Ryker
Freddie lies in the hospital bed with a mask over his nose and mouth. His lips are pinched shut, and air wheezes in and out of his flaring nostrils. He’s conscious now, although his eyes are shut—scrunched shut—and deep wrinkles mar his brow as he grimaces.
The doctor listens to his chest, before nodding more to himself than Freddie.
He’s content with the crackle and pop Freddie’s lungs make as he breathes.
He’s wheezing less than when he first got brought in, and he did manage a few words to the doctors, but he hasn’t opened his eyes.
The doctor lifted his lids forcefully to take a look, and again, nodded at his findings, but Freddie recoiled from him with a curse.
I darted a panicked look at the doctor, but he replied that smoke inhalation often affects the nose, mouth, and eyes.
I knew that, of course I did, but still, Freddie in too much discomfort to open his eyes is getting to me. I’ve dimmed the lights in his cubicle in case he wants to try again at some point, and I’ve told him there’s no rush, but I’m desperate to look into his blue eyes.
The hollow of Freddie’s throat sucks in, and his nostrils are wide beneath the plastic mask.
It looks like he’s trying to fend off a sneeze, but he’s actually fighting the urge to cough again.
The doctor gives him a knowing look that slides towards frustration.
Freddie doesn’t see it, but I do, and I glare.
I’m not Liam, though. I can’t make strangers drop to the floor and show their bellies.
“If your body is telling you to cough, you need to cough.”
Freddie’s fingers tighten into the sheet when he does.
It hurts him. He’s hoping small, from the back of the throat coughs will help, but he struggles to keep hold of the control then gives in to the harsh expel of air.
They come out in a volley that bends him at the waist, lifting the back of his head from his pillow.
His dry throat tears at the breath, snagging and ripping, and the accompanying whimper cuts into my heart.
“It’s okay, babe.” I put my hand over his and he releases the sheet, then stretches out his fingers for mine to slot through. I squeeze him, then the doctor leaves, and we sit like that for hours with the nurses and doctors occasionally checking in.
Liam doesn’t.
I need to wrangle my wayward brother, but I don’t want to leave Freddie on his own.
He’s sleeping now, or at least I think he is.
That or the painkillers being fed via drip into his arm are finally taking effect.
His brow has relaxed, but I can still see the creases where he’d been frowning in pain, as if he was concentrating on it.
His eyelids are red; his lashes poke out from swollen skin.
I want to put a damp towel over them, soothe them, and I’m about to hit Freddie’s buzzer for the nurse, to ask for one, but then he speaks.
“Where’s Liam?”
It’s my turn to scrunch my eyes and grimace. “He’s on his way . . .”
Freddie moves his free hand from his stomach to the top of his chest. I eye it suspiciously but don’t say anything. Thirty seconds later Freddie’s wandering hand rests against his throat, then finally his mask. I hold it to his face before he pulls it off.
“The doc says you need to keep that on.”
Freddie’s hand falls back to the bed with a dramatic thud.
“Liam called me,” Freddie says. “He . . . he told me to get to the window, to shout your name.”
“Hush,” I say. “Concentrate on breathing.”
When I’d opened the window, the smog inside had limited all visibility.
The lights had still been working, but they’d given the canteen an eerie glow, like the haze of a snowstorm.
If Freddie hadn’t been crumpled in a heap by the window, I would’ve struggled to find him.
My back twinges, and I sit upright where I’ve started to slump.
That damn window.
It was the shock of seeing Freddie unconscious that led to me losing my grip. It swung shut on my tank, knocking the metal canister into my spine. I caught my hip on the window frame too, and that was a sharper pain than my back, which has throbbed ever since the adrenaline faded.
“Find him,” Freddie says.
“I told you, he’s on his way—”
“Find him.”
I sigh, because of course Freddie sees through my bullshit.
“I’m not leaving you on your own.”
Freddie twitches his eyebrows. “Needs you.”
“He knows where I am,” I snap. “If he needs me, he’ll come here where you need us.”
“Ryker . . .” Freddie murmurs.
I sag in my chair. “Okay. In a bit, yeah?”
Freddie nods.
In the end, I don’t need to search for my brother. He yanks open the curtain around us and I’m confronted with his emotionally dead face. Oh boy, that’s not good.
“Where the hell have you been?”
Liam holds up his notepad and pen in reply. He doesn’t ask how Freddie is, but he takes a long hard look at him. His default expression of unbothered doesn’t change, there’s no twitch or softening of his eyes for the man he loves lying injured in the bed.
