Doug Johnstone - Hit and run

‘And no problems, no fits or anything?’

‘Billy, I think you have a bit more to worry about than Jeanie at the moment.’

Everything she said was weighted with a strange kind of sadness. Did she know about him and Adele in the toilets?

‘How are you feeling?’ she said.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, far enough away that they weren’t touching.

‘Fine, considering I’ve got a swollen brain and a hole in my skull.’

‘Don’t joke about it.’

‘Who’s joking?’

She looked down at her lap. Her hands were lying there, motionless, and she stared at them as if they belonged to someone else.

‘I really care about you, Billy.’

‘I know.’

Jesus, was she about to dump him? He couldn’t blame her.

‘Charlie and I have been so worried about you.’

That ‘Charlie and I’ made him bristle. It sounded parental, like they were a couple. He remembered the two of them mollycoddling him, persuading him not to call the authorities, not to confess. Trying to keep him medicated and calm, under their control. Had it really been like that? He couldn’t be sure, he wasn’t sure about anything any more.

He felt Jeanie lick his hand, the roughness of her tongue on his skin. He imagined her licking up all the poisons that were leaching out of his pores, cleansing him of all the bad karma and drugs and nightmares.

‘Everything’s going to be OK,’ Zoe said.

She placed a hand on top of his on the bedsheets. It was cold. She’d always had bad circulation, was always wearing more layers than him around the flat. They made a joke of her freezing extremities. Cold hands, warm heart. His own hands were hot and slippery with illness and medication and sweat. What did that say?

He leaned over to shove his nose into the side of Jeanie’s head, pulling his hand out carefully from under Zoe’s and tickling Jeanie behind the ears. The dog smelled of something primal but comforting. Eventually he raised his face to Zoe’s. She seemed sad beyond words.

A door slammed and they jumped. Jeanie flinched and backed away, head darting around nervously.

‘You fucking cunt.’

Billy recognised the voice. Here it comes, he thought, bring it on.

Dean Whitehouse was striding down the corridor towards them, finger pointing, eyes blazing, veins in his neck twitching.

Billy instinctively pushed Jeanie out of harm’s way and raised his hands in a half-hearted placating gesture.

‘I’m going to fucking kill you,’ Dean said. ‘You little piece of shit.’

He was almost at them now.

Zoe looked at Billy and got up from the bed.

‘Billy?’

‘Dean Whitehouse,’ Billy said. ‘Frank’s brother.’

Zoe turned to Dean. ‘Now wait a minute, you can’t come in here.. ’

‘Shut your fucking face, you posh bitch.’

He pushed past her and launched himself at Billy, grabbing the front of his hospital gown and hauling him up.

‘I know what you were doing with Adele in the pub toilets. Fucking my brother’s wife when he’s not even cold in the ground. You sick fuck.’

He threw a punch. Billy didn’t even try to defend himself. What was the point? He was going to die here, there was nothing he could do about it.

‘Billy?’

It was Zoe. He couldn’t look at her.

Dean laughed, indicating Zoe. ‘This your bird? Very nice.’ He turned to her. ‘Didn’t you know, darling? This slimy little cunt has been fucking my sister-in-law, taking advantage of her grief.’

‘It’s not like that.’ Billy wasn’t sure why he was bothering to speak.

‘Billy?’

He looked at Zoe now. Tears forming in her eyes. She backed away from the bed.

‘Zoe, wait.’ Why? What would he do if she stayed? He had no words.

Dean still had a hold of Billy’s gown. He threw a rabbit punch into Billy’s side, sending shockwaves through his body. Billy struggled to breathe.

Then suddenly Dean was spread across Billy’s lap, three men in hospital uniforms pinning him against the bed and pulling at his arms as he thrashed around, screaming, his neck muscles and shoulders straining.

The three men lifted Dean away from the bed by his arms. Dean grimaced, shot Billy a stare full of venom, then spat at him. Billy felt the phlegm hit his cheek and lips and raised a hand to wipe it off, trying to get breath back into his lungs as he drowned in pain, soaked in it.

Dean was being dragged backwards. ‘I’m not finished with you, fucking prick. Watch your back. I’m going to destroy you.’

The men yanked at Dean, making him flinch. They pulled him past Zoe, who stood there frozen to the spot, watching Dean with her eyes wide.

Dean was still looking at Billy, rage in his eyes.

‘Stay away from Adele, you dirty cunt. Understand?’

Everyone in the ward was staring at them. With a clatter and swish, the men hauled Dean back through the door, leaving a vacuum of silence to fill.

Zoe turned to Billy. Tears on her cheeks now, a look of understanding in her eyes.

‘Wait,’ Billy said, but he didn’t really mean it. Why should she wait, to hear more bullshit?

She turned and strode down the corridor, raising her hands to her face, not looking back, then she was through the doors and away.

Billy stared at the doors, swinging to a stop.

He heard a whine and spotted Jeanie cowering next to the bedside cabinet.

He put his hand out. ‘It’s OK, girl.’

He tasted blood in his mouth, then noticed spatters of red on his white sheets.

Jeanie crept towards him tentatively, but he made comforting noises to bring her near. When she was close enough, he stroked her snout and head, making small shushing noises. He felt the tension leave her body, then he lowered himself back on to his bed, still touching her face with a limp hand.

He pushed the morphine button and kept pushing until he knew there was no more coming.

More drug-soaked sleep, distressed, swimming with nightmare visions, him in the pub toilets standing over Dean bent over the sink, then their faces morphing into Zoe and Charlie, then his mum frowning at him, Jeanie’s simple stare, all of them crushing him, making his head explode. Images of his brain liquefying, pouring out of the hole in his skull and down the sink, everything that’s him disappearing into the gutter then the sewer then out to sea.

His eyelids snapped open. His breath caught in his chest then released in a chain of sickly gasps. He felt a slick sheen of sweat all over his body, sticking him to the sheets. Then new pain sweeping in, his face, kidneys, mingling with the old pain, the familiar throbs and aches and pulses of death flowing through him.

‘Are you OK, Kiddo?’

Rose. Thank fuck.

She was sitting by the side of the bed, her face was worried, full of compassion. It was good to see a face like that.

‘I’m fine,’ he said.

‘Because you look like shit.’

He coughed out a laugh and winced, pain across his midriff and forehead.

She smiled. ‘It only hurts when you laugh, eh?’

‘Something like that.’

‘It’s been quite a week for you, huh, Kiddo?’

‘I thought my nickname was Scoop.’

‘You seem more like a kid than an ace reporter, sitting there in your hospital jammies, lost to the world.’

Billy looked round. It wasn’t quite daylight outside, maybe around sunset, a warm evening glow ebbing through the window. He examined the ward, same spread of old-timers, wheezing and spluttering towards a bitter end.

‘Where’s Jeanie?’

‘The dog?’

Billy nodded.

‘Your brother took it home. I met him on my way in.’

Memories of his last conscious spell began filtering into his mind. Zoe. And Dean. The truth about Adele.