Pieces of You. - Ella Harper

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that she should be the one saying all the right things. She hadn’t cried yet, but she wanted to, just for the sheer release it would bring. ‘I’m just trying to think positively, is all.’

      ‘Where the hell have you been, anyway? Why didn’t you come as soon as I called you?’ Patricia’s tone was accusatory, but she probably didn’t realise how she sounded.

      Nell’s opened her mouth then thought better of it. What could she say? That she’d been in bed with a married man – a professor at her college, no less? No. It was unthinkable, especially right at this moment.

      Nell glanced at Luke. And to think she had waited to confide in him about Cal. Why had she waited? What was the point? Now it was too late. Not too late; what a stupid thing to think. Luke was going to come out of this, but Nell cursed herself for leaving it, for feeling the need to be secretive, even for a short while.

      ‘Lucy.’ Nell was stunned at the sight of her sister-in-law. She wore a grey Transfomers T-shirt and a pair of flowery flip flops. Her cheeks were as grey as her top and her legs, naked up to mid-thigh, looked pale and vulnerable.

      Nell stared at her, thinking how young Lucy looked without make-up. She looked out of place, like a student who’d wandered downstairs for breakfast after a heavy night.

      Catching sight of her, Patricia spun round. ‘Lucy. You must be distraught. Are you all right? And what are you wearing?’

      Nell stared at Lucy. There was something strange about the exhausted slump of Lucy’s shoulders, about the empty look in her eyes. Something else had happened. Something terrible. Nell’s eyes dropped to Lucy’s stomach. It looked oddly deflated. Nell felt a cry rising up and she clapped a hand to her mouth to keep it in.

      Lucy slid into the chair next to Luke’s bed, tiredly leaning her head against the wall. ‘I – I was pregnant. Nearly sixteen weeks.’ She wavered, clasping her knees with her hands.

      ‘Was?’ Patricia’s hands started to shake.

      ‘I’m afraid so.’ Tears slid down Lucy’s cheeks but her eyes seemed strangely glazed. ‘I lost the baby in the night. They don’t know why. They … they never know why.’

      Patricia let out a strangled gasp.

      ‘IVF, last attempt,’ Lucy managed. ‘A … a little girl.’

      ‘No. Oh, Lucy, no.’ Patricia shook her head repeatedly, back and forth, back and forth. She made to step forward, but her movements were wooden.

      Nell took Lucy’s hand. It was small and cold, like a child’s. She hated that she had been right, that Lucy had been pregnant. And worst of all that she wasn’t any more. Four months, four whole months. That only made the loss all the more tragic. And now Luke was in a coma. Poor, poor Lucy.

      Nell felt something ripple up inside and she struggled to hold it back. Now wasn’t the time for a panic attack. That would be selfish and inappropriate. Lucy was suffering a double tragedy; she was only suffering one. She simply had to breathe. In, out, concentrate, focus. Wasn’t that what her therapist always used to say?

      Nell saw her mother open her mouth, begin to say something. Almost in slow motion, Nell urged her to say nothing, to think before she spoke. Her mother wasn’t known for her tact and Lucy had already been destroyed.

      ‘Please don’t,’ Lucy said, before any words – right or wrong – could be uttered aloud. ‘Patricia. Please. Please. I … I can’t …’

      Nell glanced at her mother, seeing the words freeze in her throat.

      It was too much, too much for anyone to bear. Nell couldn’t imagine how Lucy must be feeling. Losing their final IVF baby and now this, Luke, in a coma. Nell wanted to say something, but the right words wouldn’t come.

      Nell tried to ignore the sterile air that was permeating her nostrils, doing her best to put the image of Luke’s rust-stained head out of her mind. Luke was going to be all right. He had to be. They needed him. They all needed him. Nell’s thoughts shifted uncontrollably to her father and Ade. She had lost them, both of them. One had died, one had run away. Nell shrunk inside, transported to her teenage years. She was out of control, floundering, and now she was on the brink of losing another anchor.

       Not Luke as well, not Luke as well …

      Nell gritted her teeth. All she had to do was breathe. She couldn’t fall apart and she couldn’t act like this was worse for her than it was for anyone else. She simply had to breathe. Simple.

       CHAPTER NINE

       Lucy

      There hadn’t been much change to speak of. They said it was to be expected after such a severe accident and it was only the following day, so I shouldn’t be downhearted about Luke’s vitals looking pretty much the same.

      Vitals. Vital signs. In Luke’s case, in the state he was in, the description seemed to underline how very … un-vital he was. His body was too still, as if his dynamic energy and spirit was being held down beneath the sheets.

      The hours since discovering him in ICU had limped past with agonising, unremarkable slowness. Another trip to surgery, the promise of a CT head scan which would reveal any bleeds or larger blood clots, but no real change.

      The kindly Dr Wallis had been replaced by another consultant, or rather, a surgeon; a man with enormous teeth like tombstones. Apparently, this was all very normal; patients in a state of trauma were dealt with by a team of people, the lead changing as each different issue was dealt with. And this new consultant seemed incompetent by comparison. Perhaps he simply lacked Dr Wallis’s excellent bedside manner, but when he evenly stated that Luke’s leg was ‘shattered,’ I couldn’t help shivering. Shattered. Was that the finest choice of words? Was that the diplomatic best a consultant could come up with? Shattered was a word most people used to describe a broken glass. On the upside, not that the consultant described it that way, Luke’s spinal injury was not as bad as they had first thought.

      ‘Oh, hello, Mrs Harte,’ a nurse said, coming in with a trolley. ‘I need to change Luke’s dressings. You can stay if you wish …?’

      I shook my head. I hadn’t presumed myself squeamish, but when it came to Luke, I was. I’d rarely seen him bleeding before, a situation that had only come to my attention in the past day or so. Sure, Luke had cut himself when he was chopping vegetables or whatever, and he’d taken a tumble while running once – an amusing incident involving a fox and a badly lit alley way. That time, he’d come back with a cut knee, a grazed elbow and a slightly sheepish expression, full of anecdotal details about the ‘bastard fox’ that had felled him. But that was it. He’d gone from childish knee-scraping to full-on gore in the space of a day. I wasn’t used to seeing Luke’s body falling apart. He put people back together, or at least he started to. At the scene of an accident, Luke leapt out and started the process of re-assembling and healing.

      ‘I have to change his catheter now,’ the nurse said. She looked cheerful rather than embarrassed, but was giving me the heads up if I wanted to leave. ‘I can do this blindfolded; it’s you I’m thinking of.’

      I left. Luke gave me enough backchat for barging into our ensuite bathroom at home. ‘Can’t a man pee in peace, Stripes?’ he’d yell as I apologetically giggled and backed out of the room with my hands over my eyes. The man had an absolute horror of being watched during seemingly innocuous toilet rituals.

      God; even trivial memories of Luke made my heart feel as if it might explode. What was wrong with me?

      I drifted into the waiting area. It was a dismal space; stark and unwelcoming, which was strange considering the amount of time friends and family of seriously hurt people spent in it. I realised the hospital budget didn’t run to accent cushions

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