Gift of a Family

Kat smiled her thanks but she had a feeling that it wasn’t tea the teenagers needed, it was a good shake.

She walked over to them. ‘Are you with Holly?’

The dark-haired girl gave a sheepish nod. ‘Is she OK?’

‘Not at the moment,’ Kat said coolly. ‘I need some information. Do you mind coming with me, please?’

They exchanged wary looks but followed her without argument, each of the girls dressed in the traditional teenage ‘uniform’ of strappy tops, hipster jeans and big belts, and wearing the obligatory bored expression.

‘All right.’ Kat closed the door and turned to look at them. ‘You don’t need me to tell you that Holly’s very ill.’

The blonde girl was chewing gum. She glanced at the other and then gave what was supposed to be a casual shrug, but Kat caught the fear in her eyes. ‘She just had too much to drink and she isn’t used to it.’ She transferred her gum to the other side of her mouth. ‘It’s no big deal.’

Kat kept her tone neutral. ‘What was she drinking?’

‘I dunno.’ The girl shrugged again, her expression sulky. ‘Alcopops mostly. It was a pretty wild party. Whatever was going. I wasn’t really watching.’

In other words, she’d been drinking herself. For a moment Kat tried to remind herself that these were young kids, just beginning to push at the traces, test the limits. Was she being too hard on them? Then she remembered the girl lying in Resus and the grim look on Josh’s face.

They needed to know that pushing at the traces had consequences. ‘Who arranged the party?’

The blonde girl rolled her eyes. ‘Like we’re going to tell you that! I don’t think so!’

Kat kept her voice steady. ‘If you want to help Holly, you’ll tell me. I’m not the enemy here.’

The girls exchanged looks again and the one chewing gum gave a careless shrug. ‘Some guy we met in one of the pubs. He throws parties all the time on the beach.’

‘And was he offering drugs as well as alcohol?’

There was a sulky silence but Katy saw the panic in the dark-haired girl’s eyes and decided that she was the one with a conscience. ‘Holly is really ill,’ she said quietly, ‘and we need to know everything we can if we’re going to make her better. We need your help. Anything you can tell us might help. Anything.’

‘If?’ The girl stopped chewing and looked at her in alarm. Smudges of the previous night’s make-up darkened her eyes and her face was alarmingly pale. She looked tired and very much the worse for wear. ‘What do you mean, if? She’s going to be all right, isn’t she?’

Kat shrugged, unable to give the reassurance the girl was looking for. ‘I have no idea, but if she’s taken drugs and you know anything about it, now is the time to tell me.’

The girl swallowed, her breathing rapid, indecision flickering over her white features. ‘She took E,’ she blurted out suddenly, ‘but it couldn’t be that. She’s taken it before and she’s always been fine.’

Ecstasy.

So Josh had been right in his initial assessment, Kat thought. He was obviously smart as well as good-looking. Or maybe drug-taking on the beach was a common occurrence in this part of Cornwall? She had no idea, and made a mental note to ask him about it at the first opportunity.

The other girl closed her eyes and gave a sigh of exasperation. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Tina.’

‘Well, what was I supposed to do?’ Tina turned on her defensively, her make-up smudging as the tears started to fall. ‘I’m not going to stand around here while Holly dies, am I? I don’t want that on my conscience, thanks very much.’ She gave a little sob and wrapped her arms around herself, looking more like a child than a teenager.

‘Oh, get a life. She is so not going to die,’ the other girl said in a derisive tone, and Kat shot her a cold look.

‘She could do. Have you any idea how dangerous drugs are?’

The girl rolled her eyes defiantly. ‘She’s just drunk, that’s all…’

‘How many did she take? Do you know?’ Realising that she stood more chance with Tina, Kat directed her questioning towards the other girl. ‘If you know, please tell me. It’s really important.’

Tina stared at the floor. ‘One,’ she mumbled, not looking at her friend, ‘just the one. Then she just keeled over. We all just thought she was drunk. She’s taken them before and she was OK.’

Kat let out a long breath but gave Tina a smile. ‘Thank you for telling me the truth, that was very brave of you. Why don’t you go back out to Reception and get yourselves some water from the machine? It might make you feel better. We’ll let you know how she is as soon as there’s some news.’ She walked towards the door and opened it, pausing in the entrance. ‘Oh, one other thing. Do you have the phone number of her parents? We’re going to need to call them.’

Tina blanched and the other girl shook her head, her jaw lifted in a stubborn tilt. ‘You’re joking, right?’ Her tone was nothing short of rude and confrontational. ‘No way are you phoning her parents. You can forget it!’

Kat resisted the temptation to shake the girl. ‘They need to know that their daughter is in hospital—’

‘But we can’t! We’re not even supposed to be here,’ Tina blurted out, panic flitting across her face, her voice choked with tears. ‘Our parents think we’re having a sleepover with a girl in our class. They don’t even know we’re in Cornwall.’

Kat sighed and ran a hand over the back of her neck. What a mess. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said gently, ‘but we need to inform her parents. I’m sure if you give it some thought, you’ll understand that.’

Tina burst into tears and the other girl sat down on a chair with a plop, her face suddenly white.

‘My dad’ll kill me,’ she muttered, lifting her head and glaring at Tina. ‘This is your bloody fault! You never should have given her the stuff. You were so out of order!’

‘I didn’t give it to her,’ Tina choked, tears streaming down her face, and Kat took a deep breath, deciding that she had no choice but to intervene.

‘Look, it’s important that I tell the team that she’s taken ecstasy, so I’m going to do that now, and when I come back I want the phone number of her parents, OK?’

One glance at their ashen, sulky faces told her that it clearly wasn’t OK at all, but she decided that she didn’t have time for them at the moment. Holly was the priority.

‘Paula…’ She stuck her head into Reception. ‘Can someone keep half an eye on those two for a moment, please? I need to go back to Resus and speak to Josh.’

‘No problem. I’ll do it myself.’ Paula stood up and Kat gave her a grateful smile then walked briskly back to Resus.

It was a hive of activity, with Josh delivering instructions in cool, calm tones that kept everyone focused.

‘Kat?’ He glanced in her direction and raised a dark eyebrow. ‘Tell me you’ve got news for me.’

‘Ecstasy,’ she said immediately, and he gave a nod, a flicker of respect in his eyes as he looked at her. Clearly he’d anticipated that she’d have trouble extracting the information from the teenagers.

‘Anything else?’

‘Alcopops. It appears she lost consciousness quite early on in the evening, but they all assumed she was drunk.’

‘Presumably they were all too drunk to notice the difference,’ Josh said wearily. ‘Remind me to have a word with Doug, our community policeman. They need to keep a closer eye on the beach in the evenings. OK, folks, let’s give her that sodium bicarb.’

There was a flurry of activity and one of the nurses glanced at the machine with a frown. ‘She has severe tachycardia, Josh.’

Kat looked at the machine and noticed that the girl’s heart rate was incredibly fast.

‘Let’s give her 5 milligrams of metoprolol IV,’ Josh instructed calmly, his blue gaze flickering first to the machine and then back to the girl on the trolley. ‘Her blood pressure is going up, too. Let’s try some nifedipine and then we need to get a CT scan before we transfer her to Intensive Care. My guess is she’ll show cerebral oedema.’

‘Kat?’ Paula popped her head round the door at that moment and held out a piece of paper. ‘There’s the number you were after.’