
You step away from the station and cross the road, staring enviously at the taxis that swirl away into the traffic. You stumble on, unwilling or unable to enter the Welcome Centre, and into St Mary Street. The shops have long emptied, and the rain is now like a curtain falling over the tall redbrick building. A stab of pain in your shoulder twists a stifled scream from you, and you slump awkwardly against a travel agency window. The grinning display of a holiday scene mocks you from beyond the plate glass, and light spills out around you and into the street. By your feet, a gurgling drain has failed, and larger puddles are lapping over the edges of the pavement.
The pain has spread over your whole upper back now. Pressing your hand against the wound hasn’t staunched the blood, and you’re beginning to feel dizzy. As you lie against the shop window, you consider how you’re going to get medical attention.
You can’t let it finish here. There must be someone to go to. But first, you have to survive this.
You stumble on past the glass and iron of the indoor market. Someone has piled sandbags across the entrance to stem the flow of rainwater. In the distance, the ululating wail of a police siren cuts across the noise of the rain storm. And you have your answer.
Your vision starts to blur as you stagger along the pedestrianised Queen Street. Its cafés and pubs and restaurants are either closed or forlornly empty under the storm, but you barely notice as you make your way, step by painful step. As a girl, you watched an 8mm film show of a school outing to Jodrell Bank, and the film had stuck in the projector. The image of waving children in front of the radio telescope had juddered, frozen and then burnt until the film snapped and the screen showed only white. The people hurrying past you through the rain seem to be slowing down, the sound of the rain and the traffic is merging into a background hiss, and your surroundings are fading… not to white, but black.
So you fight to stay awake. You heard that siren. There must still be a chance here, you tell yourself. There has to be something up towards the Millennium Stadium.
And there is. The startling blue flash of an ambulance is visible in the middle distance, back towards St Mary Street. The siren is not sounding, but the emergency vehicle is making swift progress towards you. It slows as it approaches the corner of North Road and Duke Street, and that is your opportunity.
To step out into the road in front of it.
There’s a buzz of activity, a flurry of half-glimpsed movement and impressionistic images.
You were luckier than you knew. There was a doctor in the back of this ambulance. Pretty, short dark hair. She has given you morphine for the pain, and is conducting an inventory of your injuries with a paramedic beside her. No broken limbs. A gash to the side of the head. To start with, they think you are a drunk who has stumbled in front of their ambulance. Your erratic movements, the disgusting smell of you, and your inability to speak clearly have led them to this conclusion. But their demeanour changes now that they find the gunshot wound. Even in your haze of dizziness and pain, you can see the doctor is startled by her discovery. But she stays professional. Radios it ahead. Starts to treat it.
It was Guy Wildman who got you here, in more ways than one. He told you a joke, as you were setting out for the sub-aqua trip, about how he could always get hold of the police in any emergency. A story he said he’d read in the paper. Some bloke phoned them to say his shed was being burgled. Cops didn’t wanna know, said they had no one available in his area.
So he rang them back five minutes later, told them not to bother because he’d gone and shot the intruders. Course, in another five minutes flat, his house is surrounded by armed cops. And they catch the bastards who were burgling the bloke’s shed. Cops weren’t too happy, of course. ‘I thought you said you’d shot the burglars,’ said the arresting officer. ‘And I thought you said you had no one available in my area,’ said the bloke.
So, the best way to get to hospital? Get knocked over by an ambulance.
The pain in your shoulder has eased. The other, old pain is coming back, though. The need. The hunger.
Can’t do anything about that now. Not just at the moment.
You need to rest. Recuperate. Sleep.
For now.