The Diamond Fist: Chapter 12

 Chapter 12

Liam

Falling, falling, falling…

Wading through blue. Pulling, pulling, dragging.

An eruption of orange. Smoke. Hard things. Pain. Pain, pain! Arm, my arm.

Wading through blue. Things raining. Hard things. Pull, pull! Omar, Omar…

Swim. Keep … swimming. Fire is spreading. Black on blue, far away, orange. Keep swimmi–

Cough, cough, breathe. Breathe, Liam. Breathe, Omar. Swim, swim. Breathe. Wake up, Omar, keep eyes open.

White thing, coming towards us. Lifted into air. More pain. Dry.

Black.

*****

Grey.

I don’t know how I felt. I felt grey. I felt grey–and I didn’t understand how. Not happy, not sad–just… Grey. Empty. It felt strange. My eyelids were heavy and closed.

Open your eyelids.

Only it didn’t. I couldn’t feel anything. Just empty. I couldn’t control it. Empty, empty and more emptiness. Noises I couldn’t understand. Soft, warm hands. Clicking, beeping, rushing air. The smell of sweet. More noises. One high noise. Squeaking.

“Lee–am.”

Raise your finger.

Only a twitch. Rushing air again, but going in. More squeaking. Bounce, bounce. Dizzy, dizzy, dizzy. Sickeningly dizzy. Grunt. More noises, more soft, warm hands. Rushing air next to me. Beeping. Beeping. Can’t understand. Can’t function.

When will it end? I didn’t know. I wanted to move. Stretch. Speak. Hear. See. I was stuck in a cell of grey, stuck in a straitjacket in a padded cell. Stuck in a cell of incoherency, raw feelings without being processed, understood. Stuck in drowsiness. Confusion.

Time passed in that state, like in limbo between being asleep and still being asleep–but neither at the same time. I had stopped fighting battles with my body on what to do. I simply stayed and tried to concentrate on understanding the noises, the feelings, the smells... I couldn’t comprehend any of it.

What were these noises? What did they mean? What was I doing there? Was I supposed to be there? Was I dead? What was my name? How did I get there? I didn’t like it.

Was I dead? Maybe. What was death again?

Deciding to see if my body would cooperate, I forced my eyes open. White light. White, bright light–too bright–can’t see! White, yellow, brown, pink, blue, white, white, white, white–

I shut my eyes again. Far too bright.

Noise again, squeaking, high, low. Soft, warm hands, a pair of small hands too.

“Lee–am... Lee–am...” The voice seems far away, echoing. A squeaky, innocent, pure voice. That was my name...wasn’t it?

Time passed in my semi–dead state. My body lay almost dead, but my mind was alive and drowsy. I struggled to comprehend what I was hearing but maybe it’d improved. Or was it just my mind hoping?

I began to dream. I could tell it was only a dream, yet I felt trapped within my skull and the unreal. Flashes of... orange. Flames crackling, dancing on the water. Water? The water was dark, the colour of charred logs. Perhaps...

White boats charging through the flames like enraged bulls; trying to keep Omar from drowning in the water; jumping from the cliff into the mouth of a monster under the surface of the sea, ready to envelope me in darkness; incoherent thoughts swirling like mist. When would I wake from this nightmare?

My eyes flickered open and everything seems a lot clearer. I could see colour, shape, texture. I felt like I was a blind person who had been able to see for the first time. The room was dark, with yet there felt like there was still some light which I couldn’t see apart from the flickering green and red ones to the corner of my right eye. I guessed the room was like a sea of white and I was almost grateful that I had woken up in the dark.

I wasn’t sure where I was. I didn’t even know how I got there. All I knew was that I was Liam and that I was in a dark room with flickering green and red light to the corner of my right eye. Otherwise, I was in a dark hole of nothingness.

Shutting my eyes, I tried to remember what’d happened...

Wading through blue. Pulling, pulling, dragging.

An eruption of orange. Smoke. Hard things raining. Pain. Pain, pain! Arm, my arm.

I opened them again. I remembered! The boat had exploded – something had been flying towards us. It was out of control and Omar and I had jumped into the water–just in time too–for the explosion occurred right at that moment. It’d knocked the wind out of us and Omar was coughing like crazy and was almost groggy. Debris had been raining on us, cutting my bare chest and my arm, hurting like crazy.

I’d felt dry floor before I remember it going black.

It was Yousseyaqub. Maybe that wasn’t his real name. It probably wasn’t. What kind of name was Yousseyaqub? I’d ask Omar once he woke up. Did he try and kidnap us? Was that kidnap? What was it because that certainly wasn’t normal. Maybe he was behind it and somehow that cave had been open when my team had disappeared...

