Forget Me Not (The Ceruleans: Book 2) (15 page)

… back! Get back from the fence…

A girl in a garden.

… on their way…

A girl in a garden of a cottage on a wind-swept headland
overlooking a cove.

… what’s her name?…

A girl in the midday sun, looking up at the impossible blue.

… get a line in…

A magpie looping and soaring.

… I’m here. I won’t leave you…

A magpie jerking, plummeting... saved.

… meet us at A&E…

A man in the garden, holding a struggling magpie.

… Scarlett, eighteen, collapsed at…

A man with green eyes standing before a girl with green
eyes.

… no known history…

A girl whispering, ‘Is it over? Is this the end?’

… stand back, lad. Let them work…

A man answering, ‘There is no end. Only change.’

… Scarlett! No – get off me!…

A girl sobbing. ‘But I don’t want to lose him.’

… call Dr Morris, and a porter for CT…

A man smiling. ‘You can only lose what you cling to.’

… boyfriend’s outside…

A man opening his hands, releasing a struggling magpie.

… Can you hear me? Open your eyes…

A girl and a man in the midday sun, looking up at a magpie
looping and soaring in the impossible blue.

Someone was calling my name.

‘Go away, Grandad,’ I mumbled. ‘Sleepin’.’

‘Cara, actually. And I’m going nowhere. And you’re not
sleeping, you’re lying in a hospital bed freaking everyone out.’

I peeled open an eyelid and winced at a stab of fluorescent
lighting.

‘What…?’

‘My thought exactly –
what the hell
, Scarlett?’

My pupils contracted sufficiently for me to get a look at my
friend: flushed face, pinched, no hint of her usual dimples. I refocused and
looked past her – a large room, clinical and stark, three empty bays, medical
paraphernalia, a desk at which people in blue scrubs were talking. Hospital. I
was in hospital. How –

Golden eyes, Luke shouting, roaring, pain, light…

But there was no time to process the memories; a nurse was
moving towards me.

‘Hello, Scarlett. I see you’re awake.’

The nurse – young and serious and with eyes full of sympathy
– stepped neatly in front of Cara and surveyed a beeping machine next to me.
She asked me a series of questions, which I answered fairly honestly: it was
true that I felt better than I had at the zoo, but of course I couldn’t admit
in front of Cara that my head still ached, that it always did on some level
now. Apparently satisfied, the nurse dug into her pocket and retrieved a small
plastic bag and handed it to me.

‘Here,’ she said. ‘We had to remove your jewellery for the
CT scan. I’m sure your friend can help you put it back on while I track down
the doctor for you.’

But once the nurse left Cara moved back into place beside
me, arms crossed, so I left the little package containing Luke’s pendant
sitting on my palm and closed my fist tightly around it. Hair was on my
forehead, tickling me, and I moved to brush it away with the other hand, but a
sharp pain stopped me. I raised the hand high enough to see a cannula taped to
the back and an IV tube leading out. Not good.

‘You collapsed,’ said Cara. ‘At the zoo. You’ve been out a
couple of hours. They won’t tell us anything. So how about
you
start
talking.’

I stared up at her. She looked more than worried. She looked
mad.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Don’t give me that, Scarlett Blake,’ she hissed. ‘After
what you’ve done to Luke, you at least owe me the truth.’

I struggled in the bed, pulling myself upright on the metal
guard rails. ‘Luke? Where is he? What did I do?’

‘Scared him senseless, that’s what. When he called me from
the zoo he wasn’t even making sense he was in such a state, and when I got here
– Jesus, Scarlett, he was a mess. They had to get security to pull him out of
here while they treated you in the end. And then it took me a good hour to talk
him into going for coffees. Honestly, I haven’t seen him so upset since it was
me
in that bed.’

‘Oh no – I’m sorry! I didn’t mean…’

She leaned over and gripped my arm. ‘He loves you, Scarlett
– don’t you see that? He loves you, and he thought he was going to lose you,
and it tore him apart.’

Had my hands been free to cover my ears, they’d have done
so. This was unbearable.

‘So you tell me why you’re in here then.’ Her eyes bored
into mine. ‘And don’t bother lying, because I’ll know. You’ve been lying to us
for weeks. I knew something was off with you. So spill it. Now.’

