Second Shot

He nodded. “That’s only to be expected,” he said. “The bullet entered your back at an angle and gouged a nice lump out of your scapula before it headed off toward your lung. Along the way it did plenty of damage to the muscles in your shoulder. They’re swollen and that’s putting pressure on the nerves into your arm. And you’ve been through some tough surgery. Once the swelling subsides you should find things will improve.”

“But, it will come back?” I tried to keep the pathetic note of hope out of my voice and failed miserably.

“Yes,” he said, his expression kindly now, “we have every reason to think so.”

I closed my eyes briefly. “Thank you.”

“You are entirely welcome,” he said. “So, are you going to take pity on that young man outside?”

I opened my eyes again, flicked them to my father’s face and caught the faintest sliver of guilt about him.

“What young man?” I said sharply. At least, in my head I said it sharply, but I think by the time it reached my lips it was little more than a mumble.

The surgeon raised his eyebrows, glancing quickly between the two of us as if aware that he might have said the wrong thing. It only took a moment for his natural arrogance to step in and reassure him that wasn’t a possibility. “Why, the young man from England,” he said. “He’s been sitting down the hall since the day after you were brought in here.”

“Sean,” I said and something broke inside me. I was suddenly filled with a relief so sharp it reduced me to tears. I felt them sliding sideways across my face, pooling between my cheek and the pillow. And now they’d hit the surface, I couldn’t seem to stem the flow On and on I wept, trying to hold myself rigid through the sobbing and not succeeding, so the pain made me cry harder, and the crying caused only more pain.

“I take it, then, that you do wish to see him?”

I could only nod, unable even to voice the words of bitter recrimination towards my father that, once again, he’d conspired to keep Sean away from me when I needed him the most.

The next time I opened my eyes, it was daylight. I raised my head a little way off the pillow and saw Sean sitting back in the easy chair by the bed. His head was resting on his fist, elbow propped on the arm of the chair, and he was fast asleep.

Even sleeping, he looked dangerous. If it hadn’t been for the expensive Breitling watch on his wrist-and someone with the obvious seniority of the surgeon granting him access — any member of the nursing staff who walked in and found him here would immediately call security.

For a moment I just lay there and watched him. He was wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt and he hadn’t shaved that morning. The haze of stubble lined his face, making his skin look almost pale above it and the dark eyelashes ridiculously long against his cheeks.

There had been a time, a long time before, when I’d been injured and frightened and ashamed, and I’d prayed every day that I’d wake in my bed in the military hospital and see this man waiting for me. But he’d never come. He hadn’t even known what had happened to me, not until long afterwards, and by then it was much too late.

The involvement between us then had been clandestine, forbidden. He was one of my training instructors and any hint of a relationship between us would have been disastrous for both our careers. After the brutal assault on me but before the farce of the court-martial and my eventual disgrace-when I still thought, foolishly, that I had some kind of a future in the army-I hadn’t dared ask for him.

I sometimes wondered what difference it would have made if I had.

It was strange, now, to lie there in circumstances so similar yet so different, to wake and find Sean sitting alongside me. I was profoundly grateful that he was here, without doubt. As soon as the doctor had spoken I’d been aware only of a lifting of the total weight of responsibility that had been pressing on my chest far more heavily than a collapsed lung could ever have done.

But on top of that alleviation, guilt had come chasing hard. Guilt that I had been trusted to do a job and I’d failed in the most basic way possible. Guilt that I was alive, and Simone was not. And as for Ella …

No, best not to think about what Ella’s going through.

My thoughts must have provoked some small change in my breathing because at that moment Sean’s eyes twitched beneath his lids and then snapped open, instantly alert.

He saw me watching him and he smiled, without hesitation.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hello, Charlie,” he said softly. “How are you doing?”

“Oh, great,” I said weakly. “But you’ll forgive me if I don’t come out dancing tonight.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You dance?”

“Only when I’m very drunk.”

“In that case,” he said, igniting one of those slow-burn smiles, “remind me to ply you with cheap booze at the first available opportunity.”

We both paused, our repertoire of inconsequential small talk exhausted.