The Back Road

41

For once, it was a relief to be doing an early shift. Ellie wasn’t sure she could have faced Max over the breakfast table. She had barely slept, and she knew that Max hadn’t either. So many times during the night she had wanted to put her arm around him and ask ‘why?’ but she was still deluding herself that if she kept quiet, it might all go away.

And to cap it all, she couldn’t for the life of her find her security pass. Somebody had let her into the ward, but she would have to report it. She always took it off and put it in her bag - but perhaps last night she had dropped it at Georgia’s or something. She’d report it later, during her break or at the end of the shift. For now, she needed to focus on her job.

‘You look like shit, Ellie. Are you okay?’

Ellie turned round. It was Sam Bradshaw, and he was just finishing his rounds. She gave him a weak smile.

‘Thanks, Sam. It’s kind of you to say so. I didn’t sleep well last night, but I’m fine.’

‘Is there something bothering you? Anything I can help with?’

Sam was a great guy, and Ellie was sorely tempted to drag him off for a cup of coffee so she could talk to an impartial listener. Since he had started shaving his head about three months previously in an attempt to hide the fact that he was going prematurely bald, Sam had become more confident around women, and despite a rather long and lugubrious face, his gentle nature seemed to be winning the hearts of several of the young nurses. But she knew he didn’t have the time to sit listening to her problems. Glancing across at Abbie’s bed she realised that she needed to relieve Maria who was due to finish her shift.

‘You’re a gem, Sam. But I’d better go and see Abbie. How’s she doing? Any change since I was last here, which incidentally was only about twelve hours ago?’

Sam laughed. ‘After this week I’m told we’ll be back to full strength and you can take it easy. But Abbie’s actually doing great. She’s been opening her eyes for a few minutes at a time, and she’s trying to speak. Not having much success, but she’s trying. Her conscious levels are improving and she’s responding to pain. So it’s good news. And Ellie…’

Ellie turned back towards him.

‘… you know where I am if you need me. Any time. Okay?’

Ellie reached out and gave Sam’s arm a squeeze in thanks. She didn’t think she could speak without crying. Why was it that kindness was more likely to bring on the tears than harsh words?

As she approached the bed, she noticed that Kath was looking a bit more relaxed today. Maria was talking gently to Abbie, and Ellie could see that Abbie was showing some response although it would be a while until they could tell if there had been any permanent damage to her brain.

Kath and Maria glanced at Ellie, and Maria did a double take. I really must look like shit Ellie thought. Sam wasn’t exaggerating.

‘Hi Ellie,’ Maria said in a rather excessively cheerful voice. ‘Good to see you.’

The two nurses had a brief handover chat about Abbie’s care.

‘Is there anything I can do for you before I go?’ Maria asked, looking keenly at Ellie.

‘No, you get off home. I’ll take it from here. I’ve had a word with Dr Bradshaw and he’s brought me up to date.’ Ellie gave Maria a grateful smile and turned to Abbie’s mum. ‘Good morning, Kath. You must be pleased with the improvement?’

‘We’re thrilled,’ Kath replied. ‘Brian’s actually gone back to work today. Abbie seems to be making improvements all the time now.’

‘Any news from the police? Have they got any better idea of what might have happened?’ Ellie asked.

Kath bit her top lip and gave a gentle shake of the head.

‘No. They’re trying everything, but they know nothing more than yesterday. They don’t know if she was picked up by a man or a woman, they can’t find any trace of this Chloe, who seems to know very well how to cover her tracks, and they’ve admitted that they have nothing on the driver in the hit and run. All they can hope now is that somebody will have the guts to turn in anybody that they knew was out at that time of night. It’s the only chance they’ve got.’

Ellie felt an acute stab of guilt. She had done nothing about the fact that she was out - and she wasn’t the only one. This was so very wrong. There was every chance that she might have seen something and thought nothing of it; and if she hadn’t, Sean might have done. They were staying silent to save their own hides, but that was terrible. How was she going to feel if it came out that she could have been helping the police all along, while appearing to be sympathising with Kath and worrying about Abbie? As if she wasn’t confused enough, she now felt nothing but self-disgust.

