Chapter Twenty-Five
Billy
Gus wasn’t dead. A dude with red hair and a dreamy Irish accent woke me up and told me so.
“My name’s Rupert,” he said. “I’m a firefighter. There’s an ambulance on its way. I’m going to help you as much as I can until they get here, okay?”
“Gus. Don’t help me. Help Gus.”
“I am. But I’m going to need you to breathe into this mask and stay awake. If you pass out on me, I’ll have to stop helping him to help you, so I need you to do that for me.”
His words made no sense. And I had zero clue when I’d moved from the front steps of the cottage to the old oak tree by the garage, or who’d called 999. But there was a mask in my hand, attached to a tank at my feet.
The fireman pushed my hand to my face. “Breathe,” he said. “So I can help your friend.”
I stuck the mask to my face and took a breath, then another, and another, until I was breathing like a fucking yogi. The air rattled through the tubes, and the mist clouding my brain lifted a fraction with each expansion of my aching lungs.Gus. Fuck. Where is he?
With the mask pressed to my face, I sat up and searched the mess of flashing blue lights and people I didn’t recognise. The friendly fireman had moved away from me. He was crouching over Gus, holding an identical mask over his face and calling urgently to someone I couldn’t see.
Paramedics appeared from nowhere, or at least that was how it seemed to me.
They swarmed the driveway, their footsteps unnaturally loud on the driveway, and they obscured my view of Gus.
I dropped the mask and tried to stand, but strong hands caught me and sat me back down.
Two women dressed in green stooped in front of me. “Stay where you are,” one of them said. “You need oxygen.”
“What about Gus?”
“He’s in good hands, sweetie. Can you tell us what happened?”
“What?”
“What happened in the house? How did you get hurt?
“I’m not hurt. Gus is.”
“What happened to him?”
“I don’t know.”
It went on and on. The paramedics made me breathe more oxygen while more emergency workers crowded around Gus. They lifted him onto a stretcher. His arm dangled limply off the side, and in my heart I got to my feet, dashed to him, and set it safely on his broad chest. But my legs were still numb. Instead I watched as men in orange suits appeared and carried him away to a helicopter that had landed in the field across the road.
The helicopter took off and disappeared. Part of me vanished with it, and breathing the oxygen no longer seemed to matter.
I let the mask go. It fell into my lap. My stomach spasmed, and I lurched sideways and puked.
One of the paramedics caught me and set me upright again. She wiped my face and forced me to look at her. “We’re going to load you into the ambulance in a minute and pop you over to the hospital. Is there anyone you want us to call?”
“What?”
“Do you want us to call someone? So you’re not on your own?”
I’d been alone for as long as I could remember, then the world as I’d assumed it to be had changed. Gus had given me a life I never knew I wanted, but I was more than a sum of the stolen nights we’d shared.
I pointed clumsily at the van still parked on the drive. “Call the number on the van. It’s my brother. I need my brother.”
I came to in a curtained cubicle in the local A&E. A different mask was over my face, and I wasn’t alone. Rough, work-hardened fingers clutched mine, and Luke was beside the bed, looming over me, his handsome features tight with worry.