A/N: I'm not sure if anyone is still interested in this. I'd love to hear from you if you still are :) Please review and let me know what you think.
20.
The sudden stillness echoed in Leanne's flat, as the loud pounding noise from outside the flat came to an abrupt stop. It shocked her more than the noise itself.
Simon appeared at the doorway of the bathroom, having just changed in his pyjamas. "What was that?" he asked.
Leanne was rooted to the spot, with a wet plate in hand, dripping water onto the floor, staring at the front door. "Aren't you going to check what's wrong?" he asked her.
She nodded as she walked towards the floor's hallway. She would not have seen her, had she not presumed what had caused the noise.
"Err, go back to your room, Si," she told him, as she turned round to face him.
"Why? What is it?" he questioned having remained in the flat.
Leanne hurried to Carla who was sprawled on the above landing. Her hands shook as she bent down next to her and moved Carla's hair from in front of her face, hoping she'd be able to talk to her. Her unresponsiveness scared her. She attempted to shake her softly and attempted to call her name, but nothing came out of it.
"Come on, Carla," she whispered, before running back inside for her phone.
As Leanne disappeared back inside, Simon curiously moved towards the landing to see what had caused his mum to flee. His face turned to ash upon seeing Carla's lump body.
Having called for an ambulance, Leanne returned to Carla's side. "Is she going to be alright?" Simon muttered as he looked at Leanne.
Leanne took a while to reply. She crouched down next to them, unsure of what she could do, wishing to help Carla, but scared she'd only make things worse. "Yeah," she then replied as she hugged him to her, her gaze still focusing on the figure in front of her. "Yeah, she's a strong one, this one."
After comforting Simon, Leanne paced around the hallway as they waited for an ambulance to come. She looked at Simon who was sitting loyally by Carla's side with a hand over hers. She played with her phone, before she tried to call Michelle again, hoping that this time she wouldn't get the infuriating voicemail greeting.
The blaring siren reached her ears before the ringing tone reached a halt. She ran down the stairs to lead them in, and after doing their routine check up under Simon's watchful eyes, they strapped Carla to the stretcher and carried her to the waiting ambulance.
Simon had remained quiet as he watched intently. As the ambulance disappeared round the corner, he sighed sadly. "No one went with her," he commented; a comment Leanne chose to ignore.
Michelle had come out of the kebab shop as the ambulance had driven round the corner. Curiosity took the best of her as she took hurried steps to where it had come from.
"What happened?" she called out to Leanne.
"Where have you been?" Leanne instantly replied. "Carla's had a fall."
Michelle looked at her alarmed. "Why didn't you call me?" she shrieked, before reaching in her trousers' side pocket for her phone.
"You should check it more often," Leanne told her, annoyed.
Michelle nodded apologetically as she called Rob in panic. She walked aimlessly down the road as she talked to herself urging him to pick up. He was out the front door as soon as she had broken the news and they were soon on the way to the hospital. Michelle almost wished she had asked Steve to take them. The ride there was tense. They spent most of it shouting; Michelle at Rob to slow down, and Rob ignoring most traffic lights and throwing insults at every 'slow' driver.
"Did Carla teach you how to drive?" Michelle uttered as she slammed the car door behind her.
"What?" Rob asked confused, whilst locking the car.
"You've picked up her bad habits," she said, as she tried to catch up with Rob who was already half running towards the hospital. "You almost put us on a bed next to her."
They barely said another word to each other as they rushed down the hospital corridors. Rob's face was still flushed after having a go at the people at the front desk of the hospital. "You need to calm down," Michelle told him, as they approached the Emergency Department.
It was clear that Rob had chosen to ignore her. Upon arriving they were told to wait until a nurse or doctor came out to talk to them. Initially they both sat down, until neither one of them could stand it any longer. Michelle soon took to pacing down the hall, the sound of her clicking heels echoing round the hall, whilst Rob was constantly sniping at the people at the information desk.
"What system is this? My sister is somewhere in here, you have no idea where she is or what's happened to her, and you have the audacity to tell me to be quiet?" he angrily shouted.
