The Resistance Man (Bruno Chief of Police 6)

at least for the night and was scheduled for a scan sometime the next day. If complications developed she might have to be moved to Bordeaux.
    ‘Has she come round?’
    The young man told him no, adding that the woman doctor who had brought her in was still with her. He gave Bruno the room number.
    Fabiola was sitting beside the bed where Pamela lay. She had an intravenous drip in her arm and a small tube feeding oxygen into her nostrils. Electrodes were attached to her temples and more wires snaked under the hospital nightgown and onto her chest. Displays on the machines behind the bed showed bright lines dancing rhythmically. Her face was white, her lips pale, her neck and throat encased in a foam brace.
    ‘How serious is it?’ he asked.
    ‘It’s always serious when someone’s unconscious, and the longer it lasts the more serious it is. It looks like there’s no cervical spine injury, but we’re watching for any build-up of intercranial pressure or any lesions. From the marks on the back of her helmet and riding jacket it looks like she landed partly on her head but mainly on her shoulders and back. You said she was rolling when she landed, it may have saved her from a broken neck. Were the two of you racing?’
    ‘No, she was galloping but I wasn’t. I was some way behind her, it took twenty or thirty seconds to reach her and she was completely still by the time I did. I’d been trying to get her to turn away from that house. It was Hector who spotted the rabbit warren and I tried to shout a warning, but too late. I should never have allowed her to come with me.’
    ‘Probably not.’ Fabiola turned her face away to look at the machines.
    He couldn’t tell if there was some medical duty she had to perform or if she couldn’t bear the sight of him. He knew from the look she had given him as the ambulance doors closed that Fabiola was furious with him and probably blamed him for Pamela’s fall. That was fair enough; he blamed himself. Was this the end of his friendship with Fabiola or an anger that would pass as Pamela recovered? He hadn’t really considered the prospect that Pamela might not recover fully. He’d assumed that since her neck was not broken and her limbs seemed to work she would wake up and be back to normal in a day or so. But what if it wasn’t so simple, or if she had suffered lasting brain damage or would eventually awaken with some change in her personality?
    He quelled the thought and looked around. There were three more beds in the room, two of them empty and someone lying still in the third, bandages wrapped so thickly around the head that Bruno could not tell if it was a man or a woman. There were no paintings, no TV set or radio in the room. It was entirely functional.
    ‘Are you planning to stay here?’ he asked.
    ‘No, I’ll come back with you. I’m just giving the staff a bit of a break by being here, otherwise that nurse would have to be in and out. I’ll come back tomorrow to have a look at the scan results. They’ll tell us more. If she’s not awake by then …’ She broke off and glanced at her watch.
    ‘Can I touch her?’
    Fabiola nodded. ‘Could be a good thing.’
    Bruno went to the far side of the bed, took Pamela’s hand and stroked it, thinking how odd it was to feel no returning pressure. Trying to avoid the wires and tubes, he bent forward to kiss her cheek, smelling the antiseptic wipes they had used on her.
    ‘What worries me is that she told me once that she’d fallen before and had been concussed,’ Fabiola said. ‘Over dinner one evening she was explaining why she’d given up show-jumping. She came off when her horse shied at a fence and she blacked out then for a few minutes. A second time can make it much more serious.’
    ‘Can I come back with you tomorrow?’ Bruno felt that dismaying sense of helplessness that a non-medical person feels in a hospital, dependent on the staff for information, for reason to hope.
    ‘I’ll call you after we look at the scan, but I expect she shouldhave surfaced by then, at least I’m hoping for that. We can go when you’re ready. I’ll tell the nurse and have a word with the doctor. They’re pretty good here.’ She left the door open when she left the room.
    Bruno didn’t know if he was imagining things but he thought he felt some movement of Pamela’s hand where it lay in his. He looked at her eyelids but there was no sign of any quivering. He told Fabiola when she returned and she checked