Arrow slipped into the Intensive Care Unit, and closed door quietly behind him.
`Sarah,' he whispered.
She looked over her shoulder. Seeing him, she beckoned him towards her with her left hand. The other lay on the bed cover, grasping tight to her husband, as if she were holding him with her. He lay on his back, with his eyes closed. A thick tube led from his mouth into a ventilator; its steady rhythmic pumping was the only sound to be heard.
There was an empty chair alongside Sarah. As Adam sat down, he looked around. There were three other beds in the Unit, each of them occupied by a single male patient, wired to a green-screened monitor, and everything and everyone was under the observation of a central nurses' station.
I didn't expect to see you,' she said in a dull, flat, exhausted voice.
I 'ad to come,' said Arrow. 'To see Andy, to brief him on what's been happening in London.'
Aren't DCI Donaldson and Neil down there? Couldn't they have done that?'
He smiled at her gently. 'Course they could, but I wanted to come anyway, didn't I. How's he doing?'
She glanced up at the monitor. 'He's still in shock, but pulse is beginning to stabilise. It was weak and reedy when the brought him out of surgery, after they'd done all they could in there. Lung and brain functions aren't a problem — so far, at least. It's the arterial damage that's the danger. If they've been able to repair it properly, and stop the bleeding, then his body will recover from the shock, his heart-rate will slow down and his condition will stabilise.
If they haven't, then… then he'll..
Arrow took her free hand and gave it a squeeze. 'Don't say that. This is the big fella, remember. The toughest guy I've ever met. He'll pull through.'
She looked at him, then leaned down, touching her forehead to his shoulder. 'The surgeon wasn't prepared to say that. Adam, you're SAS, you know the score as well as I do. With that wound most people would have died in the ambulance. Even the strongest can be brought down.'
`Yes,' he said. 'But some people just have that bit extra. Like 'im. And that bit don't show.
Surgeons can't spot it just by looking at your insides.' He glanced up at the screens. 'How long till he does stabilise?'
It'll be about forty-eight hours until we can start to relax. They'll keep him under for that long, and on the ventilator. After that, if everything's okay they can let him start to come round and allow his system to take over. But until then, that pulse-line up there is a single, weak thread, and he's hanging by it.'
He squeezed her hand again. 'He will hang on, though. And, hard as it is to find anything positive in all this, once he's over the worst, at least he'll be forced to take a rest. I might as well tell you I was worried about him. When I saw him after the accident, then when I spoke to him yesterday, there was something about him. He seemed strained.'
Sarah looked at the little man. 'He's barely slept since the accident, you know. When he has dropped off, he's been having nightmares.
Arrow nodded. 'That fits. I've seen those signs before; you find them in someone running on an empty tank. There's a name for it in the Army. We call it combat fatigue.' He paused And talking about fatigue, shouldn't you get some rest?'
She shook her head. 'How would I do that, Adam? I'm here for the duration, for as long as it takes. Alex, and Tracey, the nanny, will look after Jazz. When this big hoss comes round, the first thing he sees is going to be me, sat right here! And if I ain't wearing any make-up, and if I do have bags under my eyes, well that'll be just too damn bad!'