“The doctor has updated me,” he says, which means we don’t need to.
Which also means we should keep our mouths shut until he asks us something.
My brother is spiralling. He doesn’t lash out, he goes cold, distant, and acts like the people he loves most don’t matter.
It’s a defence mechanism. He’s pushed countless people away, but it’s never worked on me or Freddie because we both know the truth.
Sometimes it hurts him to care too much. He’s scared. He’s still scared despite Freddie lying awake beside me.
“Freddie told me you got him on the phone,” I try. “You told him to get to the window, shout my name.”
The look Liam gives me could turn gods to stone let alone mere mortals, but I endure the death glare. “It’s hardly relevant.”
“Hardly relevant? Freddie might have died without you—”
Freddie squeezes my hand, and at first I curse myself, thinking my mentioning of his close call has brought it all back, but then beneath his mask, I make out the word, “Don’t,” and it’s not for his sake, but for Liam’s.
I look at my brother, and he’s not looking back.
He stares at the end of Freddie’s bed, clicking his pen like his life depends on it.
He doesn’t have nervous tics. I make inappropriate jokes, Freddie fiddles with the leg of his jeans, but Liam appears calm, or he has done until now.
It’s my fault. He doesn’t want praise, he doesn’t want me to tell him he helped save Freddie’s life, he wants control, and by making him think about what happened, it slides away from him.
He needs his job right now, and that’s what the pen and pad signify. It’s the after. The solving of a case. What he’s good at, what he knows he’s good at.
“Do you want to ask us some questions?” I ask.
Liam stops clicking the pen. “Yes. You arrived on scene at twelve fifteen.”
“That’s right.”
“What were your initial thoughts?”
Thank fuck Freddie’s car wasn’t in the car park, but that’s not what Liam wants to hear.
“It didn’t look so bad from the outside.
Two windows at either end of the building were ajar with smoke pouring out, but no sign of any flames.
Martin noticed the energy drinks . . . and there were sweets too, unopened ones. ”
“That struck you as strange?”
“What kid leaves a packet of unopened jelly beans. They were M&S branded.” I check on Freddie. He’s frowning with his eyes closed again. “I don’t know, why would kids get sweets at M&S rather than cheap ones from the pound shop a street away?”
“Was that the only unusual thing you noticed?”
“We could smell petrol. The film on the windows began to blister and melt, and then we saw the true extent of the damage to the ground floor. It was more advanced than we first thought, and we used both hoses, one either end of the building, but the catches holding the windows open melted under the velocity. They swung shut. Darren made the call to break the windows to put out the fire.” I grimace. “We didn’t know anyone was in there.”
Freddie’s eyes peel open to slits, flashing me a sliver of blue. He squeezes my hand.
Liam clears his throat. “I need to ask you a few questions too.”
The “you” he’s referring to is Freddie. He must be bad if he can’t even say his name or look in his direction.
“Okay,” Freddie says, then he tries to remove his mask.
I stop him. “Ah, that stays on. We can hear you just fine.”
Liam stares at the nib of his pen on the notepad rather than Freddie. Apart from the first long look he gave Freddie when he stepped into the cubicle, he’s not looked at him since.
“You were sleeping at Hunter Healthcare?”
Freddie sighs. “Yes. I didn’t know where else to go.”
“Did you hear anything suspicious? This could be hours earlier. A crash, a thump, footsteps, kids laughing, or a car or cars outside?”
“No. I didn’t hear anything.”
Liam nods. “You thought you might lose your job, why was that?”
Freddie opens his eyes a little wider. “I . . . I skipped a step on one of the processes, wrote in the logbook I’d completed something before I had.”
Liam’s pen rests on the page but he doesn’t write anything down. He doesn’t say anything, compelling Freddie to say more.
“The last six months there’s been a few firings.
When I ran into one of my ex-colleagues, Andy, he told me why Stephen had let him go.
He told me he’d been caught on CCTV incorrectly documenting a process.
He blamed me for it. The same happened to someone else.
They’re small errors, mainly due to SOPs needing updating.
They don’t affect the product, but you can lose your job over them. ”
“How many people has Stephen fired in the last six months?”
“Five.” Freddie coughs weakly. “I think.”
“You thought you’d be number six?”
Freddie shrugs. “I made the same errors. But a few days ago I asked Stephen outright, and he told me he had no plans to fire me.”
“And how did he seem when he told you that?”