Chapter 38

Chapter 38

Beeping.

That’s the first thing she hears when she wakes. Then she feels the pain.

Slowly, Jennie opens her eyes. They feel sore, gritty. The right side of her face throbs and the rest of her body feels worse. With every inhale it’s as if something sharp is being jabbed between her ribs.

She lies still, keeping her breathing as shallow as she can. The hospital room is bright white – too bright. The beeping comes from a machine on her left connected to her by the heart monitor clipped to her index finger. She seems to be wearing a hospital gown.

Raising her head for a better look, Jennie is immediately assaulted by a strong bout of nausea. On the chair beside the trolley bed, she catches a brief glimpse of her clothes, phone, and cycle helmet. The helmet’s bashed in along one side and the helmet cam looks completely mangled. She tries to raise her head higher to get a better look, but the movement makes the hospital room start to spin around her. Black spots dance across her vision.

Jesus.

Resting her head back on the pillow, she waits for the urge to vomit to pass.

There’s a burst of noise as the door opens and a busy-looking nurse hurries in wearing blue scrubs, her black hair in a long plait. ‘You’ll want to lie still for a while. You took quite a whack to the head. There’s no skull fracture but you’ve got a bad concussion.’

‘What happened?’ says Jennie. Her throat feels scratchy. Her voice sounds weaker than usual. ‘Where am I?’

‘You’re in Moreton Hospital A&E. You fell off your bike,’ says the nurse as she checks the heart rate monitor, then indicates for Jennie to raise her arm so she can put on a blood-pressure cuff.

As Jennie raises her arm, pain shoots from her elbow to her shoulder. She winces.

I didn’t fall.

‘A car hit me,’ says Jennie.

The nurse frowns. ‘You should tell the police then. The paramedics said a couple of lycra-clad road warriors found you and called it in.’

I am the police.

The nurse finishes the blood-pressure check and makes a couple of notes on the chart. ‘I’ll be back in half an hour for your next set of obs.’

‘When can I go?’ asks Jennie.

‘Not for a while. We need to do half-hourly checks for the next few hours. Then you’ll get discharged if everything’s okay.’

Jennie frowns.

The nurse’s expression is grave. ‘Look, you’re lucky to be alive. That helmet saved you from the blow you took to the head, but your brain has still had a major shake-up. On top of that, a couple of your ribs are cracked and you’ve got some nasty road rash on your face and arm. You need to rest.’

Jennie waits for the nurse to leave the room before she tries to sit up again. Her memory of what happened is hazy, but she knows it wasn’t an accident. The car hit her on purpose – she’s sure of it.

She manages to sit upright without vomiting. Waiting until the room has stopped spinning, Jennie leans over to the chair and grabs her phone. The movement causes the nausea to rise again, but she pushes through it. She has to know exactly what happened.

The screen is cracked but the phone is still working. Jennie navigates to the helmet camera app and taps on the footage of her most recent ride. She fast-forwards through the footage, letting it play from the moment she turns onto White Cross Lane.

The footage shows her whizzing down the hill. The audio sounds blustery with the occasional burst of birdsong. A few minutes later, she hears the sound of an engine and the view switches quickly as she looks over her shoulder, but there’s nothing behind her. Twenty seconds later, the engine noise is louder. The view swivels again, and this time there’s a blue car approaching at speed. Jennie hears her breathing get louder as she pedals. Next moment the view blurs as the camera rotates, catching unfocused glimpses of the car, her bike, the grass bank and the trees, before slamming down against the road.

The camera lens fractures. Jennie hears herself groan.

From the view, the camera seems to be lying sideways on the tarmac. The cracked lens makes it harder to see, but Jennie can just make out the tyres of a car a few metres away. The engine is still running.

Moments later, she hears a car door slam and footsteps approaching. The person’s feet come into view and halt in front of the camera. They’re wearing black Doc Martens with blue and claret laces. Jennie gasps.

What the …?

I know those shoes.

She watches the last few moments of footage, reliving the pain at what he did to her as she sees it play out on the screen. The rage builds inside her.

Bastard.

You won’t get away with this.

Pushing herself up to standing, Jennie dresses as fast as she can. She blinks hard to stop the room from spinning. She’s still shaky, her stomach lurching at every movement, but she fights the nausea and keeps going.

How hadn’t she known he’d be capable of this?

Bugger the doctor wanting her to have half-hourly observations. She can’t wait around here another minute. Not when he’s out there. Not when he’s done this .

He could’ve killed her.

Maybe he thought he had.

Grabbing her bashed-up helmet from the chair, Jennie walks on shaky legs to the door and peers out. The place is heaving, patients in every bay, nurses and doctors hurrying between them. If she can make it out of A&E unseen, she should be able to grab a taxi from the rank outside.

Jennie takes a deep breath. Forces down the ever-present nausea. And opens the door.

There’s no time to waste.