A Walk Along the Promenade - 4. Scene One, A Seaside Promenade in Summer, Part 4

“Get away from me you damn vermin!” The old man’s voice shouted, suddenly filled with anger.

Shaun glanced towards the noise and saw the old man stood next to the bin. One hand held an empty fast food wrapper, which he was obviously trying to put into the bin, the other hand was waving frantically at a seagull that had swept down and tried at snatch the wrapper out of his hand.

“Goddamn vermin!” The old man shouted as the seagull gave up and flow away.

What was an American doing in Scarborough in June? Shaun asked himself. Scarborough wasn’t exactly on the American tourist trail, it didn’t have the connection to Dracula that Whitby, a short way up the coast, had.

The thought fell from his mind as he stretched out his left leg again. The pain was finally easing. It was still stiff but at least the pain was easing. In a few minutes he could try and walk back to his hotel, or at least to the bottom of the cliff railway.

He’d woken up from the beating a day later, at least that was when he remembered waking. It was over twenty-four hours later and he found himself lying in a hospital bed, wearing only one of those hospital gowns, the ones that open at the back, underneath the bed’s sheets. Into his right arm were running two IV drips, and on his left leg was a cage-work of metal, encasing his leg, with thin metal bars actually running into his leg. His whole body still seemed to hurt, an aching pain from so many different parts of his body. He took a deep breath, in an attempt to help himself wake-up and was greeted by a sharp pain in his left side. A pain that felt like a dozen long, white-hot needles were pressed quickly into his side until they reached the bottom of his lung. He cried out against the pain, as if a sudden shout would in any way ease his pain.

“Can I help you?” A young, female voice asked him.

He turned his head in the direction of the voice and found a young woman standing over him. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail that seemed to sprout out of the back of her head. She was wearing a neatly ironed white, nurse’s tunic and her face wore a concerned expression.

“I’m in pain,” Shaun gasped, his voice strangely week and quiet.

“Press the red button in your right hand, it’ll give you some analgesia, I mean pain relief,” she said.

He did so, the small plastic button strapped around the palm of his hand, no bigger than a front door bell. A moment later he felt something calming rushing through him, as the pain in his side eased away. Later he’d find out it was called a Patient Controlled Analgesia pump, a machine that would deliver a small amount of pain relief straight into his vein whenever he pressed that button. Over the next few days that machine gave him relief and a lifeline.

The young woman was a student nurse and she’d gone and got a Staff Nurse to talk to him. The Staff Nurse turned out to be a young man, in his mid-twenties, called Kenny. His short, muscular body was enclosed in a nurse’s uniform of pale blue tunic and dark blue trousers. His head was covered in thick, black, shaggy hair that he wore in a style were it was cut short at the back and yet still left it long at the front, the sides of his hair were falling past his ears and touching his collar, while his fringe was swept across his forehead, though thick strands of it would escape and fall across his face, often obscuring his rich, brown eyes.

Kenny, in a clear and short speech, told Shaun what had happened to him. He’d been found, lying unconscious on the ally way’s ground in the early hours of the morning, after the Green Man had closed and one of the bar men was throwing away the rubbish. He’d been taken to hospital, still unconscious, were his injuries had been diagnosed. Three of his ribs were broken, two black eyes, a wound to the back of his head, which needed stitching, and cuts and bruises across his chest. Knocking him unconscious had left him with a severe concussion, the effects of which he would feel for far longer than he had expected (People on television seemed to shake off being knocked unconscious with no ill effects, but for Shaun the concussion left him feeling ill for days after). But his left leg had received the worst damage from those men’s aggression. Their beating had left him with a smashed and broken leg. Both his thigh bone and the bones in his shin were smashed and his knee had been shattered into numerous pieces. As an emergency, to save his leg and enable it to be repaired later, Shaun had had an external-fixature, as Kenny called it, fitted to his left leg. The external-fixature consisted for a circular metal frame, which encased his whole leg, and this held his leg rigid with metal bars that ran right through his leg, through the skin and bone of his leg. Strangely enough his left leg only really hurt when it was moved, just lying there in bed his leg ached but the metal rods did not cause him much pain, even though they ran right through leg and its bones.

