Frankie shrugged. “Going to be snow this year, apparently. Other things to worry about now, though.”
“No shit,” Davie agreed. Yet somehow he couldn’t help but think about the weather. Perhaps it would start snowing soon, but Davie had a feeling that before any snow started to fall there was going to be a storm of epic proportions.
And the first drops of rain had just started to fall.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Officers Wardsley and Dalton had refused Andrew’s request to locate Frankie for him. They didn’t want him taking the law into his own hands. So now he was sat at his wife’s bedside wondering what to do. It was approaching 5pm, the morning having come and gone in a whirlwind of grief and emotion. Bex was yet to wake up but the Doctors had assured Andrew she would soon – that her body was just taking the opportunity to rest. Pen’s condition was less optimistic.
Her surgery had ended a couple hours ago and she was now lying deathly still. Stitches and gauze covered her throat while a drip entered the artery of her right arm, supplying her body with whatever it was the Doctors thought it needed.
“I’ll make this right,” Andrew whispered to her. He grabbed her left hand tightly in his own, unsure of whether or not she could hear him. “I’ll make them pay for what they’ve done to you – for what they’ve done to Rebecca.”
Andrew sat for a while and listened to the silence, wishing beyond all hope that his wife would just sit up and say something. It wasn’t going to happen, though – might not ever again. Tears fell from Andrew’s eyes and stained the thin, white cotton sheets that covered his wife’s injured body.
“I failed you, Pen. I’m your husband and it’s my job to keep you safe. How can I ever forgive myself for any of this? If you die, how will I go on? I’ve loved you since the day we met. Life wouldn’t make sense without you.”
Andrew leant forward and laid his head against her stomach. He could hear her heart pumping – slow and steady – the pause between each beat a balancing act between life and death.
Andrew sobbed. “Please, don’t leave me, Pen. Please!”
“Sorry to interrupt,” said a young, blonde nurse entering the room, “but your daughter has just woken up.”
Andrew’s stomach churned and he had to swallow back a mouthful of stomach acid.
What the hell do I say to her? She’s just a kid and shouldn’t have to deal with anything like this.
Andrew got up, kissing his wife’s forehead before following the nurse out of the room. Both Penelope and Rebecca had been moved once their surgery concluded and were now in separate parts of the building. Pen was in ICU under constant watch, while Bex was in the convalescence ward. They were on separate floors now and it took Andrew five minutes of marching through a maze of corridors to reach his daughter’s room.
Although obviously weak, Bex smiled at the sight of her father entering the room. Andrew’s heart ached at the sight of her. Dark-brown hair matted her forehead and her usually rosy complexion had turned ashen. She looked like a zombie from one of the films she loved to watch.
“Hey,” Andrew said to her as he placed himself down on a cheap plastic chair beside the bed. “How are you feeling, sweetheart?”
“Like I got stabbed with a pair of scissors.”
Andrew grinned, happy that his daughter’s sense of humour had not been damaged despite everything else. “Arts and crafts never were your strong point, Bex.”
“How’s mum?”
Andrew had hoped the question would wait, that his daughter would not remember events so much as to realise that she was not the only one who’d been injured. Telling Bex that her mother might be dying would not be good for her own recovery.
But he couldn’t lie to her; not his daughter.