Chapter 17
SEVENTEEN
‘Ruth, Ruth, wake up,’ I vaguely heard someone shouting loudly, their voice pulling me out of a hazy slumber as my heart was repeatedly punching the inside of my chest. I stirred, disoriented, struggling to separate dream from reality.
A tall, slim figure loomed over me, faintly illuminated by the tiny glow of a phone torch.
The figure shook me again, more insistently now, but I still couldn’t make out who it was through my blurry vision and the tiny glow shining in my eyes. It was almost heavenly.
‘Jesus? Is that you?’
‘Ruth, be serious, come on and stop being stupid, you need to get up,’ the voice replied.
Damn, Jesus was mean.
‘What?’ I mumbled groggily, my voice still croaky and thick with sleep.
‘What’s going on? What’s happening?’ I pushed myself upright, realising I’d fallen asleep at the desk with my noggin cradled in the makeshift cushion of my arms. My vision was still foggy, but as I repeatedly blinked, it began to clear.
I recognised Bill standing there, dressed in the most hideous pair of pyjamas I had ever seen, burgundy and white stripes.
Urgh. The sight alone was enough to make a woman retch.
He looked like some kind of Christmas humbug.
‘Ruth, Ben isn’t well. I need you to drive us to A I had seen many faces like hers before.
The guy in front of me mumbled something under his breath to her, which to me sounded a like, It’s been up for more than four hours, before she curtly told him to take a seat. Then I was next in line.
‘Hi, my… friend, best friend…’ I paused, feeling just ‘friend’ was far too casual. ‘… just came in here with his partner while I was parking. His name is Ben, Ben Murphy. I don’t suppose you’d know where he is?’
She drew in a breath before a short snort, as if she was sizing me up, weighing the worth of my words.
I realised the purple hoodie I had frantically grabbed in my scramble to get out of the door was one that had ‘Trauma Queen’ plastered over it, which may not be helping my case.
Mind you, I’m sure A not that he ever looked overjoyed to see me, but I was hoping he would show at least some sign of relief that I had found him in the labyrinthine corridors of the hospital.
‘What happened? How did he fall?’ I asked, peering into the room, trying to catch a glimpse of Ben through the glazed window but failing to ascertain the real severity of the situation.
‘He just fell,’ Bill replied, impassive and detached, his eyes still locked on the small, smudged portal into the hospital room.
‘Weird. So, he wasn’t feeling ill or nauseous or anything like that?’ I asked.
‘He just fell, Ruth,’ Bill repeated firmly, his eyes bulging a little and his jaw clenching.
‘Fine, fine. Forget I asked,’ I said, trying to sound unfazed as I turned away from him and dropped into one of the barbarically uncomfortable chairs in the sterically lit hospital corridor.
I watched the tense lines on Bill’s face begin to gradually thaw as I tried to find some kind of seating position that didn’t make me feel like I was about to slip right off and onto the floor that had probably seen litres of blood spilled onto it.
‘Thank you for driving us,’ Bill said eventually, surprising me with what sounded like an actual attempt at gratitude. ‘I’m just… stressed. This whole situation is stressful.’
I gave a thumbs-up as a response. I was far too exhausted to navigate the landmine-infested field that was talking to Bill at the best of times.
‘And I shouldn’t have asked you to leave,’ he continued, not making eye contact with me. ‘I wanted to say that to your face too. I really thought I was doing Ben a favour with everything going on with him, but clearly, I wasn’t.’
‘It’s fine,’ I replied somewhat aloof but attempting to be poised.
I tried not to be completely imperious, he was expressing some kind of regret to me, after all, although falling short of an actual apology.
Not sure exactly what he meant, though. Why did he think he was helping Ben by kicking me out and what exactly did he have on?
He turned and slumped his body into the seat next to me. From the way he tried to shift his body, he was finding it as obnoxiously uncomfortable as I did.
‘But yeah, thanks for not killing us on the way here,’ he said wryly.
‘Oh, you’re quite welcome. I did think about driving us into the Thames but decided against it this time.’
‘You might have done me a favour,’ he responded, scoffingly.
Were Bill and I having a moment? Even though he was his usual self, dripping with sarcasm and lacing his dry cruelty as banter, it felt like he was being just the tiniest bit softer towards me.
‘You know – and I don’t really expect you to care,’ he said, starting up the conversation again – ‘but Ben and I were meant to celebrate our anniversary tonight.’
‘No way,’ I said, forgetting for a brief moment that to Ben, Bill was my replacement. I knew I shouldn’t have expressed any kind of sympathy for his cancelled celebrations, but I still felt a little bit bad. ‘You should have said. I mean, what happened?’
‘I had to work, or I guess I chose to work, anyway, Ben got really mad. I mean, did you not wonder why I went straight up to bed without a word?’
‘I just thought maybe you were feeling tired,’ I admitted, trying to spare him the embarrassment of knowing I’d overheard the EastEnders-style shouting match from the shed.
‘I didn’t realise you two were upset with each other.
I thought maybe he had just found your cigarettes again. Did you really have to work?’
‘No,’ Bill muttered, a little softly, almost repentant with the way that he bowed his head as he said it.
From what I could tell, Bill’s second job wasn’t really about the extra money.
Between software engineering and private equity, I imagined the two of them were hardly struggling to pay a mortgage, even in London.
So why he kept vanishing at odd hours and coming home smelling of weird ointments was still beyond me.
I still kept coming back to stripper. I could see people going crazy for Ben.
I couldn’t stop myself from asking what I said next. Maybe it was the flutter of camaraderie Bill was showing me, or maybe I was still bitter about him trying to boot me out of the shed.
‘How many years?’
‘What?’
‘How many years were you celebrating?’
He harrumphed. It was stupid of me to ask, and he was wise enough not to answer.