Nobody but Him (31 page)

Louise looked down at her clipboard and began explaining what she was reading.

‘Mr McSwaine was admitted to Emergency late last night. He was immediately taken in for a head CT to investigate if he’d suffered any head injuries. We know he has severe internal trauma. His liver is lacerated, there is damage to his spleen and he has injuries consistent with seatbelt injuries from the accident. He’s fractured his clavicle and has a flail chest, which means he’s broken some ribs. That’s why he’s on the ventilator, to help him breathe while they heal. He also has a broken left leg and, as you can see by the bruising around his eyes, a broken nose.’

One of the machines beeped and Louise reached around to press a button to turn off the alarm.

‘We’re closely monitoring his pulse, blood pressure, temperature and his respiratory rate, which is why he’s connected up to so many monitors.’

Julia took more notes, pages of them and Ry just stared at his friend. ‘Can he hear us?’ Ry’s deep voice was uncertain, shaky.

‘No, he can’t. He’s in an induced coma to help him cope with the pain of his injuries.’

Ry took two tentative steps closer to the bed and placed his hand gently on Dan’s arm. He didn’t care if Dan couldn’t hear him. There were things he had to say out loud, to help convince himself that Dan would be okay. To try to make sense of this in his own head.

‘I’m here, mate. I’ll ring your parents, let them know what’s happened.’ And then he could feel Julia behind him, her arms around his waist, the warmth of her face on his back. A heave in her shoulders. He looked down to see her hands clasped at his belly, a blue notebook in her hand. He covered them with his and steadied himself.

He found the strength to ask what he’d been thinking, going over and over in his head since he’d taken the call from the police.

‘Please don’t bullshit me, Louise. I need to know when I ring his parents. Will he make it?’

Louise gave them a hopeful smile. ‘It might be hard to imagine, given the way he looks now and all that I’ve told you, but people do pull through from injuries like this. We’ll know more in three or four days when we reduce the sedation. The good news is that his CT was clear. There’ll be a long period of recovery, but he’s young and strong so his chances are good.’

Ry closed his eyes and exhaled deeply, almost overwhelmed. ‘You mentioned a phone? I need to make some calls.’

Julia watched Ry as he sat with a phone receiver in his hand, pressing numbers to get an outside line. They were in a private, windowless room just off the Intensive Care Unit, sparsely furnished with a desk, the phone, four chairs and posters on the walls variously reminding people to wash their hands or get a flu shot. She hadn’t left Ry’s side since he’d taken the call from the police. She’d made sure he had everything he needed before they got in the car and drove through the pitch-blackness of the night to the hospital. With white knuckles on the steering wheel and a calm head, Julia had let him sit in complete silence in the passenger seat.

She’d struggled with the ferocious urge to break down and sob with the awfulness of it, the waste of having a man like Dan lying in a hospital, broken and motionless. But she’d found the strength to hold it back. The last thing Ry needed was for her to lose control when he was also trying so desperately to keep it together himself. She didn’t want to be a sobbing wreck around him, she wanted to be his strength. That’s what he needed from her and she was determined not to let him down.

‘Hello Joan? It’s Ryan. I’m well. Look, I’m sorry to be ringing so early …’

She sat silently while Ry spoke to Dan’s parents, her heart aching at the sound of his mother’s extended silence down the line from far north Queensland, more than three thousand kilometres away. Ry’s eyes didn’t shift from her notebook, reading to them every thing Julia had written down about Dan’s condition and, importantly, everything they’d been told about his chances for recovery. Julia felt a surge of pride in the way Ry had pulled himself together to comfort them. She knew what it was like to be on the other end of the phone, to receive such devastating news. There would be no words for what Dan’s parents were going through, what it felt like to be so far away at such a time.

After a promise to do everything he could for Dan, Ry made his second call, to his executive assistant Fiona. Despite the hour she began to move heaven and earth to get the McSwaines on the first flight that morning out of Cairns to Adelaide.

His third call was to Barbra. After the shock and tears, from both mother and son, assurances that he would recover, they determined that Barbra would stay in the city so she could pick up the McSwaines from the airport in the morning and then bring them straight to the hospital to see Dan.

