Red Gold - 8. Chapter 8 - Prisoner of Glass and Metal

At the hospital they took him away from her and she was left to complete forms on which she told the truth as far as she was able and then lied as well as she could. After that she sat and waited. She never saw Angela and her friend again.

After about half an hour a young man in a white coat called her name and led her to a room which was obviously a waiting room, with a television set, uncomfortable looking arm chairs and a coffee machine.

“Are you Daniel’s next of kin?”

“I… no, I suppose that would be his sister.”

“Do you know how to contact her?”

“No, she doesn’t have a phone. She wouldn’t come anyway… she hates hospitals.” That much was likely to be true she thought.

“Are you a friend?”

“I’m… yes, I’m his girlfriend. What’s happening? Is he alright?”

“He’s stable.”

“I keep hearing that but I don’t know what it means.” The young man smiled at her, he looked as nervous as she was. She wondered if this was the first time he had done this.

“Well, although you may not feel like it right now, it means that your boyfriend is a very lucky guy. When he was stabbed the weapon missed his heart by a very small margin, if it hadn’t he would be dead now. As it is the knife pierced his lung and it collapsed. But he got very good care at the scene and the lung is inflated again and he’s doing really well.

“They’re taking him down to surgery now, to repair the internal damage and it could take some time but it’s looking good that he’ll make a complete recovery. He’s young and strong, he’ll be fine.”

Gabrielle had been standing up but her legs gave way and she sat down suddenly on the edge of one of the chairs. The young doctor sat in the next chair and handed her a tissue from a box on the table. When she was able to speak she looked up into his worried face and smiled, wondering what he was worried about… how to deal with a hysterical woman probably, he didn’t look as though he had much experience with women at all... but then again neither had Ca’el and he had never looked as uncertain as this.

“Thank you. I…er…I’m sorry. I suppose I should have been laughing not crying it’s just… it’s just I thought... I thought he…”

“That’s alright. People often react to good news in that way after a shock.”

“Did you learn that out of a book?”

The doctor looked alarmed. “Did it sound as though I was reciting from a book?”

“A little. But it’s alright. Everyone starts somewhere.”

“Is it that obvious?”

“Meh.” She shrugged, smiling.

“What happened? Was he in a fight?”

“I don’t know. He went out to the shop and when he came back… I don’t know what happened.”

“We might have to inform the police. I think they may already have.”

Gabrielle was suddenly alarmed. Lying to the hospital was one thing, they were not likely to check the details. Lying to the police was another thing altogether. She imagined them knocking on Leelany’s door and shuddered. Trying desperately to keep her panic away from the doctor she nodded fixing her eyes on the floor.

“Are you sure you don’t want to tell me what really happened?”

“What? I have. That is what really happened.”

The doctor looked at her steadily for a moment and smiled. “If you change your mind my name is Ben, Ben Lacey. Most people around here know me.”

Ben got up and moved towards the door. He paused with his hand on the door handle. “Make yourself comfortable. It is going to take a good few hours I’m afraid. I will try and call in to see you later. It’s going to be alright Gabrielle.”

“I hope so.”

Ben opened the door and then, remembering something, he turned back and handed her a small plastic bag. “Daniel’s things. They had to take them off for surgery. You can give them back to him later.” And then she was alone.

For a long time she just stared at the plastic bag and could not open it. In the end she pulled apart the sealed edges and tipped the content into her hand. There wasn’t much, just a silver ring and a locket on a silver chain. The ring was intricately wrought into the shape of a bird, its wings, outstretched forming the band and its beak open holding a blue stone. On the inside of the band was a series of what looked like runes. The locket was in the shape of a heart and on one side took the form of two overlapping wings opening outwards from the centre.

Thinking about it, Gabrielle remembered the locket, Cai had been wearing it earlier. She hadn’t noticed the ring but then that was not the sort of thing she would have noticed, not under the circumstances. Lifting it to her ear Gabrielle shook the locket and it rattled. She looked at it wondering if she should, or even could, open it. Finally she slid a nail under the catch and the wings parted.