I stared at her, my astute, tell-it-as-it-is best friend.
I’d hurt her, and Luke too. They’d known I was keeping something from them, and
now I’d put them here, in this position, worried about me, stuck powerless in a
hospital – the very hospital they’d come to after the accident, where Cara had
been told she would be disabled for life, where their parents’ bodies were laid
in the morgue.

I was a terrible, terrible person to have brought them here.

‘Is it drugs?’ Cara demanded when I didn’t answer.
‘Painkiller popping? I saw the pills in your bag.’

‘What? No!’

‘Something stronger?’

‘Of course not!’

‘Starving yourself? You’ve dropped weight – don’t think I
haven’t noticed.’

‘I eat like a horse, Cara; you know I do.’

‘Bulimia, then. You’re barfing it all back up.’

‘Urgh! No, Cara.’

‘Epilepsy?’

‘No.’               

‘Diabetes?’

‘No.’

‘Cancer?’

‘NO!’

‘Then there’s only one explanation left.’

‘Cara, please…’

‘Scarlett Blake, you’re
pregnant
.’

A crash from behind distracted me from the indignant denial
I was about to utter, and as Cara spun around I caught sight of the source of
the commotion: Luke standing in the middle of the room in a puddle of coffee,
staring at me.

‘Luke,’ I said quickly, reaching out a hand but held back by
the IV.

The nurse was by his side already, armed with a stack of
paper towels. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said kindly to him, ‘I’ve got it.’

He seemed to barely notice the mess he’d made, or the nurse
now on her knees blotting it up. His eyes fixed on me, he walked to the bed.
Each step he took brought me closer to warmth and safety, but something else,
something new:
regret
.

‘One visitor per bed, remember?’ called the nurse.

‘I’ll go,’ said Cara at once.

She gave me a long look, then turned and headed out of the
room, giving Luke’s arm a squeeze as she passed.

Luke’s eyes, when he reached me, were haunted and rimmed
with red, and his hands, I saw, were trembling.

‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ I began, but he cut me
off.

‘How do you feel?’

‘All right. Bit washed out.’

‘Are you in pain?’

‘No.’

‘Scarlett…’ He swallowed. ‘When I walked in, Cara –’

‘Was way off the mark, Luke,’ I said quickly.

‘You’re not pregnant.’

‘No.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘We’ve been careful, Luke.’

‘But accidents happen – and pregnant women sometimes faint,
right?’

I looked into his eyes, and I was staggered to see hope
there. He’d rather pregnancy than illness, of course. I wished, for a moment,
that was the truth of it all. I thought of little Ivor at the zoo, and my heart
contracted painfully.

He saw me wince. ‘What is it? What hurts? I’ll get someone.’

I reached out with my unrestricted hand and pulled him down,
to sit on the chair beside the bed. ‘I’m okay, Luke. But there’s no baby.’

‘Right. Well, that’s… right.’

I smoothed his crazy hair back from his forehead. ‘It’s
okay. I’m okay.’

‘How can you say that? You collapsed, Scarlett. In my arms.
And I couldn’t wake you up. That’s not okay. That’s not right.’

Fury rose up inside me. He shouldn’t have seen that. I’d
never wanted him to see that. It wasn’t fair on him. I should have protected
him.

He misinterpreted the wash of angry tears building up in my
eyes.

‘Hey, don’t be scared. It’s okay. They’ll work out what’s
going on. They did lots of tests while you were… asleep. The doctor, he’ll be
back soon.’

For a while we sat silently, each lost in our own thoughts –
his, no doubt, a horrific replaying of a scene that should never have happened;
mine an imagining of that same scene, of what he’d seen, what he’d felt.

‘Scarlett,’ he said at last. ‘Is there anything you need to
tell me?’

I saw the pain in his face. I wanted to take it away.

‘Just that I’m so sorry that you had to see that,’ I said.
‘And I love you.’

I expected a smile, at least, for the last three words, but
Luke ran a hand through his fingers and sighed.

‘Jude is outside,’ he said.

‘What?’ The abrupt subject change confused me.

‘Jude. He’s in the waiting room. Turned up an hour ago. Said
he heard you were ill from Si – Cara’s told half of Twycombe, I think.’

I groaned.

‘Why is he here, Scarlett?’

