Another Life. Part 15

The pain has spread over your whole upper back now. Pressing your hand against the wound hasn't staunched the blood, and you're beginning to feel dizzy. As you lie against the shop window, you consider how you're going to get medical attention.

You can't let it finish here. There must be someone to go to. But first, you have to survive this.

You stumble on past the gla.s.s and iron of the indoor market. Someone has piled sandbags across the entrance to stem the flow of rainwater. In the distance, the ululating wail of a police siren cuts across the noise of the rain storm. And you have your answer.

Your vision starts to blur as you stagger along the pedestrianised Queen Street. Its cafes and pubs and restaurants are either closed or forlornly empty under the storm, but you barely notice as you make your way, step by painful step. As a girl, you watched an 8mm film show of a school outing to Jodrell Bank, and the film had stuck in the projector. The image of waving children in front of the radio telescope had juddered, frozen and then burnt until the film snapped and the screen showed only white. The people hurrying past you through the rain seem to be slowing down, the sound of the rain and the traffic is merging into a background hiss, and your surroundings are fading... not to white, but black.

So you fight to stay awake. You heard that siren. There must still be a chance here, you tell yourself. There has to be something up towards the Millennium Stadium.

And there is. The startling blue flash of an ambulance is visible in the middle distance, back towards St Mary Street. The siren is not sounding, but the emergency vehicle is making swift progress towards you. It slows as it approaches the corner of North Road and Duke Street, and that is your opportunity.

To step out into the road in front of it.

There's a buzz of activity, a flurry of half-glimpsed movement and impressionistic images.

You were luckier than you knew. There was a doctor in the back of this ambulance. Pretty, short dark hair. She has given you morphine for the pain, and is conducting an inventory of your injuries with a paramedic beside her. No broken limbs. A gash to the side of the head. To start with, they think you are a drunk who has stumbled in front of their ambulance. Your erratic movements, the disgusting smell of you, and your inability to speak clearly have led them to this conclusion. But their demeanour changes now that they find the gunshot wound. Even in your haze of dizziness and pain, you can see the doctor is startled by her discovery. But she stays professional. Radios it ahead. Starts to treat it.

It was Guy Wildman who got you here, in more ways than one. He told you a joke, as you were setting out for the sub-aqua trip, about how he could always get hold of the police in any emergency. A story he said he'd read in the paper. Some bloke phoned them to say his shed was being burgled. Cops didn't wanna know, said they had no one available in his area.

So he rang them back five minutes later, told them not to bother because he'd gone and shot the intruders. Course, in another five minutes flat, his house is surrounded by armed cops. And they catch the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who were burgling the bloke's shed. Cops weren't too happy, of course. 'I thought you said you'd shot the burglars,' said the arresting officer. 'And I thought you said you had no one available in my area,' said the bloke.

So, the best way to get to hospital? Get knocked over by an ambulance.

The pain in your shoulder has eased. The other, old pain is coming back, though. The need. The hunger.

Can't do anything about that now. Not just at the moment.

You need to rest. Recuperate. Sleep.

For now.

TWENTY-ONE.

Ianto wondered whether he should knock. He stood by the office door and listened for a moment, thinking that he might determine from the sound of Jack's breathing whether he was asleep. Maybe, like Owen yesterday, Jack had dozed off at his desk after a hard night. Maybe, but not likely, Ianto acknowledged. His knuckles hesitated beside the door jamb, while he balanced the tray of coffee things in the other hand.

The office was in semi-darkness, most of the light pooling from under the angled head of an old-fashioned gooseneck desk lamp. It eerily illuminated a creepy display of gla.s.s specimen jars that Jack had arranged on a low table. Two alien claws floated in formaldehyde; the scaled fingers seemed to beckon Ianto from across the room.

