The Trials of Adam Gurney - Part Three

Adam's mission nears its end...

Unable to see very far in front of himself, Adam missed the low rise that he and his father had crested and where they had stood so companionably earlier. Had he seen it, Adam would have realised that he was already a long way towards his destination. Instead, in his haste and lack of full concentration occasioned by tiredness and concern for his father’s wellbeing, the crutch he had fashioned struck a large stone and slipped from under his arm.

Caught totally unaware and in mid-song, Adam was unable to prevent the resultant fall as his sole means of support was unceremoniously whipped away from him. As the crutch fell to one side, Adam dropped very heavily onto his knees. He let out a high-pitched scream of fear and agony as he felt an excruciating pain sear into the knee of his ’good’ leg.

For many mindless moments the teenager writhed on the ground clutching at his leg, muttering ’uh, uh’ uh’ noises as he fought desperately to not succumb to the heavy veil of unconsciousness that beckoned invitingly to him. Many long minutes passed during which he was unable to do or think of anything other than this new agony his body was being forced to endure, along with a revival of the pain from his already-damaged ankle. As he’d fallen, his injured foot had hit the ground solidly and was once again a throbbing mass of sensitive nerve endings.

As soon as he was sure that he was not going to faint, Adam fought another battle with the meagre contents of his stomach. He could not recall ever experiencing such nausea. It was a tussle he almost lost, having to swallow back acrid bile two or three times before he was satisfied that his stomach’s contents were going to remain inside him.

For what felt like an age, the fire in his knee blazed uncontrollably, leaving him feeling weak, sick and dizzy. Adam filled his lungs to maximum capacity with the cool evening air and was relieved to feel his head clearing. Eventually the worst of the agony was replaced by a dull, painful throbbing at the site of this new injury.

With tentative fingers, he felt the wound. He was alarmed to feel sticky warm blood, blood that was still dribbling from the wound down his leg inside his jeans. Adam knew without needing to explore further that it was a serious injury and would almost certainly need stitching at a hospital. As that likelihood was remote at that moment, he thought how useful a bandage would be right then.

His bloodied fingers felt his tee shirt. It was the best he had available. He pulled the sweat-stained, grimy garment over his head. Attempting to tear the fabric with his hands proved futile so he used his teeth to tear it. He tore a wide strip off the bottom and wound it tightly around the bloody gash on his knee. He was aware that he could possibly be doing himself more harm than good by covering the open wound with a filthy, germ-infested piece of cloth. "But beggars can’t be choosers" he muttered as he tied-off the tatty ends. He slipped the remainder of the tee shirt back onto his torso, it’s hem now falling several inches short of his jeans’ waistband.

The cartons of drink Adam had been carrying had fallen when he had. He groped blindly in the dark for them, expecting one or other of them to be within easy reach. He swung his arms in as wide an arc as he could reach from his seated position. His fingers eventually located the open carton. Grateful for that one small mercy, he did not feel inclined to waste any more time trying to locate the other one.

Adam thirstily drank the remainder of the drink and guiltily dropped the empty carton where he sat, imagining what his father would have to say about that. Thinking of his father was just the spur he needed to unsteadily rise to his feet again.

As he stood upright and tucked the makeshift crutch under his armpit, a fresh wave of dizziness and nausea violently struck him. Unable to stop himself, he vomited the drink he had just consumed onto the ground at his feet. Swaying unsteadily as his head spun and his stomach cramped, Adam dry-heaved several more times. His face felt hot and feverish yet he shuddered uncontrollably. Hot prickly seat broke out across his brow and his eyes dimmed alarmingly.

Fighting the urge to lay himself down, Adam stood as still as he was able until he felt the heat leave his face and some strength return to his legs. His newly-injured knee throbbed painfully but the pain in his ankle had abated to a tolerable dull ache again. He took two large breaths before once more resuming his arduous journey one unsteady, but more cautious, step at a time.

It was unnerving being out in the open in pitch darkness at the best of times, such as under canvass with one’s parents at hand. Out here, alone in strange and unfamiliar surroundings, it was more than a little scary. Odd sounds and noises seemed to emanate from all directions as small night creatures scurried by, rustling leaves and twigs as they went, probably more frightened of the strange being shambling past than he was of them.

Bushes rustled and small stones and twigs rattled like the bones of a monstrous being while the light breeze rustled leaves. It sounded to Adam like they were whispering conspiratorially amongst themselves under the cover of the moonless sky. He cursed himself for his all-too-vivid imagination. It had won him accolades and good marks for his composition in English classes at school, but he had now succeeded in spooking himself. At no other time today had he felt more like the tired and frightened fifteen-year-old schoolboy he really was.

