A Walk Along the Promenade - 5. Scene One, A Seaside Promenade in Summer, Part 5

His last visitors that day had arrived in the late afternoon. It was a man and a woman, both dressed in business suits. The man was Shaun’s age or a little younger. His brown hair was cut into a style that seemed to be a quiff dominating his forehead and the rest of his hair cut short on his head. His thick, rugby player-like body was squeezed into a cheap, high street store suit. The woman was in her late forties, her pale blonde hair was cut into a neat and short style, while her petite body was covered by an obviously expensive matching jacket and skirt. Just from her demeanour, Shaun could tell she was the one in charge. She did all the talking.

“Mr Shaun Wiseman, I’m Detective Sargent Smith and this is Detective Constable MacIvor,” the woman said.

“Oh, right. Good to see you,” Shaun replied, as he pressed the button for his pain control machine.

Detective Sargent Smith had questioned him about the attack and he had told her the same story he had told his mother. It was a lie but one he had to stick to now. If the truth came out the first one to find out would be his mother and he couldn’t risk that now he was being forced back into living in her house. He didn’t know who Arron was, even whether that had been his real name, and his memory of what the other men looked like was foggy.

In the face of Detective Sargent Smith’s questions, he’d told her that he’d gone to The Green Man to meet a woman that he’d met through a dating app, it would have been their first date. He had the woman’s details on his phone, but that had been stolen. He said he’d gone to The Green Man to meet her, a man had spoken to him as he had been entering the pub, and after that he couldn’t remember anything.

As he had told her his story, Shaun had watched Detective Sargent Smith’s face. Her expression had been strange but he had seen that expression before. He had seen that expression on the faces of nurses and doctors when they were listening to explanations of why a client’s care had not been delivered, listening to explanations of his mother’s company not having enough carers or carers with the right skills, when his mother had been delivering one of her explanations on why her company had failed. It was an expression were someone was trying to hide their disbelief, trying to hide the fact that they did not believe what they were being told. Detective Sargent Smith’s face had that same expression. She didn’t believe him.

At the end of his answers, Detective Sargent Smith had said:

“Unfortunately, the CCTV cameras outside The Green Man are false, it’s that sort of establishment. The CCTV cameras on the opposite side of the street, where you say you parked, were also broken. The Council repairs them and straight away they get broken, such is The Green Man. So, we don’t have any CCTV video of your attack.”

“Oh…” Shaun replied. He didn’t know what to feel, his lie was safe but Arron and his friends would go free.

“Now Mr Wiseman, I have to ask you this,” Detective Sargent Smith said, leaning towards him.

Shaun felt something catch in his throat. What was she after now?

“What?” Shaun quietly replied.

“There have been several incidences of gay men being lured to places without CCTV, by a man they have meet on a dating app, only to be attacked and robbed,” she said.

“That’s terrible,” Shaun said, he could see where she was going.

“I think that is what happened to you, Mr Wiseman,” she added.

“No, it didn’t,” Shaun told her.

“We can keep this all confidential, people do not have to know why you were at The Green Man. I have met your mother in the past, socially that is, and I know she is a forcible woman. She does not need to know why you were there,” she said, her voice gentle and almost reassuring.

“I told you I was there to meet a woman, and I cannot remember her name but I was beaten on the head,” Shaun replied.

“If you say so Mr Wiseman,” Detective Sargent Smith said as she sat up right, her voice holding a cold and professional tone.

He spent four weeks in hospital and had to have four different operations to his leg. After each operation he’d wake up in further pain and with further operation wounds along his leg, running under that metal cage on his leg. After his last operation he’d woken up to find a large and heavy plaster on his leg, the metal cage was finally gone. The cast stretched from his toes to just below his groin, his knee resting in a slightly bent angle. Yet all of that hadn’t been the worst part of it all.

He hated how powerless and lonely he felt. For most of his days he’d just lie in bed watching television or reading things off his new phone. The staff on the ward always looked busy but for him his days were long and empty. His only visitor was his mother, each day on her way home from work. She would bring him an evening meal, something she had bought on her way there, maintaining that no one should have to eat hospital food all day, collect any washing he had and drop off clean clothes, all his laundry done by her housekeeper, Mrs Roach. If his mother had no plans that evening, she would sit by his bed and complain about her day. He liked it when that happened, his mother’s voice would drone on about something that wasn’t related to hospitals and illness, her tales of running her company were a breath of fresh air to him, a glimpse of the world out there. Most days she was rushing off somewhere, a business dinner, an evening meal with friends, attending one of the many local societies she felt were so important to her job. When he was living with her, he’d been glad of her busy social life, it meant he would often have the house to himself and not have her bothering him. Now, lying in his hospital bed, he resented her social life, that would whisk her away from him so quickly, he longed to hear her complaining news. He longed to hear anything that wasn’t about his injuries.

