Liberation (I Am Margaret Book 3) (15 page)

Eventually he caught me watching.

“It’s okay, Margo. Whether his pulse is elevated or depressed gives some idea of how he’s doing, that’s all. We’ll be at the harbour in a quarter of an hour, now.”

Oh, thank you Lord that we decided to work our way around the Italian coast for these carbon copy raids, rather than striking inland
. And we were fairly near the bottom of Italy, so the trip back to Gozo would be comparatively quick.
Hang on, Bane... Hang on...

Everything became one long, lurching, endless nightmare.
Hang on, Bane
.
Hang on, Bane
. Glimpses over the tailgate. The Forest was gone. We drove along a coast road.
Hang on, Bane
. Cliffs rose on either side of the road behind us.
Hang on, Bane
. We pulled to a halt. The guys leapt out...

“I want him strapped down on this stretcher before we move him again,” Fox Two was saying. “Let’s just slide him over –
keep him straight
– one, two, three...
Right
.”

The stretcher was passed carefully down, Bane still unconscious like a huge doll. The blood was black and wet in the moonlight.

“Keep him straight?” Fox Two’s words belatedly filtered into my brain as they carried him to the single speedboat waiting discretely hidden by the jetty in case of such a disaster. “Why?”

Fox Two glanced my way, the stretcher safely settled along the seats.

“Oh... s’just, the bullet hasn’t come out. Takes some bone density to stop a round of that calibre – it could be lodged in his spine. Best not bend him around like a corkscrew until the thing’s been located and removed, hmm?”

Another wave of iciness swept over me. But he’d made it to the bushes, with help... So just a precaution, right?

“Brown Bird, Gecko, Fox Two, onto Speedy One,” said Sister Krayj, “The rest of you – I’ll let Speedy Two know we need pick up ASAP – I want volunteers to wait here with me for that – lighten the load.”

Everyone else immediately volunteered to wait. They got down behind some rocks and the boatman – Raphael? – began to cast off. As the speedboat leapt forward towards the open ocean the truck was manoeuvring in behind some sort of harbour shack and a large pile of fishing equipment. Oh... trying to hide. Speedy Two – waiting out of sight of shore – could be half an hour away, even if they opened the throttle all the way – the boat for the truck – waiting even further off, out of range of shore radar – could be an hour away, easily. Waiting was dangerous...

“We should take them all with us,” I said hoarsely to Raphael.

He just opened the throttle wider and nodded towards Bane.

“Your boy needs a doctor.”

Bane looked so ghastly in the moonlight the seventeen other people dropped out of my mind like a brick in the ocean. I sat beside him and held his hand as we raced along – even that was tacky with drying blood. Fox Two looked grimmer and grimmer, and my heart beat harder and harder, pounding against the walls of a chest that already felt crushed.

“It’s going to be okay, Margo.” Kyle was rubbing my back. “S’going to be okay...”

Fox Two shot him a look as though he wasn’t sure this was a good thing to promise...
No, Lord, please? Please
... Things slid into a haze of screaming engines, jouncing boat and Bane’s pale, pale face, cheek jammed against the seats, unable to hear me...

Bane, Bane, Bane, please hang on, please...

Lord? Please, please...

“Gozo.”

Raphael’s voice jerked me from my daze. How long had we been travelling? There... A black speck on the dark horizon. I stared and stared at it as though the sheer force of my gaze could draw it closer...

Then we were in the harbour and Raphael was slewing the boat around and cutting the engine and letting it come to rest against the jetty, which was lit up by the headlights of several jeeps…
Yes, oh yes
, the entire Citadel medical staff... a team of Swiss Guards...
yes, yes, quick
...

I scrambled desperately after them as Bane’s stretcher was rushed away, trying not to be left behind. My legs were like rubber – I couldn’t seem to walk in a straight line. After running – shambling – the length of the jetty my head dissolved, my legs disappeared all at once, and I found myself kneeling on the boards, clutching a post to stay upright – Bane was being carried towards a waiting jeep...

Try to get up, or crawl?

“Margo, are you okay?” Kyle.

“Fine. Fine...
Bane
...”

“Right.” He crouched in front of me, presenting his back. “Climb on, then...”

I shifted my grip from the post to his shoulders and climbed aboard, flinching as my chest pressed against his back. Definitely something wrong with my chest.

