Sophie's Run (9 page)

She petered out.

“I know,” I volunteered. “The paramedics said something about secondary drowning.”

“Yes, that is a risk,” Dr. McKendra conceded, “but—”

“What
is
secondary drowning?” I cut in.

The doctor paused for a second. “If your friend has inhaled any water, even a very small amount, that could impair her breathing process later, even in a few hours.”

I struggled to take that in, but Dr. McKendra continued speaking.

“That isn’t what we’re most worried about,” she announced. “Were you aware of your friend being depressed at all?”

“Depressed? Rachel? No!” I exclaimed. “She’s been happily planning her wedding and all that…”

Dr. McKendra sighed. “Well, it appears that she did jump into the river, rather than fall or be pushed.”

“How do you know that?” I asked defensively, even though I clearly remembered watching Rachel let go.

“The police have been talking to the guests on the pleasure cruiser, and there was no incident as such. Nobody even remembers her disappearing.”

The good doctor might as well have stabbed me through the heart with a shard of ice. The police had been on the boat? Investigating? And where the hell had Jordan been through all of this? How did nobody notice her disappearing? Would she have to speak to the police, too? Was she, like, in actual trouble for jumping off a boat?

“Well, that doesn’t mean anything,” I objected, pushing my concerns aside and focusing on the matter at hand. “There could have been an accident or somebody could have pushed her over, secretly, without anyone else seeing…”

I stopped, aware that I was sounding like an extra from a CSI show.

“Rachel told us that she jumped,” the doctor informed me carefully. “She just won’t tell us why. And that’s why we can’t let her go tonight.”

I nodded slowly, reluctantly. That did make sense, especially given the frantic phone call I received and everything I observed. I simply didn’t feel like sharing that with the doctor, however kind she seemed. I was wary of digging an even deeper hole for my friend, and I was convinced that there had to be a perfectly good, one-off, catastrophic reason for her action. Rachel wasn’t a suicide candidate, even if she had been put on suicide watch.

“Will she have to speak to the police?”

“Probably not, for now. I’ve told them what she’s told us and advised them against questioning her. So…” The doctor trailed off.

“Can I stay with her?” I needed to know.

“Sure,” Dr. McKendra agreed. “We need to finish some checks before you can go in. She’ll probably go to sleep quite quickly though. It would be good if you could come back early tomorrow.”

“Of course,” I immediately agreed. “I can stay the night if that would help…?”

The doctor smiled. “I don’t think that will be necessary. You look like you could do with some rest, too. Is there somebody who could pick you up later?”

“Err, yes, I guess so, but—”

“Good, that’s settled. You can go in when the nurse tells you. Thank you for all your help. You probably saved your friend’s life.”

And with that, she got up and left.

I sat in a daze for a few moments, then reluctantly got out my mobile to text Dan, blithely ignoring the “no mobile phone” signs plastered all over the place. Mission accomplished, I sat back and waited.

And right there, in this most unlikely of places, after this most horrendous of events, in the most awful of circumstances, I saw him again.

Steve.

I nearly didn’t recognize him in scrubs, but our eyes met once again, and it was definitely him. He was walking alongside a trolley carrying a badly injured man. He was busily monitoring the patient’s vital signs, and yet he caught my eye.

For one second, his step faltered as he saw me, but he got swept along by the movement of the trolley, disappeared through some automatic double-doors. And the moment was over.

My heart leapt in my chest and all my senses were jubilant. There was definitely something there. He had seen me. He had nearly stopped. I hadn’t imagined it, I knew I hadn’t. I very nearly did a little jig. Just wait until I could tell Rachel about this and—

I crash-landed back in reality after my short but intense flight of fancy. I almost felt guilty at the joy and exhilaration I had so briefly experienced.

A nurse stood in front of me. “You can go in now,” she repeated, a tad impatient.

“Oh, oh, right, thanks. Sorry,” I gabbled, gathering up my things and entering Rachel’s room.

“Only a few minutes, mind. We’ll be moving her to the ward shortly,” the nurse shouted after me.

Rachel looked small and frail, but she had some color back in her face.

“Sophie,” she croaked. “You came.”

“Of course I came, silly,” I chided, trying not to burst into tears.

“Can I have a hug?” Rachel pleaded.

“’
Course you can.” I bent down to give her an awkward little hug.

“Sit,” she invited me, softly patting her bed. So I sat, and held her hand.

A fat tear escaped from Rachel’s right eye and slowly trickled down her cheek. She didn’t even bother wiping it away, so I did it for her. That brought on more tears, but she didn’t seem to have the energy for a full-on sobbing fit like she had had on the phone.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I’m so, so sorry. I know they all think I’m going to do myself in, but I’m not. I lost it. I’m sorry.”

I hesitated. Was this the right time to talk?

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” I asked, as gently as I could. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, I don’t want to be nosey or anything… Just if you want to…”

“He dumped me,” Rachel cut into my clumsy ramblings.

I stared, uncomprehending.

“He dumped you?” I repeated before I could think better of it. It was too big a fact to take in.

“He did,” Rachel confirmed. “He didn’t even warn me. He simply turned up with somebody else. The bastard. The evil….”

“Hold it, hold it, backtrack a little for me here,” I pleaded. “What was this thing on the boat anyway?”

“I don’t really know, some posh function. A launch party, I think. Well, it had a launch all right,” she suddenly snorted. “Just not the kind they’d expected.”

Humor. That was a good sign, surely?

“Right, so you turned up at this party on your own?” I verified.

Rachel nodded. “I didn’t really want to go, it’s not my scene. I didn’t know anybody there. We’ve had some friction over that lately. Anyway…” she trailed off.

“You went, and he met you there?” I offered.

