Walking in Darkness

‘Thanks,’ he said, taking it, but she didn’t let go.

Her eyes held on his face. ‘If you don’t send it back in perfect condition I’ll come after you with a hatchet.’

Steve had thought her a bit crazy when he first saw her earlier tonight, but she grew on you. Smiling he said, ‘I believe you would! Don’t worry, I’ll look after it like a mother.’

Sophie saw Dr de Silva at nine o’clock next morning and was told she could go home at once. ‘No problems in the X-rays, just a few bruises, and you were in shock at first, but you’re quite stable now.’ He smiled, a short, sturdy man whose natural expression was cheerful energy, but who this morning had dark circles of weariness under his eyes because he had been up half the night dealing with emergency cases, and a hungry look, as if he never got enough to eat or enough sleep.

‘And we need the bed,’ he told her with a faint touch of humour, then took a sharper look at her pale face. ‘You feel OK, don’t you?’ he demanded.

She nodded. ‘I’m fine, thanks, Doctor. Everyone has been very kind, thank you.’ Her voice was polite but although she smiled at him there was a blankness about her face that made him frown.

‘Is there anyone at home to take care of you??

?

‘A friend, we share an apartment, and she works at home.’

He cheered up. ‘That’s great. OK, then. Get in touch if you have any serious headaches. That’s the only thing to worry about. You did hit your head when you fell, but there seems to be no damage, so you probably have nothing to worry about.’

When he had gone Sophie rang the apartment but nobody answered the phone. Lilli might be out shopping, or might be on her way here. A plump black nurse, who had just begun the day shift and did not know her, brought her clothes, and Sophie got dressed while her bed was being stripped of the used bedclothes, and the plastic mattress was washed with disinfectant.

Sophie tried to ring Lilli again. Still no reply. She stood by the window, looking out at the high buildings opposite. The sky was lit with a chilly winter sunlight, but there was a lowering cloud hanging around looking as if it might pour rain down on them any minute. Sophie felt depression hanging around inside her; she wished to God she was back in Prague. She had not felt homesick all the time she was in London and Paris. She had been too excited and too busy. Oh, God, why did I go back to Prague before I came here to New York? Why did I have to go down to the village to see Mamma? If only I hadn’t gone home that time. I wouldn’t feel this way now.

She got hold of herself, choking down an aching need to cry. Instead, she looked round at the nurse who was dumping the bedlinen in a big wheeled basket.

‘Nurse, I’d like . . . would it be OK . . .? I’d like to visit the other woman who came in with me . . . would I be allowed to see her?’

‘Is she on this ward?’

‘I don’t know – she was more badly injured than me.’

The nurse looked dubious but shrugged. ‘I don’t know if they’ll be letting her have visitors if she had an operation last night. It takes a while for anaesthetic to wear off. But you can try. Come on, I’ll show you where to find her.’

She took Sophie to the waiting-room and left her sitting on a soft-seated chair, surrounded by soothing pale pink walls, meant to sedate the anxious into a trance, with a pile of old magazines on the central table in the room. The other people waiting looked up and stared without smiling. Some of them had the look of people who have been waiting hopelessly for a very long time; their eyes were almost dead with misery and fear. Were any of them relations of the woman she had sent plunging off the edge of the subway platform? Guilt made her stomach clench.

The door opened again and the black nurse beckoned to her. Sophie hurried out of the room. A small, thin, sharp-faced woman in white stood beside the nurse. Her grey eyes stabbed Sophie’s face. ‘You want to see Mrs Rogers? She’s under sedation, sleeping, but you can take a peep at her, so long as you don’t disturb her.’

‘Is she going to be OK?’ Sophie asked unsteadily, crossing her fingers.

‘It will take time, and she’s going to have a lot of pain,’ she was told sternly. ‘But with good nursing, yes, she will recover fully.’

She led the way to a room further along the corridor, opened the door and gestured. Sophie stood just inside the room. The blinds were down and the room was shadowy with pale, wintry morning light. There was just one bed; in it lay an unmoving figure, the head capped by bandages, making her face oddly mask-like, a pale, drawn set of features that expressed no character at all. Eyes closed, nose pinched, mouth pale and closed. It could be anyone. The bedclothes were draped over a support to raise them above her broken leg. Both arms were stiffly encased, and under the white hospital robe she wore Sophie could see thick bandages around her ribs.

‘I’m sorry, you have to go now,’ said the ward sister, and Sophie looked round at her, eyes blurred with unshed tears, wanting to sob out loud but holding back.

‘Please . . .’ Her voice was low and shaky. ‘Please, when she wakes up, will you tell her . . . I’m so sorry, really sorry . . . it was an accident, I just grabbed at her to stop myself falling, I would never have wanted her to get hurt.’

‘Sure,’ said the sister with more warmth. ‘Sure, she’ll understand . . . accidents will happen, and look, she will get better, you know, she isn’t going to die.’

It didn’t help Sophie to know that; she could see how much pain the other woman was going to be in and she wished there was something she could do to help her.

She walked heavily back to her own room and with a jerk of shock saw Steve Colbourne talking to the sister. At the sound of her footsteps they both turned to stare at her; Steve looked drawn and pale but as he saw her his eyes flashed with sudden rage.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ he broke out in a rough, harsh voice.

Sophie didn’t like being yelled at by a man she had only met yesterday. Especially in front of the sister and a couple of strange men in white coats who were walking past at that second and stared curiously at them. She glared at Steve, bristling with resentment.

‘I went to visit the woman who fell under the train. Not that it is any of your business! And don’t you shout at me, either. Why don’t you go away? Why are you here, anyway?’ Why did he keep turning up? He knew something – what? How was he involved?