Xion Island Carrier Chapter Nine

No missing chapters, some werre too long so I broke them into two. 6-9.

 

The wind rattled the loose pane in the upstairs bathroom again—it was a double-glazed unit but had worked loose in the antiquated wooden frame. Alison McAlister pressed a towel around her hair and stared at the weather waging war against the trees outside her window. The street glistened under weak council-operated streetlights, and next door’s dog barked at nothing. The animal had opinions about everything and nothing worth hearing. A bath hadn’t helped to relieve the niggling headache that had plagued her all day.

‘Millie, come down and finish your homework,’ she shouted outside her daughter’s bedroom door. Left to her own devices in her room, it wouldn’t get done. The dining room table had two functions—neither of them pleasant. It was the place for thrashing out family trouble, and where the kids did their homework. They rarely ate on it these days.

There was no answer.

She sighed on her way downstairs in slippered feet and prepared to face more belligerence in the living room. Aaron sprawled under a blanket in his school uniform, with his face glued to his tablet screen. The TV played to nobody in the background.

‘Eyes off that for a bit, love. And get changed. Your uniform will be like a dishcloth tomorrow.’ She looked at his red face. ‘You look flushed. Have you got a cold coming on?’

Aaron didn’t open with a protest, which was alarming—he argued about everything. His cheeks had turned that worrying shade of pink that had mothers running for Junior Aspirin and digging out thermometers. But he didn’t move. He pulled the blanket over his shoulders and huddled deeper into the sofa.

Upstairs, she heard the toilet flush.

‘James?’ she shouted.

She heard footsteps on the stairs. ‘You okay, son?’ James asked his son as he came in and saw him looking sorry for himself.

The evening settled over Willow Crescent and inside number eleven, warmth carried through the radiators, making it feel stuffy. Dinner was done, the plates scraped and stacked, and they were waiting for the washing-up fairy to arrive. Millie was gone, and Aaron, eight years old and yawning, had found his place on the sofa with a fleece pulled up to his chin. He’d hardly eaten, and his tablet lay beside him, switched off.

Alison stepped over a stray slipper and pressed her hand to his forehead. ‘You’re hot,’ she said.

Aaron shrugged, ‘I don’t feel well.’ His eyes filled with tears.

Millie didn’t eat much either and fled back to her room the second she could. She’d turned eleven and was a vat of unhelpful opinions. Alison heard her shouting at her smart speaker to play something less lame. She was in a mood after an argument with James. He said she couldn’t meet her friends if she didn’t feel well and called up, ‘Less shouting, and turn that bloody noise down.’

‘You don’t own me. Tell him, Mum,’ she screamed through her closed bedroom door.

James laughed with good humour to ease her out of her mood. ‘I’m your dad. I’ve bought and paid for you—and it’s too late to get a refund.’

‘Well, I wish I’d been adopted,’ she shouted back, but there wasn’t much heat behind it.

Alison rolled her eyes. ‘She gets that from your sister,’ James muttered, settling into his chair. ‘She’s another one with lips like blades.’

‘Careful. My sister’s the nice one. It’s me you’ve got to watch,’ she laughed.

‘Don’t I know it?’

Alison squeezed into his chair and put her arm around him. ‘Millie’s at a funny age. Go easy on her, will you, love?’

‘She needs to go easy on my poor ears. That playlist is designed to age us by a decade per track. James said, laughing at his joke. He never rocked the family dinghy, and life had taught him to leave the strong parenting stuff to Alison. He leaned back in his chair to smile at her. James would do anything for a happy family and a quiet life, and he’d perfected the art of nodding, smiling, and retreating behind an outstretched tenner.

The household trundled along its usual evening routine. However, Aaron’s sniffles were getting worse. Alison wasn’t too worried. If one of the kids didn’t have a cold, they’d be in Narnia. Her attitude was to make another coffee and batten down the hatches for a few days of hell. Outside, the wind played with their bin lids, lifting and dropping them with a clatter. It started small like that, just a normal evening, until Vesuvius started to rumble.

Half an hour before bedtime, Aaron complained that his tummy felt bad. He’d only eaten two chicken goujons and a small piece of cheesy garlic bread.

‘It’s probably the cheese. Just lie still and you’ll be okay,’ James said.

By half-past eight, Millie was ill too. She came downstairs and looked shocking. Her face was pale, with her hair clinging to her forehead in damp strands. ‘Mum, I don’t feel well.’

Her voice trembled, and that was all Alison needed to hear. She still had a headache, and it looked like they were all coming down with something.

Two minutes later, Millie vomited in the kitchen sink.

Alison was halfway through sorting her out when Aaron clutched his stomach and threw up on the living room carpet.

‘For goodness’ sake, Aaron. Couldn’t you have made it upstairs?’ It wasn’t like her to shout at him, and she felt instantly guilty.

 She was still washing the floor after Millie had missed the sink during her first torrents of stinking vomit. Both of her children were trembling and crying. They were still being sick in tandem when Millie straightened from the sink, clutched her stomach and bolted from the room. She ran up the stairs crying, ‘Oh no.’ Alison heard the mess erupting from both ends and didn’t know which child to go to first.

She needed buckets.  