He studied Jack. Deep, regular and rhythmic would indicate sleep. In the unlikely event that the boss wasn't awake, Ianto thought he himself could sneak back to the kitchen for breakfast alone, plus maybe an extra quarter of an hour of his own research down in the bas.e.m.e.nt. He'd come into the Hub early this morning, a 7 a.m. start. That was in part because he was worried that the unceasing rain might flood the local roads on his way in from Radyr, and in part because he didn't entirely trust the sandbags around the Hub entrance. Even Llan-Duffred hill was streaming as he drove in, and the way the rainwater was sluicing around the city centre he could well imagine it pouring into the underground Hub complex and wreaking havoc.

Jack was slumped down in his office chair, his back to Ianto, exactly as he'd left him the previous night. Maybe he'd fallen asleep working there. With his head on his chest, the back of Jack's neck showed above his blue shirt collar. His greatcoat was neatly folded on top of a table beside a towering pile of pamphlets, printouts, scuffed old books, and a few leathery old apples. Jack's RAF cap still hung from a makeshift wall hook, its gold oak leaf motif faintly catching the lamp's light. Ianto had once made the mistake of asking if the hat was fancy dress, and Jack had teased him for a whole week about men in uniform. He'd eventually let Ianto try it on (further gentle mockery), but explained with what sounded like considerable pride that he'd had it custom-made by Tranter the Hatter in Jermyn Street, St James. It had been no more than a moment's Googling for Ianto to discover that this was more teasing Tranter's had never reopened after a V1 had razed the business to the ground in 1944.

Ianto blinked in surprise. A hand was beckoning him, waggling its fingers. He worked out a fraction of a second later that it wasn't an alien claw, it was Jack's arm, the shirt sleeves rolled up to the elbow, waving him into the room. 'Excellent timing,' said Jack. There was no sound of tiredness in his voice, but he stretched both arms wide, shrugged his shoulders, as though starting to get the stiffness out. Even from the doorway, Ianto heard him breathe in deeply through his nose. 'That's a new blend, isn't it? What magic have you worked with those beans, Ianto?' Another deep inhalation. 'Same old aftershave, though.'

'Good morning.' Ianto moved forward into the office, his eyes growing accustomed to the lamp light. He didn't ask whether Jack had slept well. Jack frequently stayed overnight here in his office, and although there was a bed in the room, Ianto had never once found him asleep. Come to think of it, he'd never seen Jack dozing off in meetings either, or exhausted at the end of a long day.

Jack moved the formaldehyde jar into a deep desk drawer, scooped up a pile of papers from the desk, and locked those in the drawer with it. This made s.p.a.ce for the coffee tray, which held a cafetiere and two cups, plus a notebook with phone messages annotated neatly in Ianto's meticulous handwriting.

Ianto pressed the cafetiere to pour one cup, 'I thought you'd like to try the kopi luwak kopi luwak today,' Ianto told him. today,' Ianto told him.

Jack sat up straight in his chair. 'You're kidding me! The stuff made from beans eaten by a civet and then p.o.o.ped out?'

Ianto poured him a cup. 'Yes...'

'The stuff the Indonesians go wild for? The stuff that costs, like, a hundred pounds a kilo?' Jack sniffed his cup suspiciously. His lips hovered, uncertain, at the rim. 'You didn't get this from Waitrose. Boy, I never thought I'd be quaffing cat-s.h.i.t coffee.'

'I meant "yes, I am kidding you".'

Jack clucked in disapproval, but he was smiling.

Ianto smiled back. 'They said they were fresh out of cat-s.h.i.t coffee this week. Something to do with their trucks can't through in this weather. So it's the usual.' He leaned over the desk to pick the notepad off the tray.

Jack leaned back in the chair to appraise him. 'Such a pert a.s.s, Ianto. Were you ever an Italian waiter?'

'I'm more of a French Press man myself.' He handed Jack the phone messages. 'That question may const.i.tute work-based s.e.xual hara.s.sment.'

'Only if you ask me real nice.' Jack waggled the notebook. 'What is this?'

'Bit short on detail. Said they had a problem, and would you please call him back at Blaidd Drwg.'

