Page 51 of The Monday Night Heartbreak Club
‘Flynn.’
‘Right. You’ve lost the use of your left arm and hand, and your face – well, you aren’t going to be able to disappear in a crowd, put it that way. But,’ he added hastily, as I struggled to lift the left hand that felt as though it wasn’t there, ‘plastic surgery is brilliant these days and your arm might well recover, they aren’t sure about the extent of the nerve damage. You’ve also got three broken ribs, a shattered cheekbone and your eyebrow-shaping bill isn’t going to be troubling you again for quite a while.’
I blinked. My legs tingled. ‘Can I walk?’
Flynn had obviously decided not to prevaricate any longer. ‘You will be able to. There was spinal cord trauma, and the doctors were a bit dubious, but they think you should get full use of your legs back eventually. You might have a bit of a limp, that’s all.’
I sighed. ‘I knew being a private detective was a pipe dream. Unless I can operate in crowds entirely made up of people who look like Igor – is it that bad?’
‘No. No, not at all.’
‘You’re lying.’
He sighed. ‘Sorry. I’m not very good at it, am I? And I’m going to have you moved to a private rehab unit. You’ll get the best care that money can buy.’
Everything was crumbling. That bright, shiny new future that I had thought I was walking into – well, limping into, now, was falling apart in front of me. Cautiously, I lifted the hand that would obey me, and it came up, trailing wires, clips and drips, and touched my face rather harder than I’d intended.
‘Ow.’
‘No need to slap yourself. It wasn’t your fault.’ Flynn grinned at me and I realised that at leastthispart of my life seemed to be steady. ‘Hold on, there’s a mirror here.’
I didn’t recognise myself. My face was swollen and bruised, there were lines of stitches criss-crossing the whole of the left side and half my scalp was bare.
‘You were closest to the blast,’ Flynn said, trying to sound neutral. ‘But nobody looks good, if that’s any consolation.’
You do, I thought.You might have stitches and a cut that makes you look as though you’ve had an amateur nose job, but you still look fabulous. Though that might be because you’re actually here, which I notice is a state that my family don’t seem to have entered.
At that moment, there was a tap on the door and Margot put her head around. ‘Is she…?’
‘She’s awake,’ and the tone of relief in Flynn’s voice told me all I needed to know about that state of tension he’d been living in for the past week.
Margot’s head withdrew and there was a moment of hissed conversation in the corridor. Then it popped back again. ‘Is she up to visitors?’
‘You can ask me directly, Margot,’ I said, managing to get some strength into the words. ‘I’m injured, not mute.’
Another withdrawal, another conversation. After a few moments, the door opened fully and Margot, Wren and Fraser trooped in, looking a little chastised.
‘It’s Monday,’ Wren said. She and Margot were holding hands, I noticed.
‘Can’t miss a Monday meeting,’ Fraser said jovially, glanced over at me and winced. ‘Bugger me. You look like you went through the mincer.’
Margot glared at him, although her glare had lost some of its previous power. She seemed to have softened around the edges; the power hairstyle had given way to something more casual and she was wearing the yoga outfit that she’d worn the night the club came to rescue me from Dexter. It made her look younger andhappier, or maybe that was Wren’s proximity. She did, however, have some technicolour bruising across her forehead that made her look like a mobile sunset.
Wren herself looked cheerful and bubbly and less birdlike than she had, despite a swollen lip. ‘So, we thought we’d all come over and see how you were doing,’ she went on, ignoring Fraser, who was bobbing about like a tethered balloon.
‘And Annie says to get well soon. She’s going to pop in when Eddie gets the car out,’ Fraser added.
We all looked at each other. ‘It’s in the garage,’ Flynn said. ‘Why does she make it sound as though they have to go and rope it in like a wild horse?’
We all shrugged. Well, the others shrugged, I managed a one-sided motion that set the machines beeping again. It reminded me of why we were here. ‘Have you got access to the security film?’ I asked Flynn.
‘I can source it via my phone.’
‘Ooh, get you, Mr Mission Impossible!’ Fraser bounced over and sat on the edge of my bed next to Flynn.
‘Ow, you’re sitting on my drip.’
‘Sorry.’ He moved a couple of centimetres. ‘Let’s have a look then. I want to see the big explosion.’
