Chapter 10
GERALD
My belly hurts. It’s ached on and off for a couple of weeks now, but this time it won’t settle.
Hence my urgent trips to the bathroom in the small hours (not that purging in either direction seems to help).
Normally, I have an iron stomach and sleep like I’ve been hit with a tranquiliser dart.
Something is wrong; I can’t ignore it any longer.
At least Alaric’s out of the flat. He left just after seven, but not before noisily champing through a couple of slices of last night’s pizza.
He brought his Bluetooth speaker into the kitchen, and throbbing dance music filled every corner.
A flowing cream shirt peeked out from under his jacket, with blue flowers and blue crocodiles dotted all over it.
Tucked into tight black jeans, he accessorised with a couple of heavy silver chains, layered at his neck and his wrists, and used another as a belt.
Everything about him screamed effortlessly stylish, like he’d accidentally thrown together an outfit that could land him a ‘gay London’ magazine cover.
And me? It’s Friday night, and I’m alone in my little kitchen, aged thirty-four, trying not to retch while picking over the contents of the fridge and dressed in a generic polo shirt and the kind of blue jeans my dad would borrow.
When Alaric left, his pointlessly glitzy rucksack he usually dumps in the hallway for me to trip over went too, so hopefully he’s disappeared until tomorrow.
Feeling sorry for myself, I phone Mrs Gregson to apologise I won’t be picking up Elsa tonight and take my duvet and my aching belly to the sofa.
At midnight, I vomit up my chicken salad. Perhaps the lettuce wasn’t washed properly.
Drenched in sweat at three, I throw off the duvet. At four, I pull it back on, plus an extra blanket.
At five, I regurgitate two paracetamols for my bellyache, then thunderously destroy the toilet. Thank fuck Alaric isn’t around.
At six, I manage to keep half a glass of water down.
At seven, I swear to God I’m dying.
It’s the strangest of dreams. I’m in the middle aisle of an underground supermarket, dimly lit by glowing spotty toadstools.
Pushing the shopping trolley—barefoot and cheerful, despite humming along to the requiem in Wolf Hall—is a hobbit, shouldering a shiny red rucksack.
His trolley is piled high with Pringles and crumpets.
“Gerald? You all right, mate? What’s with the sick bowl?”
The hobbit shakes my arm. When he calls my name again, I return to reality, to bright sunlight streaming through the open sitting room blinds. Alaric peers down at me, still dressed in the beautiful shirt he wore last night, the top few buttons open and gaping.
He’s totally smooth down there. Ever since we collided in the dark, I’ve tried not to picture the dip below his ribs, the shadowy hint of definition shaping his thin, pale belly.
And lower still, his pale, neat dick, and how he wrapped it up in his palm, teasingly fondling it.
He’s totally smooth down there. Pushing that image away is like trying to hold back a sneeze.
My limbs feel heavy in a vague, all-over way, as if stuffed with wet laundry, and my head pulses with a peculiar fuzzy throb.
“Big night out?” He gives me a conspiratorial smile I really don’t deserve after being such a shit to him.
“Know the feeling. I had way too many mai-tais, and then Ezra decided it would be a good idea to go for a curry.
So we all ended up in this dodgy curry house on the Kentish Town Road.
God, I love London, but I swear my tikka masala was—“
“I’m ill.” I blink hard, realising the panicky truth at about the same time as Alaric.
“Yeah.” He scrutinizes me as if I’m some sort of science experiment. “I think you are. You look like a dirty sock.”
“Thanks.” My voice is raspy. “Feel like one, too.”
My skin prickles, like something is crawling beneath it. I can’t tell if I’m sweating or shivering. At some point during the night, I kicked off my duvet. Or wrestled with it. I try to sit up. “Shit. My stomach hurts.”
The back of Alaric’s blessedly cool hand lands against my clammy forehead. I want to grab and hold on to it. “Crikey. You’re cooking on gas, Big G. Lie down again.”