'What sort of problem?'

Ianto shook his head. 'Didn't want to give me any more details. He sounded a bit upset, but was still apologetic about calling. Bit strange, really.'

Jack drained his coffee. He jumped up from his chair, loped across the room and hit the main lights. Ianto blinked away the painful contrast as they flickered on overhead. Jack dragged a conference phone onto one table, and threw the notebook and then the phone handset at Ianto. 'Dial'em in while I get changed. No, no,' he said as Ianto gestured that he could step outside, 'I'm not real shy.' From a nearby cupboard he pulled out one of half a dozen identical blue shirts, split the cellophane with his thumbnail, and discarded the packaging in the bin with the old shirt.

Ianto finished dialling. The phone's ringtone hummed briefly around the office, and then a voice: 'h.e.l.lo? Jonathan Meadows.'

'Direct line?' Jack said quietly to Ianto as he b.u.t.toned his shirt. 'No secretarial shelter. Must be important.' He yelled into the air in the direction of the phone: 'Jonathan! It seems like we were talking only yesterday. So, early shift for you?'

'Under the circ.u.mstances...' Even in those brief words, it was clear that Meadows was trying to hold back some rebuke. The quality of the sound was good enough for Ianto to hear the scientist take a calming breath. 'Mr Harkness, we're most grateful...'

'Captain Harkness,' he interrupted. 'But call me Jack.'

Another calming breath. 'Captain Harkness. We are, of course, most grateful that you've returned those four fuel packs.'

'All part of the service, Jonathan. If we can't help our Blaidd Drwg colleagues recover their carelessly mislaid nuclear equipment, then what are we in business for?' Jack grinned hugely at Ianto.

Meadows persevered. 'Most grateful, yes. And we... well, we know that you Torchwood people like to lay claim to things you come across.'

'Let me a.s.sure you, Jonathan, we have no use for nuclear fuel. Everything here works off triple-A batteries, believe me.'

'Then what have you done with the other ones?' asked Meadow plaintively.

Jack looked at Ianto.

Ianto looked at the notebook as though the original message might contain a clue. It didn't.

'The other what?' asked Jack.

'The other two nuclear fuel packs,' Meadows replied in an exasperated tone. There was a long pause. 'You do realise, don't you, that Wildman took six of them?'

The thunder disturbed Gwen during the night, its rumbling a constant presence for most of the early hours. At first she did that childhood thing of counting between the flash and the boom, but it was quickly obvious that the lightning strikes were already very close. The susurration of rain on the roof wasn't soothing her to sleep as it had when she was a child. In the end she got out of bed and went to the bathroom, and then for a gla.s.s of water. Rhys had snored through the whole night's storm, of course, oblivious to its noise and her wakefulness. She found him sprawled across three-quarters of the bed by the time she got back.

The half-light of early morning was breaking through their bedroom curtain. She was starting to think she'd finally get some proper sleep when the phone rang and shattered that hope.

Rhys mumbled from underneath his pillow, and reached out blindly for the bedside phone. He misjudged the distance, and the phone clattered to the carpet in a jangling mess of coiled wire. He emerged from under the sheets, grumbling, scowling through his tangle of bed hair. 'Gwen, that's your mobile. Get your mobile.' He slumped back onto his pillow.

Gwen found her phone by their chest of drawers. It was plugged into the wall socket, recharging but still switched on. The display told her who was calling: 'Torchwood'.

'Ianto?' Gwen said. 'Hi. Oh G.o.d, look at the time. Yeah, sorry. What is it?'

'Problem,' Ianto told her. 'You're needed back here now.'

'On my way.' Gwen flipped the phone shut. She turned around, and Rhys was already sat up in bed, glowering myopically at her.

'I thought you had this morning off,' he told her. 'I thought we both both had this morning off. I promised you breakfast. Mushrooms. Sausages. I was in the mood for eggy bread.' had this morning off. I promised you breakfast. Mushrooms. Sausages. I was in the mood for eggy bread.'