Where was Bane?

“We have to get in the next jeep, Margo,” Kyle was telling me. “There’s not space in that one. Don’t worry, we’ll be right behind them.”

He unloaded me carefully into the back of a vehicle – I swayed, leant against the back rest and gasped in pain – my back was no better.

“Is she all right?” A familiarly flat voice from beside me. Apparently I looked as out of it as I felt.

“I’m guessing her ribs have taken a hell of a pounding, but she’s only got one small hole.” Kyle squeezed in on my other side. “You’d better keep away from me for a bit or I may just kiss you on each cheek for insisting on that thing.”

“I wish we had one for all of you. But they’ve never been standard issue for the guards.”

“Yeah, well, they cost a fortune, don’t they?”

“It’s not the cost, they’ve just never been necessary. I wonder if we could find a warehouse and nick some – put it on the tab as well...”

I tuned out again, eyes fixed on the jeep in front.

When Kyle arrived at the medical wing, panting, with me on his back again, Sister Mari and a pale-faced Jon stood outside the door of the little operating room. The basics we’d arrived with had been gradually supplemented by shipments from Africa, thank God and Eduardo’s foresight, so by now we had a thoroughly equipped medical centre.

“Who’s that?” Jon’s nose twitched, foiled by all the blood and dirt.

“Margo and Deacon Kyle,” said Sister Mari.

“Where’s Bane?” I gasped. Pressed to Kyle’s back like this, breathing was a serious problem.

Jon hurried towards my voice, in comfort or to fend me away from the door?

“They’re operating, Margo, we have to wait out here for a bit. The bullet is still in there and they have to get it out and get the wound all closed up and everything. It’s in a tricky position by the spine so they’re going to have to be very careful – could take some time.”
Information
, bless you, Jon...

Jon’s hand found Kyle’s stubbly chin.

“Margo? Where are you?”

“On my back. Where’s a chair... ah, good.” Kyle lowered me carefully into it; I rested my elbows on my knees, fighting for breath.

“Is she hurt?
Margo
? Are you hurt?” Jon was at my shoulder at once.

“Fine,” I managed.

“One minor bullet hole and bruised or cracked ribs,” Kyle told Jon. “She took four bullets to that vest, thank God the thing worked.”

“Oh, praise the Lord!” Face paling even more, Jon knelt in front of me and found my hands, pressing them gently. “You’re okay?”

“Oh, for pity’s sake!” I wheezed. “Bane’s in there fighting for his... for his... and Father Mark’s lying back there with a... with a bullet... and all you lot can do is ask
me
if
I’m
okay!”

Jon went on rubbing my hands soothingly.

“Yes, but there’s nothing we can do for them right now, is there? Shall we get that vest off, you might breathe better...”

I shrugged off my holey jacket and tried to reach the Velcro – a stab of pain from my arm surprised a gasp from me.

“I’ll get it...” Jon peeled off the straps, but let Kyle ease the thing off to avoid knocking me with it – and I could in fact breathe a little better.

“Where’s Bane? Aren’t they finished yet?”

“Margo, they’ve been in there ten minutes, I expect they’ve hardly started.”

“Oh my.” Kyle was pale under his camo paint as he picked at the twisted lumps of metal imbedded in the vest. “Oh my, you said it, Jon,
praise the Lord
! Have a feel at this...”

Jon accepted the vest from Kyle, his face losing even more colour as he worked out what he was feeling.

“Bane, Bane, Bane, Bane...” I whispered, my knees jiggling up and down despite the pain it caused my chest.

Jon put the vest to one side.

“Margo, we could be here a while, please try to calm down.” His hand went to my shoulder, rubbing soothingly again. I wanted a hug, but was afraid it would hurt too much. He clearly feared the same.

Eduardo arrived then, with Fox Two, who asked at once, “How’s Cuckoo?”

Jon told him in pretty much the same words he’d told us.

“What happened?” asked Eduardo, then.

“Broadly speaking?” said Kyle. “Fox Two will have told you as well as I can. The specifics... I can’t tell you.”

“Only three people can and one’s dead, one’s unconscious and the other...” Fox Two shot a look at me, still whispering and jiggling despite Jon’s best hugless efforts.

“Oh come on,” protested Kyle, “leave her alone, it’s not urgent now, is it? Wait, are the other teams okay? Do you know yet?”

