13. Rocco
ROCCO
“ S he’s opening her eyes.”
I sit by Sophia’s bedside, holding her hand, when her eyelids flutter.
Her parents had got my phone number off Sophia’s phone and called me while I was still in Cornwall to say she’d collapsed in hospital and was unconscious.
I’d dropped everything and jumped on the next train back to London, sick with worry, and furious with myself for allowing her to make the journey back on her own.
When I arrived, they told me how serious her condition is.
I was filled in on her dialysis treatment—both of them expressing annoyance with her for not being truthful about how badly she needed to have it—and that she had a build-up of fluid which in turn caused pneumonia.
She’s on treatment now, and should recover fully, but it’s been a worrying twenty-four hours.
Why had she felt she couldn’t tell me? Had I given the impression that I wouldn’t want to know?
I’m angry at myself for not asking more questions.
I should have asked more about what’s beneath the bandage she always wears on her arm.
Maybe a part of me hadn’t wanted to know.
I hadn’t liked to think of the girl I’d grown up with being so sick it could kill her.
I can’t imagine a world now where Sophia isn’t in it, and the thought of having her torn away from me again so soon is torture.
But now she’s waking up, and I’m determined to make her see that she can be honest with me, no matter what.
Her parents crowd into the room, taking up the space on the other side of her bed.
“Sophia?” her mother says. “Sophia, sweetheart. Everything’s okay. You passed out at the hospital, but you’ve been given treatment and you’re doing better now.” She takes her daughter’s other hand and gives it a squeeze.
“Rocco?” Sophia mumbles.
“I’m here, baby,” I say, holding her hand tighter. “Everything’s okay. I’m right here.”
Her eyelids flicker again, but her fingers tighten around mine.
It’s as though her touch on my hand has a direct link to my heart, as it contracts, flooding me with emotion.
I hate seeing her like this. How could it happen so fast?
Only two days ago, we were sitting on the beach and making love in bed. She’d gone downhill so quickly.
One of the nurses comes into the room. “She should probably get some rest now, folks,” the woman says kindly. “She knows you’re all here for her, but sleep is going to be what helps her most now.”
I nod, not wanting to leave her, but wanting to do what’s best for her. I can’t stand the thought that I might have lost her. First my dad, then Sophia. My heart wouldn’t be able to take it.
A s the week passes with Sophia still recovering in hospital, I have no choice but to go back to work. I spend every minute possible outside of work at Sophia’s bedside. She’s growing stronger every day and is able to sit up in bed and talk to me.
But I’ve already taken most of last week off because of my dad, and even though my boss, Art, has been more than understanding about the situation, I know that every day I’m not there is another day the tattoo shop is losing money.
“Hey, how’s things going?” Art asks me when I come in this morning.
“Better, thanks. She’s awake for longer periods now, so we can talk.”
“Has she said why she didn’t tell you about the dialysis yet?”
I shake my head. “No, we haven’t spoken about it, and I don’t want to upset her.”
“I get that,” Art says, nodding. “But you guys are going to have to talk about it soon. It’s a pretty big deal.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I’ve done some research over the past week, and I can’t pretend it doesn’t make me nervous.
The idea that she would die within a week or so if she stops dialysis is terrifying, but I also hold on to the possibility that a donor kidney might become available.
If that happens, and her body doesn’t reject it, she could go on to live a relatively normal life and won’t have to be plugged into a machine every three days.
This new knowledge doesn’t change my feelings towards her.
If anything, it only makes me admire her more.
In the ten years we’ve been apart, while I’d been partying and studying, and working here at the tattoo studio, she’d been fighting this horrible illness.
In my eyes, that makes her a far braver person than I will ever be.
I work on today’s clients, trying to focus on the artwork rather than my thoughts drifting to Sophia all the time.
I check my phone a hundred times over, terrified I’ll get a call to say she’s taken a turn for the worst. When the day’s finally over, and I’m getting ready to go back to the hospital, Art’s girlfriend, Tess stops me and gives me a massive hug.
“Everything will be all right,” she tells me. “And I’m so sorry about your dad.”
“Thanks, Tess.”
The people here at the studio feel like a little family to me. I’ve never had much of one, not with my dad always drinking and my mum having left when I was too small to even remember her.
At least Sophia’s parents hadn’t been too angry at me because of what happened with Sophia.
I thought at first they’d blame me for not looking out for her, but when I explained that she hadn’t told me how ill she was, they’d been more than understanding.
They never made me feel as though I didn’t belong there or was intruding in any way.
They treated me like family.