Chapter 6 #2
Maybe my bad memory is convenient. Selective. Protective. I’ve given up any attempt to make sense of it. But there’s one thing I know for sure—a doctor who frowns like that is bad news.
The doctor doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere, so I go searching for a TV instead. I find one on the far side of the ward, and the return trip puts me in sight of Aidan’s bed again. He’s alone now, and it’s too easy to push the TV close enough to him that he glances up and spots me.
His lips twist into the closest he’s ever come to an actual smile, though his eyes are tight with stress. “I didn’t think you’d come back.”
“Ever?”
“No. Today. Thought you might want some time to yourself after seeing your shrink.”
Shrink. I’ve always hated that word. My twisted imagination has convinced me that it’s what they’re trying to do—to legit shrink my brain—and I cringe every time I hear it. But I don’t cringe now. Aidan speaks simply. Perhaps it’s time to listen simply too.
I focus on his actual words. “Nah. Shrink time is think time. I’ve had enough of that for one day.”
“That bad?”
I wheel the TV closer, pushing it with my good arm so it trundles along like the ancient trolleys I remember from primary school, the ones with a VHS consoles no one could work. “It wasn’t my favourite.”
Aidan accepts my answer with a grunt and eyes the TV. “How did you get that? Do you have to pay for it?”
He’s been here ten days . . . I think. How can he not know about the TV trolleys?
I scan his bay for books and magazines, or a set of weathered headphones like mine.
But I find nothing and can’t help but speculate what he’s been doing all this time.
Whenever I creep up on him, he’s either asleep or staring at the ceiling. Is that seriously all he’s been doing?
Damn. He’ll be as batshit as me in no time.
I position the TV at the end of his bed and pull the curtain around it to let any pilferers know it’s taken. “They’re free,” I say. “You just have to know where to nab them from.”
“Oh. Well that’s me fucked then. Don’t think I’ll be nabbing anything for a while.”
“You can’t use crutches? Not that they’ll be much good if you’re pushing a trolley.”
Aidan sighs. “I could probably make do and hop along behind it . . . maybe, if they’d let me up, but I’m having surgery tomorrow, so I’m going to be flat on my back again for the foreseeable.”
I somehow forgot about the doctor I saw loitering on my last visit. And that Aidan has been due to have surgery any day now. My heart turns over, and the pins in my wrist seem to throb. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. And my X-rays are messed up, so it’s going to be a longer procedure than they thought.”
“How long?”
“Four hours.”
“No—” I slap my hand over my mouth, for my benefit and his. However stoic my new friend is, he’s got to be worried. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Aidan stretches out a muscular arm and beckons me closer. “That’s pretty much my reaction too. How long did your operation take?”
“I don’t know. They sedated me before the anaesthetic, so I lost track of time.”
“What about after? Did it hurt?”
He’s definitely worried. I consider bullshitting him to ease his fears, but I can’t do it. Even with honourable intentions, dishonesty has never done me any good. “It hurt a lot at first. Use the morphine pump. If you’ve not had any for a few days, it should knock you out.”
Aidan’s gaze flickers, but the shadow is gone before I can decide if I’ve imagined it or not, and I realise that I’m hovering by the TV like a weirdo.
I venture ever closer to him and hand over the remote. “It’s got Freeview. Just use the channel buttons to flick through.”
“What were you going to watch?”
“Um . . .” Again, the urge to make something up is there. Again, I suppress it. “The weather. I can’t really watch anything else.”
I wait for him to ask why not, but he doesn’t. He turns the TV on and jerks his head at the empty chair beside him. “I’m down with the weather.”
He’s humouring me. He has to be. But I sit anyway and help him find a weather channel. A storm is brewing, apparently, with gale-force winds and heavy rain. Aidan’s habitual frown deepens and I can’t help but touch his arm . . . with my fingertip, obviously. “What’s wrong?”
“Hmm?”
“You’re thinking hard enough to break something.”
“In my brain?”
“Maybe.” I try for a grin and hope it’s convincing.