'What an incentive. But honestly, I have to go in.' She pulled her nightie over her head, and started rummaging around for knickers. 'And don't give me that look. We haven't got time.'

'You haven't got time,' Rhys rebuked her. He closed his eyes and slunk back under the sheets. 'We don't even eat together much any more, Gwen. I'm starting to think you prefer your works canteen.' haven't got time,' Rhys rebuked her. He closed his eyes and slunk back under the sheets. 'We don't even eat together much any more, Gwen. I'm starting to think you prefer your works canteen.'

'That's Gaz again.'

'Maybe he's got a point,' mumbled Rhys from within the bedclothes. 'I've seen more of him these past few weeks than I have of you, even with him on the road this past fortnight. And I bet he wouldn't turn down my mushrooms.'

'I'm not sure I've got a polite answer for that.'

She was dressed in only a few minutes. When she went to give him a kiss before she left, Gwen discovered that Rhys was clutching his pillow, already back asleep.

Toshiko leaned against the island unit in the middle of her kitchen and gazed out through the window. Rain bounced off the sill and splashed back up against the gla.s.s. In the downpour outside, next door's cat Tinkle? Winkle? one of the Teletubbies anyway made a run for cover across the street and vanished under the neighbour's car. Toshiko peered through her window, out into the torrent of rain, and smiled at the prospect of following a languorous breakfast with a warm bath.

She'd eaten only two spoonfuls of muesli before Ianto called her. 'Yeah, it's always a problem,' she told him. 'I'm on my way. And tell Jack that he is the guy who put the "lie" into "you can have a lie-in tomorrow, Tosh".'

Jack was stretched out across a chair in the Boardroom when Ianto found him. He had his boots up on the conference table, and his eyes were closed. Ianto knew better than to a.s.sume he was sleeping. 'Owen's not answering,' he told Jack.

Jack cracked open one eye. 'Location?'

'His mobile must be inactive. No signal.'

The eye closed again. 'Remind me to bang his head when he gets in.'

A thin-faced man tapped Owen twice on his shoulder, an imperious signal of authority. 'You can't use that thing in here.' He used the same finger to point at a plastic sign on the wall that stated: 'Please switch off mobile phones while in the Emergency Department. They can interfere with sensitive medical equipment.'

Owen held up his mobile, which was showing no lights. 'Switched it off as soon as I arrived.' He slipped it into the pocket of his white doctor's coat, and smiled ingratiatingly.

The man before him was mid-fifties, greying hair. His face was lightly pock-marked, like ravaged sandstone. Dark eyes peered over tortoisesh.e.l.l frames, appraising Owen. The good-quality shirt and silk tie, the well-polished patent leather brogues and the easy authority marked him out as the man in charge, rather than another angry patient complaining about the four-hour waiting time. 'Who are you and what are you doing in my department?'

Megan appeared at Owen's side. 'Ah, h.e.l.lo. Haven't had chance to introduce you both yet.'

'A friend of yours?' the man asked her sharply.

Megan nodded. 'Mr Majunath, I'm sorry, I didn't have the chance to introduce you earlier. This is Dr Owen Harper. He's a former... um... colleague of mine. We were students together...'

'Another from St George's?' interrupted Majunath, his expansive tone a complete contrast to his previous suspicion. 'That makes, what, three in the department at the moment?' He stuck out his arm, and gave Owen a brief, firm handshake. 'Amit Majunath, senior consultant. Barts man myself. Worked there for fifteen years, until they lost A&E. Wasn't expecting you here, Dr Harper. All hands to the pumps tonight, though. Literally,' he added, looking around them at the corridor floor, which seemed to be covered in muddy puddles and footprints. He intercepted a nurse as she tried to bustle past on her way out to reception. Owen noticed that Majunath was doing his staring-over-the-specs business on her, too. 'Can we have one of the HCAs get this cleaned up. Now?'

