Robert Young - Gatecrasher

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Rooted to the spot in the doorway he could hear the clamour of people behind him trying to look into the room, asking each other who it was, what had happened.

Campbell stared dumbly at the scene before him, not quite able to grasp what he was seeing.

‘Did anyone see?’ he asked of no-one in particular. When no answer came he turned to the group of people arranged in the hallway around the kitchen door. ‘What happened here?’ he asked again but his question met only with blank stares.

‘Nobody saw anything? No one was in here with him?’ A note of incredulity touched his voice as he turned back again to look at the motionless form sprawled across the floor. Campbell had not yet crossed the threshold of the doorway, his toe making it no further than the metal carpet rail that separated his hall carpet from the kitchen lino and formed a barrier that seemed now somehow impossible for him to breach.

Turning slowly he stepped into the room and as he did so, the crowd at his back pressed forward. There were more screams, gasps, more talking and he span and ushered them back out of the room and closed the door but a brown-haired woman who had arrived with a friend moved forcefully through the door and then closed it for him.

‘I know a little first aid,’ she said and then looked from him to the figure on the floor.

‘OK,’ he nodded blankly. Campbell’s head was still swimming and he blinked hard twice to try to clear his vision. It failed. He tried to think about how much he’d drunk. A lot.

He stepped forward and reached his hand out toward the man’s neck. A hooded top obscured all but the back of his head, the hair there dark and matted with blood. Neither of them spoke; not when Campbell had drawn back the hood to expose a number of vicious gashes in the man’s neck, blood flowing freely from the wounds. Not when Campbell took up the man’s wrist and rolled his eyes in relief when he found a faint pulse.

Shards from a wineglass lay broken in the blood and the long thin stem rocked gently back and forth on its circular base next to the man’s head. Campbell guessed that he had fallen and somehow the glass had ended up between the floor and his throat as he landed. He speculated about this aloud and they both winced at the thought, picturing it as they stared again at the wound.

‘Pass me a dishcloth or something,’ Campbell instructed trying to sound decisive, but she was kneeling now and rolling her sleeves up. Campbell grabbed clean dishcloths from a drawer and tossed them about in the pooling blood, pressing firmly on them as they began to colour a deep, deep red.

‘How’s that first aid looking?’ he said. She looked up at him with a pale face and red hands.

‘All I can think is that you’re supposed to stop the bleeding by applying pressure. But I’m not exactly sure how we do that without strangling the guy.’

‘Shit… Ambulance.’

She nodded and he pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and began dialling.

‘Where’s the nearest A and E?’ she asked looking back at the motionless figure and his pallid looking face.

‘Not far actually. Five minutes up the road maybe.’ he said and then started talking into the handset, fighting to keep the panic and the booze from his voice, trying not to look at the prone figure next to him.

When he finished he looked up at her and nodded, exhaling noisily. ‘Who the hell is this guy?’

After a protracted silence she spoke. ‘Party’s over then.’

Campbell was staring at the blood. So dark, he thought. He nodded but said nothing.

3

Saturday. 11.30 pm.

He shifted his backside on the thin cushioning of the waiting-room seat and looked again at his watch and then the clock on the wall.

Campbell shook his head. Where was this guy, he thought. How long was this going to take?

He had been sitting here for a little over an hour now. Half past eleven on a Saturday night in the waiting room of an A and E. The last place on earth he wanted to be and he wasn’t allowed to leave. The identity of the man he had brought in had yet to be established and he had been asked to stay until some official people asked some official questions.

Campbell squirmed in the seat and tried to stay calm. The drink was not helping. And the cheap machine-coffee in the plastic cup was worse than useless.

He tried hard to count up the number of drinks that he had got through that evening, recalling numerous glasses of wine, a couple of beers early on as he milled about on his own waiting for guests to start arriving.

Then there were the tequila shots. A sambuca? Had there been anything else? He couldn’t remember exactly but one thing was for sure; no amount of shock or black coffee was going to change the fact that he was drunk. He’d tried to remain as composed as possible with the ambulance crew but had become so conscious of slurring his words that he had then tried hard not to say anything at all. That only made him worry that in clamming up he might seem suspicious or uncooperative.

And then they’d asked him to stay. Asked him if he’d mind answering a few questions about the man, about what had happened. And he’d nodded dumbly and taken a seat, trying hard to fight down the clamouring sense of fear and panic.

But that wasn’t it.

His short term memory had been swilled away earlier that evening and already he was struggling to recall the scene in his kitchen. He was alarmed that the details evaded his recall when so little time had passed since it happened. He tried to piece it together. The brunette woman had said ‘Party’s over then’ or something and he’d nodded. You can say that again love.

And then he’d ushered her out into the hallway, told them all that an ambulance was coming and that it was probably best if people headed off now. Nobody needed asking twice and he went back into the kitchen to the man lying there in his own gathering blood hearing the noise outside drop until it was silent. Five minutes it had taken them to clear his flat as he sat wishing that he could go too, thinking about what would happen, what he would say to the paramedics. Soon the keening of the ambulance siren rose in the background and he felt the panic growing again as it drew closer. Homing in on him, seeking him out.

Which was when the man moved.

And spoke.

What had he said? Campbell frowned as he tried to remember, tried to blink his vision clear — to focus — but the memory just wasn’t there. Just a fleeting image of the head rising from the floor, something mumbled. Something. What?

Campbell slid further into the uncomfortable chair, the seat back now digging into his shoulders. He looked toward the far side of the room where a tall, well dressed man was walking slowly and deliberately toward the reception desk, blood streaked down his face from his hairline and across his brow where a large cut traced a line to his eyebrow. Campbell winced and squirmed in his chair, the train of thought abruptly derailed. Another thirty minutes passed, the room began to fill with more unfortunates; cuts and burns. Twisted ankles, broken bones. Still no-one came to him.

He racked his foggy brain again and again but all he could summon was that same fleeting image like a blurred, grainy instant-replay on loop.

As the waiting room filled with more hurt and pain, he began to feel as though he had been forgotten entirely and began to doze off before finally a suited gentleman in rimless spectacles called his name and ushered him through into a small office. Brisk and efficient he sat him down and offered him a drink in a tone that made it quite clear that to accept would have been an inconvenience. He seemed irritated by Campbell’s obvious inebriation.

‘Sorry to have kept you waiting for so long. Terribly busy out there as you can see and there are always a million other things to do to keep a place like this running. Hope its not too much trouble,’ he said with rehearsed sincerity.

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