Frankie had been at Junior's side since he had been admitted. She wouldn't allow herself even a moment for her own self-preservation; the doctors had said that it was a miracle he was even alive, and that he was not "out of the water" yet, as Dr Cheung had put it. They kept him heavily sedated so that his body could heal. Sepsis was a great risk, and he was being closely monitored, by the physicians and Frankie both.
She hadn't gone home since the night of the wedding. She had washed her face in the sink periodically, and Donny had brought her a few toiletries, but knew that she probably stunk. Regardless, she didn't care. Her baby needed her and she wasn't going to let him out of her sight. She told the doctors they would have to drag her out by her hair if they wanted her to leave, and, understanding her trauma, they had for the most part let her alone.
She stayed by his side while they re-dressed his bandages and exchanged intravenous bags. They allowed her to on the grounds that she wouldn't intervene, and she hadn't. But watching Junior like that, lying in his bed, completely unresponsive, made her feel sick.
He looked serene, and his face was slightly bloated and coated with a sheen of oil. It was like looking at a corpse in a coffin. She shook the thought from her mind as soon as it had appeared. Freddie Evans Jr was not going to die, not tonight, and not any night as long as she was still alive. He was a fighter, was her Junior. After all, he had made it this far, had he not? Yes, little Freddie was tough. The boy had survived a fucking gun shot to the liver. He wouldn't let something like infection kill him. The idea was preposterous.
Donny had stayed the first two days, but had gone home after that, to the house in Romford where he had been living with Frankie since the beginning of the year. Even the doctors had told him there was no real reason for either of them to stay. Junior was out and he wouldn't be awake until he was beginning to properly recover. He stopped by to check on them periodically but had delved into his daily walks along the city streets and down to the old dockland. It was what he did to clear his head.
Frankie saw him as a traitor. In the few weeks before the wedding, he had steadily been becoming his old self again, had Donny. That cunt. There wasn't any of the name-calling or the effing and blinding yet, but she knew it was only a matter of time. He sat around day-in, day-out, on his arse, which she noticed was getting fat, no job, as per fucking usual. Oh, he was a treat, wasn't he.
She found it easy to be negative now, easier than it had been. Donny had been there when she had to pick up the pieces of her life, but she knew he was also the reason she had been so broken in the first place. She was starting to hate him. Hated him for how he had treated her in the past, hated him for abandoning her Junior, and she hated her mother for convincing her to fall back into his arms.
And that was just so typical of her dear old mum, too, wasn't it. Always sticking her nose in where it doesn't belong, "for her own good". Well Donny wasn't good for her and, for the hundredth time over, she was realising it.
Even as she sat there in the hospital room, she felt the hatred squeezing around her heart like a fist. Good, she thought. Hang onto that. It was better than the emptiness and depression the attempted murder of her own son had brought. But what she wouldn't admit to herself was the fact that, above all else, she hated herself.
Freddie watched his sister through the open door as she held her son's hand in her own. She was such a strong woman, was his Frankie; she had been staying beside Junior diligently since the beginning, even though it was a terrifying sight to behold.
Every time he saw his nephew, it still came as a shock. There was a number of various tubes sticking out of the boy's hands and arms, and the great breathing mechanism in his mouth. A hard lump formed in Freddie's throat. No one on God's green earth should have to see their own child hooked up to enough monitors to fill a command centre. It was like something out of a science fiction film.
He lightly tapped his tattooed knuckles against the door, and Frankie jolted in her seat. When her head flicked to the side to see who was at the door, Freddie saw how bloody awful his sister looked; she hadn't bathed in days, her make-up had been cried off long ago, and with the stress and her lack of self-care, she appeared as if she had aged ten years. She looked as old as Freddie felt in that moment.
Frankie visibly relaxed when she saw him, and Fred took that as his cue to step further into the room, letting the door fall shut behind him. She stood from her chair just as he approached her, and opened her mouth to speak, but before she could say a word, Fred wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly against his broad chest.
They just stood like that for an age, in each other's arms. Fred had yet to see her on her own with her husband hanging around most of the time he stopped by, and this was the first real moment either of them had met with each other properly since they'd fought so many months before.
And just like that, with only a touch, any feelings of animosity they had once felt for each other completely vanished. As was the nature of Freddie and Frankie Evans.
'I'm glad you came,' she said after some time, simply for effect. They would have just stood like that for hours had neither of them spoken. And neither of them would have minded.
Wiping the tears from his sister's face with his fingers, Freddie nodded and said, 'I am, too, babe.'
The comfortable silence they fell in slowly turned cold as the compressed air from the breathing machine choked mechanically and the heart monitor steadily beeped like its eerie accompaniment. The reality of where they were sunk into both of their skulls, and as if they shared a mind, both of them turned to look at Junior's anaesthetised form.
