Chapter Forty-Eight

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Orkney

May 2024

CLEM

Clem drives to Senna’s house in the west side of Glasgow. Elizabeth is still at the hospital, but Senna lets herself in with her key. Clem follows her into her bedroom, holding her breath as Senna opens the door to her wardrobe and lifts out a shoebox.

“I didn’t know what else to do with it,” she says. “I mean, I thought it had been burned, but when I was hiding in the caravan park, I woke up one morning and it was there, on the end of my bed. I was terrified.”

“So you brought it home?”

Senna nods, opening the box. “I didn’t know what else to do with it, and it freaked me out too much to think I’d got rid of it and then have it appear again out of the blue.”

She lifts out the black cloth inside the box, then stares down. “Oh no.”

“What’s wrong?”

Senna looks up, frantic. “It’s gone. I swear I had it. I brought it home and I put it in here.”

She reaches inside the wardrobe, removing clothes and shoes, searching for it. She claps her hands to her face, growing tearful. “Where is it?”

“You’re sure you put it in here?”

“Swear to God, I did.” Senna pulls out her phone and dials. “Hi, Mum,” she says. “Have you been in my wardrobe at all?”

Clem can hear Elizabeth on the other end of the line, asking where Senna has got to. Exasperated, she hangs up and begins searching the rest of her room, under the bed, in her chest of drawers. She begins to cry. “Where is it?” she says with a sob. “Where the fuck is it?”

Clem pulls her into a tight embrace, calming her. “We’ll find it,” she says. “I promise.”

···

When Clem returns to the hospital, she’s shocked to discover Erin is in surgery. The injuries she’d inflicted on herself have opened some of the burn sites, and surgeons are battling to prevent the delicate wounds in her hands from becoming infected.

Bee takes Quinn and Clem into the family room and holds the door open for Dr.Miller, who has spoken to the surgeons involved in Erin’s operation.

“How is she?” Erin asks.

“We’ve managed to perform an emergency skin graft on her right hand,” Dr.Miller says. “But she’s broken a bone at the knuckle and fractured three of the metacarpals there.”

“What does that mean?” Quinn asks.

“It means there’s good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

“Good,” Quinn says, at the same time as Clem says, “Bad.”

“I’ll start with the bad, which explains the good,” Dr.Miller says. “She’s essentially pulped her hand. We’re trying to save her thumbs at the minute, but the other four digits of her right hand are lost.”

Clem covers her face in her hands and tries not to cry. “And the good news?” she whispers.

“As long as we hold on to the thumbs, she can retain use of her hand with a prosthesis. It really is good news, I promise you. Without the thumbs a lot of movement is completely gone and it involves quite complex prosthetics, which, to be frank, a lot of young people can’t get along with. But with her thumb, I have confidence that we can make this something she can manage.”

Clem allows herself to feel glad, and relieved, but she is far from it.

“There is one more thing,” Dr.Miller says. “Erin’s emotional welfare. It’s clear that there are some complex issues here. We simply can’t afford anything like this to happen again.” He eyes them carefully.

“Go on,” Quinn says.

“We propose to restrain her, very carefully. It’s not an ideal scenario but the alternative isn’t ideal, either.”

Clem feels faint, the room suddenly closing in. “What’s the alternative?”

Dr.Miller pushes his glasses up his nose and clears his throat, hesitating. “We place her back under sedation. Not a coma, but close to it.”

The room is silent. Quinn must feel as torn as she is, as though each step forward sends them ten steps back.

“How long?” Quinn asks.

“A week, in the first instance,” Dr.Miller says.

Quinn contemplates that. “What if she’s as…out of sorts when she wakes as she is now?”

Dr.Miller sighs. “I think psychiatric intervention will be needed,” he says. “I don’t really feel I can give a full picture of that outcome. But let’s hope we don’t need it.”