He sat back down, his eyes focusing on the clock above the reception desk. As his mind drifted on to Carla, he blocked his surroundings bar for the ticking hands of that clock. Each tick sounded louder than the one before it, echoing the pace of his heartbeat; growing louder and faster until he could not take it any longer. Rob stood up ready to have another go at them but Michelle attempted to pull him back down. "Stop, Rob. You're just making a nuisance of yourself."
He shook her off and glared at her. "I don't understand how you can stand there and just be calm..." He stopped as he felt Michelle's cold clammy hand on his arm.
"Anyone for Connor?" a nurse repeated.
It took them a few seconds to act on what they had heard; Michelle had her worried eyes fixed on Rob's face, and Rob's sudden-widened-eyes examined the nurse.
They followed and listened to the nurse as she led them to Carla's ward. "She's still unconscious, but you can see her. From what we can tell so far, there are no serious injuries. Though just to warn you, she does have a couple of bruises; which is to be expected. We're also still running some tests. We'll be able to tell more once she wakes up."
By the time the nurse had stopped briefing them, they had arrived next to Carla. Rob's eyes barely left his sister's frail body, as he asked for more about her condition. "How long will she remain in this state?"
"It's hard to tell," the nurse replied. "But there's a good probability she'll start coming round in the next few hours."
Back at Victoria Court, Simon couldn't sleep. He kept tossing and turning in his bed, his mind flashing back to Carla's unresponsive body and the blue lightning as it flashed away from them with Carla in it on her own. He turned round on his back staring at the ceiling above his head, skipping through memories in his head. He scowled to himself as he thought of how much he had initially despised her; the lies and the stinging comments he'd come up with to try and create a verge between her and his dad. Although they had never quite achieved a good close bond, he had often looked at her in awe. He admired her resilience, and was fascinated by the calm frontier she pulled even when he knew he had gone out of line.
Having had enough of the darkness of his room, he got out of bed and looked for Leanne.
"Mum?" He called out, "have you called my dad about Carla?"
She looked at him surprised. "I thought you were asleep."
"I couldn't," he shrugged. "Have you?" he asked again.
"Peter? I don't think that's the best idea, Si."
"I'm sure he'd want to know," he told her, before quickly adding, "I would, if I were him."
"Come here, sweetheart," she told him as she approached the sofa. "You do know they're not together any more, don't you?" she said, as she placed an arm around his shoulder.
Simon nodded. "He still loves her though," he said as he scrunched his nose.
"Yeah, well, I don't think she'd appreciate it if she was to wake up and see him there."
"Can we go see her tomorrow?" Simon asked. He had already begged to go to hospital after the ambulance had left, but Leanne had refused.
"We'll see how she is. She might not be up for visitors." She looked at him, curiously, noticing the worried look on his face. "She'll be fine, Si," she paused, and then more quietly she added, "She's been through worse."
As he sat next to Leanne, Simon's head was still bringing up memories. Once he had ceased to see Carla as the enemy, as the source of all problems, he had started to note little things that he had previously missed. Carla sometimes seemed more like a child herself, both with him and his dad. She was not like most adults he knew. When she was around him she did not always know what to say, or often said the wrong thing, to which he'd see his dad snigger, roll his eyes at her, or glare at her. As much as he had blamed her for splitting his mum and dad, he had grown to realise that he had probably never seen them look at each in the same way Carla often looked at him. Almost like a child looking up to someone with awe and admiration; with a twinkle in her eyes that looked adoringly at his fathers'. Although he tried to hide it, she occasionally made him laugh by the way she acted.
On their wedding day he had looked admiringly at them. His heart had been beating fast as they announced their feelings to each other, and exchanged their vows and rings. He had been terrified that something would go wrong. He almost wanted to jump out and tell them to get on with it, but instead he watched on, his eyes on Carla's and on his father's; whenever he wasn't giving him his back. He was arrested by the emotion he could see in them. He crossed his fingers when no one was looking, hoping that this would last, that their happiness would stretch for forever.