Although an unusually bright and mature young man, Adam wanted nothing more at that moment for an adult to come along and relieve him of his fears and worries. The wish had quickly become a desire as he acknowledged that that eventuality was not going to happen unless he made it happen. Hot stinging tears pricked the corners of his eyes and he made no effort to wipe them away as they made clean tracks in the grime on his face.

Loss of the sun had robbed Adam of any inkling of the time. He guessed it to be around seven o’clock in the evening. His mother would not be expecting himself and his father home for at least another hour and would not begin to worry for at least another hour after that, reasoning that they had been delayed for one reason or another. Not until she had exhausted every other avenue would she give consideration to the possibility that they had been involved in some sort of accident. Only then would she begin the worrisome task of telephoning the police and hospitals.

Adam smiled fondly as his stomach growled with hunger. He imagined the huge dinner his mother would have already prepared in readiness for his and his father’s return from their trip. She was an excellent cook, having learnt the basic skills from her own mother and honed them over the years of her marriage.

Juliette Gurney, nee Parsons, was the second of three daughters born to Matthew and Audrey Parsons in comfortable, though far from affluent, circumstances. Matthew Parsons had died suddenly shortly after Juliette’s sixteenth birthday.

Unlike her future son-in-law’s mother, Audrey Parsons had not had to make the same sacrifices to ensure a healthy and happy upbringing for her three daughters. Juliette, and her sisters were bright and intelligent girls. They adapted to their change of circumstances with the strength of character they had inherited from their mother.

According to his mother, Adam’s maternal grandmother had been a large-boned, no-nonsense woman of passive nature until riled. His mother assured Adam that his grandmother’s temper was legendary when given full vent. She had said this with great love and affection and she related many anecdotes about her to her son. He wished that he had had the opportunity to know his gran, but she had died of natural causes two years after Adam’s birth.

His aunts, Linda and Bernice (‘Bernie’) had doted on their sickly nephew, especially Aunt Bernie, who was dying from cancer. Her passing had upset the then nine-year-old Adam almost as much as it had the two surviving sisters and he still felt her loss keenly at times. Now was one of those times.

Like their mother, none of the Parsons girls were particularly physically attractive. Their beauty was very much from within, which became evident when one got to know them.

Juliette had been the first of the trio to marry. Whilst Greg Gurney had not been considered a ‘good catch’ he was honest and reliable, an excellent provider and not likely to stray from the marital bed.

He had not related well to his late sister-in-law and had a combative relationship with his wife’s other sister, Linda. She never hesitated to tell him when she felt he was out of line, especially where it concerned her nephew. She had made her visits to the Gurney household infrequent and short.

Juliette Parsons had never entertained girlish notions of Jane Austen-type romance and courtship. On the day she become the spouse of Greg Gurney she settled herself emotionally and physically into the role as second-string to her new husband. She knew she flew in the face of modern convention, but she felt that her marriage and her son were of far greater importance than so-called women’s liberation. If asked if she was happy she would have answered an unqualified ’yes’.

It pained her that her husband and son did not communicate as well as she would like, and she suspected, her husband would like. She knew of her husband’s history, of course, and did her best to make allowances for and be understanding of his behaviour. At those times she felt he had been particularly unreasonable to Adam she did her best to compensate the boy by being as kind and as loving towards him as she knew how to be. Mother and son had grown very close as he’d grown. She worried that she could be turning Adam into a ‘mummy’s boy’ but her son had developed his own core of resilience and independence. Adam valued his mother as much for her friendship as her mothering skills.

Neither Adam or his father knew of the secret tears she cried at the hurt and longing for love she saw in Adam’s eyes when his father berated him for his so-called inadequacies. Her son’s pain was her pain, but she kept it to herself so as to not to undermine Adam’s confidence in her. Only when she was certain of being alone and undisturbed did she give full vent to her own distress.

Oddly, Juliette was certain that her husband loved his son despite, as he saw them, Adam’s shortcomings. It was patently obvious to all that Adam did his very best at all times to please his father. Not being one given to handing out compliments, Greg Gurney visibly struggled at times to say the right thing to his son and it fell on his wife’s shoulders to encourage the boy.

