A Wedding in the Sun

Chapter 8

It took all of Jo’s seventeen years of experience in parenting to stay calm and grapple with the situation rationally. Rain sluiced down her face, but she wasn’t cold because her heart was pumping in double time. The contortions of Adrián’s face struck panic through her. She didn’t know what had happened, only that nothing could happen to Adrián right now. His son was waiting for him. He might never find that guitar. She might never find out – actually, she was currently discovering what it felt like to tangle her fingers in his hair, but it wasn’t the context she’d pictured.

His beard was smooth under her thumb, his face familiar now after the past forty-eight hours.

‘Shhh, it’s all right,’ she lied spectacularly, brushing his hair back from his face.

He groaned, squeezing his eyes shut, and Jo’s heart forgot its usual rhythm. She gripped his jacket harder, too panicked to think of anything else to do, but he yelped in response, his hand flying to his shoulder, which only made him jerk and yelp again and spit a string of foul-sounding Spanish curse words.

‘Fuuuuck,’ he finished, his voice high. But the swearing cut through Jo’s unfocused haze as she figured that he wouldn’t be biting out curse words if he was about to die. He’d managed to tug off his own helmet and he was definitely fully conscious and lucid. She also couldn’t see any blood.

After hearing a shout from behind them, Claudia had braked sharply, pulling to the side of the road just in time to see Adrián’s trolley bag flying off the back of Georg’s bike and skidding down the slope towards the stream, ripping open and haemorrhaging fabric. It had taken a moment too long to realise that Adrián himself lay at the side of the road, sprawled on his back, but when she’d noticed him, she’d thrown her leg over the back of Claudia’s bike and sprinted over, scraping her knees as she dropped down beside him.

‘Someone call the emergency services!’ she hissed at Georg and Claudia, who seemed dazed themselves. Supporting Adrián’s head, she tucked her backpack underneath and smoothed her hand down his chest in a silent instruction for him to stay still. ‘Do you remember what happened?’

‘No,’ he said, ratcheting Jo’s alarm up another level. ‘I mean, I was conscious, but it was too quick. I just remember feeling like I was on a rollercoaster,’ he said with a whimper.

His voice seemed to be returning to normal, although his breath was short. She settled her hand more firmly on his chest, glad to feel the rise and fall under her palm. ‘Where does it hurt the most?’

‘Shoulder,’ he said with a grunt. ‘Hurts like fuck.’ He took a sharp breath against the pain, his brow low and twisted.

She looked up at Georg, relieved to see him on his phone. The other bikers drew around solemnly. ‘Hang in there,’ she murmured gently to Adrián. ‘We’re getting help.’

The moans escaping his lips were alarming and he clutched her wrist painfully. She calmed him as best she could, struck by the memories of soothing children with hugs when there was nothing else she could do. He turned towards her and settled his face into her side.

‘No, there is no puncture that I can see,’ she heard Georg say as he crouched down, the phone still at his ear. ‘No blood. He is breathing, but he seems to be in pain.’

‘Fucking understatement,’ Adrián said through a groan.

‘Uh, a lot of pain,’ Georg corrected himself. ‘Fifteen minutes? Okay, we’re waiting. No, he’s definitely breathing.’ He turned to Jo. ‘Pulse?’ he asked.

She lifted her fingertips under his chin and immediately found the wild beat of Adrián’s pulse. ‘Racing,’ she confirmed. She shared a look with Georg after he’d finished the call. ‘Fifteen minutes seems quick.’ For the middle of nowhere. The only other living thing she could see in this valley was a large, circling— eek, it was a vulture. She gulped and drew her arms more firmly around Adrián.

‘This is terrible,’ Georg said. ‘That stone fell right in front of us and I had to stop suddenly.’

‘It’s… all right, Georg,’ Adrián murmured. ‘I’m glad you and the others aren’t hurt.’

Those fifteen minutes were some of the longest of her life. The bikers moved the stone that had caused the accident, but all Jo could do was try to stop her legs going to sleep while she held Adrián still as he mumbled and grunted and yelped in turn. His face was red and she didn’t want to think about internal bleeding or what she’d tell little Oscar if— It wasn’t going to come to that.