Ellie stayed quietly by the bed, and listened to Kath murmuring from time to time to Abbie. But she was miles away. She was remembering that night. The night of the accident.

She had left the house at about ten past midnight. She knew Max wouldn’t have been on his way home by then. He was always the last to leave any party.

She had tried to keep the chances of being seen to a minimum by going the long way round, and she had approached the back road from the top end. The designated meeting place was a small road that ran to a disused barn about half a mile from where the accident had happened. The scene leapt into her memory, with all the pain and fear that accompanied it.

The minute she’d stopped the car, the passenger door had been wrenched open and Sean had jumped in. She’d started by taking an aggressive stance, but it hadn’t taken long for her to realise that it wasn’t going to work.

‘You shouldn’t have called me tonight. It’s not fair to keep putting me under this pressure. You frightened the life out of me when I was in the kitchen. What are you playing at? It’s got to stop.’

Sean had tried to put his arm round her.

‘Get off me. I don’t want you to touch me. Don’t you get it? I made a mistake. I let things go too far, but you’ve got to put an end to this stupidity. What is it you don’t understand?’

He had looked hurt. So hurt, in fact, that she thought he might cry. And that would have been terrible, because it was her fault.

‘I’m sorry,’ she’d said. ‘I do know that I’m to blame. I knew how you felt about me, but you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Can’t we just forget it ever happened?’

Sean had twisted his body round so that he was facing her, and she couldn’t bear to look at the expression in his eyes.

‘Are you trying to tell me it’s over, Ellie? Because I don’t think I can accept that.’ His voice was soft, but there was a level of menace that made her uncomfortable.

‘It’s not over. It never started. And you have to accept it. It’s not optional.’

He had continued to stare at her, and she wouldn’t meet his gaze. She didn’t know what she would see, but she could feel that the emphasis had shifted from pain to anger.

‘I’ll tell you what’s going to happen, shall I?’ he’d said. ‘I can’t live without you now, and I don’t want to. No. Correction. I won’t live without you. Max has his little interest, as you well know. So you can either wait for him to leave you, or you can leave him. Either way, I can bide my time until the decision is made. But it will be made. And it will be soon. Until then, Ellie, wherever you go, I’ll be there. Whatever you do, I’ll be watching. And if I don’t like what I am seeing, my patience will be gone.’

Ellie had turned to look at him, and seeing the sheer determination in his eyes she was scared. Really scared. She didn’t think he would hurt her, but she knew without him saying so that he was threatening her. Not physically, perhaps. But it was a threat that was infinitely more terrifying.

‘Please don’t do this. I don’t know what to say to you, but please, please can’t we forget it ever happened?’

‘Listen to me very carefully, Ellie. You are all I’ve ever wanted. I’m prepared to give up everything for you. Do you understand? Everything. Even if Max decides he wants you and not the lovely Alannah, he won’t when he knows what happened. How you seduced me. How you’ve been lusting after me for months. How often we’ve spent time together. You know he won’t.’

She’d stared at him in disbelief.

‘But that’s not true! I didn’t seduce you. I succumbed to you once - and even then, I was able to stop. It is nothing like as bad as you’re saying. It’s bad enough, but it wasn’t like that at all, and you know it.’

He smiled nastily.

‘Who is Max going to believe, do you think? Can you afford the risk? I want you to think about this, and think hard. And until you’ve decided, I’ll be around. You might not see me, but I’ll be there.’

Ellie burst into tears.

‘Please, can we stop this? What do I need to do to persuade you? Don’t hurt Max. I’ll beg, if you want me to.’ She choked back the sobs and looked at him.

He put his arms round her and pulled her to him. For a moment, just a second, it felt good to be comforted.

‘Kiss me, Ellie. For now, a kiss will do. Come here, darling. It’ll be okay, I promise.’

She could remember feeling appalled at herself, but she didn’t know what would happen if she didn’t give in to him. She found a tissue in her pocket and blew her nose. He pulled her closer. She had let him kiss her, and as his tongue gently explored her mouth, his other hand had moved to her breast and stroked it tenderly.

