A/N: I can't tell you how much fun I had reading that last lot of reviews. Even I don't know whose side I'm on any more! Ha ha. Here's another instalment (for a blissfully sunny Friday evening). Make of it what you will :)
It was funny how different a hospital smelt, felt and sounded when you were on the receiving end, rather than part of it. Laura sat bolt upright in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the waiting room of A&E, watching the hospital staff pass to and fro: some rushing, some chatting, some dawdling. The smell of disinfectant seeped beneath her skin, making her stomach turn. She heard the squeak of trainers on the tiled floor, the rush of trolleys, the beep of the lift. All of these things were familiar to her, yet today they only served to fuel her panic. Her knuckles were white from gripping the seat of the chair, her insides were an empty mess of nausea, her jaw ached from the way it had been set since Hathaway's phone call… how long ago had that been? It felt like hours. Maybe days.
She couldn't be sure.
Various doctors had been to speak to her – some she recognised, some she didn't. Robbie had fractured his leg in the fall, cracked several ribs, but the more pressing concern was the bruising on his skull. He was in theatre now as they attempted to reduce the swelling on his brain. She'd not been allowed to see him yet.
She so wanted to see him.
Hathaway paced agitatedly up and down the waiting room, tracing a repetitive line between the magazine rack and the vending machine. It was getting late now and the casualties of the early evening's revelry were beginning to appear through the hospital's sliding doors. Laura shuddered.
She was so cold.
At great length, a tired-looking consultant emerged from the lift. Laura scanned his face, knowing he would tell her the results before he had even opened his mouth to speak. His eyes met hers and she exhaled deeply with relief. Robbie was still here.
Hathaway did most of the talking and Laura listened in a daze to the consultant's account of the procedure and its outcome. Whilst it had been a success, Robbie would be kept in an induced coma for several days – any lasting trauma to his brain would not become apparent until after that stage.
"When can we see him?" Her voice was hoarse, as though she had been shouting, her mouth dry. It was the only question she cared about.
"Soon, Dr Hobson. Soon." The consultant placed a reassuring hand on her shoulder, which served only to irritate her. It took all of her composure not to shrug it off. "I'll have someone come down for you as soon as he is ready."
More waiting. Endless, gaping chasms of time stretched out in the sickly green confines of the waiting room until eventually they were summoned.
Up on ICU, the charge nurse signed them in.
Hathaway provided his details first: "James Hathaway. I'm a colleague of Inspector Lewis."
"And…?" The nurse looked at Laura.
"Laura Hobson." Laura spoke quietly. "I'm his…" her voice trailed off, a lump forming in her throat.
"She's his other half." Hathaway added for her.
The charge nurse nodded, kindly, gesturing for them to follow her down the corridor. "He's just this way."
They had placed Robbie in a side room; mercifully the ward was relatively quiet this weekend. He was surrounded by tubes, wires and beeping machines, all familiar to Laura, but so alien when attached to Robbie. She looked at him, tucked up so neatly – so uncharacteristically assembled on the bed. Normally he would be sprawled half in, half out of the covers, usually with a book he'd fallen asleep in the middle of reading embroiled in the sheets somewhere beneath him. He didn't look right like this. He didn't look like Robbie. Her throat tightened.
"Can he hear us?" She heard Hathaway ask.
"Unlikely…" replied the charge nurse, "although sometimes people can." She looked at Laura's ashen face. "It can't hurt to talk to him, though. Might make you feel a bit better?"
Hathaway found Laura a chair and she sat by Robbie's bedside, reaching instinctively for his hand with both of hers. His hand was motionless but warm. Thank God it was warm.
Hathaway lingered, looking quizzically at the machine controlling Robbie's breathing, his expression pained. He scowled before excusing himself so that he could call to update Innocent.
Laura stroked Robbie's hand. She found she couldn't speak to him yet. She didn't know what to say: where to begin. She just stared at him, laid out, still, before her. She wanted to climb into the hospital bed with him, to wrap her arms around him and tell him she was here. She wanted to kiss his face and cradle his bruises and broken bones. She wanted to shout at him at the top of her lungs.
"You better not leave me." She murmured. I don't know what I'd do without you.
The exhaustion and shock finally found her, the stoical stare of the past few hours ultimately clouding with emotion, as hot tears rolled noiselessly down her face.
James drove Laura home and, as he stopped the car on the pavement outside the house and she undid the seatbelt, the journey up the path to her darkened front door seemed like an almost insurmountable distance.
"You going to be ok?" He asked, as though reading her thoughts.
She turned towards him and forced a smile. "Yes, I'll be fine." She looked at him properly. "Thanks, James."
He too affected a smile in response. "It's the least I could do."
