Chapter 53 After
After
Frankie wakes to the sight of a soft-featured nurse changing her drip bag, the glistening liquid inside filled with glittering bubbles that refract like jewels in the hospital light. All of that liquid, she notes, will soon be traveling into her aching body through a thin plastic tube.
That string of thoughts alone, disjointed and beautiful, is enough to tell Frankie that the drugs Simon flooded her body with have still not fully flushed through her system yet.
The nurse offers to get her some breakfast. Frankie’s stomach gurgles loudly, her last meal having been before heading to Matt’s house on Sunday afternoon. That meal, along with everything Simon drugged her with, was pumped from her body as soon as she reached the hospital.
There is a swell of guilt over Matt, when her thoughts land on him. That she had been so sure he had Anna, so sure that she had sent DI Cobham to his house, granted it was to his renovation house, not his actual home, but still. She had been so sure when she’d sent that email.
Frankie shifts in the bed, feeling having returned to her now, but with feeling came the ache of her bruises, the throb of her head, and the excruciating kidney and muscle pain the overdose Simon had given her had caused.
Frankie recalls DI Cobham visiting her hospital room the previous evening, at least a portion of it; he had questions that were time-sensitive to the case.
She gave him the passcodes for the stored cat camera videos on her online account, he called it in, then sat and talked her through the events of Monday morning.
They had broken Matt’s renovation house’s front door. He of course had not been there but oblivious in his own home. They had found the cinema room and two empty unrenovated bathrooms. They had begun to spread out and search the neighboring buildings.
Screams were heard coming from a house two down from 65 Locksheath Road. Entry was forced and Simon had been apprehended; Anna was safe but in hospital.
Frankie had asked if Anna had been taken to the same hospital as her but DI Cobham was not at liberty to tell her.
But Frankie feels a rush of vindication, like no other, a burst of joyful relief that stays with her because she finally knows Anna is safe, that everything that occurred over the last eight days was worth it, that she hadn’t gone mad, that she wasn’t alone, that Anna is free.
Some of the things DI Cobham has told her are lost to Frankie’s mind for now, a soupy mixture of swirling images.
Pam had come, at some point. Arabella too, flowing with apologies and promises for the future.
And Aoife, with her driver, carrying a display of flowers larger than the bedside unit would allow, forcing Aoife to position them in an area that blocked a large section of the view from the wide fifth-floor window of her room.
She held Frankie’s hand; she told Frankie what they had done when they found her, and though Frankie slipped in and out of following her words, she felt held by them.
She was asleep when Matt visited; they told her when she woke. It was probably best, she thought, as she had too many things to say and nowhere near the focus to say them yet.
Frankie takes in her flowers again, the sunlight glowing through their bright tropical petals, and beyond them summertime London, sprawling in heat haze, and she feels at home. For the first time in a long time, Frankie feels held by other people.
There is a knock at the door.
A woman with a bruised face tentatively looks in, her posture tall, proud, her hair cut unevenly.
“Hi,” she says, her voice clear and unbroken, her eyes full of love.
Frankie shifts up in bed, the pain sharp but unimportant. “Hi,” Frankie croaks, the lining of her throat stripped from the tubing and medication.
“Can I come in?” the woman asks.
Frankie acquiesces, words momentarily failing her as emotion surges up inside her fast and strong; she fumbles back her hospital sheets, the other woman already moving to meet her.
The two of them wordlessly rush to each other, their bare feet on the cool hospital flooring. They embrace, silently, tightly, shuddering relief and effervescent joy bubbling between them.
What they feel is beyond the words they currently have, as they hold each other, safely encased in a tangle of hospital wires, in a maze of corridors, in a city of people.