Whatever she could have imagined would have been inside the locket what she found was the last thing she expected. It was a tooth. Gabrielle shook it out into her hand and stared at it. In fact it was a broken tooth, a broken baby tooth.

Something like an itch prickled the inside of her brain, a memory. Three children running in the sunshine. Gabrielle closed her eyes and the memory surfaced more strongly. He was fast, faster even than his sister who was three years older, but she could always catch him. Not always by fair means, sometimes she would pretend to stumble or fall and he would come back, his face dark with concern and then she would throw her arms around him and kiss him and run ahead.

On this day she didn’t fake the fall. Something… someone? had tripped her and she fell striking her mouth on a rock. Her front tooth had broken and she had cried for a whole day. It was her first tooth, a pretty, even, shiny tooth that she was very proud of and now it was gone and it hurt. She had to go to the healers who made her drink the sweet sickly potions of oblivion and when she woke the whole tooth was gone and there was a gap until her second tooth grew in years later.

She had never given the tooth another thought, but he had. Somehow he had found it and when they had come to this place, not very long after that day in the sun he had brought it with him and wore it around his neck ever since. A shiver ran down her back and she found herself trembling all over. Hastily she put the tooth back into the locket and folded the wings closed. Feeling sick she put both the locket and the ring into the pocket of her jeans.

It was, indeed a long time before any word came. The minutes turned to hours and the hours were longer than any previous hours of her life had ever been. She had little to think about, alone in the waiting room with the banal television programmes and the empty magazines and so her mind continually replayed the events of the previous forty eight hours over and over and over. Picking over every moment, every word, every action she was at one moment elevated higher than she had ever been thinking of his eyes, his voice, the touch of his hands on her body; and at the next plunged into the pit of despair by what she had done to him.

Unbidden Cai’s words after the accident they had witnessed came back to haunt her. “I cannot imagine anything worse. To be taken away in a box on wheels to a building full of strangers, away from your family and those who love and care for you… it is a prison, a prison of glass and metal, it sounds cold and hard. I would hate it. I would die there.” Shivering she wondered if she had betrayed him again.

After about three hours Ben returned. He shook his head at the hope that flared in her eyes.

“There’s no news yet, I came to see how you are doing. Isn’t there anyone you can call to come and wait with you? This is not an inspirational place to wait alone.”

“There’s only one person I want to be with me here Ben, and he’s the one I’m waiting for.”

“Fair enough. Would you like to take a walk with me? Nowhere exciting, just to the café. I’ll buy you a coffee.”

“Why?”

“Why? I don’t know. Because you were my first assignment? Because there was something about your boyfriend that made me… I don’t know… something that felt strange, and it’s here with you too. It makes me feel… “ he shrugged, “that I’m in the middle of something I don’t understand but I would like to.” He shrugged again. “Or maybe it’s just that I have been on duty for eighteen hours straight and I really need a coffee.”

“Well, a coffee would be nice but you had better not be hitting on me. I think Cai…er Daniel might be the jealous type.”

“You think he might be?”

“Never had to test it.”

Nevertheless he gave her an odd look as he held the door open and she wondered, suddenly and irrationally if they had called the police after all.

Ben was pleasant company and he entertained her with tales of medical school and his first week on the job. He was witty and charming and, in other circumstances Gabrielle could have thoroughly enjoyed this sojourn with him. However, in these circumstances all she felt was guilty. Her mind was never more than half on what he was saying and more than once he gave her a sympathetic look, knowing exactly what… or rather whom she was thinking of.

“Have you been together long?”

“Sorry?”

“I know you are thinking of him so I thought we may as well talk about him. Have you and Daniel been together for long?”

“That question is strangely difficult to answer. On one level yes we have. We have been together all our lives. We played together as children and he’s always, always been there for me. But, we haven’t been in a relationship as such for very long, not very long at all.

