Chapter 20

Twenty

BHODI

It’s been a long time since I last contemplated this much blood.

Iron-y red seeps into my shoes where I’m squatting on the frosty tarmac, my hands wedged to the neck of the man half thrown from the mangled SUV. He’s conscious enough to batter my eardrums with his screaming, so he’ll probably live, but as the frigid cold seeps into me, threatening the unnatural energy of a real emergency, it’s my only comfort.

You see, there’s a reason I’m not an A&E nurse and it has nothing to do with avoiding my disarming ex.

“Scoot up.” A firefighter drops down beside me. “I’ve got this one if you can give the other rig a hand? And get some high-vis on. Don’t want you getting mowed down too.”

That’s what happened, apparently. Someone jay-walked across the motorway and caused a pile-up with the four vehicles on the road at this time of night. The bad fortune is biblical, but I’m not the one hanging out of a car window, or unconscious in my lorry cab, or the victim of any of the other incidents that have stretched the ambulance service so thin tonight, so I count my blessings as I move through the scene to the next patient.

By chance, I come across the same firefighter from the major incident a few weeks ago.

He’s as tired as I feel. “Merry Christmas,” he grunts. “This one’s dead.”

Blunt, but he’s right, and I blow out a stressed breath. I was already late home because someone died before I left the hospital. This is not how tonight was supposed to go.

How was it supposed to go then?

Now there’s a question, and I no longer know the answer. When I left the house—the annex—I was happy enough to put one foot in front of the other. Then Tam’s texts started rolling in and everything felt lighter.

I’d really love to see you.

Vicious wind whips through the accident scene, but even without the coat I’ve left hanging in Tam’s house, this time, with him on my mind, I don’t feel it. Because hope is a powerful thing, and that’s what I felt when his messages hit.

I’m not humouring you.

Whatever you’re thinking, don’t.

“Over here, mate.”

The firefighter calls for my help again. I follow him to another smashed-up vehicle, my blood-soaked shoes crunching glass, and it’s a while before I look up.

By then, it’s near dawn and the air ambulance has arrived.

I’m stood down, and I back away from the scene to sink onto a concrete barrier, the bitter temperature and lack of sleep finally catching up with me, fading adrenaline shuddering through my limbs as it peters out.

There’s no warmth in my blood and I need to find my car, abandoned on the hard shoulder when the police flagged me down and spotted my hospital ID dumped on the dashboard. I need to go home , to Tam, but even the thought of him isn’t enough to get me moving, and he’s probably asleep now anyway.

Or just getting up.

Either way, I need to get to him, but I’m too tired to move. To drive. And so I sit there in the cold and wait for that to change.

“Bhodi!”

I’m leaning hard on my bent knees and it’s an effort to raise my head. To turn towards the sound of my own name. It starts to rain, fat drops hitting the ice at my bloodied feet. My chest. My face. I can barely see and I raise my hand to fix that feeling as if I’ve dropped a couple of benzos.

More than a couple—there’s no way what I’m left with as my vision clears is anything close to reality.

It can’t be.

Because that would mean the tall figure vaulting barriers and running towards me in the rain is Tam—that he’s here—and as much as I don’t share the misfortune of the poor souls I’ve seen tonight, I’ve never been that lucky.