“I went, and he didn’t meet me there. He brought somebody else. He didn’t even acknowledge me.”

I must have looked like a question mark, because she reiterated. “He pretended he didn’t know me. He blanked me. I tried to talk to him but he had security take me away.”

I gave a sharp intake of breath.
Oh my God.

I was going to find him. And when I had found him, I was going to kill him. No, better still, I was going to tear him apart alive, bit by bit.

But Rachel was still talking.

“So I flipped. I went to the railing and took my ring off and threw that over the side. I thought I’d feel better, but I didn’t. And then it seemed like a really good idea to go after it. I mean, what’s the point of it all?” She shrugged her shoulders. “I hadn’t even drunk anything. I threw my glass of champagne at him before they dragged me away. What a waste, huh?” She gave a hysterical giggle. “Anyway. What a stupid thing to do. I felt I couldn’t go on. But you can always go on. Of course you can. Remember Gloria Gaynor, right?” And unbelievably, she burst into song. Very softly. “I’ve got all my life to live, I’ve got all my love to give, I will survive… I will sur
vive
…”

Her eyes glazed over and she bore a crazed expression. A rash of goosebumps spread from my arms to the nape of my neck. I hated seeing my friend like this, veering between her calm, rational self and hysterical, defiant self-pity. Yet before I could say anything to comfort her, she passed out. A nurse—a different one from before—gave a little cough. She seemed to have been in the room for a while.

“Sorry,” she said. “I had to be here. I didn’t mean to listen. Anyway, looks like she’s asleep now. That’ll be the sedative kicking in.”

I nodded. “Was this…was this really her talking, or was that the sedative, too?”

The nurse smiled. “A bit of both. What a shock, though. You can kind of understand her reaction, can’t you?” She busied herself straightening Rachel’s blankets.

“You’d better go and get some rest,” she suggested. “Come back in the morning. She’ll have a jolly good sleep. Everything will be better in the morning.”

When I emerged from the hospital, more shaken than I had realized, I found Dan waiting outside the lobby. He looked slightly disheveled and very pale.

“What on earth happened?” he greeted me. “Is Rachel all right?”

I started talking, but he interrupted me immediately. “You look done in, let’s get you home. You can tell me on the way.” He took my arm and led me toward the car park. I filled him in on the evening’s events on the drive home, and his face assumed a grim, and a grimmer still expression.

“Low,” he mumbled under his breath. “That’s really low.” He drove on in silence, but at the next red traffic light he suddenly erupted. “Bastard,” he announced forcefully and smacked the steering wheel as hard as he could.

“I know,” I concurred. “Bastard. Scum. Evil son of a bitch. I’ve gone through the whole catalogue but nothing’s quite strong enough.”

Another silence ensued as we neared Dan’s house. Soon, we were sitting in Dan’s kitchen, me with a gin and tonic—for medicinal reasons—and Dan with a whisky on the rocks.

“You don’t think…” Dan pondered, sounding hesitant to express his thoughts. “Well, is it possible that Jordan might have tried to break up with her for a while and she didn’t get it?” he finally ventured.

I spluttered into my drink.

“No!
” I issued with considerable emphasis. “How can you even think that? They were
engaged
.” I took a deep breath to steady my voice. “Rachel picks up on these things, she would have known something was wrong. No,” I reiterated, “this was a complete surprise to her.”

“I guess you’re right.” Dan was crestfallen. “I never really liked the guy that much but I find it hard to believe that he could be so cruel.”

“I
liked him,” I confessed. “They seemed so good together. But this…well, this is something else.”

“Oughtn’t we to find out why?” Dan ventured once more.

“No. Absolutely not. I don’t care about his side of the story.” I banged my glass on the table for emphasis this time, noting absentmindedly that it appeared to be empty. “What he did was inexcusable. Unforgivable. No matter
what
the reason, you don’t do that to a person.” And, as a classic non-sequitur, “Can I have another, please?” I waved my glass in the air.

“Sure,” Dan jumped up and busied himself with the ice cube maker.

“I guess you’re right,” he said again as he sat down once more. “I just don’t know what else to say.”

“There’s nothing
to
say,” I pondered. “He dumped her, and she threw herself off a boat. Now she’s in the hospital, and they think she’s at risk of inflicting more harm on herself. That’ll look
really
good on her health records. That’ll stay with her all her life.”

“Okay, okay,” Dan soothed as I was getting myself worked up again. “Calm down. It’s done now. And she didn’t have to jump, nobody made her.”

I snorted again. “Only a man could say that. Of course she didn’t have to bloody jump. Of course nobody made her. That’s exactly the point. She flipped. She lost it. Temporary outage, if you will. She will regret this bitterly in the morning. She’ll feel really stupid. But she felt she had no way out. Have you never felt that way, ever?” I challenged him.

Dan considered this. “Nah, not really. But!” Something occurred to him. “When Irene left me…”

He paused while I waited with bated breath for what he would say next. Even though that was way before my time, I knew he had been heartbroken after the divorce.

Smiling ruefully, he continued, “When she’d gone, after I’d been all patient and calm… Well, when I was on my own, I guess I lost it a bit.” He stopped and turned red.

“What did you do?” I pounced, intrigued.

“I…” he faltered.

“Go on, you’ve got to tell me now.”

“I smashed up my Les Paul.”

I sucked in my breath. “Your Les Paul? Your
Black Beauty
? Your beloved electric guitar?” I confirmed, incredulous. “The really, really expensive one?”

“Yup, my baby. I smashed it against the wall. I don’t know what came over me.” He looked sheepish all over again.

“See,” I pounced. “You
do
get it. You destroyed something really precious to you. That’s not a million miles away from throwing yourself into the river on an impulse. It’s certainly the same range of emotion.”