My head was clear now, the residual headache a niggle, not a
distraction, and yet my mind struggled to fathom the meaning in his words.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

Luke nodded his head slightly, then asked bluntly, ‘Is there
something going on with you and him?’

‘No! What on earth – why would you think that?’

A deep voice interrupted Luke’s reply: ‘Miss Blake. Remember
me?’

I tore my eyes from Luke and looked at the man at the end of
the bed. I certainly did remember him. It was the doctor who’d treated me when
I’d come in with a head injury after killing – no, healing – a deer. He was
also the doctor who’d treated my sister after she collapsed… oh, just like me.
He was a jovial, friendly sort who’d been very kind to me before now, but today
there was no hint of a smile in his eyes, only that same sympathy I’d seen in
the nurse.

I swallowed. ‘I remember you,’ I said. ‘Hello, Dr Morris.’

‘I need to talk with you, Scarlett.’ He looked expectantly
at Luke, who remained sitting at the bedside, jaw set. ‘Perhaps you’d like to
get a coffee.’

‘No, thanks.’

I saw Dr Morris’s expression, and could guess what he was
about to say:
I need to speak with Scarlett alone
. Quickly, I said to
Luke, ‘I’d like a coffee. Please?’

Luke looked from the doctor to me and then stood up. ‘I’ll
be back soon,’ he promised me.

I watched him until he was out of sight, and then I sank
back onto the pillows. Dr Morris took Luke’s place on the chair and laid two
files on the bed beside me. Even upside down the name labels were clear:
Sienna
Blake
and
Scarlett Blake
.

‘Scarlett,’ he began. ‘There’s no easy way to say this…’

‘You scanned my head. And you found a tumour. Like my
sister’s.’

‘You knew.’

‘Yes.’

‘You were diagnosed elsewhere?’

‘No. I just knew.’

‘What? I don’t understand. Why didn’t you seek help? I
wanted to scan you last time, given the history. It’s rare for such tumours to
run in families, but not unheard of. We’d have caught it earlier, and then…’

‘There would have been no point. I was never going to
survive it.’

‘I was going to say we may have been able to buy you more
time.’

His words stung. That had been my wish – more time. Maybe he
could have granted it to me. But then, what would the time have been like,
under treatment? These past few weeks I’d at least been able to live a normal
life, been able to hide the truth.

Until today.

Oh God, Luke – what he must have felt.

‘I didn’t need more time to suffer and make others suffer,’
I told him.

‘She said the same thing. Your sister. You’re very like
her.’

‘No, I’m not.’

He stared at me for a moment, with eyes that were
suspiciously bright, and then sighed and picked up my file and flipped through
it. ‘Well,’ he said in a more businesslike tone, ‘I suppose there’s no point
trying to get you to stay, or take a referral to neurology?’

‘No. I just want to go home.’

‘Then I’ll start the paperwork. And I’ll get you some
prescriptions that will help with the symptoms. I assume you have pain
regularly?

I nodded.

‘Visual disturbances?’

‘Yes.’

‘I can give you some drugs, but there’s only so much they
can do for you. You’re going to deteriorate, Scarlett – you know that.’

‘How long do you think?’

‘It’s impossible to say without further analysis. But
towards the end – it won’t be pleasant, I’m afraid. You’ll need to think about
what you’ll do then, when you can’t function normally any longer. Here’s some
literature to look through.’

He handed me a pile of leaflets that had been slotted into
my file. On top a picture of a smiling elderly woman in a chair surrounded by a
smiling nurse and various smiling family members was overlaid with the title
The
Clairmont Hospice: Compassionate End-of-Life Care
. Before my eyes the scene
shifted to me in that chair, and around me everyone I loved. No one was
smiling. No one.

I thrust the leaflets back at him. ‘I won’t be needing a
hospice,’ I told him.

‘I see,’ he said quietly, taking them from me and eying my
outstretched hand. It was shaking, I realised. I pulled it back. ‘Then does
that mean you will –’

Raised voices drew our attention. We both looked towards the
doors, beyond which snatches of an argument were audible.

‘… where? In here?…’

‘… with the doctor…’

‘… alone?…’

‘… if you’d just…’

‘… move aside, please…’

‘… waiting room…’

‘… will not keep me from her!’

And with that the doors banged open and into the room strode
the very last person in the world I wanted to see right now.