With that, his mind swiftly took him back to the last time he had ended up in hospital. He had woken up in the middle of the night, and felt stranded on his own in that strange place. Although through the blinds in his little window he could occasionally spot a nurse bustling around in the corridors he had felt lonely and lost. From time to time a nurse would pop in to check how he was but each time he'd pretend to be still asleep; they weren't the people he wanted to see; their unfamiliar faces and presence had made him feel more scared and alone.
To him, the woman he had seen lying on the floor had not looked as tough as everyone described her. Even unconscious, she had a sad look on her face, and looked as though she needed someone to hug her and comfort her. Although Carla would always hide it, or pretend it was an allergy, it was not the first time he had caught her with tears down her face. He had never cared enough to check if she was okay, and he had mostly ignored her and her feelings. Yet now that he had that image of her fixed in his head, he could not stand the thought of her being alone, and feeling as stranded as he had felt.
"I'm going to go try again," he suddenly piped up. "Sleep might come easier after that cuddle," he told Leanne.
"Right, off you go," she told him as she hugged him tighter and leaned down to kiss him on his head.
"Night," he replied, as he tried to scan the room without her noticing.
"Actually I'll just have a glass of water before I go," he then added, as soon as he spotted the white oval object on the kitchen counter.
Once it was in his hand, he quickly downed some of the water he had filled for himself, and emptied the rest into the sink, eager to retire back into his room. Once he closed the door, he quickly dialled the number and waited impatiently for his dad to answer. His eyes were fixed on the door and his ears were peeled on what was going on outside his room.
"Dad?" he quickly greeted him as the ringing stopped and someone could be heard breathing on the other end.
"Simon?" he answered, alarmed as he looked down at his watch. "Are you okay? What happened?"
"I'm fine," he told him, his voice a whisper.
"What are you doing still up?" Peter quickly asked.
"Never mind that," Simon replied. "Something's happened to Carla."
Peter cut him off. "I can barely hear you," he told him. "Why are you whispering?"
Simon tried again, this time a bit louder. "Carla's fallen down the stairs. She's in hospital."
He could picture his father's face from where he was. "Are you still there?" Simon asked when Peter failed to reply.
"Yes, son," he quietly said. "Do you know what happened? Is she okay?"
"I don't know what happened. She wouldn't wake up, and mum didn't want to tell you."
"You did the right thing, son," he assured him.
"Why is it that the two of you always have to be so stubborn?" Michelle asked Rob, as they sat by Carla's side yearning for her to wake up.
"I'm not stubborn," Rob quickly defended himself, "I just know what I want. She on the other hand is another thing entirely."
Michelle smirked as she looked at her best friend.
"What do you reckon happened?" Rob asked, his face quickly sobering up again.
"I don't know. She slipped?"
"So you don't think someone else was up there, do you?"
"Who? Peter?" Michelle asked, horrified.
"Or Tina," Rob replied.
"Leanne never said owt," Michelle said. "Besides why would they?"
"Perhaps she wasn't quick enough," Rob said, as he thought about it. "I don't know. Revenge? There could have possibly been an argument."
"Revenge?" Michelle asked. "If anything, shouldn't Carla be the one seeking that? They're capable of a lot of things, but I don't think either one of them would do something like this."
They looked at her as they tried to take it all in. It had already been difficult to link the person Carla had recently become to her former self, but the person in front of them, looked even less like her. With the tough exterior gone, with a few cuts and blue bruises across her body, and a nasal cannula attached to her, she almost looked like a shade of her much younger self.
"She was acting weird when I went to see her," Rob uttered.
"Nothing new there. She hasn't been herself lately, and that's that."
"Was it yesterday she collapsed?" she piped up again after a moment of silence. "They might need to know tha… That… That," she repeated as she looked at Carla intently, her gaze shifting swiftly from Carla's face to Peter's. "Did you see that?"
"See what?"
"Her eyes," Michelle replied enthusiastically. "She's just fluttered her eyes." She quickly looked around, almost panicking, until her eyes stopped on a particular button. She slammed her hand down on it, before restoring her full attention to Carla.
She gently grabbed Carla's hand and started talking to her, encouraging her to wake up. "Come on, Car. You're going to give me an aneurysm."
Rob's eyes were now firmly held on Carla's face as he silently urged her on. "You wouldn't want that on your conscience, sis. She'd never let you live it down, even if it kills her."
