When You Wake up and Scream

"What?" Conán demanded, not exactly in the mood for talking.

"Conán –"

It was Naoise, but she didn’t get the chance to say anymore as Conán slammed the phone down. She was persistent, however, and it rang at ten-minute intervals for the next hour, until, nearly driven mad by annoyance, Conán snatched it up.

"Do you not get the message?" he hissed down the phone. "When I don't pick up, I do not want to talk!"

"Well, we are going to talk. What the Hell's wrong with you?"

"What's wrong with me?" Conán suddenly shouted, his temper finally getting the better of him. "What the Hell is wrong with you, you betraying bitch?"

"What?" Naoise demanded, her voice also angry. "What's got into you?"

"You spilled everything to that psycho detective at the police station, didn't you?"

"Well, what was I supposed to do? I couldn't lie!"

"You could have not said anything at all! Do you realise what you've done? You're the first person I ever trusted, and you've gone and told a detective who thinks I'm a deranged multiple murderer! I've just been at the police station for ages getting shown pictures of severed heads and having my past thrown at me, I had him talking about my mother and telling me that killing wasn't going to make her love me and I had him knowing everything! And you told him! I trusted you, Naoise! I trusted you and you threw it back at me!"

To Conán's horror he found he was nearly in tears. He couldn't believe that what he was saying was actually true – he wasn’t acting, she had betrayed him. He had trusted her. It was all true.

Naoise seemed to realise the extent of what she'd done. Conán suspected, with some embarrassment, that she had heard the tears in his voice.

"Conán, I'm sorry … I didn't realise that they were going to pull you in again … I mean, I knew that they would probably come and talk to you but I didn't think that he would use what I'd told him against you! I didn't mean for that to happen, Conán, I'm so sorry!"

"So you mean you hoped no one would know? You hoped I wouldn't find out? You did it behind my back?"

"Conán –" Naoise couldn't think of an answer. She sighed heavily. "Look, you're right. I did betray you, and I'm sorry. I know it won’t make you feel any better now, but I want you to know that I only did it because I thought I had no choice. I thought that perhaps he already knew, and he was making sure I wasn't lying, and I certainly never thought in a million years that he would pull you in and harass you about it. I know I'm the only one you ever trusted and I feel like such a bitch now. You've every right to be mad at me. I'll just go now, and if you want you can phone me if you want to talk. But if you never want to speak to me again I'll understand."

Conán couldn't speak through the lump in his throat. There was a pause, and then the phone clicked and he got the dial tone. Conán sank to his knees, sobbing.

*

Detective McAfee sighed, glancing at his watch and then looking up the railway track from where he was standing on the platform. He was waiting to meet his brother, who was coming from the West of Ireland with his two nieces and nephew and sister-in-law, but it looked as though he would be running late. There was always an express through-train that came through from another area around Dublin, straight up to Belfast non-stop, and then his brother's train would be behind it. The express train was running fifteen minutes late, and with another sigh of annoyance Detective McAfee realised his brother's train wouldn't be able to come in until the other train had got through. He sat himself on a bench, ready for a potentially long wait.

As he sat and people-watched, he noticed a very familiar figure standing a little way down the platform. Conán Connolly appeared to be taking swigs from a bottle of water, but judging by the way he was lurching around and barely able to stand upright, Detective McAfee suspected that the water was definitely not water, but a slightly stronger clear liquid. The detective rolled his eyes and looked back up the rail track, where he could finally see the express train approaching. He sighed with relief, knowing he wouldn't have to hang around in the cold for much longer. As always, he watched it approach, wondering about the people whose faces he would only see for a split second. He wondered if they realised they were travelling through one massive crime scene. He wished he could switch off from his job, but he never could. He always had a policeman's mind.

This time, this state of mind was a blessing. It happened so quickly that Detective McAfee didn’t know how he knew, but he had learned to trust his intuition, and so he had leapt up and was running before anyone else had registered what Conán was thinking.

Conán had nearly succeeded in throwing himself in front of the train when Detective McAfee grabbed him, practically snatching him out of the air. Over the roar of the train speeding past and the shouts of the people who had realised what had just happened, he heard something else, which didn’t reveal what it was until he and Conán thudded back to the floor.