Somehow neither of them seemed able to mention Robbie's name, nor able to murmur any half-baked, mutual reassurances. It wasn't part of their makeup.
Instead they sat in silence.
"I'd better get going." She murmured.
James nodded slowly, his jaw tightening. "If there's anything you need..."
"Yeah." Laura pushed open the door of the car, hurriedly.
Hathaway gripped the steering wheel with a grimace. He forced himself up out of the car and she threw him a questioning look in the streetlight.
"I'll just… ah… see you to the door. See that you're settled." He shrugged.
In a parallel universe, another Laura would have scoffed and muttered a firm put down. But this Laura was weak at the knees with worry. Set rigid with exhaustion. She managed a genuine smile in acceptance and heard the bleep of the lock on Hathaway's car, the only sound in the silent street.
The wall of 'Robbie' hit her as soon as she pushed open the front door: the sights, smells and sounds of their home. Hathaway followed her into the hallway, his feeling of utter redundancy expressed by his hands that were plunged deep into his coat pockets and the strain on his face. Laura busied herself with trying to bring some light to the darkened house. He hovered behind her, frowning.
"Cup of coffee?" She asked.
"No than-…, oh, ok, er, yes please."
Laura plodded numbly into the kitchen and filled the kettle.
"I hope you don't mind, but I'll be having something stronger." She reached a bottle of brandy from the cupboard, trying not to notice the breakfast dishes that Robbie had left in the sink earlier that morning. Back when things had been normal.
A silence hung heavily as she prepared both drinks. Hathaway leaned awkwardly against the kitchen counter. He watched Laura padding around the kitchen, visibly straining to maintain a sense of normality. The full pint of milk sloshed clumsily into his coffee, splashing the counter top. She swore, uncharacteristically, and when she put the milk down, he could see her hands were shaking. He went over to her:
"Tell me what I can do to help. Is there anything…?"
She closed her eyes and swallowed, exhaling slowly as she battled to compose herself. "No." Her voice was painfully unsteady. "No, thank you James." She handed him his coffee and took a swig of brandy, wincing against but almost grateful for the burning discomfort it unleashed on her throat.
Once again silence descended. Laura refilled her glass.
Hathaway could sense she wanted to be alone, yet he felt terrible leaving her. It was torture to see her like this, staring bleary-eyed into the soupy darkness of the back garden: so vacant, so un-Laura. Somehow leaving her alone felt like a betrayal of Robbie. Yet he knew she didn't want him here. She didn't want company for this. She didn't want a witness.
Some time later, he excused himself. By then, she'd had three glasses of brandy and he wasn't sure she even registered his goodbye. He walked reluctantly to his car, looking back over his shoulder in the hope he would see a light going on upstairs and thus an indication of her settling down for the night. The upstairs windows remained dark. With a sigh, he started the car and left.
Laura heard the car engine fade into the night and with it the need for her to hold it together. Her shoulders loosened, the shock and disbelief finally flooding into her with such force, it made her want to retch into the sink in front of her.
She wanted Robbie.
She stumbled upstairs to their bedroom, leaving the lights on downstairs and the front door unbolted. Her brain was a whirling frenzy of panic, remonstration and regret. She recalled the last things she'd said to him. The look of rejection: the hurt on his face. It killed her to think she might never have chance to say sorry, to take it all back. She picked up the t-shirt he'd slept in last night – hung sloppily over the back of her dresser chair – a fact that normally would have irritated her, but tonight made tears form in her eyes. She held it to her face, inhaling the smell of him, yearning for him a way she would never have thought possible. She undressed clumsily and put it on, curling into a tight ball on his side of the bed.
Her thoughts wandered inevitably to Robbie alone in the hospital. Just lying there, inert. Despite all of her medical experience it was utterly bizarre to contemplate him being in an induced coma: existing but not really 'being'. She could count on one hand the number of times they had spent apart since they moved in together. Yet tonight felt cataclysmically different. She couldn't ring or text him. She couldn't picture him drifting off to sleep. His life was in the balance, supported by machine. He was the furthest away he could be from her without actually being…
… No. Furiously, she shook her head. She wouldn't think about that. The brandy burned with the unending nausea in her stomach and sweat prickled on the back of her neck. Irrationally, she found herself too frightened to switch out the light: scared of what the darkness might bring for the first time since she was a child.
"Robbie."
The sob rose uncontrollably in her throat, fading unheard into the emptiness of the house. What she would give to have him back here by her side. Anything. Anything – she'd do anything. The fear bubbled upwards within her, forming as hot tears that streamed down her face and soaked into his pillow.
She lay, curled up and rigid with terror, until morning, listening to the wind torturing the roof tiles as the rain hammered against the window.