"Maybe some good will come of all this" Adam thought as he progressed. He regretted the strains in his relationship with his father and the emotional distance between them. He determined that, as soon as he was able, he was going to tell his father he loved him, and damn the consequences, whatever they may be. It wasn’t the done thing for adolescent boys to say such things to their parents. Adam, like his mother (although he didn’t know it) was not bothered by what was or was not ‘cool’. Adam felt that something inside him had changed today, although he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what that something was. He was equally sure that his father would not recognise it anyway, but Adam was going to do his damndest to make him aware of it.

Adam dragged his emotive thoughts back to his father’s car. They had travelled for less than two hours from their home, along mostly deserted country roads. As far as he could remember, his father hadn’t actually mentioned the name of this place to Adam or his mother. Adam recalled the last town they had passed through shortly before parking. it had one of those peculiarly unpronounceable Welsh names that seemed to be all consonants. Unbidden, the name popped into his head - Cwmdyllch. Adam repeated the name to himself over and over until he was satisfied he had it memorised. "No use getting to the ‘phone if you can’t tell anyone where you" are he advised the empty night.

He hurt. He hurt like he had never hurt before and never wanted to hurt again for as long as he lived. The cut on his knee was bleeding again: his foot was wet with the blood that had leaked into his boot. The tendons in his legs were tight and sore and his hips, feet and arms ached mercilessly. The muscles across his shoulders were tightly knotted and the crutch had abraded his armpit to rawness. Add to all that the headache he was developing through hunger and Adam felt himself to be in a pretty sorry state.

He desperately wanted to stop and rest and not to have to move again, but he did not dare pause for another second. He was cold, the chill evening air cooling his perspiration and cloaking him in a damp blanket, causing his to shiver constantly. Each successive hop was accompanied by increasingly severe pains, which made the next one harder to even contemplate, let alone make, but make it he did.

The beckoning fingers of despair and defeat taunted his tired, over-stressed mind mercilessly. He waged a war of wills with and against himself as he took the next step, and the one after that, inching closer to his goal, by a whisker at times managing to avoid falling into the seductive embrace defeat offered him.

Slowly, Adam neared his destination, moving more by willpower than conscious effort, his mind a blank except for concentrating on making the next hop...

So complete was his concentration that he almost missed the 'darkness in the darkness' that indicated the stand of Ash trees where his father had parked his car. Only a primeval sixth sense alerted Adam to its presence. With a last burst of energy he hopped quickly over the intervening yards between himself and his means to summon help.

In the lambent light, Adam could just about discern the silhouette of the large family saloon. He felt his way around it to the driver's door and grasped the chrome door handle. He pulled it hard.

For several long moments his face wore an expression of complete befuddlement. His exhausted mind just could not comprehend why the door had not swung open. After several seconds of standing completely motionless, Adam shook his head and uttered an animal-like bark of a laugh. He had finally remembered that that particular model of car had a small lever behind the handle that had to be depressed in order to open the door. He slid his hand along the smooth chrome until his fingers located the lever, depressed it and pulled.

The door remained very shut.

In desperation and disbelief Adam yanked frantically at the door handle, refusing to accept the obvious. No matter how hard or how many times he yanked at the handle the car door remained obdurately shut against him.

When common-sense finally prevailed and the truth dawned upon him, Adam screeched an agonised "NO!" at the top of his voice. His mind's eye replayed their arrival here. He saw his father conscientiously travelling around the vehicle, checking that each door was indeed securely locked (this in spite of the fact that that particular model boasted a central-locking mechanism activated by the key in the driver's door) . Adam saw his father dropping the small bunch of keys into the right-hand front pocket of his jeans, then patting them as he always did. And that was where they still were...

Adam had not so much as thought about keys when he'd remembered the car-'phone. His sole focus had been on getting help for his father and himself. Only now, after everything he had been through, did they come to mind. He berated himself severely for his sheer stupidity and lack of foresight, totally at a loss as to what to do now. Tears of frustration bullied his eyelids as he struggled to regain his composure.

Precious minutes ticked by, Adam’s frustration and agitation growing with each passing second. An idea had occurred to him; an alternative method of entry yet, even now, he hesitated.

There were few material possessions Greg Gurney cherished: a few sporting trophies, the tools of his trade, a couple of photographs of his wife and son. But above all else, Greg Gurney loved his car. No expense was spared in maintaining his most prized possession in anything less than tip-top showroom condition.

Adam had only once witnessed his father’s real fury when, one day, he had gone out to his car and discovered that all four tyres had been maliciously slashed. For the one and only time in his life Adam had been afraid of his father. Such was his apoplectic rage that day his son genuinely feared for his father’s wellbeing. He was convinced that his father was going to do real harm to himself. It was several days before he calmed down again, yet he still made reference to the incident every now and then.