"Jesus, what were you thinking?" Detective McAfee asked the young man. Conán didn't reply, and suddenly Detective McAfee realised what the third sound had been. He hadn't quite been quick enough, and although Conán hadn't been pulled under the train like what would have no doubt happened if he hadn’t been jerked back, the train had still clipped him. Detective McAfee looked at him for a brief second, in shock, before he registered that the young lad was severely injured.

Conán was unconscious, his head resting in a pool of blood, which was steadily getting larger.

"Sweet Jesus," Detective McAfee muttered, before looking up at the shocked crowd. Ahead of the station, further up the track, it became apparent that the train was stopping. "Somebody call him an ambulance!"

Detective McAfee checked Conán's pulse and breathing, which, to everyone's relief, were still present. He gently opened Conán's eyes one by one and looked into them. His pupils were worryingly unresponsive.

"Oh, Conán," he muttered, shaking his head. He didn't dare move him for fear his spine was injured, and moving him might make it worse.

A few silent and fearful minutes later saw someone running back from the direction of the train, clearly the driver.

"Is he all right? Jesus Christ, let him be all right!"

"He's unconscious but breathing," Detective McAfee told him, as reassuringly as he could. "His head injury looks bad, though, and he's completely unresponsive."

"Will he die?"

"I'm not sure."

"Oh, Jesus," the train driver's voice cracked and he put his face in his hand. Detective McAfee gently patted his shoulder.

"It's not your fault. There was nothing you could have done, and he's prone to suicide attempts."

"I'll never forgive myself if he dies."

"I know him fairly well, he's strong stuff."

Conán suddenly coughed. It was a reassuring sign until they realised that there was blood running out of the corner of his mouth and his breath was starting to gurgle. Detective McAfee realised that he had no choice, and as gently as possible, rolled Conán over into the recovery position. It was either moving him or allowing him to choke. His breathing calmed down a little, but there was still a worrying amount of blood trickling out of his mouth.

The paramedics arrived only a minute or so after that, and it became apparent that Conán was more seriously injured than Detective McAfee had anticipated. The paramedics wasted no time in getting him to the ambulance, and Detective McAfee waited with the two police officers, whom he knew well, who had been sent down to see what had happened.

"You're always in the middle of things, aren’t you, Cillian?" one of them asked him.

"I wish I wasn't. I was only waiting for my brother and sister-in-law to turn up."

"What happened, then? A suicide attempt?"

"Yeah, there was no foul play. I just saw him go for it out of the corner of my eye and I leapt at him, but the train clipped him on the way past. His head was pretty bashed up and it sounded like a punctured lung or something."

"Jesus, I hope he'll be all right."

"Yeah."

Detective McAfee was preoccupied. He didn’t want Conán to die, of course he didn't, but he was convinced that if he didn’t survive, the murders would stop.

Something was left on the ground near where Conán had been lying injured only minutes before. Detective McAfee realised that it was Conán's wallet, and he picked it up. It would give him an excuse to stop by the hospital if the young man survived. Until then, he knew Conán would most likely be alone at the hospital. He remembered that he had a girlfriend, and so he opened the wallet to see if he had anything in there with a number on it. He was in luck, as there was what looked like a mobile number, and the handwriting looked female. He was used to Irish names as well, and so he realised that the name at the top was Naoise's name. He retrieved his own mobile from his pocket and dialled the number. Naoise picked up instantly, though she didn’t recognise the number. She hoped it was Conán, ringing her after scrounging a phone off someone in the pub, perhaps?

"Hello?"

"Hello, Miss McCullough."

Detective McAfee could feel Naoise's mood plummet over the phone.

"Detective …" she muttered. "What … what's going on? Why are you ringing me? If you're after more information on Conán I'm not interested. I've already caused enough damage."

"It's nothing like that, Miss McCullough, but I'm afraid to say Conán is, once again, our subject matter. I'm afraid he's been involved in an accident."

There was a long and horrified pause, almost as though Naoise was hoping that by pausing, she could hold off what would be inevitably bad news.

"What's happened?" she eventually whispered. "Is he all right?"

