Come home
I knew this would be long, but not quite this long.
16/5/98
"Sorry, we have no visitors listed under your name." The nurse at the desk said coldly. "We enforce this to get rid of journalists. I'm sure you understand." An unspoken `or else` hung in the air. Fiona took her fake ID back, wondering.
She'd been called at home by Sarah at half past five that morning. Sarah had said that Adam was back in the country and being taken to Truro. The name of the place wasn't spoken in the service. The place torture victims went to cower and die.
"Sarah, tell me honestly, how bad?" Sarah's sigh had scared Fiona all the more.
"I'm not a medic, Fiona. I don't know. It's fluid-drip-and-a-lot-of-morphine level, but he hasn't been in to cardiac arrest or anything." That only meant that Adam wasn't on the cusp of death.
"Conscious?"
"Probably something to do with the morphine, but no."
Fiona and Sam, who'd called when Fiona was half-way dressed to go to Truro, and insisted that they go together, as Sam had to go anyway, he was Adam's section head, had driven half the length of the M4, a lot of M5 and two hours of A and B roads, as fast as they'd dared, in two hour shifts. They'd been stuck for what had felt like an age in the Bristol rush hour, made it in five and a half hours and now she was being stalled by a bored duty nurse. She'd brought fake ID to avoid the hostility with which spooks were treated here, also the reason Sam was waiting in the car until she was in, so they weren't tarred with the same brush. She sighed and drew out her fake ID.
The nurse looked at it resentfully.
"Which patient would you be looking to see?" She said to her computer screen.
"Adam Carter."
"Admitted?"
"Today."
"Permission given by?"
"You don't need permission if it's your section's jurisdiction."
"Your section is?"
"Lambda."
"So...L?"
"Five use English alphabet, six use Greek." The nurse typed in the details slowly.
"Was it you then?"
"What?"
"Was it you that tortured him?" Fiona felt herself whiten.
"How dare you?" She breathed. "How dare you make an accusation like that? You have no idea what happened. Where is he?" The nurse looked dispassionately back at her.
"Through there, second left, first right, fifth left on that right. There's CCTV in there. We will have you if you lay a finger on him." Fiona turned on her heel and walked out, feeling tears sting her eyes. She wanted to scream at that bitch, who thought she knew it all, thought Fiona'd tortured Adam. Tortured Adam. The thought stung her like a lash and she broke in to a run. She had to get to him. That was all that mattered right now.
Doors flickered past her on the left, two, three, four, five. She stopped and threw her weight against the door. It opened. She froze on the threshold.
Adam. It was Adam, but oh God. He was unconscious, a tube in his nose hooked up to something under the bed, attached to a vitals monitor. Fiona didn't know much about medicine, but she knew that, for someone unconscious, a blood pressure of 74 over 65 was not normal, neither was a heart rate of 86. His face was swollen, worse on the left, lip split, the eye reduced to a slit, closed anyway. Like the rest of his skin that was visible, it was mottled with bruises, from half-healed green to black. There was a drip in his right hand, she had no way of knowing what. The upper half of his left arm was completely obscured by bandages, but even through them, it looked wrong. There was usually an attractive outward curve of muscle on Adam's upper arms, now his left arm looked flat, almost concave. That couldn't just be atrophy. Not in six days. What had they done to him?
Fiona padded forwards noiselessly, as though drawn by a magnet. She was afraid to look closer, afraid of what she'd see, but she had to be close to him. She reached for his left hand and held it in both of hers.
"Adam." She breathed. "Adam, it's alright now. You're home. You're safe. It's OK." He didn't even stir. She hadn't really expected him to, but tears stung her eyes. She blinked hard. "It's all over. You're safe. It's all over."
A tap on the door. Fiona started. A woman, maybe four or five years her junior stood in the doorway. Cornflower blue top, white trim, so a staff nurse, light blonde hair tied back, no makeup, nowhere she could feasibly be carrying a gun, hands full of bandages. All this passed through Fiona's mind in the time it took for the woman to smile and draw breath to say,
"Where did you come from?" Northern accent, probably Yorkshire. Fiona could think of five ways to answer that question, not all of them truthful. Before she'd decided, the nurse changed her question. "Can I see some ID please? Only we were told he wouldn't have civilian visitors." Fiona drew out her real ID resignedly. And so it started again. This woman could be as hostile as she liked, Fiona wasn't going anywhere.
"Yes, I am a bloody spook." The woman looked briefly at the ID card and raised her hands, still full of bandages.
