Wasn't Expecting You

Hold Me Tonight

Once Joey was settled into the ward, Sophia had insisted that David, the boys and I head home to shower after the search and bring Joey back some fresh clothes. As much as I wanted to stay by his side the whole time, even I could admit that I absolutely stank and desperately needed to fix that. So we hurried off as fast as we could, knowing that an officer would arrive soon to take Joey's statement and we desperately wanted to hear what happened.

By the time we got back to the hospital Coach had arrived, but we were still waiting on an officer to arrive. Despite everyone else in the room, Joey insisted that I sit with him on the bed, his arm tight around my waist as though he was scared to let me go again.

Everyone was talking amongst themselves, making plans for the rest of the day when the door opened and a young officer entered.

The officer ignored the lingering eyes of everyone else in the room and beelined straight for Joey.

"Good afternoon Jonathan, I'm officer Leroy Miller. Quite the popular patient I see," he mused, gesturing around the room at the rather large crowd of family and close friends gathered. Luckily being rich meant you also got a private room when in hospital.

"Please, call me Joey, it's my preferred name. I'm only Jonathan on official documents or when I'm in serious trouble with my mom!" Everyone laughed and Sophia shrugged her shoulders, shooting me a wink when I looked at her.

"Of course, that is noted. Well if you want to tell us what happened, I'm going to record it on my device here and make notes along the way too. I may stop to ask questions if I need to. Of course you aren't in any trouble, this is all just for the official case files so we can close off the search."

"Alright, sounds simple. I guess I start at the beginning? Or when we left camp?" Joey began, but with a slight question in his tone.

"Let's go with when you left camp, we have detailed accounts of what happened before you left."

All eyes and ears in the room were then on Joey as he began to retell the events of his last 48 hours.

"Right. Well Martin, our defence line assistant coach and I took off down the track we came in on. We were careful, we had a torch to light the way, but we were also still trying to hurry because we new Austin needed help. We didn't take many other supplies because we were planning on getting straight out and calling for help. I remember the rain was still coming down hard and the sound of the wind howling around us, we pretty much went out in the middle of the storm which now we know wasn't smart. Martin was in front of me, we were maybe 2 miles from camp, I don't even know how it really happened but I think he tripped on a rock, then with the unsteady and wet ground he tumbled down an embankment. At first I couldn't even see where he went, it was so dark and stormy. I weighed up my options at the time. I could go back to camp to get help, but risk not knowing where he fell in the dark to find him again. Or I could continue on by myself to get to the bus and call for help and rescue Austin and now Martin, or I could stick with Martin incase he knocked himself out during the fall and help him back out and we still get help. In all honesty, all three were pretty crappy options and it the moment I needed to make a judgement call."

He stopped for a drink of water and to allow Officer Miller to write some notes before continuing.

"So I decided to help Martin, it just didn't feel right to leave him alone after a fall. I was confident I could still navigate our way out. I got myself safely down the embankment and found him, his ankle in a bad way but he was prepared to push on. So we started walking. After what felt like hours we had to stop. His ankle was bad and the ground was too uneven, so we decided to rest for the night, figuring it wasn't long till the sun would rise and we hoped we would be found the next day."