Chapter 28 Fawn
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
fawn
Kudos, God.
That’s the last thing I remember. Clay Butcher isn’t a devil—he’s an angel. My north. My everything.
As I open my eyes, Sir’s face isn’t hovering over me. No biker or cars or frantic world or blood on the curb. Instead, I’m nestled in a warm bed, surrounded by white, with a sheet pulled tight under my chest.
For a sweet moment, I think it was all a nightmare.
Then somewhere, a monitor chirps.
Ugh. Hospitals.
I hate hospitals.
I try to move my head, but it’s somehow both heavy and hollow. I smack my lips, tongue thick and dry. The scent of disinfectant fills my nostrils, and suddenly blunt pain rolls across my forehead as if it forgot for a moment it was there.
Slowly, I come to. I reach up, fingers instinctively finding the wound, exploring the foreign soft, puffy texture.
Bandages.
When I prod at the edge, someone gasps. There are hands—gentle, anonymous, but authoritative—guiding my wrist back down to the blanket.
"Don’t touch that," a female says, her tone tender and exhausted, like a newborn’s mother… A mother…
My babies.
Clay.
I try to focus.
A nurse sits at my bedside.
I glimpse at her—round shoulders, hospital-pink scrubs, a name on a lanyard that blurs in and out of legibility.
"You’re”—her words are slightly delayed, as if translated from another language—“awake.”
She forces a smile.
All I want to do is ask for Clay, to pull his name out of my head and taste it on my tongue, but my throat won’t work.
I try anyway. "Clay." It comes out as a rasping whisper; the way it scratches my throat reminds me of screaming.
The nurse leans in. "Easy. You’re at Connolly Hospital. You had a nasty bump to the head, but you’re going to be fine.”
I try again, this time with more… just more.
"Where is Clay? Where are my babies?" Something isn’t right. He would never leave me alone in a hospital. He should be sitting beside me, waiting for me to wake up, fingers on my cheek, a reverent grounding touch. Like last time. When I lost the baby. He was there. He never left my side. I manifest his words as my throat thickens with emotion. I hear, “Little deer.” That’s what I should be hearing right now. Where is he?
“Clay.” My voice breaks as a blast of memory hits me—glass exploding, screaming, my babies, the biker, and then Clay… Sir. Then blackness.
"He’s not here… right now." She looks down on me, almost apologetic. I fucking hate her pity. She trails off into the most painful and confusing of pauses.
I try to sit up. "Where are my babies?" I ask, desperate, clawing at the words. "My babies—"
The nurse flinches, and a second nurse appears, summoned by some secret code of distress.
Anger picks at me.
This one is older and, if emotional fatigue had a team, this lady would be the mascot.
She sits on the edge of the bed, her big blue eyes level with an expression of grave necessity. "First things first. You need to breathe," she says.
“Breathe? I am breathing!”
"You took a hit to the head and lost consciousness. We have to take that very seriously, but you’re stable. Now, we need you strong for them, okay?"
Them.
The word is like a knife finding a mark in my heart, in my head, in my abdomen. “I am strong.”
For a moment I can’t process anything beyond panic— my sons. Clay gone. Me—alone.
The younger nurse tries to interject. “You’re fine, you’re fine.” But her voice is too high to be convincing.
My vision tunnels, the edges of the room going fuzzy with pressure and fear. "Where are they?"
The door clicks open.
I snap my gaze up to find a man in a blue uniform standing at the threshold, his belt clanking with objects. A radio. Something that could be a taser. A silvery badge. He is not a henchman. Not a soldier.
Police officer?
The older nurse glances over her shoulder at him, then back at me, smiling oddly.
"Is she clear to move?" he asks, tone flat with practised formality. I hate police officers almost as much as I hate hospitals.
Where. Is. Clay?
The nurses exchange a look of significance, that says everything and nothing, and now I can’t breathe. This is what they do, what they always do, they treat me like a child. Like I can’t handle it. When Clay isn’t present, I’m a ward.
A pretty little burden.
"If you feel ready, you can stand," the older nurse says. "But take it slow."
I’m already swinging my legs out of the bed, ignoring the flare in my muscles.
The dull ache of overuse, of exertion, and trauma.
The hospital gown is stiff and scratchy, and when I look at my arms, they are marred with bruises—shades of blue, purple, and yellow.
I barely notice the cold on my skin or the vertigo threatening to tip me over.
"Where are my babies?" I bark, my hands shaking violently.
The officer’s expression hardens for a second, but he doesn’t approach. "I’m Officer Blackborn. I will escort you to the paediatric ward soon, but there’s something you need to know." He looks at the nurses. “A moment, please.”
My eyes widen.
Unknown fear wraps around my throat.
The nurses hesitate, then obey with a soft nod, leaving the two of us. The moment they’re gone, the room is suddenly freezing cold. All the hairs on my skin rise.
The door whispers shut behind him.
He takes one measured step. "Can you recall anything before losing consciousness?" His gaze dissects my face, searching for bullshit.
My fingers curl into fists at my sides, knuckles whitening.
My jaw locks, teeth grinding against each other as something primal rises in my chest—a need to lunge across the space between us, to force whatever terrible truth he's withholding out into the open.
Just tell me! Stop circling and tell me what's happened to them!