"Someone jumped down your throat?" She asked. Fiona didn't reply. "I won't. It's not my place to judge, and so far as I can see, you're less happy to see him like this than most of the staff."
Something inside Fiona snapped. She curled forwards where she stood, breathing breaking down in to shaking sobs, she wasn't even sure why. The nurse put the bandages down and put her arms around Fiona, who leant against her without ever deciding to.
"I know." The nurse said quietly. "I know, it's always hard. It's alright. He'll be alright."
It took Fiona maybe a minute to pull herself together enough to draw back from the nurse and apologise embarrassedly. The nurse smiled.
"It happens. You're not the first person in here who's needed a shoulder to cry on, and I doubt you'll be the last. It's alright." Fiona didn't have an answer to that, so the nurse asked another question.
"What's he to you? I'm guessing you don't just work together." Fiona hesitated.
"No. He's my husband." The woman nodded once.
"I'm sorry."
"It's not your fault." Fiona said shortly. She didn't really want the sympathy of a stranger. "How bad is it?" She asked after a moments silence, her voice as emotionless as she could make it.
"Let's have a look" The nurse turned to the foot of the bed and picked up the clipboard which hung from it. She turned to the back page. "Condition on admission:" Fiona looked over the nurse's shoulder to read, but the page was written in some sort of shorthand she couldn't read, in awful handwriting. "Unconscious, very dehydrated, low blood volume from bleeding. Multiple bite wounds, possibly by a dog, on right leg. Serious bite wound on left upper arm. Tissue missing. Left lower jawbone damaged, still has partial stability, whatever that's supposed to mean. If it were cracked, it would say so."
"They drilled a hole in it." Fiona said quietly. The nurse stared at her.
"How-"
"They sent us a tape." She explained, pain choking her voice. "They tortured him and sent us a video of it, and a photo of the dog they were going to set on him." The horror on the nurse's face was a shadow of what Fiona had felt.
"That's just sick." Fiona nodded.
"Yes, it is. Is that all they found?" The nurse seemed to shake herself and looked back at the paper.
"Sorry. Extensive bruising and grazes, hard to spot internal injuries. Ribs seem to be intact, so his lungs and heart should be too."
"Prognosis?" The nurse hesitated.
"I'm not a doctor, I'm not supposed to comment, but he's survived this far, and his blood pressure has improved, and I can't see anything here that's likely to kill him outright. What have they done so far?" The nurse turned the page. "Nothing very unusual, Rabies antiserum just in case, a lot of antibiotics, stitches, considering grafting his arm, debrided the wounds, which explains why the dressings need checking so soon. Debriding tends to make them bleed a bit."
"Can I help?" Fiona asked. The nurse hesitated again.
"OK. Go and wash your hands." She nodded at the sink in the corner. Fiona obliged, knowing it would steady her to do something useful.
"You don't have a name tag." She observed, over the sound of the tap. "but you've seen mine."
"Fiona, wasn't it?" The nurse asked. "I'm Tia, well, Hestia really. I've never quite forgiven my mother for that." Fiona smiled in spite of herself, turning back to her, hands wet.
"Where's the name from? It sounds... Latin?"
"Ancient Greek." Tia replied, offering Fiona a paper towel. "My parents' passion was Greek mythology, and none of my sisters are happy about it." Tia turned back the bedclothes, exposing Adam's right leg. What wasn't bandaged was dappled with bruises. "Can you hold his leg like that?" She demonstrated. Fiona took over. Adam felt reassuringly warm, but what might be under the bandages worried her. Tia had picked up a pair of scissors.
"How many sisters?" Fiona asked to distract herself.
"Three." Tia started to part the top layer of bandage from what was underneath. "Four, counting me. Athena, eldest, goes by Thena, which isn't much better, Hera can't do anything with hers, then me, then Demeter, uses Demi." The outer layer of bandage fell away. The layer beneath was still pristine white. "OK, that's fine." Tia started to re-do the outer layer with a fresh bandage. "How about you, any siblings?" Fiona shook her head.
"Adam's the only one I... rely on really." She couldn't bring herself to say `love`. Tia nodded.
"It must have been horrible to know this was going on." Fiona didn't want to go in to that, so stayed silent. "How long was he gone?"
"He went missing a week ago." Tia fastened the bandage.
"OK, can you hold his other arm..." She walked round to the other side of Adam's bed. "like this." She held his upper arm at both joints, slightly off the bed. Fiona nodded and took over. Tia began to cut the outer bandage away. Fiona saw it before her, a spot of blood, the size of a five pence piece, on the next layer of bandage.
