The silence was deafening. It was a phrase she'd heard before but not until this moment did she truly understand what it meant. The echo of shoes tapping and squeaking as people hurried up and down the hall had become irritating. Why didn't they stop? Didn't they know where they were? And yet they made the silence louder. Made the stillness more ominous. She hated it.
Stillness had never bothered her before. In some ways she even relished it. For example, he was still. But his stillness was deceptive. He made you think he was still but in reality he moved at a speed that always threw the criminals off guard. They underestimated him and he welcomed the confusion. It was what made him so good at what he did.
But this stillness was unnatural. It was involuntary. And no one knew how long it would last.
She wanted to lash out. At him, at her friends, at the entire city. Because if she lashed out then no one would know how frightened she was that the stillness would be permanent. And that stillness would utterly destroy her.
She had been the one to find him. A raid that had gone horribly wrong. He'd told her to stay back and against her better judgment she'd done exactly that. When it was over she'd started looking around to congratulate him, to await his identifiable swagger that never failed to impress her, loath as she was to admit such a thing.
Everyone was accounted for except him. Her concern became unease. Other men there said he'd been right beside them. His presence was such that they didn't notice when he physically disappeared. They just assumed he was hidden and watching over them. But she immediately begged several of them to go back and start looking. His legend was such that not one of his men rejected her request.
Her unease became panic when he didn't answer as they called out for him. He would never have ignored their pleas for his response. The group began searching in earnest. His senior constable barked orders demanding they go faster, that were the roles reversed, he wouldn't tarry to locate them.
She saw a shoe sticking out from behind a pile of crates and the familiarity of that shoe froze her in her tracks. Falling to her knees beside him she first saw the wound that was rapidly working to take him away from her. She then saw his eyes, open wide in pain and fear, wanting to tell her so many things but unable to do so. The scream she expelled was like nothing anyone had heard.
Later she was told how she bellowed for an ambulance, a spare car, anything that could get him to a hospital. She couldn't remember what anyone had said, what she'd said, how she'd tried to follow him into the operating theatre until she was physically restrained by orderlies and later by her companion and her new husband, the senior constable.
Her best female friend talked to the other doctors, allowed her to know things non-family members would never have had access to, and sat with her during the long hours of surgery. She wouldn't even entertain the idea of going home. Until she knew he was staying on this side of the veil she would keep her vigil.
He'd barely survived the surgery. His survival was still in jeopardy. But until she knew one way or the other, she would not leave his bedside. The nurses knew to give her a wide berth unless they wanted a severe dressing down. Not even the head matron would cross her which was spoken of with awe by the other doctors.
Now she was here waiting. And she spent her hours either talking to him and trying to find a way to communicate her love for him. To beg him to stay. That she needed him to stay and she would make him so happy. Things she'd been too afraid to say before. Or she would sit in silence, stroking his hand, stroking his cheek, trying to hold back tears that threatened to flow at a moment's notice. Now she knew the definition of helpless.
He had a number of visitors, from the police station, from Russell Street, from her own circle of friends. She paid attention to none of them. Her focus was only on him. Five days had passed and the stillness clung to him with talon-like claws. Her fatigue was crushing. Her aunt had begged her to go home and get some sleep and she'd rebuffed her without a second thought. The cab drivers and red raggers had promised to stay with him and not let him out of their sights. She was moved, but she couldn't leave.
The rosy light of dawn began fading in to the room and she wearily lifted her head to look out the window. She felt a slight pressure on her hand and looked down, noticing his hand was now holding hers instead of the other way around. She looked up and saw his eyes open, watching her realize he'd come back to her.
"Phryne," he said. And the world righted itself.