'Sorry, Mr Majunath,' replied the nurse, completely unfazed. She was obviously used to being seized and stared at in the corridor by senior staff. 'I'll have Cerys sort it out. With this awful weather, people have been traipsing mud in all day. The auxiliaries seem to spend all their time with mops and buckets.' She disengaged her elbow from Majunath's grasp, and disappeared around the corner.

'Insurance nightmare,' muttered Majunath, squinting at the muddy floor. 'Lucky that we don't have the management skulking around tonight. Tucked up in bed with their spreadsheets for company, we can but hope. Onwards, eh?' He bestowed a big smile on Megan, as though it was a personal favour. 'We have a jumper about to arrive. Only this one chose to throw herself at one of our ambulances, on its way in with a suspected MI. Nearly gave the driver a heart attack, too!' Having delivered this special news with such relish, he stalked off towards cubicles.

Owen grinned at Megan. 'He's worse than you told me!'

Megan shushed him, but giggled too. 'He has spider-sense. He'll hear you. I think he's a bit on edge tonight because we're still waiting for them to appoint a Clinical Director for the ED. Majunath is the hot favourite, though he thinks they're going to hold it against him because he can't speak Welsh. Seven other languages, but not Welsh. The Board was supposed to meet yesterday, all hush-hush. But I'm not sure they all got in because of this rotten weather.'

'You know how it is,' Owen told her. 'The first sign will be when white smoke starts coming out of the hospital incinerator.' He stepped aside as a health care a.s.sistant appeared and started to mop the mess up around them.

Even this far into the hospital building, the storm outside was making its presence felt. The ba.s.s notes of thunder rumbled in the distance. Since he'd arrived, at the start of Megan's night shift, all the patients that Owen had seen had been soaked. The nursing staff had cut the outer clothing off a teenage boy, brought in with a suspected wrenched ligament after a fall at home, and he'd been soaked to the skin, even though he'd been in reception for two hours after triage. The emergency patients, trolleyed straight through to cubicles or resus by paramedics, were all drenched, even dripping as they were prepared for immediate treatment.

Megan stood back to allow the HCA more room, and leaned against the wall next to Owen. 'You must have switched off your mobile pretty quickly when Majunath caught you using it.'

Owen shook his head. 'My phone's been switched off since we left your place. He saw me using something else.'

'What?'

Owen slipped his hand from his white coat, and held out the Bekaran device for Megan to take from him. 'I palmed it for my mobile. Wouldn't do for him to get his hands on this scanner. You, on the other hand...'

Megan turned the device over in her hands, wondering. She checked to see that no one else was looking at them. The HCA was squeezing his mop into a bucket at the far end of the corridor. Megan stammered: 'I'm not sure that...'

'Why not?' Owen ushered her back towards the cubicles. 'Come on, it's been a long shift. You've seen the crowd out in reception, it's not getting any smaller. And besides, how do you think I spotted that emphysema case so quickly? The one brought in from the RTA? The one your colleague thought was an obvious pneumothorax?'

'Owen!' she hissed at him.

'Well, it wasn't by waiting for the portable X-ray,' said Owen, 'or getting him in the ever-growing queue for MRI.' He indicated the device with a movement of his head.

'You're not even supposed to be working here,' persisted Megan. 'You know the hospital's not insured for you. And even if it was, well, using this... alien thing...' She thrust it back at him.

Owen didn't accept it. He could see from the way her eyes moved that she was worried someone else would see the device. He waited. She tried to stick it in his coat pocket, but he shoved his own hands in them to prevent her. 'Come on, Megan. Isn't that why you let me come here? We could have met up afterwards. Or you could have made your own way to Torchwood. We'll go there later. I want you to see it.'

She relaxed her arm, and Owen moved in to hold her shoulders. 'Try it.'

'How can I explain it?' she protested. 'To Majunath? To any of them?'

'You don't have to. And if anyone asks, you can say it's a new pervasive device that you're trialling for me.'