I withhold all that erratic behaviour and tremble; the effort to remain still takes every inch of strength from me. Digging through my brain, I pull up images from today. The ride in the SUV, the world exploding in light and sound, the rush of wind and blood.
"There was an accident," I say, stifling my anger, but frozen with the need to purge it. "Someone hit us."
He nods. "We have a statement from Mr Butcher.”
Clay. I want Clay. "Is he okay?"
“Clay Butcher?”
“Yes!” I bite out.
“He’s alive,” he confirms, tone formal, and for a moment, a tiny moment, a sliver of time, I feel relief spread through my chest, but it's gone as quickly as it blooms because he’s not here. Clay. Is. Not. Here.
“Where is he?”
“He’s”—Blackborn diverts his gaze to the window behind me, then returns his attention—"indisposed.”
I feel numb. "My babies?"
"After the crash, they were brought to paediatrics for observation, but—"
"But what?"
He takes a big breath in and lets it out slow. "They were taken hostage in their room.”
The world shrinks to a pinpoint. Hostage? “I don’t understand.”
“An individual went into their room while the nurses were warming milk. This individual locked the doors.”
I grasp the edge of the bed.
“No, no, no, no,” I chant, feeling the floor tilt.
I release the bed, and back away from that man.
I put space between me and him. I hate his fucking uniform and his useless fucking job!
He is a fucking failure! He failed me! The system failed me.
There was no accountability for me as a child, for our poverty or my mother’s drug problem and suicide.
No accountability when they put me in that foster home with that woman or for my rape.
And now, no accountability for the car pileup or for my babies.
I hate him. I step backwards again, my calves hitting the single seat behind me.
He goes on, “We have the room surrounded, but the perpetrator has stopped communicating with us.”
The officer is talking—I stare at the ground as my vision burns around the edges with hatred.
He says it all so plainly, as if this is not the unravelling of my entire existence.
Of all the good things, one, two, and three—the infinite number!
It’s meant to be infinite! I just started accepting it, accepting that good things can come, keep coming…
I don’t feel the tears until my face is covered in them, and the world is blurring again. I manage to claw four words up from my consciousness. "Who has my babies?"
He takes a single step towards me. "Can you confirm you know a woman by the name of Eleanor Bradfield?”
No.
The car… The car with the squashed insects on the grille—it was Jake’s. It was her.
“Yes.” My head aches.
“We are concerned about the safety of your children. She seemed hostile and extremely volatile. She was talking about her two missing foster boys, something to do with revenge for them. She is claiming that Clay Butcher may know their whereabouts.”
No.
“It’s best you prepare yourself. She was your foster mother, correct? Do you know what she might be referring to? We are hoping you can convince her to update us on the welfare of your children and get her communicating.”
No.
And I drop to my knees, crumbling, legs as useless as I am—this is my fault.
Mine. I invited her into my life, into their lives, all because I wanted to prove I wasn’t a nobody, was worthy of her love.
I moan at the hospital floor, a current of sorrow flooding my face, making the useless man in blue fade.
The room blurs.
My reality trembles.
I close my eyes. I cover my face and ears, blocking everything out, sobbing mindlessly—throaty, painful tears that don’t want to be inside my useless body that failed them. I failed them. Mummy wasn’t close. Mummy didn’t protect you. My three good things: my perfect boys and our life.
Not again.
I see my mum.
Not again.
A bullet in her head.
Not again.
See Benji’s smile.
No, no, no, no.
Sobbing, shutting down, I feel myself losing the fight for resilience. For happiness. For the good things. I recall a time when Clay Butcher asked me what I had tried and failed at. I can answer him now. ‘I failed them, Sir. I failed them.’
My muscles are rigid, my face buried in my hands, my throat clenching as I expel the helpless despair.
The hospital room dissolves.
It’s quiet in my mind, inside a memory of a caravan.
Of a little girl hiding behind a wall, peering around at the same police officer who comes by every Tuesday at midday.
She is talking to my mum, who sways in place, hungover and frail.
I look down—I’m the little girl, wearing one kitten slipper.
The other is lost. Which means I must be around four or five.
I remember them, remember stuffing both feet into the solo slipper and hopping on one leg, making a game.
Yes, I must be five.
“Get it together. Snap out of it, Ashlee.”
My mum nods. “Okay.”
“Do it for your daughter,” the officer says.
“I will.”
I smile because Mum said she will. Yes! Maybe today we can make a fairy garden. She can be so much fun when she is happy.
My mum closes the door and stumbles to the top drawer in the kitchen. The cutlery drawer. I am about to walk out of my hiding spot when she pulls out the magic knife. The one I’m not allowed to see her use.
I freeze mid-step.
She slides down the cupboard, hitting the vinyl floor, slouched out of view. I see only her bare feet peeking out from around the counter. I hear her breath catch, then her toes curl in tight.
I blink.
Snap out of it.
The officer said.
Snap out of it.
For her.
For me, Mummy.
For them.
I lift my head.
Snap out of it, Fawn.
Back in the hospital room, I’m surrounded by three nurses and two officers, all giving me space but sharing gentle words I can’t hear. Don’t need to. There is nothing they can say, no words of support. They don’t know me.
My palms meet the floor. I pant, catching my breath, and push to my feet. Dragging in air like it’s hot and harsh and sharp, I growl, “Take me to Eleanor.”