“The other teams are all fine,” said Eduardo. “Went like clockwork, like normal. Just one Facility Commandant who used his initiative.”

And Father Mark’s dog collar would go some way to console the cunning bastard for his failure to wipe us all out.

Father Mark’s peaceful face, that tiny hole – but so much blood – his eyes had been closed
...

I leant forward and threw up. Tried to mumble an apology and burst into tears.

Jon put his arms around me at last, very carefully.

Kyle hovered anxiously.

“Is there a single nurse or
anything
who isn’t helping with Bane?”

“Don’t you dare!” I hiccoughed fiercely, “Don’t you dare take anyone away from Bane!”

“It’s okay,” spoke up Sister Mari. “I’ve helped in hospitals back home in Africa. Let’s take her into one of the side rooms where she’ll be more comfortable...”

“I’m staying right here!”

“They could be several hours, Margo...” Jon gently eased me to my feet with Kyle’s help. “Come on in here for a few minutes at least...”

Sister Mari no nonsensely dispatched Fox Two for a washbowl, Kyle for some clean clothes from my room and Eduardo for a hot sugary drink and some chocolate. When they came back she turned them all out except for Jon and peeled me out of my gory clothes.

Oh, that’s why it hurt
... The bruises were developing already, huge and extensive – the two shots that had hit near the centre had actually driven my buttons through my skin. Sister Mari prised them out and smeared the raw circles with antiseptic, then had me washed and in clean clothes, the hot drink poured down my throat and seated in an armchair eating chocolate in the space of a quarter an hour.

I actually felt slightly better.

“How are they doing?” I asked Jon for maybe the fiftieth time.

“I’ll ask.” Patiently, Jon left the corner he’d retreated into throughout all this – his equivalent of turning his back – opened the door a crack and passed the question on. “Still no news,” he reported. “That’s good, y’know.”

Translation: Bane hasn’t died.

My stomach threatened to reject the chocolate.

***+***

13

DEAD MEAT

I hurtled out of the circle of Jon’s arms as a door opened out in the corridor – stood for a moment, bent over and bracing myself against the wall, waiting for the pain to subside.

Good enough... I yanked the door open and tottered through. The two nurses were just wheeling a trolley into a side room.

“Bane?
Bane?
”

“He’s still unconscious,” said Doctor Frederick soberly, following as I hurried into the room. “Will be for a while...” His voice became a vague sound in the background – I’d seen Bane.

So pale. So still. A monitor beeped on the side of the bed. Steadily but with a certain deficit of enthusiasm.
Come on, Bane, hang in there
...

The nurses briskly connected up fresh bags to needle things in his arm – one of blood, one of fluid? I sat on the tube-free side of the bed and took his hand gently. He was clean and they’d put him in some sort of medical gown.
I’d have done that
... But, no. I wasn’t his wife yet, so it was the nurses’ job.

I stroked the hair back from his white face. An oxygen tube was hooked under his nose. I bent to kiss his cheek – no reaction, of course. If only he’d open his eyes and be okay...

After a while Jon appeared on the other side of the bed.

“Be careful, Jon, there are tubes and things over there…”

Oh, Doctor Frederick was gone...

“Jon? What did the doctor say? I couldn’t... I couldn’t take it in...”

“Oh...” Very carefully, Jon felt his way around the bed. My heart sunk further with every step he took and I eased off the bed, staring at his strained face.
Not good
...

He found my hand, gave what was clearly supposed to be a reassuring squeeze.

“Well, he said...” he paused. Simply trying to summarise what Doctor Frederick
had
said or choosing his words? “He said...” He squeezed my hand again. “He said Bane’s got a chance.”

The carefully chosen words sunk in slowly.

Bane only had a
chance
?

Nothing about making a good recovery. Not even a
good
chance. Only...
a chance
.

I sat on the bed again with a bump. Muttered, “Sorry, Bane.” But he hadn’t felt it. Too deeply unconscious. Would I ever see his brown eyes open again? Hear his voice? Ever again?

Jon was draping a blanket around me... oh, I was trembling. He put an arm around me and I leant into his comforting warmth. The whole world was shades of cold and grey.

“I thought if we could get him here, he’d be okay...”

“Did you?”

“I hoped.”

“Well, he may well be. He’s a fighter, you know that.”

“Yes...”

