Interlogue 3

Half asleep, Yelena Kafkasian shifted uncomfortably in her chair. It was actually quite comfortable for a hospital chair; well-padded, with armrests and a headrest, but it hadn’t been designed for visitors to sleep in overnight. The hospital had offered Yelena the use of a cot in another room but she wanted to stay close to her daughter, to be there as soon as Joanna woke up.

Although she was sure her husband, Armin, had been equally worried about Joanna, he had gone home overnight because he had other responsibilities to take care of. The doctors had declared that Joanna was out of danger and she had promised to call him if there was any change in their daughter’s condition.

When the Air Ambulance had retrieved Joanna from the hill farmer’s yard, she had been perilously close to death from blood-loss. The paramedics had stabilised her in the helicopter and flown her straight to the city hospital in preference to the local hospital in Mountview. Although she was out of danger the hospital doctors had topped her up with a partial transfusion, but despite finding unknown drugs in her system they preferred to let her sleep them off naturally rather than subjecting her to the additional trauma of a full exchange transfusion.

Yelena leaned forward in her chair, suddenly wide awake. She had seen her daughter’s eyeballs jerking around underneath their closed lids. That was surely a good sign - Joanna must now be sleeping naturally and no longer under the dominance of the drugs she’d been given.

Yelena wondered where Armin was. He’d looked in earlier that morning and found her awake but slumped in the chair. After confirming that Joanna hadn’t woken up yet, he’d gone to fetch coffee to tide them through until the doctor did the morning rounds, but that had been quite a while ago.

The door opened; it was Armin. He looked grim. “Any change?” he asked as he handed a coffee to Yelena.

“Yes. Rapid eye movements. I think she’s dreaming.”

Armin nodded and half-smiled: he too thought that was a sign their daughter’s condition was improving.

“Any news on the boy?” Yelena asked, meaning the boy who had been prepared to sacrifice his life for their daughter, the boy who had been retrieved by the Air Ambulance at the same time as their daughter, the boy she knew next to nothing about.

The prognosis for the boy hadn’t been good: the doctors had diagnosed a potentially catastrophic bleed on the brain. After an emergency operation to insert a shunt to relieve the pressure, they put him in a controlled coma to give his brain a chance to rest. Armin had then had him flown out of state to one of the best neurological units in the country. That was one of the things Yelena loved about Armin; he was so capable, he made things happen.

“It’s bad,” replied Armin. “The doctors worked on Kevin Randell overnight. They’ve done the best they can but his condition continued to deteriorate and he’s now on life-support. The bleed was pretty catastrophic and, if the boy lives, he’s going to be severely brain-damaged, perhaps a vegetable. I’ve authorised the doctors to do whatever they can for the boy no matter the cost, but his family might eventually have to make the decision when to switch off his life-support. It might even be better for the family if the boy died: at least it would spare them from having to endure a protracted demise, but I’m certainly not going to to tell them that. I put a company plane at the family’s disposal and they flew out to see him this morning.”

“Just who is he and why was he prepared to sacrifice himself for our daughter?” asked Yelena.

“I don’t know,” admitted Armin, “and what’s even stranger is that he’s gay. Marcus and Jaymon were supposed to be looking out for Joanna but neither of them mentioned his name until after Joanna went missing. The local police actually had Kevin down as a suspect because he danced with Joanna at the prom and was one of the last to see her. I authorised release of the Mountview Deluxe Hotel’s security tapes so the police could verify Kevin’s story that they went their separate ways after spending the night together.”