‘Shh, you’re okay, Adam,’ Elle soothed, checking her watch again. ‘You just had a little seizure, but you’re safe and your sister’s here.’
‘The ambulance is on its way,’ Fitz muttered quietly. ‘This is for his bladder. I’m going out to check the car, I’ve probably got spare clothes in my gym bag in the boot.’
Gratefully, Elle took the blanket and laid it over the boy’s lap, asking him how he felt and trying to note his clarity of answers through Lisa’s panicked interference. It was clearly going to be a lot easier for Elle to make her assessment without Adam’s sister wailing and babbling.
‘Come with me, Lisa,’ Fitz commanded softly, in the tone he used when he needed people to do things he knew they absolutely didn’t want to do. ‘We’ll work it out, but your parents need to know. However mad you think they’re going to be, imagine how upset and angry they would feel if you didn’t contact them.’
Almost against her will, Lisa backed away from her brother, her eyes still locked on his dazed form.
‘I... I guess they’d be even more angry?’
‘I think you’re probably right. Now, my...friend is going to stay with Adam until the ambulance arrives, but you and I need to call your parents together and let them know what’s going on.’
‘And tell them Adam’s going to need to go to hospital for an EEG,’ Elle muttered in a low voice. ‘Tell them to meet Lisa and Adam there.’
‘Understood.’ He turned back to the sister. ‘Right, shall we step outside where it’s a little quieter?’
The sister flip-flopped again.
‘No, no... I can’t.’
Time to take her properly in hand.
‘Lisa, they’re going to find out some time,’ Fitz informed her sternly. ‘Better sooner, don’t you think? If you’d prefer, I can call them for you, but someone needs to do it. Now.’
The girl hesitated, then nodded, silently handed over her mobile, and followed him outside.
* * *
‘Thanks for moving everyone away so quickly,’ Elle said forty minutes later as they watched the ambulance pull away from the kerb. ‘The last thing that kid needed was to come round to find a bar full of nosy people gawking at him.’
‘No problem. You were quite impressive back there. Again.’ He smiled. ‘Shall we go back inside?’
She shook her head.
‘No, I really do need to go. But thanks for the drink.’
Her guarded gaze caught him by surprise. He couldn’t shake the feeling he was missing something. The sounds of the music thumped sensually into the street from the live band who had taken the stage early to lift the mood of the still stunned crowd, but neither of them made a move.
‘Ah, okay. I did find one thing odd, though,’ Fitz said, stalling for time. ‘His sister really had no idea he was epileptic?’
‘He might not be.’ Elle cocked her head, apparently happy to be delayed. ‘It isn’t uncommon to have a single seizure and then for it never to happen again for the rest of his life. Especially because he’s seventeen and alcohol can be a trigger. The EEG should help to determine whether or not there is unusual electrical activity in Adam’s brain and he’ll go from there.’
‘And what do you think?’ Fitz asked, admiring the way her eyes lit up when she talked about medicine. Clearly being a doctor was more than just a job to her, it was something she loved.
‘I don’t know without the results, but from everything he said afterwards, I’m thinking he’s had a few absence seizures in the past, which he never really thought much about. Then the combination of alcohol, exams in school, finding it hard to sleep at night was a trigger for more. But that’s just a guess.’ She hunched her shoulders. ‘Anyway, from your reactions I’m guessing that isn’t the first time you’ve seen a seizure either?’
‘My little sister suffered from epilepsy. From the first year of her life.’
The words were out before Fitz had time to think and he halted abruptly. He never talked about his sister. Never.
The last time he’d even talked about his family—other than to trot out the one, practised sentence that his mother and sister had died a long time ago—had been to Janine. And even then he hadn’t told her the full story, just enough to satisfy her questions after her colonel father had already told her about the car crash.
He’d certainly never told her about those three years when it had just been his mother, his sister and himself in that tiny, cramped flat. The happiest three years of their lives together until his old man had walked back in that night.
‘Suffered? Past tense?’ Elle asked. ‘Did she grow out of it? I think it’s somewhere around ninety percent of children with childhood absence epilepsy can grow out of it by about the age of twelve, although I understand they can sometimes have other types of seizure.’
‘No. She died.’
Elle held his gaze steadily, her expression changing.
‘I’m so sorry. What happened?’
Old, familiar guilt had resurrected itself, and was pressing on his chest like a flatbed truck was crushing him. Images assailed Fitz. Him getting home, the car gone, the phone lying smashed on the floor, the shattered furniture, leaving the house turned upside down. And everywhere the stench of booze. The stench of him. The man who was Fitz’s father in name only.
‘Car crash. She was six, nearly seven. My mother died too.’
He braced himself for the look, pity coupled with discomfort as they quickly changed the topic. Instead, he simply saw quiet empathy, a calmness and genuine interest. It seemed to slice through all the layers of protective armour he’d spent years pulling into place.
‘Fitz, how awful for you. So it was just you and your father?’
‘He was driving.’ Fitz tried to swallow the words. Elle was a stranger and this was no one’s business except his. ‘Drunk. I was the only one left.’
Instead, they kept pouring out, as if they’d been waiting for this moment—for this woman—for half his lifetime.
‘Is that why you wanted to protect me from the drunken bloke who was hassling me at the bar, and his mate?’ she asked softly. ‘So, how old were you?’
‘Sorry?’ he stalled.
This was the longest he’d allowed himself to think about it in a long, long time. And he didn’t want to. Not here. Not now. Not ever.
‘How old were you when your family died?’ she repeated steadily.
‘You ask a lot of questions for a damsel in distress.’
‘I wasn’t in distress. I had my thumb-lock, remember?’ Another smile that twisted in his gut. ‘But that’s not to say I didn’t appreciate the solid back-up.’
‘Well, then, that makes me feel better.’ He managed a wry smile.
He should have known better than to distract her. Her gaze never wavered and he was compelled to address her unanswered question.
‘Seventeen. But it was the night of my eighteenth.’
He should have had happy memories of the time but all he had was one of his mother and his sister lying in that hospital mortuary. To this day he didn’t know which of the mass of bruises over his mother’s face had been caused by the crash itself and which had been the result of his drunkard father’s cruel fists. Fitz struggled to breathe, let alone regulate his voice, which sounded a million miles away when he spoke.
‘Listen, this isn’t something I like to talk about.’
A