‘I’m coming, darling,’ she called, though she didn’t know which wailing offspring she was answering. She dropped the mop back in its bucket and gave instructions for James to find receptacles for them to be sick in. This was a living nightmare with the most horrendous smell, but the cleanup would have to wait. She’d just straightened to go to the children when her vision blurred. She was struck by a wave of nausea and dizziness so strong that she clutched the doorframe and groaned. A sudden, smothering pressure burst in her skull. She saw colours that blinded her, and her nose poured with blood. Her knees gave way, and she crashed to the floor.

James caught her before she hit the tiles.

‘What the hell—Ally, what’s going on?’

Her reply was a moan. Her eyes were unfocused, and sweat formed beads across her brow. The fever rose from her burning face like steam released from boiling water.

James panicked—his limbs frozen for a heartbeat before he sprang into action

***

He’d never called an ambulance before. He’d never had to. He’d fractured an ankle playing five-a-side once, but that was nothing compared to this. His wife was barely conscious and both kids were puking and shitting like something from the exorcist. He moved Alison’s head forward as she vomited and made sure her airway was clear. She jerked as her body went into a seizure.

The paramedics arrived quickly. The word contagion came to him in his fugue, and they used the phrase, cause unknown. They checked he was okay, and he assured them he felt fine. They gave him a mask and told him to follow them to the hospital.

When he got there, his family had been taken into an isolation ward rather than being seen in A&E. The air in the hospital corridor was thick enough to chew, heavy with bleach and dread. Ally and the kids were rushed through triage. More masks appeared, and the staff were double-gloved. Cannulas pierced rupturing veins. Bloods had to be taken. Machines beeped, and people ran in the corridors. Was that the correct procedure? His teachers had always told him not to run. But that was when he was young, and suddenly he felt much older than thirty-six. Every beep of the machine felt like a countdown.

Alison had slipped into semi-consciousness and was unresponsive. Aaron’s fever spiked to forty, and Millie’s fingers held tight onto the cardboard sick bowl as she threw up. Looks were passed between the doctors when blood replaced vomit in the bowl.

James stood outside the double doors of the isolation bay. His stomach coiled into a knot that breathing hard couldn’t loosen.

‘We had the same meal,’ he said for the third time. ‘Why am I okay?’

A nurse looked up from a chart. ‘That’s what we’re trying to figure out.’

‘When can I see them?’

‘We’re working to get your wife and children stabilised, sir. They’re very poorly, and I need you to be patient. We’ll bring you in as soon as we can.’

‘But they’ll be all right. Won’t they?’

‘’We’re doing what needs to be done.’ She stroked his arm to loosen the cut of her words, and James noticed she hadn’t agreed that his family would be fine. It made no sense. Why only them?

By 4:30 a.m. Aaron was moved to an ICU side ward.

At 5:10, Millie collapsed during an obs-check. Her pupils were blown and her temperature soared.

James sat in the family room, staring at the peeling green paint on the skirting board and tried to remember how to breathe. Somewhere, a machine let out a long, flat whine. But it came from A&E. It wasn’t for his family. Not yet.

He was still untouched by the illness.

Nurses rushed past the door. They had no time for his questions. And in the silence, James imagined the worst a thousand different ways. It was over two hours before a doctor came into the family room. He looked tired and removed a paper hat, but he left his mask and gloves on. He pointed to his covered face, ‘Excuse this.’

James nodded, and instead of shaking hands, the doctor touched him on the shoulder and squeezed it. It was warmer and more intimate. Kinder. ‘Mr McAlister?’

James nodded again and burst into tears.

‘I’m Bob Fendt, one of the senior consultants. We’ve had our work cut out, but we’ve managed to stabilise your family—for now.’

James let out an audible breath as though he’d been winded. ’Thank God. Are they going to be okay?’

Dr Fendt motioned him into a chair and sat opposite. ‘I’m not going to lie

to you, Mr McAlister. They are all very poorly.’ His words echoed louder in James’ head than the sirens that brought them.

‘But they’ll live?’ He laughed, and it stuck in his throat. ‘I mean, it’s not life or death, right?’ He hooted again, too loudly in the silence of the room.

Dr Fendt smiled at him and patted his hand. The smile was warm, and he was kind. ‘We’re doing everything we can. Sir, I have to ask you this. Does anybody in the household suffer from gout?’ He glanced at James’ feet.

James blinked like a fish staring out from a goldfish bowl, trying to connect dots that didn’t exist. ‘Gout? I don’t understand. What are you talking about? No. Is that what this is?’

‘I need you to be very clear in your answer, Mr McAlister, because it will help

us to treat them. Is there any way your family could have been exposed to a medication called Colchicine?’

‘No. None at all. I’ve never heard of it. Aaron had a couple of Junior Aspirin last night, and I think my wife might have taken some paracetamol. That’s it.’

‘Okay, James. Is it okay if I call you that? Try not to worry. I’m in charge of your family’s care, and I promise to keep coming back to let you know where we are with everything.’

‘I need to see them.’

‘And you will. Very soon. Just trust my team to look after them.’

 

Xion Island Carrier is book 6 in the DCI Nash series. They're all on KU. Hush Hush Honeysuckle is Book One, and this is the Amazon link.

https://books2read.com/u/4EB0zg