I think he thought I was trying to choke him, and he struggled to get away, but I hung on, I was much bigger than him, and I had no choice, this was it; if I failed we were all dead. With one final surge that felt like my head was exploding I wrapped my legs around him, pinning him against me, and twisted his head in a quick, snapping motion, just the way I’d been taught, crying out as the enormous bloom of pain in my head nearly blinded me. I felt something give, and he went limp, the effort leaving me wrung out like a wet dishrag with his dead weight motionless on me.
Pushing him off me and rolling to my knees took more effort than pushing a dump truck uphill, my vision blurred and doubled and danced, and the wave of nausea was so intense I vomited, retching again and again, but I somehow got to my feet, retching even more as the waves of nausea threatened to drive me to my knees again; Georgy, I had to get to Georgy, Max had her, and he was going to die.
Somehow, I managed to stagger into the corridor, the dim coolness helping my vision and nausea a little, but my balance was shot to hell. I could hear voices coming from the secret stair landing, Max cursing and swearing and ranting, so I held onto the wall, staggering as the floor swooped and danced and shifted under my feet. The corridor in my family home, the upright in the ‘E’ shape the house was built in, is ninety yards end to end, my ancestors believed in big and impressive, but it felt a million miles long as I inched along it. I didn’t know what I was going to do when I caught Max; my first thought was I was going to crush his fat throat and watch him strangle, but I had to get to him first, and I didn’t know if I could even make it that far, not when I wasn’t even sure where the floor was.
Staggering along a million miles of corridor that swooped and tilted under my feet and spiralled away from me, fighting nausea and the deafening clamour in my head, I finally made it to the landing doorway. Max had left it open, which I thanked providence for, because I didn’t know how I would find the hidden catch, let alone operate it, but when I lurched in the entrance, the look of terror on his face made it all worth it. He paused, frozen, he obviously thought I was too out of it to come after him, and that was all Georgy needed. Her face writhed in fury as she she shook his hand off and stepped up. Her foot lashed out, a hard, stamping kick, powered by all her hate and anger, right in the middle of his fat belly, knocking him over the low, slender balustrade. Georgy was an equestrian, and one of the benefits of riding her powerful horses every day was it toned and developed her thigh muscles and all that power and toning landed right in the middle of that disgusting fat fucker’s bread-basket.
A brief cry, a loud thud, and silence. Georgy jumped to grab me before I fell, but I had to see, I had to know. Looking down, there was Max at the foot of the stairwell, he’d dropped right through the middle of the spiral staircase to land on his head on the bottom tread and he wasn’t going anywhere; no one with their head bent in that direction was going to get up and walk away from anything. I think I grinned at Georgy, but then I had to sleep, I was bone-weary and nauseous, and the blackness was rising faster than I could hold it off.
Georgy tried to hold me up, but I was falling, falling into deep, warm, velvety blackness and sounds of voices soft and far away, funny, they all sounded like Georgy, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying, and then silence.
*****
I woke in an unfamiliar white painted room, in a bed shrouded with a thing like a plastic tent with something taped to my top lip and bags of clear fluid on wire racks with tubes connected to my arm and chest. I panicked, I couldn’t move, and then I realised I was restrained, there was something around my waist, and my forehead, and my wrists were also restrained. Where was I, why was I here, where was Georgy, and what had happened; had I been injured? How? Where was everyone?
A young-looking, pretty little Asian doctor dressed in scrubs, with a surgical mask hanging under her chin and a stethoscope around her neck came in and unzipped the plastic tent, and slipped a blood-pressure cuff around my upper arm.
“Excuse me, where am I? What happened?” I asked; tried to ask, I should say; all that came out was a collection of hoarse, scratchy sounds, and my lips felt cracked and dry.
“Don’t try to talk, Tyler, just rest, your throat’s too dry but you can’t drink anything just yet, you’re Nil by Mouth for now, maybe tomorrow we can take the IV drip out and you can sit up; if you can, you can have some water then. You’re not really thirsty, you just think you are, your electrolytes and hydration are normal, so just bear with us a little longer. Now, there’s someone to see you, she’s been waiting three days now, just don’t try and talk, and please, just take it easy, you’re doing well, the operation went well but we just need to keep you immobilised a little longer, so don’t panic, everything’s fine, you’re fine.”
