Bleed for Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

beside me on the bridge, taking Sienna and laying her on the tarmac with a coat beneath her head. He yel s instructions to his partner. Pulse. Blood pressure.
    Good signs.
    Another set of hands helps me to stand, holding me up, making sure I don’t fal . One of them is asking me questions.
    Did I find her in the water? Was she conscious? Did she fal ? Is she al ergic to any drugs?
    I don’t know.
    ‘She’s my daughter’s best friend,’ I say through chattering teeth.
    What a stupid statement! What difference does that make?
    Julianne’s face appears in front of me. ‘He’s shivering. Get him a blanket.’
    Her arms wrap around me and I feel her warmth. She wil not fail. She wil not let me go.
    The ambulance reverses down the hil . The back doors open. A litter slides from within. Sienna is rol ed on to a spinal board and lifted on the count of three.
    ‘We have to take you to the hospital, sir,’ says a paramedic.
    ‘My name is Joe.’
    ‘We have to take you to the hospital, Joe.’
    ‘I’m al right - just out of breath.’
    ‘It’s a precaution. Do you know this girl?’
    ‘Her name is Sienna.’
    ‘You can ride with Sienna. Try to keep her calm.’
    Calm? She’s catatonic. She’s a statue.
    Wrapped in a silver trauma blanket, I’m half pushed and half lifted into the ambulance. Julianne wants to come with me, but she has Charlie and Emma to think about.
    The right door closes.
    ‘Cal me,’ she says.
    The left door locks shut. A hand hammers a signal and we’re moving.

    ‘Did she take anything?’ asks the paramedic.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘Did she say anything?’
    ‘No.’
    He shines a pencil-torch in her eyes and slips an oxygen mask over her face.
    The siren wails, chasing us through the darkness. Sienna is lying completely stil , her limbs muddy and pale, her stomach rising and fal ing with each breath.
    I keep seeing her in the beam of the torch - a spectral figure with her brown hair hanging in a fringe across her face. She was looking at me as though she’d seen something terrible or done something worse.

    3
    It has just gone midnight and the sky is a black sponge. Police vans are parked outside the Royal United Hospital and four paramedics are kicking a coffee cup around the ambulance bay, scoring goals between the bins.
    My feet move unsteadily, as though unsure of the depth of the ground. Ushered through swinging doors, I fol ow a young triage nurse to a consulting room. She takes my wet clothes and hands me a hospital gown and a thin blue blanket.
    Then I’m left alone in the smal room with a bench and an examination table covered in a sheet of paper. There are no magazines to read. No televisions to watch. I find myself reading the labels on syringes and medical swabs, making words from the letters.
    Forty minutes later a doctor appears. Obese and prematurely bald, he’s the sort of physician who finds the gulf between preaching and practising healthy living one dessert too far. He examines me in a perfunctory way - blood pressure, temperature, ‘say aaaaah’ . . .
    Most of his questions are about Sienna. Did she take anything, did she say anything; does she have any al ergies or sensitivities to medications?
    ‘She’s not my daughter,’ I keep repeating.
    He makes a note on his clipboard.
    ‘She was bleeding.’
    ‘The blood wasn’t hers,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘The police want to talk to you. They’re waiting outside.’
    The policeman is a senior constable whose name is Toltz and he writes left-handed with a cupped wrist so he doesn’t smudge his notebook.
    ‘What was she doing at your house?’
    ‘It’s not real y my house. My wife and I are separated. Sienna turned up and then ran away.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘There must have been an accident. Perhaps her boyfriend drove off the road. He could be hurt.’
    ‘Why your house?’
    ‘She’s my daughter’s friend. Her mother works nights. Sienna often stays with us.’
    The senior constable doesn’t react to