Second dragged eternally after second, minutes were whole hours, hours were days as I knelt by Bane’s bed. Sufficiently restored by Sister Mari’s attentions for prayers of more than two syllables, I begged ineloquently but fervently for Bane’s life. And begged. And begged.

After a few hours – days? – passed and the monitor was still beeping, I began to see how lacking my prayers were. I’d always tried to finish with that best and most beautiful prayer, ‘or your will, Lord,’ but now, now I couldn’t. Not with this.

The Lord always brought good out of evil. The Lord always had our best interests at heart. But right now I couldn’t care about that. There was only one thing I wanted, whether in my best interest or not – though surely it was, I couldn’t believe otherwise...

I just wanted Bane to live.

Even in the Facility I’d managed to surrender myself to God’s will. But I couldn’t surrender Bane. Perhaps it was a lack of trust in God. It felt like it. Jon knelt beside me, hands resting on the bed and forehead touching them. Was he doing any better?

Please, Lord, let Bane live...

Please, Lord, let Bane live...

Please, Lord...

...I woke with a start, my heart pounding in sudden panic and my ears straining...

Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.

I relaxed.
Gratias Domine
.

I was lying on the bed beside Bane, a blanket tucked over me. Jon must’ve put me there. My ear against the mattress had muffled that precious sound. Was it a little less tentative, or was that just wishful thinking?

Bane still looked so white. Jon was asleep in an armchair. How could I have fallen asleep? How could Jon have fallen asleep! What if...

I shied away from the thought and climbed as lightly as I could off the bed to kneel again on the floor. I could sleep later, when... when Bane was getting better, please Lord?

Please, Lord...

...Something settled onto me... I opened my eyes... Kyle was bending over me, just letting a blanket go. Dawn’s light brightened the dimly lit room, spilling around the curtains – one of the nurses bustled in through the open door and began to draw them. My hip ached from lying on the hard floor and when I tried to sit up, my
chest
...

I gasped and fell back, panting in pain.

Beep. Beep. Beep.
The nurse checked on Bane and departed in a wave of efficient unconcern. All was well. I could... I could take it a little more slowly.

“Margo?” Kyle knelt beside me. “You okay?”

“It’s just... it’s just my chest.”

“Chests are kind of important, we breathe with them. Do you want Doctor Frederick to take a look?”

“I really don’t think he can do anything,” I panted.

“Well, he can check nothing’s actually broken.”

“I don’t think he can do anything, even if something is. Could you just... help me up?”

“Okay. Slowly does it...”

He pried me gently from the floor and eased me gradually upright. Everything had stiffened up unbelievably. A mistake getting off the bed in the night. He steered me around to the armchair on the other side of the bed and settled me there.

Stirring, Jon opened his eyes and listened for moment. “That sounds better.”

“You think so?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you wake me?”

“No reason why you shouldn’t get some sleep. The monitor’s connected to an alarm in the little room where the nurses sleep.”

“It is?”

“Yes, Doctor Frederick said, yesterday.”

“Oh.”

Kyle gave me a breakfast of toast and a cup of coffee. And fetched me water when I realised how thirsty I was.

“Oh, Happy Christmas.” He gave me a hug and a kiss. “We’ll defer present giving until Bane can join in, shall we?”

Oh yes, please Lord, let Bane be able to join in
...

Doctor Frederick arrived and pronounced himself cautiously optimistic. A lot of caution and just a hint of optimism. Better than the opposite.

Pope Cornelius next – must’ve just been told what’d happened. I managed to return his sober ‘Happy Christmas’. He’d brought Holy Water, and he sprinkled Bane and laid his hands on him and prayed for him, doing as close to the Anointing of the Sick as was possible for a nonBeliever. When he’d finished he laid a hand on my head for a moment and murmured a blessing.

“Bane,” I said. “Bane needs it...”

“It’s an infinite supply, my dear, the blessings won’t run out.”

When he’d gone, Kyle helped me move the second armchair around to the tube-free side of the bed. Then it was just me and Jon.

“Did you hear what Doctor Frederick said about the morphine?” asked Jon.

“What morphine?”

“I’ll take that as a no. There’s a little button thing there by the bed apparently, can you see it?”

My eyes sorted among the tubes.

“Ah. Yes.”