“When I came here, to the university, I thought I had left him behind and then…well the other day we kind of bumped into each other and it sort of rocketed from there. I never realised how much he has been there for me all these years.

“I didn’t know, not until today, just a while ago…. just exactly how close he has held me all these years. See…well, when we were four or five we were running, I was chasing him and I fell, actually I think his sister tripped me but that’s another story, anyway I hit my mouth and broke a tooth. I didn’t think about it again… ever, but then, just now when you gave me his stuff, I looked inside his locket and there it was, after all this time, all these years, he still kept it.”

“He must love you very much.”

“Yes, I think he does.”

“And do you love him?”

“What’s love? Even after all these years, I barely know him. And yet… when I thought I was going to lose him it felt like my life would end, that there was no point in going on. When the paramedics came I was in such a state I could barely remember my own name. And even now, when I am sitting here with a very handsome young doctor, who is being very nice to me thank you very much.” She was gratified to see him blush. “ Even now all I can think of is wild red hair, green eyes and a smile that makes my heart hurt.

“I couldn’t begin to describe him to you, not in any words that would do him credit. He’s strong and brave, morally and physically; he’s straightforward and honest, he doesn’t play games, doesn’t even understand the rules. He’s so innocent in many ways, naïve even but when I laugh at him I’m the one who ends up feeling foolish. He’s kind and generous and he wears his heart on his sleeve. He’s just amazing and so, so beautiful.

“You know I used to think that he wasn’t good looking at all, for years I thought he was kind of funny looking, a bit weird, but when I saw him again the other day and he looked at me with this look in his eyes.” She smiled dreamily at the memory. “I think he must have cast a spell on me because ever since then whenever I look at him I’m completely blown away by how beautiful he is.” She stared into the distance lost in thought. “I’m sorry, what were we talking about?”

“Don’t worry, I asked you a question and you answered it.”

“And what about you Ben? Is there someone special in your life, or do you just make a habit of chatting up other people’s girlfriends in hospitals?”

This time he saw the funny side and laughed without blushing. “No, I don’t make a habit of that, only the truly beautiful ones who look as lost as you did. And, I suppose there is someone... well there could be. I don’t know… in a way I suppose it’s kind of like you and Daniel. There is someone I have known all my life, that I suppose I have loved forever. I kind of left her behind when I came to medical school and I catch up when I go home but…I haven’t ever… well… taken it any further.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I am embarrassed to admit this but I think that part of it is that I didn’t think she was sophisticated enough to be a doctor’s wife. She is kind of naïve and innocent too. Come to think of it that kind of thing is so refreshing isn’t it?”

“You can say that again. Do you know what I think you should do… you should go and telephone her right now. Go on. Go and ring her and have a long talk with her. Tell her how much you miss her and arrange to meet up as soon as you have time off. Go on, do it now.”

“No… no, I can’t”

“Why not? Will she be home?”

“She’ll be in bed, it’s the middle of the night.”

“Well, as long as she isn’t in bed with anyone else you will be fine. Just tell her that you were working in A & E and a patient came in that made you realise that life is short and that time is precious and you didn’t want to waste another moment of it before telling her how you feel for her.”

“You have the soul of a poet.”

“Yes, and the fist of a bare knuckle fighter so go do it now or take your next shift with a black eye.”

“I knew you were special, the moment I saw you. But then… so is he, I saw that too.” He frowned. “I’m glad you found each other. Daniel’s a very, very lucky man.”

“Well, I doubt that he is going to be feeling very lucky for a while but... I think we are both lucky, that we finally found each other. Let me know how the call goes.”

“I’ll walk you back your room madame. Then I promise I will go and phone.”

It was incredibly lonely in the waiting room, all alone after her interlude with Ben. She found that she missed him. Finally she lay down across a few of the chairs and, although she had never thought she would, she fell asleep.

