Chapter 2

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It took a half hour for them to get to the hospital after the ambulance took Mollie away, with traffic and the tram and pedestrians. They had all undertaken longer journeys while they were on tour, and yet it seemed that the road seemed to stretch on forever for that trip. They were all crammed in the van together, and even though there was more space than there usually was with only the four of them, they were practically sitting in each other’s laps.

Una was pale and unblinking beneath Rochelle’s arm, her head halfway turned in the other girl’s neck, and the tears that had started falling in the apartment had still yet to cease coursing down her face. Rochelle had her cheek resting on Una’s red-haired head, but her eyes were far away. She still held the bloody towel clamped in one hand at her side. She had forgotten how to release her fingers so she could drop it.

Frankie and Vanessa were ensconced in the chair beside them, half curled around each other, but Frankie had turned out of the embrace somewhat so she could see out of the front windscreen. She was leaning forward slightly, as if she could somehow speed them along to their destination. Her hands were still damp with her best friend’s blood, and there were smears of it on her face. Her eyes were the only things that were dry about her, yet they were hauntingly empty.

“Do you think…?” Vanessa’s voice was loud in the stunning silence of the car, and she stopped herself immediately, unable to finish the needless question.

Rochelle glanced at her over the top of Una’s head. “They know what they’re doing,” she said in a low voice. She had remained the most optimistic, but even she was having trouble keeping an upbeat tone. She had managed fairly well until the moment Mollie had actually sped off in the ambulance, the sirens fading into the distance with each passing second. Her efforts faded once they took her unresponsive friend out of her hands, pressing oxygen to her mouth and feeling for her pulse beneath their fingers. Still, if nothing else, she could manage a few encouraging words for her friends. “They’ll help her. She’ll be okay.”

Una had to bite her lip, dropping her head even further to hide her face. Frankie didn’t say a word.

It doesn’t happen like it happens in the films. There is no leaping into the back of the ambulance and holding your friend’s hand while you speed off together, whispering promises and telling them how you’ll be with them the whole time. There’s no tearful exchange. There is no immediate cut to the hospital, where you are suddenly at their side again without any pause in between, and they would be sleeping peacefully with a fluffy bandage around their head. There are no instantaneous reunions, no long gazing at each other as they drive away, no goodbye at all.

One moment, Mollie was staggering drunkenly through the kitchen, fever-high and laughing, and then the tiles were splattered with blood and their best friend was having her ribs cracked in CPR received from paramedics that barely had the time to throw two words over their shoulders as they carried her away.

There is no certainty, no reassurance.

Instead, there are calls to her mother and babbled explanations that come out in a rush of tears and sudden, horrible realisation that has the phone being passed off to anyone who can wrap their fingers around it. There are calls to management, who send out teams to the hospital like they can do something to help her with iPads and publicity, when they don’t even know if Mollie’s heart is still beating. There are long waits in between. There are lines and queuing and nurses who were too harried to have the information ready for them on their arrival and too restricted by regulations to give them the news they sought. There are waiting rooms and tears and vending machines that give out the wrong snack and incite the urge for random destruction.

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