I gasped. They were kept in there! That’s where they went! Yousseyaqub had revealed himself... stupid bastard. Well. As soon as I got out of here, it was straight to the police station I’d go.

Wherever that was. Or wherever “here” was too.

Speaking of here, where was “here”? I tried to look around for clues unsuccessfully. The blanket was a grey colour (which in brighter light was white) and so were the curtains. Except, the curtains seemed to enclose me in a small space, as it I were in a cubicle–like a toilet cubicle–with retractable walls.

I regretted thinking of that. Wincing, I tried to think at something completely random to remove the image out of my head. It wasn’t working.

Looking around me, I spotted the green and red lights. Moving closer, I realised they weren’t lights but in fact, numbers. The red one was at the top and had the number 68 flashing on it. The bottom one was green and had 95 on it. Whatever that meant.

I kicked off the covers with my feet and was greeted by an array of scratches and wounds on my chest. Some of them appeared to be just grazes–others had scabs and others still seemed to have stitches on them. I winced again.

My left arm had a bandage on it–thickly wrapped cloth with some kind of tube protruding from it, leading to something tall which looked like coat hanger with bags of liquid labelled “POTASSIUM CHLORIDE” on it. There was an army green screen on it too, flashing as well.

Someone had found an interesting use for the storage of potassium chloride. More importantly though: what was it?

Behind the coat hanger were the curtains. They were translucent and I could see a dim light behind it. A shadow, silently jogging towards me.

On my other hand was a cast and it was being held up by something from the ceiling. Clearly, I’d hurt my arm–broken it, by the look of it. I daren’t move it, in case it hurt. That must’ve been one serious explosion. What could’ve caused the boat to go haywire and explode? I didn’t know, but good thing that we had some sense to jump off the boat or else...

The shadow drew closer and I heard the gentle yet swift movement of it–like raindrops gently patting the floor soothingly. It came to the side of the curtain on the right, where I couldn’t see it. I could hear quiet murmurs–a male, older voice–that did not seem familiar. It spoke in Arabic with a soothing tone accompanied by the quiet rustling of plastic bags and wrappers.

“Kol, ya habibi. Matamalsh sot kiteer.”

Perhaps this was the father. Its shadow had been tall and well built–it looked like a man and sounded like one too, but I could only guess. Or an uncle or granddad.

“Momken bebsi?”

This voice was younger–male too–and sounded suspiciously like Omar. Dare I?

Dare I not. The gentle rustling of plastic wrappers continued, but I didn’t dare speak. I made a hoarse grunt, but it seemed to go unnoticed. I waited for a while, drumming my fingers, waiting. The place I was in–a ward, it seemed–was dead silent. Apart from my breathing, there was no audible sound.

Occasionally, the cubicle next to me was visited by a nurse after ominous beeping. Nothing in my cubicle beeped though, so I assumed it was all okay... until–

Bang!

I jolted upright, my heart pounding against my ribs, bursting. I panted and looked around frantically. The beeping started again, but this time it was coming from right next to me. Heavy footsteps followed along with the sound of laughter. The ward was still dark, dammit!

A nurse in a white lab coat came and checked it. She removed something from my hand but I was too groggy to notice what. She then turned to the liquid bag coat hanger and adjusted something. I rubbed my eyes with my shoulders and wondered what the loud noises were.

“Shwaya... Shwaya...Mat khabatahash!”

The nurse sighed. “Sleep. Do not worry. We have some noisy visitors,” she said in heavily accented English before striding out of the cubicle, almost angry. “Please keep the noise down!” she whispered, but it was one of those whispers that was a lot more like yelling.  And a lot louder too.

But louder they became, not quiet. She repeated what she said again, but it was clear that they knew the rule of Simon says and ignored her. Instead, they marched towards us and I wondered what they were doing at a hospital ward at three in the morning. Suddenly a burst of light and my eyes burned, and all of a sudden, it was complete pandemonium.

The curtains were violently flung open and I saw that it was Omar and his dad on the other side. An army of TV personnel had arrived and began filming Omar who looked completely bewildered. “Three, two, one–”

I gaped, feeling like a cuckoo clock, staring at everything after suddenly being found in the centre of attention. I wasn’t entirely the centre of attention, but–oh look, yes I was.

One of the interviewers advanced on me like an eagle. “I will ask you in Arabic what happened wiz you and Omar,” she said, “and I want you to reply in Eenglish. Okay?”

“I–”

“Filming,” grunted one of the camera men, and suddenly I found myself staring into the flashing red light of the camera. The interviewer asked me something in rapid Arabic and I stared at her bewildered. I didn’t understand what she said, but I groggily began to speak, stumbling over my words often.