Freddie spoke first. 'How is he?'
Frankie sniffed as she pulled herself back into reality, clearing her throat and wiping the tear residue from her cheeks. 'Um, he's . . . stable. No sign of infection yet, which is good.'
They both knew it was hard to find light in an otherwise bleak situation. It didn't help that they still had no word on who the gunman was. And even so, life went on. Things were getting heated on the Greek front. The bubbles had made their first move—buying commercial properties in Dagenham. Fred had ordered a raid on a Portakabin owned by the buyer, a prominent figure in the Greek community named Vasilis Papakostas, and had uncovered a series of documents all relating to the chairman of the City of London's planning committee, Melissa Brighton.
This was all leading up to something, and Freddie knew Stella had been right about the Greeks. But for the moment, his mind was on Junior. The boy was all he could think about. The good part was, if the Greeks had anything to do with the shooting, the new information Fred's men had uncovered would certainly bring it right to their doorstep.
One of the nurses came into the room to change Junior's dressings. With a quick flash of a sympathetic smile at the two grieving siblings, she drew a privacy curtain around the bed and disappeared behind it. As the woman worked, Freddie and Frankie looked at each other, until Franks broke her gaze away from the older man's and turned towards the window. 'There's something I need to tell you.'
Fred watched his sister expectantly for a long while until the nurse had finished her duties, and only after she had pushed back the curtain and left the room did he actually respond. 'What is it?'
Frankie wetted her lips before pressing them together in consideration. After a beat, her mouth opened and closed again as if she was about to say something, but the words were lost somewhere in the back of her throat. As she finally said them, her voice sounded strange to her own ears. 'Junior's not just your nephew, Freddie. . . . He's your son.'
Freddie's mouth went dry. He stopped moving. He was almost certain his heart had even stopped beating. The words "Junior is your son" flashed across his mind's eye in bright, neon lettering, and yet, he still couldn't process them.
Freddie Evans Jr was his son, the child of two half-siblings from a broken home, neither of whom knew just how deep the rabbit hole went. They had a son, with ten fingers and ten toes, and a fully-developed mind, and interests and hobbies and passions, and he was fighting for his life. But he was theirs, their flesh and blood. Their Junior.
They stood at each other in disbelief; Fred at his sister's words, Franks that she had actually said them. It seemed as if an eternity had passed before Frankie went on, unable to meet Freddie's wide-eyed gaze.
'I think I always knew it, somewhere,' she said softly. As the words passed her lips, it was as if they had finally solidified and became real. 'In the back of me mind. I just didn't want to believe it. Thinking back, I remember when he was conceived, even. That time when we was in your bedsit shagging and smoking puff all through the night, because you knew you was getting banged up?'
Frankie saw the memory flash across her brother's eyes, and swallowed thickly before continuing: 'I had a paternity test done. Don't worry, I done the right precautions. Old mate of mine what works in the labs owed me a favour. Didn't use any names or anything like that. Now she just thinks I'm a slag, but I don't really care what that cow thinks.' Neither of them spared a forced chuckle at her lame attempt at humour.
Freddie had to sit down on one of the chairs near the wall, and as he slowly sank down onto the thick, brightly-coloured plastic, his eyes were on Junior's still body. He was speechless.
Frankie smiled weakly before sitting down beside him, wringing her hands in her lap. 'I think that's why I named him after you. 'Cause I knew, inside me. He's yours.'
She looked at him with a mixture of elation and desperation in her eyes, and watched him steadily, hesitating to speak. ' . . . You're quiet.'
Freddie blew a hot gust of breath out from his lips loosely before shaking his head a few times. 'I dunno what to say, Franks. He's always been me little boy, but now he's . . . '
'Your son,' she chimed in, and reached across the small space between them to take his hand in hers. He squeezed it back tightly, and as they both looked into each others' eyes, past the tears, they each felt the thread that had bound them for their entire lives, the one that had been severed so many months ago, completely mend itself.
The only testament to the fight were the small, light flecks across the apple of Freddie's cheek from his sister's nails. Frankie noticed the scars and rubbed them with her fingertips, and Fred moved his head to kiss the palm of her hand. And they sat like that for some time, enjoying the comfort of each other, the warmth that filled them and spilled over at the elation over the news, but that quickly ran cold at the realisation that their son lie dying in a hospital bed only paces away from them.
Their minds were in very different places as they both turned back to him.
'Are you going to tell Donny?' This was Freddie.
Frankie felt a lump form in her throat. 'I don't know.' She then considered the prospect and added, 'Maybe . . . Maybe some things are better left unsaid.'
As they looked at each other once more, Frankie's words took on an even deeper meaning. Donny would never know Junior was not his son. Junior would never know his real father. And maybe that was for the best.