The Three by Sarah Lotz Page B
Authors: Sarah Lotz
Tags: Fiction / Thrillers / Suspense, FICTION / Dystopian, Fiction - Religious, Fiction / Psychological, Fiction / Occult & Supernatural
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liaison team were there in seconds, as if they’d been hanging around outside my door. The trauma counsellor, Peter (I never did catch his last name), a little grey manwith specs and a goatee, sat me down and talked me through everything. Warned me not to get my hopes up, ‘We have to be sure it’s her, Paul.’ Asked me if he could contact my friends and family, ‘for added support’. I thought about calling Gerry, but decided against it. Stephen, Shelly and the girls
were
my family. I had friends, but they weren’t really the type you can lean on in a crisis, although later they all tried to muscle in, eager to grab their fifteen minutes of fame. That sounds bitter, I know, but you find out who your real friends are when life as you know it falls apart.
I wanted to fly out straight away to be with her, but Peter assured me she would be medivacced to England as soon as she was stabilised. I’d completely forgotten that all European planes had been grounded. For the time being, she was being assessed in a Portuguese hospital.
When he thought I was calm enough to actually hear the details, he told me gently that it looked as if there might have been a fire on board before the pilot was forced to ditch, and Jess (or Polly–we didn’t know which twin she was at that stage) had been injured. But it was hypothermia they were most concerned about. They took a DNA swab from me to be sure that she really was one of the twins. There’s nothing quite as surreal as having the inside of your cheek rubbed with a giant ear bud while wondering if you’re the only surviving member of your family.
Weeks later, at one of our first 277 Together meetings, Mel told me that when they heard Jess had been found, she and Geoff didn’t give up hope for weeks, not even after they started finding the bodies. She said that she kept imagining Danielle washed up on an island, waiting to be rescued. When air traffic was back to normal, Go!Go! offered to charter a special plane to fly the relatives out to the Portuguese coast, which was the closest they could get to the scene of the crash. I didn’t go–I had my hands full with Jess–but most of 277 Together went. I still hate the thought of Mel and Geoff looking out over that ocean, feeling a sliver of hope that their daughter might still be alive.
There must have been a leak inside Go!Go! as the phone rang off the hook from the moment it was confirmed that one of thetwins had survived. Whether the hacks were from the
Sun
or the
Independent
, they all asked the same questions: ‘How do you feel?’ ‘Do you think it’s a miracle?’ To be honest, dealing with their incessant questions took my mind off my grief, which would come in waves, sparked off by the most innocuous thing–a car advert showing an impossibly groomed mother and child; even those toilet paper commercials with the puppies and multicultural toddlers. When I wasn’t fielding calls, I was glued to the news like pretty much the rest of the world. They ruled out terrorism early on, but every channel had experts galore speculating about what the causes might be. And like Mel and Geoff, I suppose I couldn’t murder the hope that somewhere, out there, Stephen was still alive.
Two days later, Jess was moved to a private hospital in London where she could get specialist care. Her burns weren’t severe, but there was the constant spectre of infection, and although the MRI scan showed zero sign of neurological damage, she still hadn’t opened her eyes.
The hospital staff were great, really supportive, and they showed me to a private room where I could wait until the doctor gave me the go-ahead to see her. Still swamped with a feeling of unreality, I sat on a Laura Ashley sofa and flipped through a
Heat
magazine. Everyone says they can’t understand how the world can just keep turning after someone you love has died, and that’s exactly how I felt as I paged through images of celebrities snapped without their make-up on. I
were
my family. I had friends, but they weren’t really the type you can lean on in a crisis, although later they all tried to muscle in, eager to grab their fifteen minutes of fame. That sounds bitter, I know, but you find out who your real friends are when life as you know it falls apart.
I wanted to fly out straight away to be with her, but Peter assured me she would be medivacced to England as soon as she was stabilised. I’d completely forgotten that all European planes had been grounded. For the time being, she was being assessed in a Portuguese hospital.
When he thought I was calm enough to actually hear the details, he told me gently that it looked as if there might have been a fire on board before the pilot was forced to ditch, and Jess (or Polly–we didn’t know which twin she was at that stage) had been injured. But it was hypothermia they were most concerned about. They took a DNA swab from me to be sure that she really was one of the twins. There’s nothing quite as surreal as having the inside of your cheek rubbed with a giant ear bud while wondering if you’re the only surviving member of your family.
Weeks later, at one of our first 277 Together meetings, Mel told me that when they heard Jess had been found, she and Geoff didn’t give up hope for weeks, not even after they started finding the bodies. She said that she kept imagining Danielle washed up on an island, waiting to be rescued. When air traffic was back to normal, Go!Go! offered to charter a special plane to fly the relatives out to the Portuguese coast, which was the closest they could get to the scene of the crash. I didn’t go–I had my hands full with Jess–but most of 277 Together went. I still hate the thought of Mel and Geoff looking out over that ocean, feeling a sliver of hope that their daughter might still be alive.
There must have been a leak inside Go!Go! as the phone rang off the hook from the moment it was confirmed that one of thetwins had survived. Whether the hacks were from the
Sun
or the
Independent
, they all asked the same questions: ‘How do you feel?’ ‘Do you think it’s a miracle?’ To be honest, dealing with their incessant questions took my mind off my grief, which would come in waves, sparked off by the most innocuous thing–a car advert showing an impossibly groomed mother and child; even those toilet paper commercials with the puppies and multicultural toddlers. When I wasn’t fielding calls, I was glued to the news like pretty much the rest of the world. They ruled out terrorism early on, but every channel had experts galore speculating about what the causes might be. And like Mel and Geoff, I suppose I couldn’t murder the hope that somewhere, out there, Stephen was still alive.
Two days later, Jess was moved to a private hospital in London where she could get specialist care. Her burns weren’t severe, but there was the constant spectre of infection, and although the MRI scan showed zero sign of neurological damage, she still hadn’t opened her eyes.
The hospital staff were great, really supportive, and they showed me to a private room where I could wait until the doctor gave me the go-ahead to see her. Still swamped with a feeling of unreality, I sat on a Laura Ashley sofa and flipped through a
Heat
magazine. Everyone says they can’t understand how the world can just keep turning after someone you love has died, and that’s exactly how I felt as I paged through images of celebrities snapped without their make-up on. I