CHAPTER 68
I was tired, in that state where your eyes seem displaced to the back of your skull, looking out through long tunnels that feel soaked in vinegar.

Enid had been released, and was recovering at home, but I was still spending as much of the day and night as I could by Alice's side. Arwel was never far away, leaving everything on hold and in Hywel’s care, and to my delight Mam and Dad came over on the fourth day after she woke to take care of Jim and allow Tony some rest of his own. Family…

I stood in the ladies’, inspecting the wreckage in the mirror. I badly needed a bath, and some proper sleep, but there was no way I was going to leave her till I was certain that her recovery was assured and the risks of further arrests were gone.

Siá¢n brought me some fresh clothes a couple of times, but I was still antisocially dirty, and, well, I needed to do certain things that only girls like me understand, and I couldn’t sit next to the bed with what added up to a dildo in me without arousing at least some disquiet. In short, I just wanted everything over, all lives set back to ‘default’, and one young man’s car crushed into a cube with him inside it. Bev was feeding me, after Mam and Dad took over the house, and every time she left I had a cry. Alice was just about fully awake now, and she saw.

“Why the tears, my darling girl?”

“It’s just silliness, Alice, realisation that I have so many good friends, and I’ve got no way to repay them. What can I do?”

“Understand this, Sar, you have the friends because of who you are. That’s all. You care, you give things back, and people see that. They gravitate to you, because you listen”

“Yeah, I try, Alice, but lots do”

“Yes, I know, but you accept people. I don’t mean you are a soft touch, you just seem to accept people as they are, and that’s a rare gift.”

“Yeah, well, I sort of need that for myself, being what I am, so it’s kind of a payback”

She laughed, and I joined in, and the sound was so wonderful, she was going to be my happy little old lady again. Her speech was still slurred and broken, but I was putting that down to the wiring up of her broken jaw, and not to any brain damage. Please god, no damage there.

Doctor Matthews was in a little later, still looking raw around the edges, and I realised that Alice wasn’t his only concern, and wondered how many other families were camped out in hope and fear just like us.

“Good morning, Alice, how do we feel this morning?”

“I don’t know about you, Doctor, but I still feel like shit. Is there a time scale for getting these bits of meccano off?”

“Soon, I think. You were very fortunate indeed to have two such clean breaks. I wanted to be sure everything was straight before I moved onto simple plaster, but all is looking good just now. We’ve also been looking at the scans, and there seems to be good news there too.

“There is no easy way to put this, Alice, but you have to think of your brain as being like a big soft blancmange. Your skull can do remarkable things to protect it, but if your head stops suddenly, the brain can keep moving inside your head. That can deliver what we call rotational brain injury, potentially very nasty.

“I’ve spent a lot of time with the consultant, poring over your scans. There is damage there, but nowhere near as much as we had feared. What I would like to do is put you through some cognitive tests, see how your thoughts and memory are.”

“Well, I can’t actually remember the crash, just seeing the car about three feet away and the driver looking down”

“Retrograde amnesia, very common. Quite a blessing, really, you don’t remember the pain of the impact. How is the pain now, by the way?”

“Whatever you have me on seems to work. Out of professional curiosity, doctor, what are you giving me?”

They launched into a complex discussion of analgesics and dosage, and I smiled with relief. If she could handle pharmacology to that level, she was still there inside.

Arwel appeared as the doctor left, taking the time to shake his hand and thank him, which he did every time they met. He was carrying two sacks from the burger chain that had a franchise in the hospital, which sort of went against my idea of healthy, but never mind. He had cokes AND coffees, the sensible man, and I devoured my cholesterol and calories as if I hadn’t eaten for hours.

Well, I hadn’t, but the double dose of caffeine shook me awake, and the greasy, salty mess was just what my failing body demanded. Alice asked for some, and I watched as Arwel first held a straw to her lips so she could take some of his coke, and then, so gently and delicately, fed her chips, one by one, as she sucked on them in her broken mouth.

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There is little more I can say about those days that would be n any way structured. After the shock and pain of the accident, and Alice’s arrest, things settled into routine. Her ‘meccano’ came off, to be replaced by plaster, and I had the job of scratching inside with a long plastic stick. Once that was done, we could finally allow Jim to visit properly. I had been adamant that the sight of metal rods sticking into her flesh was not something I ever wanted him to see. He was upset, but once more I was treated to the sight of a bouquet bigger than a boy.

The cognitive tests revealed some damage, largely to Alice’s short-term memory, and as she got better we would notice the occasional pause in her conversation where, as she put it, she was rewinding events to see where she had been and what she was talking about. Arwel was sanguine.

“Women talk too much anyway” he said, but there was a twinkle there that had been missing for a while, and it was clear that as Alice healed, so did the rest of us. Eventually, the day came when we could get her out of the hospital and home. There was no question of crutches, not with two broken limbs, and so she rode home in Arwel’s minibus with a National Health Service wheelchair on loan. Her head was still healing, what little hair remaining shaved off, so she wore a headscarf like some Russian farmer’s wife, in a wonderfully bright pattern of roses that seemed to shout out to the world “Nyah, missed me!”

Arwel took her home, as our place has steps to the front door, and Tony and my uncle had already transferred our sofa bed so that she could sleep downstairs. He had apparently already moved himself into her room on what looked like a semi permanent basis, so what with him and Enid, and the constant stream of well-wishers, she had everything she needed.

Tony took me home at last, and I stood under the shower for what seemed like years, then pulled on a sleep shirt and climbed into our bed. I slept for twenty hours, Tony told me. I just had nothing left.

A couple of days later, Dawn called round. Dad let her in, and as we shared a cuppa she talked me through the case.

“We actually found a live one in the CPS, and they have agreed that we have a reasonable chance of conviction. Not only that, but they are going for the possession with intent charge instead of the soft option. I am going to ask a serious question, now. Alice is transsexual, am I right?”

No shit, Sherlock. “Er, yes…”

“Good, just wanted to confirm it isn’t crossdressing or any of the other flavours. Ripley has gone for a jury trial after his PDH. so we’ll need to make sure she’s up to that, and then we can sort out the VIS, which I think we can make multiple…what? Oh, sorry.

“Plea and direction hearing, victim impact statement. He has gone not guilty, light was green, she stepped out, no time to stop, etc, and you hit him first”

“Well, I did…”

“Yeah, on your knees, big man coming at you, no problems there, you’re a woman. No, that should be fine. What we want are the VI statements from as many people involved as we can, such as Enid, especially as she ended up in the next hospital bed, and that tank of a man who wants to kill my scrote.”

“Uncle Arwel?”

“Yeah, two reasons. ‘Gentleman friend’ for the jury, and also for Ripley to have a good look at.”

She grinned. “I want him to see your husband, and your uncle, and your Dad here, and even though I know that you are all law-abiding people who would never, ever consider such a thing, I want the little bastard to be looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life.

“Alice is one of MY people. Nobody touches my people”
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I grinned back. “Funnily enough, I might be able to add another couple of lads to the team”

Steve and Hywel. Dawn grinned, and there was something of my sister in her.

“For once, I am actually looking forward to a trial”