She’d been watching out for an ambulance to come swerving up the road through the drizzle, but instead the thwack-thwack of helicopter rotor blades reached her ears. Then time sped up again as a team of rescuers jumped out and the doctor dropped down beside Adrián.

‘A dislocated shoulder,’ the doctor diagnosed after a quick assessment. Jo’s lungs deflated like a bouncy castle at the end of the day. That didn’t sound too bad. ‘It hurts a lot?’ the paramedic asked.

‘Are you joking?’ Adrián snapped. ‘It’s burning like the fires of hell!’

A hysterical laugh rose in her chest. He was going to be fine. A dislocated shoulder was a relatively minor injury. The shock was wearing off and he was already sounding more like himself, while she was a sluggish mess of post-adrenaline shock and relief.

Helping him shrug out of one sleeve of the jacket, the paramedic administered a painkiller. As Adrián calmed down, Jo melted even further in relief until she felt as though she were made of jelly. She was beginning to believe everything would be all right when the doctor said, ‘I will try to put it back in, okay?’

‘Sure!’ Adrián said, too enthusiastically to be in his right mind.

‘Madame, you hold his hand?’

Her heart rate wound right back up again as she gripped his hand, squeezing his forearm with her other one. The rescuers took up well-practised positions holding Adrián in place and with a move that looked more like a karate master vanquishing his enemy, the doctor pulled and twisted and manipulated Adrián’s arm until he was wailing again despite the painkiller.

The paramedic murmured to the team in French, before rolling Adrián slightly and giving it one more shot until he was gasping in pain. Judging by the head-shaking and mutterings in French, it wasn’t working.

‘Jo?’ he said pitifully, making her turn to him in dismay. ‘Your fingernails are digging in,’ he said between clenched teeth.

‘Oh, sorry!’

The doctor stopped his torture and Jo sighed deeply, brushing the hair out of Adrián’s sweaty face.

‘This is a fun day out,’ he said, meeting her gaze, his eyes not quite clear.

‘He needs stronger anaesthesia, so we will immobilise him and try again at the hospital,’ the doctor explained. ‘Will you travel with your husband? Or do you need to return with the motorcycle?’

‘I’ll travel with him,’ she answered immediately, without enough energy to explain that he wasn’t her husband.

Claudia approached her, giving her arm a squeeze as they loaded Adrián onto a stretcher. ‘Will you be all right? Should we meet you back in Lourdes? Are they taking you to Lourdes?’

‘We will bring him to the hospital in Tarbes,’ the doctor explained, but Jo had no idea where that was anyway and she was still recovering from the floods of adrenaline.

‘You continue on, Claudia,’ Jo said once she’d finally realised why they’d asked. ‘Is the bike okay?’

Georg gave her a thumbs up from where he had righted the motorcycle and was inspecting a scratch on the saddle bags. Pressing the throttle, he nodded when the engine roared to life. The only victim had been Adrián and his poor trolley bag.

It might have been littering, but Jo didn’t have the presence of mind to wander along the hill and collect his underwear while the helicopter waited. When she was ushered into the aircraft, she had no choice but to climb up and leave the case. Adrián still had his little shoulder bag of valuables – and Claudia would have to keep Jo’s dress for the wedding. It was ugly anyway.

Claudia and Georg and the rest of the Godspeed bikers waved earnestly goodbye as the rotor blades started to spin and one of the rescuers slid the helicopter door closed.

‘Ooh, that morphine’s good stuff,’ Adrián muttered emphatically.

She had no idea how she was supposed to explain to Liss and Dec that, rather than being en route to Zaragoza to support them at the strange family party tonight where no one spoke English, she was in a hospital in a place called Tarbes with the delirious ex-husband of their dad’s bride beside her, shirtless, with his arm in a sling. She had at least ten messages on her phone, but she needed to call them to have any hope of them understanding.

She hated disturbing the quiet of the hospital room where Adrián was dozing after the trauma of having his shoulder popped back in, but she needed to call – everyone. Unfortunately, she knew who she needed to call first.

Adrián’s phone had facial recognition, so she held the camera in front of his woozy face and told him to open his eyes – he was rather agreeable with his system pumped full of painkillers. She found Mónica’s contact – with a profile picture of her holding her arms above her head in a flamenco pose, wearing a striking, frilly red dress that draped off one shoulder – and pressed the call button with a sigh.