Finally, when the calls were done, Ry put the receiver back in the cradle with a soft click. He crossed his arms out on the table in front of him and dropped his head, utterly exhausted. Julia rubbed his back in comforting circles, then nestled her palm on his neck in the spot where his hair met the collar of his shirt. He turned to her, his eyes hooded and red with dark circles settling under them again.

She rested her head on his shoulder and for a long while they just sat.

‘You want a coffee, Ry? Something to eat?’

There was a barely-there shaking of his head.

‘No? Tell me what I can do.’

He moved wearily and checked his watch. Julia could see it was five a.m.

‘I need a shower. And sleep.’

‘That’s a good idea.’ Julia kissed him gently on the cheek, wondering if his heart was breaking or healing. ‘Let’s go home.’

‘Not Middle Point. My place in the city’s closer. I need to come back here as soon as I can.’

‘Of course. Let’s go.’ Ry didn’t have to ask and Julia didn’t have to say she would go with him.

She wasn’t leaving his side.

The first weak rays of the winter sun were coming up over the shadowed and purple Adelaide Hills when Ry slid the key into the lock of his front door. He urged Julia into the bathroom to have the first shower, telling her he wanted to check in with Fiona to see how plans were progressing to get Dan’s parents to Adelaide. She wearily agreed, stripping off her clothes in a pile on the bathroom floor. She needed to feel the heat of the water running over her shoulders, washing away the despair and the agony of the night.

It was only when she was in the shower, with the sound of the water drowning out any other noise, did she let go. Free herself to mourn for Ry and what he might lose. The grief raged inside her, gripping her stomach, tightening her throat, the sobs shook her shoulders and buckled her knees. She let herself sink to the tiled floor, her arms tight around her, the hot water sluicing through her hair, over her face and taking her tears with it down the drain. She needed to camouflage her grief with the noise and the echo because in a few minutes she would go back out to Ry and be a rock for him.

It was something she knew she could do. Wearily, she realised it seemed to be the part she was born to play, the organiser, the strong

one, the shoulder to lean on in a crisis. When her father died, she’d been the tower of strength for her mother, who was inconsolable with grief for months. There was no one else to shoulder the burden so a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl took charge. And when her mother died, she was already well practised in dealing with crises and perfunctorily performed all the tasks she’d needed to, organising the funeral and the wake, not letting anyone see her fall apart. Julia Jones did
not
fall apart. Even when she’d stood in the funeral parlour and Middle Point locals were crying around her at the loss of her mother. Even when she’d locked the door to her mother’s house a year ago, knowing her mother would never be there again. Even when got back to Melbourne and felt stranded and alone. She would not fall apart now. Someone she cared about needed her to be strong.

Fifteen minutes later, she sat on the taupe-coloured sofa in Ry’s living room, dressed in one of his T-shirts and some checked pyjama bottoms he’d left out for her. He was in the shower now and Julia listened closely, wondering if he was using it as a panic room for his anguish as well. There had been tears, but he hadn’t broken down. Maybe he wasn’t the kind of man who did. Julia knew you couldn’t predict how grief would hit and when, and she knew better than most that a lack of tears didn’t mean there was no hurt. She’d got used to being alone in her grief. After all he’d been through, maybe he had too.

There was a person she needed to speak to more than anything. Julia fished her phone out of her handbag and dialled a familiar number. Lizzie picked up and didn’t even wait for a hello before speaking.

‘Hey Jools! Can you talk? Are you with Ry? What happened last night? I saw you two leaving the pub looking like a couple of horny teenagers racing to the nearest panel van.’

Julia swallowed the lump in her throat.
Oh God
. So much had happened since last night that it felt like three lifetimes ago. Where to start?

‘Lizzie …’

‘This had better be a good make-up sex story. It would be nice to know that someone around here is having sex.’

Julia took a deep breath. ‘Lizzie, listen. I’ve got some bad news.’

‘Oh no,’ and Julia could hear disappointment in every word. ‘Is it really over with you and Ry?’ Julia gripped the hem of Ry’s T-shirt and twisted it around her fingers.

‘No, Lizzie, I’m not at Middle Point. I’m in Adelaide, at Ry’s place. We’ve spent all night at the hospital.’

‘What are you talking about? Are you all right?’

‘It’s Dan.’ Julia took a gulp to steady herself. ‘He was in a pretty bad car accident last night on the way back to Adelaide.’

