Liam – How it happened I reached the intensive care cubicle just as the doctor was giving my parents the prognosis for the patient in the bed. I couldn’t believe the form lying there was my little sister. Her beautiful blond hair was streaked with blue and red dye, her cheeks were pale and sunken, and the dark circles under her eyes didn’t belong to an eighteen year old. Despite all that, there was no denying it was Stacey. As the doctor droned on I looked at my parents. It was difficult to tell who was the more upset. They stood hugging each other, Dad with his arms around Mum’s shoulders, she with hers around his ample belly. Her face was smudged with mascara which had run down the side of her nose and her cheeks. Her eyes were red but she was no longer crying. Dad was being the brave, unemotional Englishman, all stiff upper lip despite being a brick layer not a banker, but his eyes were brimming and I could see his hands shaking. “This is our son, Liam, Stacey’s brother,” I heard Mum say and I looked at the doctor properly for the first time. He didn’t look old enough to be a doctor, but he must have been otherwise he wouldn’t be standing at the side of an intensive care bed with a clipboard in his hand and a stethoscope around his neck. The doctor nodded and continued. “Because we don’t know what she has taken we don’t know how to treat her,” he said. “We pumped her stomach just in case but the results from blood tests and urine samples showed nothing we could identify. We are carrying out further tests but as time goes by there is less chance of identifying anything. In the meantime, we will keep her on life support but we can’t say if she will come out of the coma or not.” His words made no sense to any of us. True, we hadn’t seen Stacey since the day she walked out, but she would never take drugs, would she? Once she had wanted to be a doctor herself. She knew the dangers of taking illegal substances. “Surely you can tell if she has taken coke or heroin?” I said. “Of course, but she hasn’t taken anything like that. There are dozens psycho active drugs left over from the days of legal highs. Since the government banned them these things have gone underground and are sold like other illegal drugs by pushers. Some are very addictive and we are seeing more and more casualties because of them. We have tested for the most common ones, those that can actually be identified. But there are still many that do not show up or we don’t know about.” I stared at the doctor in disbelief. I had heard of these drugs but had never been tempted to try them, I didn’t mix with that sort of crowd. Like my mates, I stuck to beer and other alcohol. I shuddered. “How did she get here?” I asked. “Did she pass out before or after she arrived?” “Before. Someone put her in a wheelchair from A&E and dumped her there. No explanation, no clue as to what she had taken or how she got in this state, not even her name. The police managed to track her down through the missing persons register. Very lucky there.” “Did anyone see who brought her in?” was my next question. My parents were saying nothing, too traumatised maybe. “They have been lucky there. Her arrival was caught on CCTV. Luckily the recording hadn’t been deleted. She was admitted over a week ago.” I felt my mouth drop open. For a week my little sister had been lying here, alone. Suddenly the sound of the beeping monitors and the machine pushing air into her lungs seemed to become over powering and I had to get out of there. “Can I see the CCTV, I might be able to help.” The doctor nodded. “I’m sure the police would be most grateful for that. They are in the security room now, looking at the footage again. It was only found this morning. No one had thought to look.” Typical, I thought as I followed the doctor down to the security room where a bank of monitors stood guard over the car park, A&E and random corridors. Two policemen were sitting in front of a screen, winding the footage backwards and forwards, trying to identify the man pushing a wheelchair into the waiting area. “This lad is the brother. He thinks he might be able to help.” With that the doctor left to do whatever doctors do. The two policemen parted to make room for me. “Pull up a chair and take a gander,” the older of the two said. “I don’t need to,” I said, a chill running through my entire body. I’d recognise the pattern on the back of that leather jacket anywhere. The hair, the walk, I didn’t need to see the face. “I know exactly who that is. It’s Dale, Dale Barker, the guy Stacey ran off with on her eighteenth birthday.”
