Reunion - Epilogue

Stephan woke and squinted against the bright electric light shining from above. As had been happening a lot over the last two weeks it took him several seconds to work out where he was but the sight of the crisp white bed linen and metal frame of the bed soon reminded him he was still in hospital.

The other big clue was the drip stand and drip running running in to the cannula in his arm. Though that only contained fluids and a couple of electrolytes now, he was off the antibiotics and making a good recovery from his injuries.

He reached for the electronic bed control and pushed the button to raise up the back of the bed and sit him up in the bed. It was early evening and he had dozed off again in the late afternoon. The doctors had told him after the sort of physical, not to say mental, trauma he had been through he should expect to be sleeping a lot as the body did the hard work of fixing itself.

After a couple of days in the main public ward of the hospital a visit from the consular office in Manilla and a couple of phone calls had got him transferred to a private room courtesy of the medical insurance provided by Korda International. This also got him his own private nurse as well. A breezy and cheerful English girl called Rosie. The irony of being in the hospital in the Philippines and having an English nurse was not lost on Stephan.

Sitting up he looked over at the TVin the corner of his room that was on with the sound down. It was BBC News 24 playing at the moment. This was a recent concession as Rosie had not initially allowed him to watch anything too taxing or vexatious and especially not the news as that was “nothing but doom and gloom.” What she didn’t tell him was that for large parts of the last two weeks he had been the news. Or rather the story of the plane crash, the explosion that removed half the mountain top of the island and his subsequent rescue. So far reporters had been kept away largely through the stern control of Rosie and some clever mis-direction from consular office.

Stephan looked up at the screen and the scrolling breaking news text at the bottom. “Post-mortem results on the body of Anthony Korda,head of Korda International, inconclusive” it said. He turned the sound up.

“……..senior members of the executive board have asked for this to be able to bury his body and begin the task of winding up his affairs but the authorities in Italy are currently considering whether to request time for further investigations.”

The hairs on the back of Stephan’s neck prickled and somehow he knew that Jon Ryder had had a hand in the death of his former classmate mate multi-billionaire, Anthony Korda.

“… Now back to our main story, further details of the ongoing excavations from the Sonsorol Island explosion. Our reporter on the scene is Andrew Foster. Andrew what can you tell me about the latest findings? “

Stephan sat up sharply as the screen cut to a scene he recognised, the scene behind Andrew Foster’s unfeasibly orange tanned face and white teeth. The burnt out plane in the background and the view around the bay to where a few days ago he had been fighting for his life.

“Well the authorities here have had crews working through the night since the discovery of the collapsed cave complex yesterday. They say they have now made the structure safe and are starting to explore what seems to be an extensive set of underground caverns. I haven’t been able to gain access to that part of the site but I can tell you that the body of an unidentified western male has been recovered from the scene bringing the death toll here on Sonsorol to 13.”

‘An unidentified western male’ thought Stephan, that would be Ryder. Even in death he was anonymous. “Serves the fucker right,” he said and chuckled slightly making his rubs ache. Just then Rosie walked into the room carrying the evening meal on a tray.

“I think that’ll do for now don’t you?” she said and without asking laid down the tray, picked up the TV remote and switched the channel to show an old Tom and Jerry cartoon dubbed into Spanish.

“There’ll be plenty of time for you to deal with all that. For now you need to get your strength up so we can fly you home.”

Ah yes home, thought Stephan, there’s no place like home.

The End.