Page 28 of My Best Friend Is Broken
“What happened?” the older one asks, kneeling beside Liam with the kind of calm competence that comes from dealing with human crisis on a daily basis.
“Security alarm went off,” I explain rapidly. “The guard grabbed him. He’s just been released from prison, five years inside, he has PTSD, trauma. He thought he was being arrested again.”
More than half of what I have just said is assumption, but I don’t give a shit. I’ve painted a clear enough picture for the paramedic to do his job. That is the only thing that counts.
The paramedic nods, already reaching for his kit. “Has he hit his head?”
“Against the wall.”
“Right. Sir?” The paramedic addresses Liam directly, his voice gentle but firm. “Can you tell me your name?”
Liam doesn’t respond. Doesn’t even seem to hear. He’s completely dissociated now, gone somewhere we can’t follow.
“Liam,” I say softly. “These are paramedics. They’re here to help. They’re not police, they’re not guards. Just doctors.”
Something flickers in his expression at the word ‘doctors,’ and the paramedic catches it.
“That’s right,” he says smoothly. “I’m just a medic. Like the ones in prison. You know prison medics, don’t you? They help when people get hurt.”
It’s a brilliant bit of psychology, connecting to something familiar from Liam’s recent experience instead of trying to pull him back to a present he can’t handle. And it works. Liam’s breathing slows slightly, and he stops rocking.
“There we go,” the paramedic says encouragingly. “That’s much better. Now, I can see you’ve got a cut on your head. Can I take a look at that for you?”
Twenty minutes later, we’re in the back of the ambulance, racing through London traffic toward the nearest A&E. Liam is conscious but barely responsive, wrapped in a hospital blanket and staring at nothing. The paramedic has cleaned the cut on his head. It’s not deep enough for stitches, thankfully, but he’s still concerned about concussion and what he delicately termed “acute psychological distress.”
I sit beside Liam on the narrow bench, not touching but close enough that he can see me if he turns his head. Whichhe doesn’t. He hasn’t looked at me since we left Primark, hasn’t spoken.
Shame is written across every line of his body.
“It’s not your fault,” I tell him for the tenth time, but he might as well be on the moon for all the response I get.
Outside the ambulance windows, London blurs past in streaks of gray and white. Normal people living normal lives, going about their normal days, blissfully unaware that sometimes the simplest things, a shopping trip, a security alarm, a stranger’s casual touch… can destroy someone completely.
I think about this morning, about the hope I’d carried like loose change in my pocket. About Liam’s almost-smile when he chose the gray hoodie, about the way he’d said “playing at being normal” like it was something beautiful and precious.
The hoodie is still back there on the floor of Primark, scattered among the handbags and the wreckage of what I’d thought was progress.
And I realize, as the ambulance pulls into the hospital car park, that normal isn’t something we can play at.
Normal is something we’re going to have to fight for, piece by bloody piece, with no guarantee that we’ll ever actually reach it.
But looking at Liam, pale and broken and so far away I can’t even find him, I know I’ll keep fighting anyway.
Because the alternative is losing him completely.
And that’s not an option I’m prepared to consider.
Chapter ten
Liam
Iwake up to the smell of disinfectant and the steady beep of machines that aren’t quite familiar but close enough to make my stomach clench. Hospital. I’m in a hospital, lying on a narrow bed with scratchy sheets and a pillow that smells like industrial bleach.
For a moment, I can’t remember how I got here. The last clear memory I have is of standing in Primark, holding a bag of clothes, feeling almost normal for the first time in forever. Then there’s nothing but fragments. Flashing lights, shouting voices, the taste of blood in my mouth, and underneath it all, the crushing weight of hands on my shoulders dragging me back to places I thought I’d left behind.
“You’re awake.”
I turn my head, too quickly, because the world tilts sideways and pain shoots through my skull, and see a woman in scrubs sitting in the chair beside my bed. She’s maybe forty, with kind eyes and the sort of tired patience that comes from dealing with broken people all day every day.