After a few seconds, her fluttering eyelids came to a stop. Her eyes formed narrow slits etched with confusion. She studied each of their faces. "Where…," she started. "What happened?"
Before they had time to explain, the door swung open and the smell of antiseptic entered the room. Carla looked up at Michelle and Rob yearning for an explanation, but they were soon ushered away as the nurse started debriefing Carla about what had happened whilst carrying out some tests.
"This is idiotic," Carla uttered at one point, refraining from doing what she had been asked to perform as the doctor moved his fingers from side to side. She rubbed her face with her hands and pinched the bridge of her nose before finally relenting.
Once they had completed their brief examination, her eyes veered from one person's eyes to the next. "So, am I fine?" she suddenly and quietly asked. "Is everything okay?" She was thankful that most of her newly made friends and enemies had remained well and truly quiet; still tired from the ordeal.
"So far so good," the doctor replied. "We'll just wait for your blood test now."
Carla looked down at her hand, and placed a finger on the little plaster, gently caressing the area. "That would explain the soreness then."
"You also have a couple of bruises," the doctor reminded her, to which she nodded, before resting her head back against the pillows.
"We're not interrupting your rest, are we?" Michelle asked as they returned to her room.
Carla gave a little tired smile. "Don't be daft."
Although both Michelle and Rob had been aching to ask her what had happened, they decided to wean off the topic for now. Their voices droned on in the background as she looked from one to the other. She smiled fondly as Rob laughed to something that Michelle had said. The two of them contrasted against the environment; that sound of laughter was not something she'd usually associate to this place. The sickeningly sweet smell that lingered in this place was enough to fill her stomach with dread and generate a horrible feeling of nausea. His laugh took her back to a thought she had often fantasised about. She had imagined Michelle as her sister-in-law, before Paul had even entered her life and she had then started envisioning herself walking down the aisle towards him.
The gentle but tightening pressure around her left hand, which was cocooned in Michelle's hands, alerted her back to their conversation.
"Spill," Michelle ordered.
"What?"
"That look on your face. I haven't known you all these years for nothing."
"You owe it to us after the night we've had," Rob joined in.
"Ay, I'm the one on a hospital bed," Carla retorted. "See, I don't know how you two never got together."
"That fall really got to you, didn't it."
"It's not like I'm imagining something that never was. The foundation's already there. You would have helped knock some sense into him, and you," she paused smugly, as she looked at Rob.
"Go on, sis. We're waiting."
"I don't know with you, Roberto. You'd have given her, what? Grief, perhaps?"
His phone rang before he had time to react. He answered whilst giving Carla a dirty look.
"That would explain this relationship," Carla whispered, as they realised who he was talking to.
"Yeah, she's fine," he told her. "Till now, anyway," he added with a smirk, his eyes still on Carla.
"You can nark my relationship all you like," he told them as he placed his phone back in his pocket, "but she actually called to check in on you."
"Tracy? Tracy Barlow?" Carla asked surprised. "I thought I was the one who fell and hit my head."
Their conversation was then interrupted by the noise of whispered chatter and murmuring as the door swung open. Carla gauged the look on the face of the man with the green plastic suit. His perfected neutral look was difficult to read.
"Do you mind if I have a word with Carla on her own?"
"You can go ahead, I'm her brother."
The doctor's presence had alerted Carla's anxiousness. The overpowering sterile smell in the room seemed to intensify. Her nerves were on high alert, an alertness that made her aware of the hushed voices. "There's nothing to worry about," the doctor said, "but there are some results which I'd like to discuss confidentially."
"He knows," a voice shrieked, startling Carla who in turn warranted a quizzical look from Michelle.
Back in the waiting room, Rob had not stopped nattering. He drummed his hands on his knees and continuously tapped his feet. "What did he want to tell her that he couldn't say in front of us? I'm her brother. Know what, I don't care what he says, I'm going back in there. He said everything's okay, didn't he? Then there shouldn't have been a reason to chuck us out."
"She's not a child, Rob," Michelle uttered exasperatedly.