This was going too far. His tongue was making her want to gag, and she thrust him away forcefully.

‘A kiss, you said. Just a kiss. I’m not going to do this. I’m not. Get out of my car. Get out.’ She put her head back down on the steering wheel, choking on her grief. The tears wouldn’t stop coming, and she could hardly hear when he spoke softly, right against her ear.

‘This isn’t over. Don’t kid yourself. This isn’t over by a very long way.’ Muffled as his voice was, she could hear the pent up fury. She heard the door open and sensed rather than heard him getting out of the car. There was no mistaking the slam of the door, though, or the sound of tyres skidding on gravel as he sped off down the unlit dirt track.

She barely remembered putting the car into gear, or driving slowly back the way she had come. Almost blinded by the hot tears that spilled relentlessly down her cheeks, she had turned up the back road, away from the village. She at least had the sense to drive back the long way round, where she was less likely to pass anybody.

Ellie was jolted out of her reverie by a shocked recollection. There had been a car. She had completely forgotten about it, because her mind had been exploding with the torment of it all. There were no street lights, of course, and the car had its headlights on full beam. She had been blinded for a few seconds, and saw nothing of the car - only an impression of something blue or black maybe. A large saloon car, she was fairly sure. But the driver would have seen her. And her dark red Mercedes was one of a kind in the village. Why had nobody mentioned her? Surely an innocent person would have reported her distinctive car to the police?

But that hadn’t happened. Nobody had come forward.

Was that because the driver was the person who knocked Abbie over, or even the one who had abducted her? A cold feeling of remorse settled deep inside her. If the driver was also the person that knocked Abbie over, Ellie could have been withholding vital information for days.

‘Ellie? Ellie? Are you okay?’ Kath was talking to her. ‘You were miles away. Is something the matter?’

Ellie gave herself a mental shake. She was going to go to the police, as soon as her shift finished. Enough was enough. She would just have to live with the consequences.

‘Sorry, Kath. I was just thinking about a couple of things that I was meant to do at home, and I’d forgotten all about. Nothing important. I’m sorry, did you need me for something?’

‘No, it’s nothing. I was going to go and get something to eat, if that’s okay. I might get a bit of fresh air as well. Let you get on with your job.’

Ellie smiled as she watch Kath reach over and kiss Abbie’s forehead.

‘Back soon, sweetie,’ she whispered.

Left alone with Abbie, Ellie went through some of her usual patient routine, washed her and changed her dressings. She was pleased to see that the child’s legs were looking much better, and the cuts on her feet were healing well. It was time for her break, so she had a quick chat with the nurse looking after the patient in the next bed. It was an agency nurse that Ellie hadn’t met before, but she would keep an eye on Abbie.

* * *

Ellie didn’t normally take her full break, but today she needed it. She had to work out what she was going to tell the police. Much as she was dreading it, this was something that she had to do. She could imagine the look of contempt in Kath’s eyes if she ever found out that Ellie might have been able to lead the police to the driver of the car, which may possibly have shed some light on the abduction. Ellie had asked if she could be Abbie’s named nurse, to look after her on every shift, and if her silence were discovered it might suggest a level of sinister intent that simply didn’t exist.

She couldn’t begin to describe how she felt about herself at this moment, but disgust wasn’t a strong enough word. She was actually finding it difficult to swallow, and her head was pounding.

Following Brenda, the senior charge nurse, back through the door to the ICU she made her way to the water cooler next to the ward office. She’d just had a cup of coffee, but her throat was tight and dry with anxiety. Brenda had beaten her to it, and was picking up a couple of plastic cups of water. She looked keenly at Ellie.

Oh not you too, Ellie thought. The expression on her face must have said it all, because Brenda simply made a comment about the rubbish summer they were having.

Ellie gave a faint smile, turned towards the ward and stopped.

That was odd. Sam hadn’t said anything about wanting to examine Abbie again today.

With a small frown she spun round to Brenda.