"Poor thing." Tia murmured when she saw it, then added, "you don't have to watch this. I can do it on my own if you'd rather not see."
"I'm fine." Fiona replied firmly, as much to herself as to Tia. Tia nodded and began to remove the rest of the bandage. Every turn, the spot grew bigger, darker red, until it was almost four inches long, and two wide. The dressing pad was saturated. Tia lifted it away. Fiona stifled a gasp. It looked as if a section of Adam's arm had been torn out, skin, muscle beneath... The wound was a livid red, covered in blood. It didn't seem to be bleeding from any one place, but from everywhere at once.
Tia set about the dressing quickly, muttering about bad dressing pads. Fiona looked away. That would take a very long time to heal, if it ever did. Adam almost always seemed so indomitable. Nothing phased him, he barely seemed to register most pain. Seeing him like this again, so weakened, so broken... It was hard, very hard.
As soon as Tia finished the bandage, Fiona felt her stomach clench, her throat tighten. Saliva began to pool under her tongue. Shit. It was late in the day for this, and she'd emptied her stomach already this morning. She looked about, she had no idea where a toilet was. Tia was ahead of her. She reached under Adam's bed and pulled out a lidded bucket. Fiona knelt and heaved. Mercifully, she hadn't much in her stomach, and she was almost getting used to this.
Tia offered her water. She took it gladly, recoiling from the smell of the bucket.
"Done?" She nodded. Tia removed the bucket and lidded it.
"Sorry." Fiona mumbled. "I wasn't expecting that." Tia shrugged.
"It happens. Seeing that-"
"It wasn't that."
"Do you want me to get a doctor?" Fiona shook her head.
"I'm not ill."
"Then-" Tia started.
"I'm pregnant." It felt odd to say it aloud, after so carefully not saying it. "Or I think I am." She conceded. Tia looked at her uncertainly.
"Do you want a test?"
"You keep pregnancy tests in a hospital for torture victims?" That was almost farcical. Tia nodded sadly.
"Sometimes, if a woman's brought in here, there are some men who'll-" Tia stopped abruptly. Fiona looked down. That made her feel naive. "Anyway, I'll get you one." Fiona nodded once.
"Thank you."
"And a chair. I swear there's a poltergeist in here with a fetish for chairs. If you take your eye of one..."
o0o0o0o
Fiona had no idea how long she'd been sitting there, it was dark outside. Sam had brought her food at midday and six, complaining about how unhelpful everyone was being. Chris needed to know how long Adam would be out of action, so he could get a substitute in. The doctors insisted they wouldn't know for a day or two. Sam insisted they were messing him about on suspicion of being a spook. There was also the question of how much Adam had given up, which neither of them had mentioned. The question of how long to get a substitute in for was being made more difficult by the fact that the test kit Tia had brought was unopened in Fiona's lap.
"Just go and piss on it, for heaven's sake." Sam had said when he'd seen it, then apologised, saying it was his stress talking, and that he'd had no right to say that.
Sam had gone now, and Tia. She was alone with Adam, holding his left hand in both of hers and listening to the regular beeping of the monitor, counting his heart beats. He stirred.
"Adam?" She breathed, squeezing his hand. "Adam, can you hear me?" He turned his head. He could hear her. He could hear her. "Adam, it's alright. It's all over now, it's all over. You're safe, it's alright." His eyes flickered open a crack and tilted towards the sound of her voice. "Adam?"
"Fiona." The word was slurred, faint, hoarse, but there could be no doubt as to what it was. Her name. He'd said her name.
"Adam." She repeated, her voice cracking with relief. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry. She felt like she was starting to do both. "Oh Adam."
"Fiona." He repeated, more clearly this time. He was waking up. Oh, thank God, he was waking up.
"Adam, it's OK. You're safe, it's over." She reached out to touch his face, but the images from the tape jumped before her eyes. She didn't want to hurt him more. She laid her hand on his shoulder instead. It was a minute or two before he spoke again.
"Where am I?" Fiona hesitated.
"Truro." She said, deciding on the truth. She saw fear flicker across Adam's half-focussed eyes. "They said you're going to be alright." No one had, as such, but she wasn't going to tell him that. Adam sighed gently.
"How long?"
"They got to you in the middle of last night, you got here early this morning." There was another long silence. Adam's eyes flickered down to the tube in his nose.
"What's that?"
"I have no idea." Adam half smiled, then winced.
"Are you alright?" What a stupid question, she thought as soon as she'd said it.
"I'm home." Adam replied after a moment. "And that's enough."