"Do I need to remind you about her recent actions?" His face was only a few centimetres away from hers.
Michelle was getting irritated with his behaviour. "You're not the only one who's worried about her."
He spotted Peter making his way towards them. "No? Then you'd let me punch him," he angrily replied.
Michelle backhanded him on his chest. "We're in hospital, remember?"
"Yeah, in the ER, which will work better for him. He'll soon be looked after."
"Michelle," Peter called, sounding out of breath, as he hurried towards them.
Rob instantly took a step forward about to lurch for him, but expecting it, Michelle grabbed his shirt and roughly pushed him a few steps away. She rammed her finger into his chest as she talked to him. "You are going to stop playing the jackass and bottle it up, and either sit down and play nicely, or else go wait outside. You've already raved enough when we first arrived." Rob glared at Peter as she talked to him.
"Fine," he finally uttered, as he gruffly took a seat.
Peter approached them. "How is she Michelle?" he tried again.
"You can go back. She's not up," Rob curtly answered.
He looked from Rob to Michelle, confused. "I got Tracy to call. She said she's fine." Michelle couldn't help but smirk, which didn't go unnoticed by Rob.
"Give me a call when we can go back inside," he muttered, as he pushed past Peter and left the room.
Meanwhile, Carla had followed the doctor's every move. Wrinkles formed around his eyes as he examined his notes and her results.
"Is there a possibility you might be pregnant?" he asked her.
Her tired eyes grew bigger until they froze in space. The screams and thumping in her head were deafening. She could feel her face grow cold, and involuntarily started shaking her head.
"Consider even the slightest possibility."
Her hands found each other, and one thumb started digging into the flesh around the other's nail. Her head replayed recent events, as a tirade of no's and yes's flew around her head.
"I can understand that the thought might come as a shock, but Carla, we need to run some more tests if there's a slight possibility that you might be pregnant. We need to rule it out or see if any harm's been done."
She found it almost difficult to swallow and became aware of every breath she needed to take. This awareness made these actions painful. Although the nasal cannula was starting to irritate her she was currently thankful for it. She then leaned her head to one side and started nodding.
"Okay. There might be nothing to it, but it's always better to know right what's going on. It will give you a clearer mind and open possibilities of what can be done," he said.
Carla barely took note of what he was saying. In her head she was back in the hotel room, back in her new flat being crushed beneath his weight, the shred of self worth and dignity she had left, stolen from her, feeling suffocated and nauseous. She turned onto her side, wincing as she rested on one of her bruises. Beneath the hospital sheets she crossed her hands in front of her chest and held herself tightly trying to comfort herself as she tried to listen in to what was being discussed about her. They chose to exclude her from their conversations and discussed her in their little groups, as they spoke over each other, making it difficult to understand what was being said.
Initially, she barely registered the nurse that entered the room. She avoided eye contact and willed herself not to snap at her. She explained what she was going to do and asked for her arm. Carla could almost see the smirk on her face. The words that had left her mouth had sounded almost gentle but Carla could read a level of mirth lacing those words. She obeyed her orders as she took the pregnancy blood test, and focused on that harmless sting and the pressure on her vein. Once that was done, the nurse soon rushed out of the room. The door soon closed behind her, but not before the laughter reached her ears. Although the corridor was out of her sight, it was clear to her it was coming from outside her room; an almost cackling laugh, merciless high pitched laughter that kept echoing even when the door was closed.
Without the alcohol's numbing effect that helped sending her to sleep, time was playing a torturous waiting game. The darkness that set in each time she attempted to close her eyes was suffocating. Each time she tried, her chest would tighten and she'd feel herself fighting for a way out, trying to scurry up the darkening walls that were smothering her. She had previously refused to let them send in her visitors; she had wanted to be alone, an aloneness that had become an almost impossible feat. Yet, even when she was, it still wasn't enough. Throughout the night she yearned for a way to cut herself loose from everyone including herself. The doctor's nod that came later that afternoon was enough to confirm that rather than providing her with the reigns to do whatever she liked, she now had another burdening tie, another black wall suffocating her within it; another unwelcome visitor who was taking up the space within her, leaving her with little for herself and almost forcing her out.