Learning To Trust Again

Jake checked Todd’s vital signs and sighed with relief as he found a pulse. He could also see now that the man was breathing.

‘What is it mate?’ Dave one of the other officers asked looking at the shocked expression on Jake’s face ‘do you know him?’

Nodding as he started checking Todd for injuries, Jake said quietly ‘he’s Rebecca’s brother.’

‘Who?’ Dave asked.

 Jake looked up at him and seeing the puzzled look on the other man’s face, he realised Dave didn’t know who Rebecca was. None of his colleagues did. He hadn’t told anyone about her. Not because she wasn’t important, but because as he’d told her once, he wasn’t used to people wanting to know things about him. He didn’t tell other people anything. Jake tried again to explain, ‘it’s.’ But still not knowing how to finish the sentence, he finally just said ‘yes I know him.’

‘Okay’ Dave said with a smile, still sounding and looking confused but patting Jake on the shoulder. ‘What do you want us to do?’

‘Find out what happened can you?’ Jake said without looking at him, his eyes back on Todd.

‘Sure thing’ Dave said and signaling to the third officer, a woman, to follow him, he moved off to question those present.

As he finished checking Todd over Jake swore. The younger man’s upper body was already turning black and blue as new bruises covered the marks of the earlier beating. His face and head were cut and bleeding and the flesh around his eyes and mouth were swelling almost before his eyes, altering Todd’s features until he was barely recognisable.

He didn’t know enough to gauge the extent of the damage to his torso but he suspected he may have some broken ribs. He had red impact marks all over his chest. There was little Jake could do about most of the damage but he pulled out a dressing they always carried and held it over the worst wound on the side of his head, stemming the blood flow that was trickling through his hair. He knew it was probably caused by him hitting the concrete. It looked deep and Jake knew it would probably need stitching. With still no sign of Todd regaining consciousness Jake was worried. With his free hand he said into his radio ‘how long on those bloody ambos Mike?’

‘They said five minutes Jake…should be there any second now.’

Dave had told Mike that this was more to this than just a job to Jake, that there was some sort of personal connection, so choosing his words with care as the other man asked ‘do you want me to call anyone?’

‘No’ Jake yelled, his voice harsher than he intended. He wanted to tell Rebecca himself. Even though she had repeatedly refused to speak to him ever since the morning after Todd’s party, she needed to hear this from him, not a stranger. He owed her that much. Jake took a deep breath and added in a calmer tone ‘I’ll take care of it. Let’s just get him on route to the hospital first.’

‘Okay Jake’ Mike said, I’ll work on finding the guy who did it. There should be CCTV footage. After all the trouble they’ve had down there, everybody has a camera up.’

‘I have a fair idea who did it’ Jake said with a fierce note in his voice. ‘I just don’t know his name. If you can find that out, maybe we can do something about it.’

‘Right Jake’ Mike said ‘I’ll check the footage and see if I can Id. him.’