And now here was Adam - his own son - contemplating committing an equally deliberate act of vandalism. He did not dare to waste time wondering how long it would take his father to get over this one, if he ever did... Deciding that there was nothing else he could do, the determined, but somewhat nervous teenager, crouched down, his fingers exploring the ground around him.

He was looking for a good-sized lump of rock capable of breaking the glass in the driver’s door. His probing fingers soon alighted upon what felt like a suitably-sized object. He had to wriggle it back and forth before it came free. Hefting it in his hands he brought himself upright again. Muttering a soft ‘sorry, dad’ raised the rock high in the air and brought it crashing down onto the glass.

The sound of the glass shattering into thousands of tiny shards was obscene in the near-silence. Adam himself was both shocked and slightly sickened by what he had done. Never before had he done anything remotely so criminal. He dropped the rock, his urgent need to contact the emergency services overriding his feelings of guilt and shame. Carelessly he brushed away the remaining glass from the door, located the knob that released the lock mechanism and yanked the door open. Sitting sideways-on in the plush, glass-covered seat, Adam reached for the neat compact telephone mounted in a matt-black holder securely fixed to the dashboard. With trembling fingers he firmly hit the number nine three times...

The area was awash with emergency vehicles, their red and blue lights giving the scene a movie-like feel. A helicopter hovered above like a mechanical bird-of-prey, its piercing white searchlight slicing through the blackness as it sought the recumbent form of the injured man.

The soft-voiced paramedic’s radio squawked and spluttered with messages being passed back and forth on the air as she sat with her arm protectively wrapped around the teenage boy. When she heard her call-sign she stood carefully and, acutely aware of the intensity of the stare of Adam’s eyes at her back, she acknowledged the call. She listened to the message being relayed to her, signed off then turned to face the boy.

She nodded ‘yes’ to the unanswered question written on his face. Realising she may have given the wrong answer to the wrong question she walked quickly to where she had sat with Adam and enfolded him in her comforting arms.

"They’ve found him, Adam" she said softly, "and he’s alive, thanks to you."

The dirty, dishevelled, battered and exhausted schoolboy at last released the tears he had held in check throughout his lengthy ordeal. As the paramedic held him tightly, Adam sobbed freely.

As the clattering noise of the returning helicopter approached, Adam told the paramedic that he wanted to ride with his father to the hospital. In moments a message was relayed to the pilot and he was setting the craft down again nearby to pick-up a very important passenger. 

　

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His face was still pale and drawn and it looked older somehow and less severe. Adam had never loved it as much as the moment it turned to him and the eyes opened. There was pain in them, but also something else.

"Adam?" his father whispered hoarsely, lifting an arm with a drip attached to it. Adam tentatively reached for his father’s hand and slid his own much smaller hand between the strong fingers and gripped them tightly. He felt a weak but significant squeeze on his own fingers in response. Adam felt a tightening in his chest and more tears threatened to spill from his eyes. He brusquely wiped his free hand across them. He sensed his father looking at him and felt a familiar flush of embarrassment warm his face.

"It’s okay, son", his father whispered, squeezing Adam’s fingers again. Adam looked at his father’s face and was astonished to see two large tears slipping from his eyes.

"I am SO proud of you", he said, "so very proud". Two more tears slipped from his eyes and Adam’s chest swelled with more love for this hard-to-love man than he could ever recall.

In a tremulous voice, he uttered the words that he had, at times, ached to say.

"I love you, dad".

Greg Gurney smiled, a smile that Adam had never seen before. From it shone warmth, love and pride and Adam struggled to accept that that smile was not only aimed at him but was for him. He felt that more words now were unnecessary so he simply sat perched on the edge of his father’s hospital bed, holding his hand while he drifted back to sleep.

His own tiredness seemed to have vanished in moments and as he watched his father's face relax in repose Adam knew, just knew, that things would be different from now on.

THE END

NOTES:

I wrote this story way back in 1988, pre-dating mobile 'phones, but including the 'new' in-car phones that were becoming popular at the time.

This was by far the longest thing I'd ever written at the time. Aside from a few minor edits the story is pretty-much the same as it was written.

The emotional ending was suggested by a magazine editor friend. My original version ended with the line "With trembling fingers he firmly hit the number nine three times..." but my friend felt that readers would want to know the outcome, both to the story and the relationship between Adam and his dad. I added everything after the quoted line to tie-up both of those questions.