‘Do you know what Sam’s doing with Abbie?’ she asked, indicating the closed curtains around Abbie’s bed. Brenda flicked her head sideways, and Ellie looked in the direction she was signalling. She could just see Sam’s bald head over the filing cabinets in the office, and he appeared to be talking on the phone.

‘Did Abbie’s mum come back?’ Ellie asked.

‘Not that I’ve seen.’

Ellie felt as if her back were crawling with spiders. She glanced at Brenda, and no words were necessary. Brenda kicked open the door to the office and said two words. ‘Sam! Now!’

But Ellie had already gone. This wasn’t right, and she knew it.

She reached the bed next to Abbie’s in seconds and spoke sharply to the agency nurse as she ran past.

‘Who’s with Abbie?’ she barked, knowing it wasn’t this girl’s fault.

The startled nurse looked up from where she was taking her patient’s pulse.

‘A doctor. Came a few minutes ago. Why? Is there a problem?’

Ellie didn’t know. Perhaps she was over-reacting. But seconds later she knew she wasn’t. Sam and Brenda rushed to her side.

‘I’ve got this,’ Sam said, firmly pulling back the curtain.

But he was too late. The curtain on the far side of the bed was flapping, and Ellie could see a figure dressed in scrubs racing to the nearby emergency exit.

‘Ellie - get in here,’ Sam shouted.

Trying not to disturb the other patients, Brenda mouthed ‘I’ll call security,’ just as the alarm on the emergency door destroyed any chance of discretion.

Ellie didn’t care about security. All she cared about now was checking if Abbie was okay. She pulled back the curtain to follow Sam, and found Abbie tossing her head and her upper body from side to side. She was trying to speak. Her eyes were wide open, as if with shock, and Sam was frantically trying to hold her still.

‘Calm her, Ellie. I need to check her over. Make sure that whoever that was hasn’t done anything to harm her.’

Ellie crouched down at the side of the bed, and tried to stroke Abbie’s hair back from her head. But it made her worse. Abbie jerked her head away from the hand, as if Ellie’s fingers were burning her poor skin.

‘Shh,’ Ellie whispered. ‘Be still. Be quiet.’

Abbie’s body went rigid, and she arched off the bed, at the same time moaning with such distress that Ellie’s whole body was instantly covered in goose bumps.

‘What the hell’s happening to her?’ Sam asked.

‘I’ve no idea, Sam. I’m just talking to her. Soothing her.’

A slightly out of breath Brenda reappeared at the open curtain.

‘Security are on their way,’ she said as she turned to pull the curtain back around them. ‘Christ, what’s up with her?’ she asked as she saw the state that Abbie was in.

‘Brenda, get me one milligram of Midazolam please. We need to calm her down.’

Ellie had moved her hand away from Abbie’s head, and was now stroking the back of her arm. That seemed to be causing less distress. She stopped speaking, and started to sing softly.

‘Ellie,’ Sam said quietly. With his head he nodded towards the edge of the curtains surrounding the bed. On the floor was one of Abbie’s pillows.

Ellie knew that the shock on Sam’s face would be reflected on her own. No words were necessary. Sam grabbed a pair of surgical gloves from his pocket and put them on, picking the pillow up by its corner as Brenda reappeared with the sedative for Abbie. She looked from one to the other of them, her brow furrowed with silent questions.

‘Get security to cover the doors, Brenda,’ Sam said. ‘And you need to call the police.’

Ellie tried to quash her panic in case she conveyed her feelings to Abbie. She tried to sing again, but her voice was shaking too much.

Abbie continued to toss her head from side to side, but not quite so frantically. It was as if she wanted to tell them something. She was moaning, but they couldn’t make out what she was trying to say. She sounded in such pain, but they didn’t know where it was coming from. Finally, the sedative started to do its work, but just before she surrendered to the drugs, she said one word.

And this time, Ellie heard it clearly.

* * *

There was a sense of urgency and suppressed tension in the ward, and away from the patients the squawking of police radios was a constant backdrop that added to the general unease.

