Chapter Twenty Tristan
Chapter twenty
Tristan
I woke to white.
Not the distant, clinical kind associated with corridors and textbooks, but closer, harsher, pressing in from every angle.
The ceiling felt too near. The lights too bright.
Pain reached me before thought did. An all-encompassing weight pinning me to the bed and making breathing feel like a conscious act rather than instinctive.
I tried to inhale properly and failed.
The pain in my side flared immediately, sharp and deep, radiating outward in a way that told me something fundamental had gone wrong. It wasn’t surface pain. It felt internal.
I whimpered.
“Tristan! Oh, darling, don’t move. Please don’t try to move.”
My mother’s voice cut through the haze, tight with relief and tipping into panic as she she closed her hand around mine. I tried to turn my head towards her but the movement sent a hot, blinding jolt through my ribs and shoulder; the pain stacking so quickly it made my vision pulse at the edges.
Everything hurt.
My leg throbbed dully beneath the blankets and I couldn’t feel my foot properly. Or perhaps I could feel it too much. Every sensation was distorted, amplified.
“You’re safe.” Mother smoothed back my hair from my brow. “You’re in hospital. You’re awake now.”
I swallowed. My throat felt scraped raw, as if I’d been shouting. Or screaming.
“Wh…” My voice came out hoarse. Useless.
She leant over me, getting into my sight.
“You were shot.” She blinked mascara-smudged eyes.
I’d never seen my mother so…unpolished. And she spoke carefully, as though the words themselves might bruise me further.
“In your side. The bullet passed through, thank God. There was internal bleeding, but they got to it in time.”
Shot.
It started coming back. Everything that had happened.
“And your leg.” She tapped her hand on the end of the bed. “You were struck with… something. A metal pole, they think. The bone broke cleanly. They’ve stabilised it.”
I followed her gaze, heart sinking as I registered the weight and rigidity beneath the sheets. My leg was immobilised, wrapped and braced, elevated in a way that made it feel separate from the rest of me. As if it wasn’t quite mine.
“And you have several rib fractures. From the assault.”
Assault.
Beating.
The fragments lined themselves up clinically in my mind even as everything else swam. Gunshot wound to the flank. Blunt force trauma. Orthopaedic injury. It was all very neat in theory. In practice, my body felt as though it had been dragged apart and hastily reassembled.
“How long?” I asked.
“You were unconscious when you arrived. You were in intensive care for a day and a half. Sedated. They moved you to this ward once they were satisfied you were stable. You’ve been here, in and out of it, for two days.”
Intensive care.
My chest tightened, and it had nothing to do with broken ribs.
“You’re in a high-dependency ward now.” She ruffled the covers over me, checking the drips and whatever else I had stuck into my skin. “Close monitoring. Pain control. Rest.”
Rest felt like a distant concept.
“But we’re arranging a transfer,” she added briskly, as if changing the subject might smooth the edges. “Once you’re strong enough. A private hospital. More privacy. Better continuity of care.”
I didn’t argue. I didn’t have the energy to care.
My entire world had narrowed to pain, breath, and the dull certainty that something terrible had happened and I was only beginning to understand the shape of it.
So I lay there while my mother fussed with blankets and pillows, telling me again that I was safe, that I was lucky, that everything had been handled.
But beneath the medication and the careful voices and controlled environment, my body remembered cold concrete. Hard impact. The sound of a gunshot. And the sickening jolt as I went down.
Still I couldn’t ask the one thing sitting heavier than any injuries on my chest: how was Razor? Was he hurt? And most importantly, where was he?
Time blurred. Doctors came and went. Nurses checked lines, adjusted drips, and murmured reassurance.
My mother refused to leave my side, citing the one-visitor rule as if it were a personal affront, until eventually a familiar figure appeared at the end of the bed.
Scrubs, stethoscope, posture that didn’t belong to a visitor at all.
Henry.
Somehow, rules bent for him.
“Tris.” He moved to my other side, automatically scanning monitors, checking charts, eyes doing what his mouth didn’t need to say. Once a doctor, always a doctor. “They said you were awake. Nasty bit of work you took there.”
“Be honest, Hen.” I swallowed, breath catching where my ribs protested. “Am I going to be okay?”
He smiled. Easy. Certain. “You? Tristan Hale-Fitzroy? Of course you are. You’ll be back on your feet and terrorising a courtroom in no time.” He raised his eyebrows. “We’re going to need the bed.”