‘Adrián? ?Por fin! ?Dónde estás?’ She said a lot more than that, but Jo only caught the agitation in her voice.

‘Um, sorry, Mónica, it’s Jo.’

‘Who?’

That hurt. ‘It’s Jo. Joanna.’ Joanna Watters – Watters, like your fiancé!

‘Joanna?’

‘I’ve not come back from the dead,’ she snapped, but kept her voice to a mumble so Mónica wouldn’t catch it.

‘Why are you calling from Adrián’s phone?’

‘That’s the thing,’ she began, glancing at his resting face, his muscles occasionally twitching with discomfort. ‘We’re in hospital. There was an accident on the road.’

‘Hospital where? The party is starting in two hours and I can’t send someone to collect you.’

‘We’re not going to make it to the party,’ Jo said clearly.

‘But… you came all this— Oscar! Stop poking the dog!’ She continued in muffled Spanish and Jo guessed she’d pulled the phone from her ear. ‘Look, if Adrián doesn’t want to see my family, then he doesn’t have to come. He can just collect Oscar later. You too. I understand it might be a bit difficult for you both.’

Heat rushed up Jo’s neck and out her ears until she felt like the head-exploding emoji. Ben had told her the party was important – almost more important than the wedding, because all of the family and friends from the close-knit neighbourhood where Mónica had grown up were invited. He’d said it would be strange if Jo wasn’t there with the kids. Now Mónica was letting them off the hook – several weeks too late to change that fateful flight that had led to the worst two days of Jo’s life where everything she’d tried to do had gone wrong.

‘Mónica,’ Jo cut her off. ‘We’re still in France. We’re further away from Zaragoza than we were this morning.’ She couldn’t stifle a laugh at that realisation – and at the memory of Adrián pronouncing ‘Zaragoza’ with that Spanish lisp. ‘Adrián hasn’t been discharged yet and might have to stay overnight so we can’t even arrive in time to not come to the party!’

‘Adrián is hurt?’ At least she seemed somewhat upset – finally.

‘He dislocated his shoulder.’

There was a long silence where Jo imagined Mónica feeling sympathetic, but then she asked, ‘Can he still play the guitar?’

‘I think that’s the least of his worries right now,’ Jo grumbled. ‘He’s in a lot of pain.’

‘But Adrián is only half a man without a guitar!’

‘Considering his guitar has gone missing, you might have only half a man attending your wedding, then,’ she snapped. ‘Maybe you should look for another half a guitarist, since you seem to be perfectly able to quickly find other men!’ Jo cringed, wishing she could reel those words back in. She wasn’t sure what bothered her more: that she’d shown weakness to Mónica or that she was still so emotional about Ben’s wedding. ‘I just mean if you understood how awkward this situation is for us, perhaps you shouldn’t have asked him to play.’

‘I do know how awkward this is – when you meet my family, you might understand. But you and Adrián are part of this. I can’t erase the past so I wanted to… integrate it.’

‘Well, I’m sorry you can’t integrate us tonight. We’re in hospital in Tarbes and I don’t know how or when we’ll make it to Zaragoza.’

‘But we’re heading to the coast on Monday to prepare for the wedding. Weren’t you going to travel with my brother?’

‘I have no idea.’ Jo had blocked out all plans except the most immediate. ‘But the wedding’s not for a week. I’m sure there aren’t enough mishaps in the world to delay us that long.’ More’s the pity. ‘I have to call my kids,’ she said curtly.

‘All right. I hope he feels better soon.’

‘I’ll pass that on.’

Jo had just buried her face in her hands when she heard Adrián’s weak voice from beside her. ‘Mónica?’

‘She says she hopes you feel better soon.’

‘You…’ He lifted his good arm and groped clumsily for her. She reluctantly held her hand out to him and he took it, slipping his fingers between hers. She stared, her stomach churning with shame and regret and a protectiveness she’d rather not feel. It was his right hand, the one that still had the little indentation on the ring finger, and there was a brush of black hair on the back. But holding his fingers knotted with hers didn’t feel wrong or strange. ‘I’m so glad you’re here,’ he murmured.

He meant Mónica, right? He was delirious and he’d just said his ex-wife’s name.

But then he continued, making all her hair stand on end. ‘Joooooo-annnna,’ he said on a sigh. ‘You feel really good.’