The Broken Man. Josephine Cox

the high-pitched wailing of sirens filled the air.

      ‘They’re here!’ Phil scrambled to his feet to go to meet the ambulance crew. ‘Stay with her, son. Keep talking to her, but no questions. Just tell her the ambulance has arrived. Tell her she’ll be in good hands now.’

      Adam tried his hardest to be brave. He was grateful that his mother would get help, yet he was terrified she might be crippled or made to stay a long time in hospital. She would be unhappy about that, because her greatest joy was walking the countryside, just the two of them together.

      ‘Move away, son,’ Phil urged him, as the ambulance men hurried in.

      Adam backed away as they brought the stretcher forward. ‘I love you, Mum,’ he whispered. The tears made a bright trail down his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m truly sorry …’

      But he was not sorry about the promise he had made, to make his father pay for what he had done. When he was big enough, he would go after him, and when he found him, he would make sure to punish him.

      No, he was not sorry for any of that. The only thing he was sorry for just now was having made this vow out loud, and making his mother anxious.

      From the back of the stairway, he watched as they treated his mother to ease her pain. He saw them cut into the rungs of the stairway and tenderly lift her clear, before securing her to the stretcher. Then they carried her to the ambulance where they raised the stretcher to slide her gently inside. In that moment, she made a feeble cry for her son.

      He wanted to go to her, but he was too afraid. What if she was calling for him so she could tell him she would never see him again? What if she was in terrible pain and he couldn’t stop it? What if …? What if …? Hopelessly mixed up inside, and more frightened than he had ever been in his young life, he took to his heels and ran.

      Panic-stricken, he hid behind the shrubbery, where he sobbed as though his heart would break. ‘Don’t die, Mum,’ he whispered brokenly. ‘Please, Mum … don’t leave me.’

      Realising the boy’s fears, Phil found him and lovingly drew him away. ‘I know she called for you, son, but she’s delirious. There is nothing you nor I can do for her. She’s getting the best care. If you want to go in the ambulance with your mum, you’d best be quick.’

      ‘Will you come too?’

      ‘I’m surprised you feel the need to ask.’ Phil was already hurrying him to the ambulance, where the attendants had executed the necessary safety procedures and were about to leave.

      Phil and Adam climbed inside, and then they were swiftly away; the ambulance tearing along the lane with the sirens at full scream.

      These fine, experienced men had seen it all before. They had learned to deal with desperate situations in a professional manner.

      This particular call-out, however, was deeply disturbing. As they were both family men with young children, they found the boy’s distress difficult to deal with. The disclosure that it was the child himself who had discovered his mother lying bloodied and broken on the stairway was shocking. Such a discovery could prove to be the stuff of nightmares for years to come.

      Another concern was their shared suspicions with regard to the ‘accident’ itself. In their considered experience, the woman’s extensive injuries did not appear to coincide with a tumble down the stairs.

      For now though, getting her to hospital was their main priority.

      Inside the ambulance, Adam sat quietly beside Phil, his attention riveted on his mum, and his eyes red and raw from crying. Every few minutes he would whisper to Phil, ‘She will be all right, won’t she?’ And Phil would pacify him as best he could, though secretly, he had his own doubts as to whether Peggy Carter could survive.

      He wondered about Adam’s father, and the way he’d fled from the house like a guilty man. His instincts told him there was far more to Mrs Carter’s so-called accident than met the eye.

      Throughout the journey, the medic remained by Peggy’s side, softly reassuring and constantly tending her while she drifted in and out of consciousness. Not once did he glance across to the two anxious figures seated on the small bench at the back of the ambulance. He had a job to do, and if there was the slightest hope that this patient might survive, then time was of the essence.

      To Phil and Adam, the journey to the hospital seemed to have taken for ever, when in fact they were there in under an hour.

      On arrival, the ambulance doors were thrown open and Phil and Adam scampered down onto the tarmac. The driver ran from his cab and climbed into the back, where the two men set about securing Peggy to the stretcher again. Phil and the boy waited anxiously, but it was only the briefest of moments before the two medics manhandled Peggy out of the ambulance. With one of them at each end of the stretcher and Peggy now deeply unconscious, they went at a run towards the hospital emergency doors where, having been forewarned, the medical staff were there to collect the patient and rush her straight to theatre.

      While Peggy was hurried away, Adam and Phil were taken aside; though Adam tearfully insisted that he wanted to go with his mum. ‘Where is she?’ he wanted to know. ‘What have they done with my mum?’ Traumatised by the fear that he might never see her again, he called for her over and over.

      The nurse gently assured him, ‘The doctors are helping your mother now. Don’t worry, she’s in safe hands, and they’ll come and tell you when you’re able to see her. Meantime, there is nothing you can do. She truly is being taken care of, so please … I know how hard it is, but you must try to be patient.’

      She knew the boy might have a very long wait; especially since the message relayed from the ambulance crew to the hospital as they drove there had described the patient as having suffered life-threatening injuries.

      ‘Look, I’ll tell you what …’ She pointed to the little tuck cabin down the corridor. ‘If you go and see Mavis, she might let you have a bottle of pop. Tell her Nurse Riley sent you, then she won’t charge you a single penny for it.’

      Phil understood her kindly motive. ‘That’s a good idea, Adam,’ he encouraged the boy. ‘In fact, I wouldn’t mind a bottle of pop myself.’

      With sorry eyes, Adam glanced at the green baize door through which they had taken his mother. ‘All right then.’ Reluctantly, he gave a little nod. ‘But you have to promise you’ll wait here, Phil. You won’t leave me, will you?’

      Phil choked back a tear. ‘Me? Leave you?’ He cradled the boy’s face in his hands. ‘I would never leave you, never in a million years!’ Digging into his trouser pocket he withdrew a shiny coin, which he handed to the boy. ‘There! You run off and see Mavis … there’s a good fellow.’

      ‘Your grandfather is right,’ Nurse Riley said. ‘Mavis will be pleased to see you.’

      Phil and the boy exchanged curious glances at her reference to Phil as ‘your grandfather’, but wisely, neither of them made mention of her remark.

      A short time later, when they had drunk their pop and were seated in comfortable chairs in a small room off the main corridor, the silence between them was heavy.

      All they could think of was Adam’s mother, who lay just a short distance away, fighting for her life.

      Every few minutes either Adam or Phil would go into the corridor and look to see if there was anyone they could speak to about how the boy’s mother was doing, but there was no one about, except a man in a long white coat, in a great hurry, and a nurse rushing about with a trolley, piled high with newly laundered linen.

      ‘They all have jobs to do,’ Phil reassured Adam. ‘I know you’re worried, but we have to be thankful that the doctors