Aidan opens the cabinet on the other side of the bed and retrieves a yoghurt he’s saved from dinner. He hands it to me with a shrug. “Storms mean damaged trees, which means work, lots of work that I’m missing out on while I’m stuck in here.”
I peel the lid from the yoghurt pot and pry the plastic spoon from its hiding place. The yoghurt is fudge flavoured. At home when I’m fighting the urge to be manic or crawling out from under a vicious low, it’s the only thing I can eat. “Are you worried about money?”
Aidan snaps his gaze from the TV. For a moment he seems cross. Then his face softens enough for me to dip the spoon into the yoghurt. “I was worried about money,” he says, “until the surgeon came around. Now I’m so fucked there’s no bloody point.”
I retrace the few conversations we had about the tree surgeon work he clearly enjoys. He works for someone . . . but the name escapes me. “Will you lose your job?”
“Nah, Bernard likes me too much, but technically, I’m a subcontractor—if I don’t work, I don’t get paid, and I was already in the shit before this happened.”
I tap my fingers on Aidan’s bed rail. His tone is casual, but genuine worry lines his lovely face, marring his rugged good looks. “Your boss won’t bung you a few quid?”
“Dunno.”
“Have you asked him?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should. You got hurt on the job; that’s got to be bad for business, and for him, if he has a heart.”
“Mmm.”
He doesn’t want to talk about this, so I take the snippet of information he’s let fly and stash it away. I don’t know much about much, but surviving, somehow, without the capacity to hold down a regular job, is something I excel at.
For long minutes, Aidan watches the weather channel while I watch him and try to find the answer to his problem.
My brain is a jumble of incomplete theories and aborted thoughts.
Sifting through them takes time, and I’m tired.
I slump in my chair. Aidan notices and lowers his bed rail.
“Lean on the bed if you want. I mean, if it’s more comfortable for you. ”
He knows . . . knows that leaning backwards sometimes makes me feel as though I’m falling, and I don’t like it.
I’ve never spent time with another person without having to explain my every nuance.
Maybe with Aidan it’s because he doesn’t care, that he enjoys my company merely because without it he’d be alone, but I decide it doesn’t matter and dump my arms on his bed.
I rest my head on my good arm and fight to keep thinking as I realise my face is a few centimetres from Aidan’s bicep.
He has amazing muscle tone, lean and strong, but still soft enough for me to wish my cheek could be pressed against his skin instead of my own.
I close my eyes. My brain quiets to a dull roar and I’m almost asleep when a sharp voice drags me back to the real world.
“Ludo, get back to your own bed. Sorry, Mr Drummond. He does know not to bother the other patients.”
“He’s not bothering me,” Aidan snaps as I raise my head. “Leave him alone.”
The nurse glares. “He’s not supposed—”
“To what? Talk to his friends? Piss off.”
“Aidan—”
He silences me with a furious scowl and turns back to the nurse. “He’s fine. I asked him to sit with me.”
The nurse glances between us, unconvinced, but whatever she sees in Aidan persuades her to back off.
She vanishes without another word, leaving me to stare at Aidan with my stomach in my throat. “You didn’t have to do that. They’re always chasing me back to my bed.”
“Yeah well, they’re not very good at it if they’ve never caught you with me before.”
True. But I doubt it’s occurred to anyone that Aidan would want to talk to me. He doesn’t talk to anyone else. I’ve heard the nurses calling him Mr Moody, and after tonight I reckon he’s probably cemented that.
He’s not moody with me, though. And he called me his friend, in a roundabout way, which makes me smile.
Aidan cocks his head sideways. “What’re you grinning at?”
“Dunno. I’m loopy when I’m tired.”
“You should probably go back to sleep then.” He points at the exact spot my head was before and turns back to the TV as if it makes perfect sense.
Lacking any better ideas, I lay my head back down, and my eyes fall closed like weighted shutters. I am tired, and something—everything—about Aidan’s silent company makes me feel safer than I have in a long time.
After a little while, he drapes his arm over my shoulders, solid warmth tying me down to the world, and it doesn’t make perfect sense. It doesn’t make sense at all.
But I like it.