Julia heard the gasp of shock down the line. ‘Oh no. Is he … ?’

‘He’s alive. Really banged up, but alive.’

There was silence for a beat then Lizzie’s voice, barely a whisper. ‘I … I can’t believe it. He was here. In the bar. Last night. I poured him a Coke. He wasn’t drinking, Jools, I know he wasn’t. What happened? Oh my God. This can’t be real.’

‘I saw him lying unconscious in hospital and I still can’t believe it.’ Julia tried to blink away the image of Dan, broken, still, almost lifeless. Of Ry’s pain at seeing his friend like that.

‘Oh hell, how’s Ry?’ Lizzie asked.

‘Lizzie … he’s devastated.’ Julia felt her bottom lip quiver.

‘Okay, don’t move. Where’s Ry’s place? I’m gonna jump in my car and come to you.’ That reaction was so Lizzie it made her heart ache. She’d missed her best friend so much.

‘No, Lizzie, please. I’m wondering if you can stay and look after the pub? We’re just not sure how long Dan will be in hospital. Ry will want to be there, to see him when he comes to.’

‘Of God, of course.’ Julia heard a sob and a gulp of breath. ‘Tell Ry not to worry about a thing. I’ll be managing the place from Monday, anyway. It’s only a couple of days early.’

They both hung on in silence, a bond much stronger than the phone line keeping them connected.

‘You okay, Jools?’

‘I’m okay.’

‘Promise me you’ll ring me when you have news. Tell Ry it’s all under control here. And give Dan a big kiss from me, will you?’

‘I’ll call you. I love you, Lizzie.’

‘I love you too, Jools.’

Ry stood in the living room with his phone to his ear, his hair ruffled and still damp from the shower, a pair of boxers pulled on haphazardly. Julia studied him as he paced the room, distracted, staring out the windows to the Adelaide Hills in the east as he listened to his messages. Every now and then he jabbed the screen, clearly deleting the messages he didn’t need to keep. Then he spun around, his face dark with anger, and sought out her face.

‘What is it?’ she asked, a shot of anxiety snaking up her spine.

‘It’s a fucking journalist from the local paper down at Middle Point.’

‘What do they want? Is it about Windswept?’

‘That would make sense, wouldn’t it? But no. They want a comment from me about Dan’s accident. How the hell did they find out and why the fuck is it any of their business? What a bunch of lowlife, pond-sucking …’

Julia calmly got up and walked towards him. She reached for the phone and wrangled it from his grip.

‘Did you get a name? Is it the same journalist who wrote the story about Windswept.’

‘Yes, I think so. Debbie something.’

‘Debbie Doherty? I remember her by-line on that front page story.’

Ry raked his hands through his hair and paced. ‘I’ve got nothing to say to her. This is not a goddamn news story. This is private.’

Julia listened to the message again and then pressed the keypad to return the call.

‘What the hell are you doing, Julia? I’m
not
talking to her.’ She twisted away from him so he couldn’t snatch his phone back.

‘Not, but I am. It’ll be all right, Ry, really. I know what I’m doing.’ Julia saw fury flash in his sapphire-blue eyes as he stalked away, crossing his arms over his bare chest. She knew it wasn’t directed at her. No doubt he’d had his share of bad publicity when Blackburn and Son Developments had been on the verge of collapse, and was now understandably suspicious of talking to the media at a time like this. She couldn’t blame him. She’d worked with some of the best and, unfortunately, some of the worst examples of the profession in her years in Melbourne.

The call connected and Julia heard a girlish voice down the line.

‘Hello? Hi Debbie. My name’s Julia, I’m calling from Ryan Blackburn’s office.’ Julia looked over to Ry, who stood by the window, his head half turned in her direction.

‘Thank you for that. That’s very kind. Of course he understands how very concerned the people of Middle Point are about Mr McSwaine. As you know, he can’t comment on the circumstances of the accident as the police are investigating.’

Julia listened for a moment. ‘He’s getting the best possible treatment in hospital. Mr Blackburn would like to sincerely thank everyone in Middle Point, especially the regulars at the Middle Point Pub, who’ve been so kind in passing on their thoughts and prayers.’

Julia watched Ry slowly turn, drop his arms, his head cocked to one side. The anger had gone and in its place she could see something that looked like relief.