Before too long she found herself dreaming, running through a wood following flashes of red gold between the trees. Bursting into a clearing she saw a figure sitting on a rock throwing stones into a river. The sun turned their hair to liquid fire and Gabrielle rushed forward eagerly. But, before she reached the figure she stopped. Something was wrong. There was something in the way this figure held themselves that was all wrong. The hair was too smooth and tame, the shoulders were too narrow and she was suddenly certain that she did not know this person.

“Who are you?”

At the sound the figure rose and turned to face her. The way that they moved was very like Cai and the face was familiar, with its slanting green eyes. The expression, however was not so familiar, although it certainly sparked a memory within her and gave the figure a name.

“Leelany?”

“You have betrayed him twice now, evil bitch. It wasn’t enough for you to deliver him into the hands of his enemies you had to imprison him in that place. You have bound him and enslaved him and soon you will abandon him. Three times I saw, three times you will betray him and I can’t do anything to save him. But I swear that if I were not committed to seeing you back where you belong, fulfilling the destiny that was placed on all of us, I would kill you now.”

“Leelany, I didn’t mean to hurt him. I had no idea.”

“You did not listen to him. You were warned often enough that you should not speak his name and yet you could not keep silence. And then, when you had done the worst thing you could do to him, you betrayed him again. When he was helpless to defend himself, when he could not fight you, you betrayed him.”

“No… no, I didn’t. I didn’t betray him. I just wanted to help him. I swear I just wanted to help.”

“You ‘helped’ him by sending him to that place to be…” she shuddered, genuinely appalled. “…butchered by people who do not know him, or care for him, to be poisoned and imprisoned in glass and metal, to be a prisoner of their machines and... and…”

“No, Leelany, that’s not the way it was. He was dying, I don’t know how it happened but one minute he was as you left him and then he was bleeding. Somehow, somewhere he was stabbed and he was bleeding and I thought he was going to die.”

“Better that he had, in freedom that to suffer the fate you have sent him to.”

“How could you say that? He’s in surgery Leelany, he was stabbed, his lung was punctured, when the ambulance came he was coughing blood and if they hadn’t come when they did he would have died. How can that have been better?”

“I could have saved him.”

“How? Did you not listen to me? His lung collapsed, he would have died.”

“How can you be sure of that? Do you think that I could not have healed him? Do you think that I have not done so before?”

“What do you mean?”

“He has not always been so strong and so skilled, and the demons have always been there, on your trail, getting closer and closer to you. There have been many fights and many times when I have had to heal him. This is not the first serious wound, I have stitched and brewed and I have held his hand through long nights when the fever has taken possession of him and I was not sure that he would live to see the morning. But he always has. And I have done that… in the wood under the stars. He has breathed clean air and been free.”

“I… I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I had no idea.”

“No, you did not. And that was the way it should have stayed.”

“Maybe you are right, but that is not the way it did stay. I made a mistake, a terrible mistake, alright, maybe two terrible mistakes but I didn’t do it deliberately, I would never, never hurt him on purpose. I love him Leelany.”

“No! Don’t say that. DO NOT SAY THAT. It can never be. I have worked hard to stop him from falling in love with you. So many times... It cannot be Gabrielle. You must not fall in love with him and you must not let him fall in love with you or you will betray him again.”

“No, I will never betray him, never again. What I have done I have done in ignorance. I will be so much more careful now, I swear. I will not hurt him again. I will not betray him again.

“But you will. Before another day has passed you will betray him. You will abandon him and you will betray him. And if you let him love you then you will betray him again. One of these days Gabrielle you will betray him to his death.”

“No! That will not be. I will NEVER do that. I don’t know why you hate me so much but…”

“You don’t know… you don’t know…? How can you not know when I have just told you? I hate you because of what you have done to Ca’el. I have always known that you would. I saw it in you from the start. You have betrayed him and you will betray him again and, for that and no other reason, I hate you.”

“But...”

Before she could say another word the ground began to shake and both she and Leelany lost their footing and fell