Kenny told him that his medical team, the surgeons who would be repairing his leg, would see him on Monday morning, the next day, and explain the treatment they had planned for him.

That first day he woke in hospital Shaun had spent dozing in his hospital bed. His head felt thick and heavy, and sleep seemed to be the only thing that eased it. It also stopped his mind dwelling on what had happened to him. His mind felt so tired and dulled, as if he was trying to think through a thick, cotton wool fog, and trying to sort out his thoughts was so difficult. His body also seemed to ache with pain, a dull and constant ache throughout his body, or a sharp pain in left leg, as if the very bone of his leg was on fire, every time his leg was moved.

The following day, a Monday, had seemed to be a blur of activity. First, he was visited by his team of surgeons, shortly after he’d finished his lack-lustre breakfast. Though his surgeon was a man, Mr Melnyk was an Eastern European doctor, not the stereotype of the upper-middle class surgeon with a plum in his voice, and half of the team of four doctors with him were women.

Mr Melnyk explained the different breaks Shaun’s leg had suffered, but the man might have been speaking in his native tongue for all Shaun could understand what he was being told. All he could understand was that his leg was badly broken and it was going to take several operations to fix it. Shaun had simply nodded his agreement to what was being said to him, he felt he had no other choice.

At mid-day his mother had visited him. She had swept onto the ward with her full forceful personality, dressed as elegantly as always, demanding to know were Shaun was and what was happening to him. He heard her voice before he saw her approach his bed.

She had sat herself down next to his bed and announced:

“What the hell were you doing at the Green Man? You should know what type of pub that place is and to keep well away from it. People like us do not go to places like that!”

“I was meeting a girl,” Shaun almost blurted out. It was the first answer that jumped into his mind. He’d not thought about it or made any plans about it, it was just the first lie that had come into his mind to tell her.

“And who was this girl? What’s her name?” his mother replied.

“I can’t remember.”

“That’s convenient. You haven’t mentioned her before,” his mother added.

“I was meeting her for the first time,” he told her. One simple lie and he could tell the truth, well a very edited version of the truth.

“Was this some blind date?” His mother asked.

“I met her through a dating app on my phone. She wanted to meet at the Green Man. I can’t remember her name but her number and everything are on my phone,” he said, barely having to think about his story, even though his mind still felt fuzzy and full of cotton wool.

“Well that’s gone,” his mother shot back.

“What has?” Shaun asked her.

“Your phone. They took everything off you. They stole your car, which no one will see again. They cleared out your bank account yesterday, and again you won’t see any of that again. I spent this morning getting your bank card and phone cancelled, though it’s all a bit late, and the police weren’t hopeful about your car,” his mother bluntly told him, but all Shaun heard was that all the money had gone from his bank account. What was he going to do?

“All my money has gone?” Shaun mumbled.

“Every penny,” his mother said.

“But my rent is due in a week,” he said. The thought occupied all his mind now, he had to save his home, but he didn’t know how, not from a hospital bed.

“I have already sorted that out,” his mother replied. For a moment he thought she would actually pay his rent, but her next words killed that thought. “You’ll just have to come and live with me, you can have the back ensuite double bedroom. I’ll organise moving all your things from your flat, later this week.”

“You’ll pack up all my stuff?” The thought of her packing away all his personal possessions caught in his throat. He had to stop her.

“God, no. I’m far too busy. The removal firm will pack up all your things before they move them,” his mother said, in her flat and business-like tone. At least it would be complete strangers sorting through his dirty underwear and packing away his porn DVDs, at least it won’t be his mother or one of her employees reporting back to his mother.

His mother had left shortly after making her announcement, leaving Shaun to worry about what she had said. All his money was gone and with it was his independence. He was back where he started, facing again living with his mother, and he’d achieved nothing.