“Well, if we think Bane’s coming round, we should press that to give him an extra dose of morphine – unless he’s had one too recently, the machine will know. Pain puts the body under great strain, apparently, and he mustn’t be strained. And considering the damage... well, it’s gotta hurt.”

“What is the damage? Is his spine okay?”

“Did you hear anything Doctor Frederick said last night?”

“Not really.”

“Well, he was basically lucky, or rather – it could have been worse, that was the verdict. You know it’s just a Hollywood myth bullets travel in straight lines inside the body?”

“Uh,
yeah
, I grew up with Bane as a best friend too, y’know.”

Jon mustered a smile at that.

“Yeah. Well, the bullet went into his back at the side just under the ribs but missed the kidneys. Veered off to the left at an angle and lodged against the spine, but didn’t penetrate far enough to threaten the spinal cord. Didn’t actually do much damage to the spine at all, most of its force was spent by then.

“If he can pull through the shock and trauma, he should heal okay. It missed the main artery down the centre of the body, most importantly of all. Or you wouldn’t have got him here, he’d have been dead in minutes.”

“There seemed to be such a lot of blood as it was.”

“Yeah, but it could have been a lot worse. A little blood goes a long way visually, Doctor Frederick says. But it didn’t damage anything major.”

I swallowed. The thought of the bullet tearing through Bane’s insides...

“Did they keep the nasty thing? Bane’ll want it.”

Jon snorted.

“Yeah, they kept it. I’ll still be one ahead, though.”

My hands flew to my mouth.

“Oh Lord, please don’t even...”

His hand found my arm and squeezed.

“Sorry. Just a joke. I hope he never has another.”

“Yeah...” I stared over my hands at Bane. He hadn’t survived this one yet.

“He was my only friend for so long,” said Jon after a while.

“The only one?”

“Yeah. My sister was so much older than me and no one wants to be friends with a preKnown.”

“Other preKnowns?”

“My mum tried. But I was too little to understand they were my only potential friends. Just knew I bored them, they bored me. So I was on my own until I was seven.”

“That’s when you first met Bane?”

“Yeah. His mum brought him to work with her one day in the school holidays. Wasn’t long after the thing with the car at the high adventure course, you know about that?”

“Oh my, yes. His parents were going to take him and Eliot on the high adventure course for Eliot’s birthday – but there was a row, as usual, so they decided to take Eliot and a friend and leave Bane in the car.”

“Yep, so his dad locks him in the car with no lunch, Bane swearing he’ll get out, but his dad doesn’t listen, off they go to have fun. Some hours later there’s an announcement asking Mr and Mrs Marsden to go to the car park so along they go, and there’s Bane sat in a police car, getting to play with the lights and the siren and eating a real burger the nice police lady’s bought him.”

“At which Eliot and his friend turn bright green with envy and their day is completely ruined,” I grinned. “And Bane’s parents endure a twenty minute grilling from the policewoman as to how their seven-year-old son came to be walking down the main road to Salperton, all the time wondering how much Bane had said.”

“Off to visit you, wasn’t he?”

“Yeah, he hadn’t quite grasped how far it was. Of course, he hadn’t actually said very much. He did figure out quite early on that being taken into care wasn’t quite as good a thing as it looked at first glance.”

“Umm,” agreed Jon. “So the police lady is finally satisfied and off she goes. At which point his parents discover what he’s done to the car.”

“Ripped out most of the interior panels, trying to figure out how to get the doors open.”

“Yep, but of course, car doors being electric, he couldn’t work it out, so finally he got so hot and hungry and frustrated he kicked out the driver’s side window and simply climbed through.”

“Yeah, his dad was furious. Stopped on the way home and dragged him into the forest and gave him a hiding he’s never forgotten – or forgiven.”

“Umm,” sighed Jon. “Anyway, your parents couldn’t have him that day when I was seven, for some reason. That’s what they did with him for most of the school holidays, right?”

“Yep. So his mum was prepared to risk the car again?”

“Rather than the
house
, yes. They’d had a row and he’d threatened to burn it down if she left him locked in there. She parked in shade and she’d actually made him lunch to reduce his motivation to escape. But my mum saw Bane in the car as she drove past our cottage and assumed Mrs Marsden was doing an incredibly nice thing, bringing her son to play with dead meat.” Jon used the derogatory term for a preKnown and I grabbed his arm.

“Don’t call yourself that!”