The worst part of being a hospital patient was the loneliness. He’d never had any real friends, he found friendships awkward and difficult to maintain, but it now meant no one, bar his mother, came to visit him. During the day he’d lie in his bed and watch the ward around him. A few of the other patients were men around his own age, with injuries as severe his own, but most of the other patients were old men, usually with a broken leg or hip, being slowly rehabilitated by the nurses and others.

He had so little to occupy his mind and he’d find it returning again and again to that Friday night. Over and over his mind went back to what happened, how he should have known what was going to happen, how he should have avoided it, he should never have followed that Arron down that alley way, he should have seen those men and their bats, he should have avoided it. It was his fault that he ended up in this mess, he should have avoided those men, avoided that attack.

At night it was worse. The ward was never really in darkness, at best the lights were dimmed but not fully turned off, and the place was never quiet, there was always a nurse walking around or another patient making noise or the low hum of some machinery. He found it difficult to get to sleep, just lying awake in the dim light and desperately waiting for sleep. When this happened, his mind would go back to the attack, again and again going over the events and lambasting himself for not avoiding it. When he did finally fall asleep his sleep was never restful. It would always be interrupted by nightmares, were he’d re-live the attack moment-by-moment, blow-by-blow. Often he’d wake-up suddenly in the middle of one of these dreams, cold sweat running into his eyes and his heart racing in his chest. Then he’d be left back in his original situation, lying awake, his body aching and sleep miles away again.

He didn’t tell anyone about the nightmares or the self-doubt that plagued his mind. Just to think about them made him feel week and embarrassed, he couldn’t admit it to anyone else. Most of the nurses on the ward were middle aged women, all of them seemed to have a motherly quality to them, but he couldn’t even tell his own mother how he felt, let alone one of those nurses.

There was Kenny, who was the only male nurse on the ward, if you didn’t count the odd male agency nurse, and Shaun was always happy when Kenny was looking after him. Kenny was very kind and always attentive, he could never fault Kenny’s care. Kenny didn’t take half an hour to get him pain killers or tell him to hang-on when he asked for a bedpan. But Shaun had felt a deep and quiet attraction towards Kenny from the moment he’d been able to fully focus on him. He especially enjoyed it when Kenny changed his dressing. He never enjoyed his dressing changes but when Kenny did it he’d ask Shaun how he was doing and afterwards, after Kenny had taken off his latex gloves, he’d would rest his hand lightly on Shaun’s shoulder or upper arm, as they spoke.

It felt like one of those silly, teenage crushes, his emotions running high because a handsome man was showing him a little attention and kindness, but in this lonely environment Shaun was clutching at anything. At least Kenny would talk to him, not deep or long conversations, they were usually only a few minutes long, and usually about television programs they had both watched, but at least they were conversations about more than just his physical health.

He only left that hospital bed the second day after his fourth operation. The doctors had finally told him that the last operation had “stabilised” his leg, and now with the cast on his leg, he could now finally get up on crutches. He’d felt a rush of excitement at the news, but the reality had proved much harder. Mid-morning two physiotherapists had turned up at his bedside with a pair of crutches. They were two women, a younger one with obviously bleached white hair, and an older one with her chestnut brown hair tied back in a loose ponytail. They’d helped him sit on the edge of his bed and lower his left leg over the side of it. As his left leg had tipped over the edge of the mattress, he’d felt a surge of pain rush up his leg. He’d tried to bite down on the pain but when they had stood him upright, using those crutches, the pain had become unbearable, once again it felt as if his leg was on fire, and he’d screamed out against it, as his head spun around wildly with dizziness. The next moment he was sat in the armchair next to bed, with his head still spinning, as the older woman was telling him off for not trying hard enough.

He spent the rest of the morning sat in that armchair, with his left leg resting on a stool. He was out of the bed but it felt like climbing a mountain to do so.

Before he helped Shaun back into bed, at mid-day, Kenny had patted Shaun on the shoulder and said:

“Well done mate.”

Shaun had wanted to say how hard it was but he didn’t, he basked in that moment of attention.