She patted my hand, took the BP cuff off me, made some notes on the chart in the holder next to the bed, and moved the squiggly monitor thing with the big yellow flickering numbers out of the way. She pulled the door open and beckoned whoever was outside.
“No more than thirty minutes, okay? He’s still very disoriented, and he may fall asleep while you’re talking, if he does don’t worry, that’s normal, he’s been through a lot. He’s still Nil by Mouth, so please don’t try to give him anything to drink, he might aspirate and choke, but you can wet his lips if you do it sparingly, there’s a water-bottle and sterile gauze pads in the night-stand. Stop at the station on your way out, I need to go over some things with you.”
She stepped aside and there was Georgy, my Georgy-Girl, looking impossibly beautiful, tears in her big, beautiful grey eyes and her smile huge and radiant.
“Oh Willie, it’s so good to see you awake, I was so scared, but they said the operation was a success, another few days and you can come home!”
I tried to speak, to ask her what happened, but she put her finger on my lips, and looked around to check the door was closed.
“Shush, Willie, your surgeon, Doctor Canete, said no talking, so be quiet!” she murmured, “About the other thing, don’t worry about it, it’s all sorted; the police came and left, they’re satisfied Max and his accomplice died through their own incompetence, so they’ve closed the case, and they’re going to recommend their deaths are recorded as ‘Death by Misadventure’ by the coroner. As far as the police are concerned, those two argued over who got what in the robbery, Max murdered his partner and fell down the back stairs in his rush to escape, because you couldn’t possibly have done anything while incapacitated with such a serious head injury, and they know I couldn’t have snapped that man’s neck, not while Max was restraining me, I still have the bruises on both arms, plus Aunt Kay’s own injuries meant she was also incapacitated, so we’re okay, I think they know what really happened, but they’re not taking it any further; we’re in the clear.”
I managed to breathe ‘what injury, what did they do to me?’ and Georgy’s mood immediately sobered up.
“Max hit you with that bronze statue on the mantelpiece; it caused a depressed skull fracture, and made your brain swell. Willie, they had to cut a piece out of your skull to save your life!”
She was crying now, huge tears racing down her cheeks. She picked up the chart and flicked through it.
“You had something called a, called a, here it is, a ‘subdural haematoma’, they said it was a blood clot on your brain and they had to take it out or you would die; I had to sign the consent forms, I was your only kin, and they took you away and they cut your head open! They shaved your head and took a big piece out of your skull, then they screwed it back in again, I was so scared, we had so many plans, and that nursery we were going to make for our babies, I was so scared I’d never need it, and seeing you lying there so pale, day after day, barely breathing, and I knew, I just knew I was losing you, I was so scared…”
Her fingers were twining with mine, the best I could do; I wanted to hug her, to tell her I felt fine, that I’d beaten it and I was coming home, and all I could do was make rusty, croaking noises. Georgy bowed her head down, resting her forehead on my hand as she cried, but I managed to squeeze her hand to let her know I was okay, that we were good, that it was over.
“Aunt Kay…” I managed to whisper, and Georgy smiled through the tears streaming down her face.
“She’s going to be fine, bad concussion and a fractured cheekbone but no other damage, they kept her in for observations too, she’s next door; I’ll try and bring her in tomorrow if they’ll let her out of bed.”
I struggled weakly against my wrist restraints, and Georgy squeezed my hand, stopping me.
“I’m sorry about your hands, baby,” she murmured, “they don’t want you turning around or touching your head yet, not until your sutures heal; they had to screw the piece of skull back in and it hasn’t healed yet, so just a little longer, I promise.”
She twinkled at me, her eyes flashing with mischief.
“When they asked my relationship to you on the form, I wrote ‘spouse’, so you, mister Tyler Courtenay De Morgan Giffard Amboise-Wilmot, are now officially my husband, got a legal paper that says so and everything, right here, look, so note to self: I shall be expecting an appropriate ring in the very near future!”
I grinned at her; incapacitated as I currently was, and distressed as she obviously was, I could still appreciate her piquant beauty and sweet, pixie sense of humour; when I got out of this place we were going to have that conversation about babies again; life was too short to make long-term plans, and after what we’d been through I knew I had to grab the brass ring while it was still in my reach.