“We were... on a boat and then ... it started going haywire and stuff... this guy called Yousseyaqub–” One of the cameramen sniggered “–tried to, I dunno, kidnap us? And then.... it went funny and stuff... and then I thought we should jump off–Omar thought I was on crack and I think he thought I was on the trolley–off I mean... and then it exploded and stuff.”

“Sweet.” She dropped the microphone on my leg and lit a cigarette. She blew a trail of smoke into the air.

“What’s going on? Why are you here?” I asked. She looked astounded that I had asked her a question, but I wanted the woman to leave all ready. Her visit encroached my sleep and I wanted to sleep again.

“Your friend–” She shot a dirty look in Omar’s direction “–was in an accident. We came to report it.” Her tone aggravated me. I longed to rip off that smirk from her face–and became alarmed that I felt. “It is exclusive on ze TV. Only our shannel will have an interview wiz you and him.”

“What about the police? I swear they need to talk to us–”

“Zeir issue. Not mine.”

Before I could probe any further, the camera man took a step backwards and filmed the scene: watching the cameras not amused and feeling very sleepy. Omar was surrounded by a huddle of reporters and was being interrogated. His dad too had been taken and interviewed in the corner, but it looked far more like an interrogation.

Eventually, they left, although I did have a mini-go at them. I hissed, “Can I get some Goddamn sleep already? I don’t care what you’re doing because it’s three in the morning.”

My complaint went ignored. They did get out eventually, when it was four AM, after interviews with two nurses, a lot of questions amongst other things. They had even asked for my name–which I’d reluctantly told them after some pressure–and my address. Despite the fact I’d not told them, they’d still managed to find them through hospital records. I couldn’t help think, however: where was patient confidentiality?

Omar’s father had gone downstairs for a cigarette, so he’d left Omar and me alone in the dark.

“That... was an adventure.” Omar chuckled, waving at me from just across from where the curtain would have been. “God knows how we got out of that one!” His bandaged arms camouflaged with his blankets and his oxygen mask lay next to him.

“Yeah... how did we?” I had to drag you through the water before landing on the shore. “You all right?”

“Yeah, man, I’m good. My arms and legs ache and my chest and all over, but I feel great. Do ya remember anything of what happened?”

“Some...  but it’s not about that. You know Yousseyaqub–”

“Who?”

“Yousseyaqub,” I repeated. Omar seemed completely perplexed.“Who we went snorkelling with.”

He snickered. “His name is Yaqub. I’ve never seen anyone with two names–”

“I thought he said Yousse...” I mumbled, fiddling with my cast. “But either way, I think he was lying about his name... Where do you think James went? He didn’t make it, did he?” I sighed, and slumped back into a sleeping position again. “And now we have our next victim. Bloody hell.”

“Maybe he had something to do with your friends going, Liam.”

“Yes,” I said, slowly. “Maybe he does.” Then I gasped–so suddenly that I began coughing hard and buckled over with my face in front of my knees. “He did,” I whispered excitedly once I stopped coughing. “When they disappeared, I heard they mentioned something about a cave. So... hold on. How did Lauren go, then?”

He shrugged and lay back. “I don’t know, man, but there’s something fishy about that now that we’re talking about it. I was such a fool. I told him a lot. But what happened happened and I think we should do something about it now that we’re sure.”

“Sick bastard,” I hiss. “What does he want them for? If only he was at some other town, then we could be left alone.”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like it. I don’t think he’s alone and there’s something... bad he’s doing with them.”

I turned sharply. “Bad like what?”

“Bad like,” he paused. “Bad.”

Just then, I heard Omar’s dad enter the ward again. We returned to our sleeping positions as if nothing had happened, and we knew the conversation would have to carry on tomorrow.

I woke up to the sound of one of the babies screaming and thrashing. It was light again and the curtain between my cubicle and Omar’s had been drawn shut again. Accompanied with the baby’s scream was the sound of heart monitors and calls for breakfast and I-don’t-know-what-else but it was loud and irritating. I found a piece of paper–white bordered with red–around my cast in both Arabic and English.

NAME: Liam Hunt

AGE: 14 and 8 months

DOB: 16/5/96

BLOOD TYPE: O Negative

And then afterwards were some ID numbers.

As I read the label around my cast, Mum arrived. I hadn’t been expecting her–but she probably would’ve come anyway. She mightn’t have given much of a damn about me before, but certainly now, she must’ve. Maybe this would change our relationship. Or maybe not. There’d been loads of things that’d happened between us: the divorce, the remarriage, Beth and moving to Sharm El Sheikh but they’d all made it worse. We barely talked and I honestly wondered sometimes if she ever cared about me–but surely, if your kid is in hospital, you would.