“I’m also freezing.” As if to prove it, a shiver rolls through me like a rogue wave.
“How long have you been feeling unwell?” Alaric’s shift into doctor mode is subtle but immediate.
“Uh… since yesterday.”
I hesitate. Despite sharing this small flat with Alaric for nearly a month, I hardly know the guy, a situation for which I’m entirely to blame. Moreover, after our squabble, we’re not exactly on speaking terms.
“I can handle it. This isn’t your problem.”
I try to get up again, thinking I’ll shuffle off to bed, maybe phone the NHS help line for advice. But a sharp pain in my belly steals my breath.
At the same time, Alaric’s firm hand presses on my shoulder. “Hey, simmer down. Stay right where you are. Anyone can see you’re not well. You look bloody awful. Only since yesterday?”
“I woke up with a stomach-ache a couple of nights last week. I was going to make an appointment at the doctor’s, but then it settled.”
“Any vomiting? Any nasty bugs going around at work?”
“I’ve been sick twice,” I admit. “I feel a bit sick now.”
Lips pursed, his blue eyes search mine. “Bowels? Urgency? Diarrhoea?”
A wildfire of heat scorches my ears. “Yeah. On and off.”
“Any burning when you wee?”
I shake my head. “Listen. I should get up, maybe shower and put on some clothes.”
It must be gone midday. I’m still in pyjamas. If I’m going to make an emergency appointment at the doctors, I need to get dressed. And drink some water, grab a couple of paracetamols.
“A shower will do me good.” For the third time, I make to move from the sofa. The room tilts with me.
“No.” Again, Alaric pushes me down. “Stay where you are. Where exactly is the pain in your tummy?”
“All around here.” I indicate with the tips of two fingers. During the last couple of days, it’s been a nebulous ache in the middle. Overnight, it’s shifted to the right corner.
Alaric kneels on the floor next to the sofa. “Would it be okay if I examined you? Sounds like you might have appendicitis.”
“That’s what passed through my mind.”
I’ve never been properly ill before. Over the course of a shocking night spent clutching my side and wailing like a Victorian ghost, I’ve seesawed between convincing myself I’ve pulled a muscle lifting my hardback copy of Wolf Hall to believing I only have about four minutes to live.
Alaric agreeing with my diagnosis is almost a relief.
“You don’t have to,” I tell him. “Honestly. I’m going to take a shower, then phone for an emergency appointment.” Alaric’s being far too nice, especially after I’ve been such an unwelcoming shit.
“Gerald. Listen.” His voice is firm. “It’s no bother, and it’s kind of my job.
I spend half my night shifts examining bellies, trying to differentiate between appendicitis, kidney stones, UTI’s, or just general gut rot.
And the gynae stuff of course.” He flashes me a brief, gap-toothed grin.
“But I think we can safely rule that out.”
Too weak to protest further, I roll up my pyjama top.
Alaric exposes even more of me by easing down my pyjama bottoms an inch or two.
My belly feels bloated, but after a cursory glance, he doesn’t look at it.
He only watches my face as he palpates each tender quadrant, chewing on his bottom lip in concentration.
I conclude I must be very ill indeed. When his soft palm, so deliciously cool, lightly presses its way around my hot, tense belly, unsparing of the lower, sensitive portions, my dick doesn’t so much as twitch.
After he’s finished, Alaric pats down my pyjama top and covers me up with the duvet again.
I swallow a lump in my throat, blaming it on feeling so ill.
But… perhaps it’s more to do with the way he tucks the duvet around me so fucking compassionately, so nicely.
He’s so generous, and I don’t deserve a fucking second of it.
“The good news, Big G, is that you have St Peter’s Hospital number-one urology registrar as your private, personal physician.
” He flashes a grin again, the one that’s always ready and waiting.
“The bad news is I’m pretty sure your appendix, which has done nothing your entire life except freeload, has decided to throw a full-blown tantrum and needs evicting.
” He rises to his feet. “I guess St Helier’s is the nearest hospital? ”