Ellie, Sam, Brenda and the agency nurse had all been interviewed, but there was nothing decisive; nothing that told them who the hell had been on the ward, or whether they had actually tried to kill Abbie. CCTV was being checked, but the footage from the camera by the door was inconclusive, so they were trying to backtrack and trace the intruder’s route through the hospital.

As far as they could tell, Abbie had come to no harm - particularly if suffocation had been the intention. They had taken all precautions, though, and changed the contents of everything on and around Abbie’s bed - from the water jug to the drip.

Ellie knew that the other staff members would each be feeling as culpable as she did, but then they didn’t have the extra burden of guilt that she was carrying.

When Kath Campbell finally made it back to the ward, Ellie could see that she had been shopping. She came in looking much more cheerful, and proceeded to fish some pretty new pyjamas for Abbie out of one of her bags, obviously pleased to see that her daughter was sleeping quietly.

Ellie looked towards the nurses’ station, and saw Sam beckoning her.

‘Kath, Doctor Bradshaw would like a word, if that’s okay.’

Kath looked startled and about to start quizzing Ellie, but Ellie gently took her arm and guided her away from the bed and towards the office.

Kath’s face drained of all colour as Sam explained to her what had happened, and why the place appeared to be crawling with police.

‘I noticed them at the door when I was waiting to be buzzed in,’ she said. ‘I thought there must have been a smash on the motorway, or something, and they were waiting to interview somebody. I never thought it would be my Abbie. Why, though? Why?’

There was no sensible answer that either Ellie or Sam could provide. That was a question for the police, although it was fairly clear to Ellie that it either had something to do with Abbie’s abduction or her accident.

‘How did they get in? We have to be buzzed in, and the staff have security passes,’ Kath said, not unreasonably.

‘I’ve heard back from security,’ Sam said. ‘Everybody that came in swiped a card, or was buzzed in and has since been verified. No cards have been reported missing, so we’re going through the CCTV to see if we can spot them, and find out whose card it was.’

Ellie felt sick. Her vision became distorted as if she were looking through shattered glass, with all the parts fragmenting. Sam’s face was splintered into a thousand pieces, and his voice seemed to be coming from a long way off.

Now was not the time to admit that this was her fault. That could only add to Kath’s distress - but she had to get out of there and talk to security.

Thankfully after a few moments her vision cleared, and the feeling of dizziness started to pass. Nobody had noticed. Sam was focusing entirely on Kath’s horrified face as he outlined what they knew.

‘All we have at the moment is the evidence from the nurse who was keeping an eye on Abbie. A doctor walked towards Abbie’s bed and pulled the curtains round. He or she was wearing a surgical hat, and scrubs, which can be bulked up to make somebody look a different shape. Their height has been assessed as around five eight, five nine, and it looked like a masculine walk, but that means nothing.’

Kath was struggling to take all of this in, on top of the horrors of the last few days.

‘The important thing is,’ Sam was saying, ‘she’s fine.’

He was leaning forward in his seat, his hands clasped between his knees, looking at Kath with concern.

‘In fact, more than fine. She was moving - really moving - on the bed, and making sounds. She’s continuing to be more intermittently responsive.’

Kath looked up hopefully at Sam, and Ellie leaned towards her and took one of her hands, putting her own worries aside for the moment.

‘She spoke, Kath. I could tell she was trying to speak, but it was just as she fell asleep that I was able to make out what she was trying to say. She was asking for you, Kath. She said “Mother”. I heard it distinctly.’

Ellie smiled at Kath, but was dismayed to see the colour drain from her face. Kath sat down heavily in a chair.

‘After all this time, all that love, and she still wants her mother.’

Ellie crouched down next to Kath and grasped her hands.

‘No - you’re her mother. It’s you she wanted. Why would you think anything else?’

‘Ellie, Abbie has never once in her life called me Mother. She has never referred to me as that, and it’s a word she never uses. It’s what she called her birth mother. I’ve always been Mum, but now, when she’s in trouble, she wants that awful woman. After everything she did to Abbie and Jessica.’

Ellie didn’t know what to say. She’d been convinced that Kath would be delighted, but she looked as if the exhaustion of the last few days had caught up with her as she leaned back on the chair and closed her eyes.