“Will,” she said, softly, wrapping her arms around my neck, careful not to lean onto my cast. “Will, are you okay?” she whispered into my ear softly.

“Yes... I’m all right.”

Her arms remained wrapped around me for a few moments before she broke away and sat back in the chair. She handed me a bowl of cereal and placed something that looked suspiciously like orange juice on the bedside table. “You were sedated yesterday, so I’m afraid that I had to eat the apple pie. I daren’t imagine how many calories there were in there, but it was very juicy and sweet,” she murmured.

I shrugged. “I thought hospital food was disgusting,” I mumbled.

She smiled. “I miss you Liam. I miss when we used to have fun together and bake, like we hadn’t a care in the world...”

That was when I was six. That’s changed; you’ve changed; everything has. I began making a start on the cereal which was already turning to mush just a minute or two after being put in the milk. Just like shreddies back at home–but hey, these had some flavour. I didn’t complain–most days I just skipped breakfast and had a larger lunch. In fact, on weekends, I woke up at lunch. Surprising how I knew the definition of the word.

I quickly finished breakfast and then one of the nurses arrived explaining everything to mum about what they would be doing today. In the meantime, I noticed the TV and began channel surfing. Egyptian dramas heaven: car doors dented; weapons being drawn; fighting with the kids, the partner and who knows what else. A music channel here, a movie there–oh look, Tom and Jerry! Jerry was teasing Tom with a fishing rod. But even then, I wasn’t even in the mood.

The nurse decided that I no longer needed to be connected to the coat hanger for a bit, or the heart monitor. She removed the tube but left in the small one that ended with some kind of thing which sealed the gap between two things. We learned something similar in school: was it a synapse? No, that was... I wasn’t sure what a synapse was for. Nerves?

“Come on, Will. Would you like to see Beth? She’s missed you dearly.”

She led me (while I hobbled there, feeling shaky as I walked) to the children’s playroom: a large room painted a warm yellow, its walls covered in scribbles with crayons and colourful cartoon characters like Minnie Mouse and Daffy duck. Beth was by the train track, pushing Thomas the Tank Engine forward and advancing towards Barbie and Ken–smiling as always–who lay on the track. I had a feeling that Beth didn’t like the dolls and wished to see their end in the most violent way possible. Who’d have known a just-turned-four year old could be so violent?

“Beth,” I grinned. “Beth–”

The train crashed into the dolls and they spun to the sides, falling off the bridge with a great clatter. Beth giggled and it was like hearing the sound of innocence and purity. Pure all right.

She turned and seemed to pause in awe. I’d not seen my face in the mirror and I instantly put my hands and felt my cheeks, my nose, my forehead and my chin but there didn’t to be anything abnormal apart from a considerable amount of gashes. Nevertheless, she seemed to get the courage to hug me tightly, feeling as if I was almost being squashed and pushed back.

“Not too tight, not too tight–” I rasped.

She let go, and looked at me as if she wondered what happened. But she didn’t say anything about it and instead invited me to the train tracks. “Look what happened, Lee–am! The choo choo train crashed into the people!” she said, in a tone of urgency as if it were a bad accident even though I very well knew she’d ran them over. I found it hard not to laugh.

“The train isn’t being a very good train, Lee–am! Look!” Next to her were a collection of rubber ducks in all sorts of colours–red, green, blue, purple–and interestingly enough, none were yellow. Clearly someone thought yellow was a boring colour.

She threw the ducks onto the table with the complex network of tracks ad tried to fit the blue one inside the tunnel. The rest lay fly-tipped under the bridges. “They’re on the track and the train is very angry with the duckies. He’s going to craaash!”

Needless to say that the result wasn’t great. Six “duckies” were injured and one injured.

Andrew, Mum and I watched Beth play with the trains while viciously slashing at the “duckies” with the trains and leaving Barbie on the track again while Ken tried to “save” her but in the end was run over too. Mum held my hand tightly for the duration (which I tried to wriggle out of a failed) while we watched, only saying a few words here and there. Interesting that when I was injured, she only just noticed that she actually had a son.

Andrew tried to pry some answers out of me but I refused firmly. I didn’t want to relive it all.  I was getting a little bit worked up with all the questions so I hobbled back to the bed and refused to say anything.

I shut my eyes quickly when I heard them approaching. Omar was probably in a second operation because his bed wasn’t there. Luckily, I didn’t need another one–I was just kept for observation.

Just before I was about to sleep, the nurses arrived with the discharge papers. We would be allowed to go home, apparently, so we took the car home and I quickly fell asleep there.

Hours later, the phone rang. And it wasn’t who I thought it was.

It was Lauren.

 A/N: Thoughts and comments appreciated! What do you make of Liam's relationship with his family? It'll be rather important in the next few chapters...