I tried to laugh. It came out wrong.
Henry caught the shift in my face immediately and glanced towards my mother. “Mrs Hale-Fitzroy, would you mind popping down to get him some lemonade? It’s good for recovery.”
She was on her feet instantly, as if he’d handed her a life-saving task. “Of course, Dr Redmayne.”
She kissed my forehead, then my nose, and swept out.
“Thank you,” I croaked once the ward doors shut.
“She hasn’t left. Not even when your father tried to insist on a turn.”
I coughed. Everything hurt. I winced.
Henry checked my chart again. “We can probably push your pain relief a little. I’ll have the consultant look at that.”
“When will I get out of here?”
“This is the NHS, Tris. If the papers are to be believed, we need to make sure you’ve had the opportunity to catch at least three rare infections first. Give us a day.”
I laughed. It hurt. Worth it.
“You’ll move to a standard ward in about twenty-four hours. But your mother’s already requested a transfer. Honestly, Tris, don’t fight it. Better food. Quieter rooms.”
I swallowed and looked at him properly. “Can you tell me?”
“I can tell you your medical status, sure.”
I gave him a look. One he’d know. Years of friendship didn’t need words to communicate. “I need to know where he is, Hen. Let’s say it’s for my recovery. I’m not going to get better if I’m panicking about him.”
Henry dropped his gaze to the bed but before he could say anything, or decide not to, my father appeared at the foot of the bed.
“Mr Hale-Fitzroy.” Henry straightened instantly.
“Henry.” My father inclined his head. “May I have a word with my son before his mother returns to reclaim sole possession of him?”
“Of course.” Henry huffed a quiet laugh. “I’ve got a corridor full of A&E disasters waiting for me.” He squeezed my hand. “I’ll be back before you’re airlifted out of here.”
I smiled. Nodded.
Then Henry was gone, and my father took his place.
He looked immaculate in the way only he ever could after such an endeavour.
Tailored suit, woollen coat still buttoned despite the heat of the ward.
But he was unshaven. That alone made me stare.
His face looked thinner, paler, the sharp planes of it more pronounced, as if the last few weeks had carved something out of him and not bothered to put it back.
His own recovery was ongoing. Chemotherapy. Surgery. Fragile remission. And now this. His son dragged from a courtroom, shot, beaten, left bleeding on concrete by organised criminals he prosecuted on a daily basis.
Saved by the man I’d spent months pretending didn’t exist.
Yes. That would change a man.
“Quite the role reversal for us, eh?” Father stepped closer to my bedside.
We looked at each other for a long moment. Two people professionally trained to speak for a living. To argue. Persuade. Dismantle opposing positions with precision. Yet neither of us knew where to begin.
But I had to. “Please tell me he’s not back in prison.”
My father huffed. “That’s what you open with?”
“It’s the most important thing on my mind. Everything else has been described to me as stable. That hasn’t.”
He studied my face for a long moment. Then he straightened, as though bracing himself for impact. “No.”
I was fairly certain my heart monitor spiked. “Where is he?”
“Granted bail again. With tighter monitoring. Additional conditions. One of those conditions is that he is to have no contact with you.”
“He’s the reason I’m alive.” The words escaped before I could stop them.
Objection, Your Honour. He should be here. He should be sitting where my mother sat. I should be able to say thank you. I should be able to tell him I love him.
“He is also,” my father replied evenly, “the reason you are here.”
I shut my eyes. Tried to shake my head against the pillow and failed, pain flaring through my ribs. “No, he isn’t.”
“Tristan, you have been involved with a man known to organised criminal networks. An associate of one of the most dangerous figures in East London. I cannot adequately describe the dread that fills me with when I consider how close you have come to things that are not only professionally catastrophic for you, but lethally dangerous. You were shot. Beaten. Left for dead.” He exhaled shakily, the first sign any of this had got to him. “What I cannot fathom is why.”
“Because I love him.”
My father turned his head away as if I’d struck him. Then he crossed the small distance to the chair my mother had vacated and sat heavily, elbows on his knees. He dragged his hands through his hair, fingers catching, breath uneven for the first time since he’d entered the room.
For a moment, he said nothing.
Then, he glanced up at me. “I raised you to understand consequence.”
“You raised me to understand justice. They’re not the same thing.”
He tilted his neck. “Do you believe loving him absolves him of what he is?”