A Heartbeat Away. Eleanor Jones

oblivious to Ben in his jogging shorts, squeezing his cup into a hundred pieces.

      He stood and dropped the remains of the cup it into the trash bin. Easing his cramped muscles, he moved across to peer through the glass panel once more. The man was sitting quite still, seeming to read a newspaper yet studying the blond nurse, who was adjusting tubes and making notes on a clipboard. Oblivious to his attention, she hung the board over the end of the bed, walked across toward the swing doors and out into the corridor, a preoccupied expression in her pale blue eyes.

      Ben tried to get her attention, but she just shot him a half smile before hurrying by. On sudden instinct he stepped forward to take hold of her arm. When she looked around in surprise, he gave her what he hoped was an apologetic smile.

      “How is she?”

      A shadow passed over her attractive English-rose features. “She has a long way to go,” she told him quietly. “Apart from being badly battered and bruised, she has some cracked ribs and a broken leg. Our real worry, though, is her head injury. If she doesn’t stabilize soon, we may have to operate.”

      Ben felt as though someone had hit him hard in the pit of his stomach, and his arm dropped to his side.

      “I’m sorry,” she murmured, edging away from him. “Now, I have to go and get the doctor.”

      Just behind them, the door swished open again and the man appeared. He dismissed her with a glance, and as she scurried away, he turned to Ben, jaw clenched, eyes half closed.

      “There really is no reason for you to hang around here,” he remarked in a cold, flat voice. “They say that she’ll…”

      Behind him, the bleep of the monitor faltered. He hesitated, glancing back. When its regular bleeping became a single high-pitched tone, Ben pushed past him and burst through the swinging doors.

      Her face was deathly pale against the pillow, blue-lidded eyes closed against her cheeks, thick dark lashes lying upon her translucent skin like two small, perfect fans. And beside the bed, a single green line across the monitor and that awful, final, single tone as her life ebbed.

      Ben stood frozen for a moment as the whole ward came alive with the urgent buzz of controlled panic. Firm hands bustled him out into the corridor. He heard the thumping sounds as the doctors struggled to shock her failing heart back to life again, then a desperate voice.

      “It’s no good. She’s gone.”

      And he started to run, down the endless, faceless corridors, anywhere away from this place that already haunted his dreams.

      CHAPTER 3

      They say that your life flashes in front of your eyes in the moments before you die. Mine didn’t. And as the hard gray pavement rose up to meet me, I clung to that one stupid thought, knowing that I didn’t want to die like this, here among strangers on the cold, wet street.

      I was beyond feeling, beyond anything but an acute and horrified awareness of the violent events that had overtaken my body, hurling it onto the road like a helpless doll. I knew I was broken before I felt the crack—the pressure was just too strong for flesh and blood to bear. And in the instant that I felt my bones give way, there even came a kind of relief that the terrible pressure was released, that my life wasn’t flashing in front of my eyes. So I couldn’t be dead…could I?

      Far, far away I could hear the squeal of brakes. Someone was calling, but I knew I had to go. I wasn’t dead, was I? I just needed some time out, needed to let myself slip away from the violent events that had overtaken me…needed to find Daniel. Was he out there somewhere, searching for me?

      I felt a hand, soft against my cheek, stroking the hair back from my brow. He was here. Daniel was here. I tried to open my eyes, but my body refused to obey the distant commands from my brain, and as I felt myself beginning to slip away, a deep, trembling voice rang out inside my head, begging me to stay. I wanted to stay so much, but the darkness clawed at me with comforting fingers. Then the voice began to fade and a glorious blaze of light exploded inside my head, bursting out again in myriad colors to hover way above me, beckoning with the promise of peace. And when the dark fingers wrapped themselves more closely around me, I let myself go.

      They say that your life flashes in front of your eyes in the moments before you die. Mine just flowed, on and on and on in an endless river of memories, long forgotten and eagerly relived. And they all began and ended with Daniel Brown.

      CHAPTER 4

      My feet felt cold in my scuffed red shoes and my hand, in the tight clasp of my mother’s, was gradually going numb, yet still I refused to put one foot in front of the other.

      “Lucy!”

      My mother’s voice was loud and angry, but I just made my legs very straight when she attempted to drag me forward, frowning up at her with the stubbornness that she said I got from my dad.

      “I want to go home.”

      I started to cry with great big sobs, just like the ladies in the films that my mom was always watching on TV. All it seemed to do was make her even crosser than she already was, and she began to yank so hard on my arm that it felt as though it was going to come right off.

      “Well, I have to go to work, and you, young lady, are going to school whether you like it or not.”

      For a second she stopped and gazed down at me. I scowled back with all the selfishness of a six-year-old, not noticing the harsh grooves that ran prematurely down either side of her mouth, or the tired lines that made a delicate network around her faded gray eyes. As far as I was concerned, my mother was as old as Methuselah. Thirty-five on her last birthday. How could she ever remember what it was like to go to school? If only my dad had been here. It would have been different. He would have understood my fears. He would have done something about Mollie Flynn. He would have understood about her. He would have known that I couldn’t go to school because she laughed at me and pinched my arms and stole my books so that I got into trouble with Mrs. Meeks. I hated Mollie Flynn and I wasn’t going to school. But my dad was long gone—“Up to no good as usual,” my mother said. I knew, though, that he would return one day, for wasn’t I the apple of his eye? I was. I know I was. He had told me often enough.

      My feet hurt in the scuffed red shoes. They were a bit too tight, but I refused to wear anything else because my dad had bought them for me and I loved them with all my heart. The day he’d brought them home, my mother had gone mad, ranting on and on about having no money, but I thought it was just so special for my father to buy me such beautiful shoes when he had hardly any money at all. Well, at least he had had some that morning. But my mother said it had gone on a horse, so I supposed he must have bought a horse as well as my lovely red shoes. He was such fun, my dad, tall and good-looking, with sparkling blue eyes and a really wide laugh. He was always doing exciting things. But all my mom ever did was to get angry with him, and that made him sad, so it made me sad, too.

      He went away that night and I haven’t seen him since, but I know he will come home soon because I am the apple of his eye. I hope his horse is okay.

      Two bright spots of red popped up on my mum’s pale cheeks. That was how I knew that she was really mad, because her face did that on the day my dad gave me the red shoes and bought that horse. But I wasn’t frightened; at least, I was, but I was more afraid of Mollie Flynn.

      We were nearly at the school gate when a blue car drove up. We didn’t have a car, but I didn’t mind about that anymore because we had a horse now, even though I hadn’t seen it yet.

      My mom stopped and looked at me. Her face was all shiny and she wiped her forehead with her hanky, but she didn’t let go of my hand. I would have run away if she had.

      I knew the big lady who got out of the car. She always wore nice clothes and her face was smiley. She had a boy who went to our school. He was older than me, but I sometimes saw him in the playground; I think he was in the eight-and-nine-year-old class like Mollie Flynn. I wondered if she nipped his arms. Yet I didn’t think so, because he was taller than