Chapter Text
She never thought she would come back, and now she was back, she wished she had stayed away. Once again, taking the coward’s way, but after what she had been through, maybe she was entitled to a bit of a break. Seemed not. She took a deep breath, girded her loins and stepped out of her rental car.
“Cameron.”
She saw the car. He didn’t. When she rushed towards him, for a millisecond, she wished it was over. He was still breathing. She scolded herself mentally for having wished that. She remembered Friedrich…She remembered Elinor. She remembered Charlotte. She gulped back her tears and took his vitals, calling them out to the medics who’d come rushing.
They cut her some slack – well, a lot of slack. Maybe it was because of her ex-star surgeon status. Maybe it was because of old friendships never quite severed. If one had asked Henrik Hanssen why he allowed Major Berenice “Bernie” Wolfe to stay with her son in ICU, he would have said it was because of the haunted look in her eyes, and the lines of grief etched in her face. He didn’t know much about what had happened to her during the last three years. He didn’t ask questions. And those he had asked had been answered in the briefest way possible. So he knew she had been kept hostage by a Somalian guerrilla group and had been released. He also knew her daughter had died. And he hadn’t probed further, because of those deep, pain-filled eyes.
So when Cameron woke up, he found his mother sitting beside him. Each time she saw the cuffs chaining him to the bed, she winced. She had thought she would be immune. War usually had that effect on people. After a while, you became anaesthetised to pain. You found ways of coping. Like she had done when she was held in a two by two cell without windows. You told yourself stories. You exercised, because you knew you had to. You tried to count the days. And when you had to operate on some of your kidnappers, an assault rifle pointed on your head, you did it, because you’d been taught that the most important thing was to survive. And you did, actually, want to survive, because you had unfinished business. You thought about her often. And you hoped your journal had got to her. Because in the journal, you’d poured out your soul, and you wanted her to know you’d never forgotten her. Never forgotten the softness of her lips on yours, the warmth spreading through your body when she looked at you, the caress of her fingers on your heated skin….and you dreamt. You had nightmares, mostly, but when you dreamt, you dreamt of her, and those shards of happiness made you want to live, despite the hunger, despite the cold, despite the abuse.
Bernie forced her attention back to the bed and away from Cameron’s wrists. He had changed so much. She had too, but she hardly recognised her little boy. What had she missed as an absent mother? What had Marcus and his parents not told her? Had things happened at school? Had he been abused? Or was she the cause of his behaviour? Was it because she’d been away that he had become the…the monster he was now? She pictured them in her mind’s eye, during one of the rare family holidays. She saw Charlotte and Cameron building a sandcastle on the beach, laughing. They’d bickered about who had had the biggest scoop of ice cream. She sighed and rubbed her red-rimmed eyes, daring them to water. She had promised herself she would not cry. Not when she’d been captured. Not when she’d been mistreated. Not when she’d been released. And not when she had learnt that during her captivity, her daughter Charlotte, whom she’d been estranged from, had died of aggressive breast cancer. She would not cry. She buried her face in her hands and gritted her teeth. She had no time for self-pity.
“So – the prodigal mother returns…but it’s too late.”
His speech was slurred, but every word hit home.
“Cameron.”
“Wonder where you’ve been all these years. Because apparently, you’re not dead. Or maybe you are, and this is all a nightmare.”
He tried to pinch himself, noticed the handcuffs and slammed his hand against the metal bed. Hard.
“Nope. That hurt. Not a nightmare. So you were hiding away, Major?”
She winced. Took a deep breath. Opened her mouth. Shut it. He went on, “Everything was a lie, then. Wonder who the poor sod we cremated in your place was. To think I actually cared. And it was just another one of your lies.”
“I didn’t lie to you, Cameron.”
“No? What about the fact you’re an old dyke, and you were married to my father?”
She held her gaze. “That’s between your father and me, Cameron. It has nothing to do with you.”
“Whatever.”
He stared at the ceiling.
“I wasn’t hiding, Cameron. I was captured during the hospital bombing. The military faked my death to help negotiate my release. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know.”
He didn’t react.
She dried up. She couldn’t tell him about Alex. About Serena. She couldn’t tell him that when she’d been released, she had had partial traumatic amnesia, and if it hadn’t been for Alex, she would probably still be in a psy ward somewhere. Alex had somehow managed to get her out of the hospital, wrangle her on a plane and taken her to Pontevedra, a small Galician town where Serena had rented a house overlooking a vineyard. She’d remembered Serena, but it had taken months before she’d remembered her children were not actually children anymore. Serena had nursed her back to health, and little by little, she’d recovered her memory. And wished she hadn’t. Because she wouldn’t be here today otherwise. She would be on a deckchair, near the pool, with a glass of wine and Serena at her side. Suddenly feeling claustrophobic in this windowless room that was reawakening her PTSD, she got up and hurried out. She barely heard Cameron’s words , “It’s all over anyway”.
****
“We’ve got to evacuate. Get people out. Do not panic!”
She’d heard those words too many times. She stopped a young woman in scrubs. “What’s happening?”
“We’ve got to go. He left a note.”
“He?”
The young doctor didn’t answer and hurried away. Bernie saw Fletch at the end of the corridor and hailed him.
“Bernie! What? Where? You’ve got to get out of here!”
“Fletch – tell me what happened.”
He looked harried. He also looked like he was hiding something from her. He’d never been a good liar. She looked straight into his eyes. He gulped. “Cameron left a note. There’s a bomb in the basement and I can’t find Evie.”
“You have to help the patients, Fletch. I’ll find Evie.”
“Bernie- you can’t…” But she was gone.
She remembered the way to the basement. Some of the supplies were kept there. Her spatial memory kicked in and she strode as quickly as possible towards the stairs. She would have run, but a badly broken and unfixed ankle during her captivity precluded that. Just before reaching the stairs, she pulled out her cell phone. One text. Just one, to say everything. She didn’t have time to think. Just three words. Serena would understand. She wouldn’t get out of there alive, but she would save Evie. So many children had died – Evie would survive.
Even in the darkness, she saw the bomb, the red digits shining bright. Three minutes. She called out Evie’s name. Nothing. She walked a little further, a hand on the walls to keep her bearings, the security lights’ green glow more than inadequate. She wouldn’t have found her if she hadn’t stumbled on something. Something soft. She bent down and found the girl’s pulse. Still strong, but Evie was unconscious. She tried to drag her, but Evie was heavy, and they didn’t have time. So she stopped and slapped her, hard. At the third slap, Evie mumbled something and her eyelids fluttered.
“Good girl. Come on, we have to go.” Bernie helped her upright, and although she still had to drag her, at least Evie wasn’t a dead weight anymore. They didn’t quite make it. They’d almost reached the stairs when a blast projected them on the floor, Bernie sheltering Evie with her body.