"He jumped in front of a train, Naoise," Detective McAfee told her, being as gentle as possible. "I managed to pull him back, but the train clipped him. It was going at quite some speed. He's suffered head injuries and he was unconscious and partially unresponsive when the paramedics took him to hospital. I don't know if he'll be all right, if I'm being truthful. It depends how severe his head injuries are. He was coughing up blood, it doesn't look promising."

Another long pause.

"He threw himself in front of a train?" Naoise eventually whispered. "As in, on purpose? As in …" she trailed off, pain evident in her voice.

"A suicide attempt, yes," Detective McAfee said softly. "I thought you might like to know. You seem to be all he has."

*

Naoise was trembling when she arrived at the hospital several hours later. She had nearly been driven mad by the worry on the way there, and now she had to persuade the nurses to let her see Conán.

"I'm sorry, honey," one of the nurses told her. "But if you're not family –"

"He has no family!" Naoise burst out.

"Now, I'm sure there's someone …"

"There's not! His mother's dead, she never cared about him, and he's never met his father in his entire life. There's no one, no one apart from me!" Naoise pleaded the nurse with her eyes. "Please let me see him! I'm the only one here for him, there's no one else at all!"

She finally won the nurse over, when she realised that the young man truly was by himself. Naoise was terrified when she was shown down to see him, as she didn’t know what condition he would be in. She was surprised at how peaceful he looked. He was unconscious, but he merely looked as though he was sleeping. His head was bandaged and the bandage was spotted slightly with blood, and his shirt had been cut off him and his chest was also bandaged, but apart from this and the tubes coming out of his arms, he looked normal, peaceful.

"Oh, Conán," Naoise whispered, and she hurried over and gently took one of his hands in hers. "Oh, Conán, I'm so sorry! This is all my fault, I should never have told them anything! I'm so sorry, Conán, please be all right! I'll never forgive myself if you die, please be OK!"

Conán didn’t move. Naoise's eyes filled up with tears and she bit her bottom lip. The nurse gently put her hand on Naoise's shoulder.

"He's doing the best he can be doing," she told her reassuringly. "He doesn't realise how lucky he is. He was badly injured when he came in, but now he's been patched up it looks to be the best of a bad situation."

"Will he be all right? He's not going to take a turn for the worst?"

"I can’t promise anything one hundred per cent, sweetie, but from what I'm looking at now he should be all right. He's a strong lad, he did very well while they were operating on him."

Night had fallen, darker than Naoise ever remembered it, when Conán finally stirred. Through the light from the corridor, which was tinting the room a strange shade of yellow-orange, Naoise saw Conán's eyes flutter open, and he softly groaned. Naoise squeezed his hand gently. She hadn't let go of it since she had arrived at his side.

"It's all right, Conán," she whispered to him. His eyes flickered out of focus briefly before they re-focused on her face.

"Naoise …" he croaked, and his eyelids flickered closed again. Naoise gently reached over and stroked his forehead, beneath his bandage.

"You're going to be fine, Conán. I'm here, I promise. I'm going to make everything up to you. I'm so sorry, Conán, this is all my fault!"

"Not your fault," Conán croaked. "Just me."

"It is my fault, though. I did a horrible, horrible thing to you, but I couldn't lie. I mean, he's a police detective! I know it doesn't excuse the fact, but … I just never thought he would throw it back in your face!"

"Not your fault," Conán muttered again, squirming suddenly as though he were in pain. Naoise stroked his forehead and calmed him. "Would have done it anyway."

"Conán, don’t say that!"

"I would have."

"But why, Conán?"

"I hate myself … I'm evil … and I'm a filthy bastard … a sick bastard …"

Conán's eyes drooped closed. Naoise gripped his hand again.

"Don’t talk about yourself in that way, Conán!"

"It's true, you don't know,"

"I know enough to know that killing yourself would not be the answer. Oh, Conán! You poor thing, I can't believe I left you … are you really this serious about ending your own life? Well … you must be, I mean, throwing yourself in front of a train, you must have meant business … but, Conán, I love you."

Conán's eyes opened as quickly as they could, and looked at Naoise.

"You do?"

"I do."

"You're the first person who's ever told me that."

"And I mean it."

Naoise gently kissed him. Conán reached up an arm weakly and put it around her, and they stayed like that for a while.

"I do love you, Conán."

"I love you too."

Conán smiled to himself. It was the most beautiful yet bittersweet moment of his life.