Chapter 22
NEIL
If my retinae weren’t horribly damaged before, they fucking are now.
Hello, old friend. A fluorescent strip of light burns through my eyelids, telling me where I am: in a bloody hospital. Turns out it wasn’t a nightmare, then. Just me making yet a few more shoddy life choices. Oh joy.
Mind you, the pain pulsing from my dazzled eyes has nothing on the agony of my arm. I swear some demon’s poking a dagger around in there just for the hell of it. I twist my head to escape the light, sending a shower of fireworks shooting up to my shoulder.
“Fuck,” I yelp. “Turn that bloody light off. It’s killing me.”
Immediately, the intense artificial light is blocked by a blond head. A faintly amused voice lisps, “You’re awake then.”
Groaning, I squint at Alaric through my fingers. “Oh great, they’ve sent a willy doctor.”
“Urologist.”
That is way too complex a word for how my cotton wool brain is computing right now. “Please tell me you’re not here prof…professionally.”
“No.”
Thank Christ. I’ve already embarrassed myself enough for one millennium. The finer details are hazy, but my brain’s not so hungover it’s incapable of signalling the general gist.
“Though,” Alaric continues, examining his nails. “I haven’t checked anything down below yet, so…”
“The fact you need to say that is deeply unsettling.” I root around under my gown with my good hand. Mercifully, everything feels as it should. “Why are you here, then?”
“Somebody needed to keep you alive in the ambulance. Everyone else was too busy serving free drinks to customers brave enough to stay, and cleaning up the bar.”
That’s me told. Wincing, I try to sit up. “Fuck, my arm hurts.”
“Glass slicing through several nerves, blood vessels, and tendons does tend to have that effect, regrettably. There’s a tiny cup of oral morphine on the side here, waiting for you. I advise you to neck it.”
I don’t usually follow Alaric’s suggestions–mostly out of principle, as he’s a bossy bugger—but this seems like a sensible one, especially if it’s the path to oblivion.
Once he’s helped me sit up enough to drink it, he stops talking and I’m grateful, because…
what the fuck is there to say? I’ve blown things with Ez beyond measure, which means I can kiss any friendship I have with Isaac goodbye too.
Gerald didn’t need any more reasons to hate me, and Alaric’s probably only here out of a sense of medical duty.
As for Luke….
I can’t allow my mind to dwell on Luke. It’s too painful, even more painful than my arm. Fortunately, the morphine’s kicking in, except with the added side effect of making me weepy. My lovely, lovely rash whisperer. My sweet man.
I sniff, trying to disguise it as a cough, and the sharp, metallic, and unmistakable taste of blood fills my mouth. Must have banged up my nose, too. Fucking idiot. As the opioid dulls my pain, I float into the gradual slowing and speeding of time. Nurses come and go; Alaric talks on his phone.
“I love him,” someone rasps, just as I fade into dreamland. Pretty sure it’s my voice.
“I know you do, you great big twatwaffle. We wouldn’t be in this bloody mess if you didn’t. Ah, look, they’ve come to take you away for surgery. Be good, darling, try not to break anything else.”
At some point in the time-space continuum, tiny pinpricks of light float before my eyes.
I rouse from a sleep far deeper and, dare I say, far pleasanter than the one which swiftly followed me spraying a couple of litres of the red stuff across the floor of the bar.
Even my arm hurts less, though it's twice its normal size. The surgeon’s hours of delicate handiwork are wrapped inside a sturdy plaster cast.
Irritatingly, I’m still on Planet Earth and lying on a sweaty plastic mattress atop a narrow hospital bed.
I feel hot, vaguely nauseated, and strangely buoyant, like a rubbery, sentient jellyfish.
As highlights of my recent escapades come back to me, one horrific shred after another, I also realise I’m not alone.
In the chair by the bed, someone shifts and a cool hand folds around my free one.
“You didn’t need to stay, Al. I’m perfectly capable of being miserable on my own.”
“He’s not here,” says a voice.
It’s just a voice, really, an ordinary, mid-range man’s voice, and yet, like a peace lily craving warm sunlight, I turn my face to it.
Every knot in my chest loosens a little.
Even the rapier filleting my forearm feels a lesser foe.
Because that voice belongs to a man who sings like faulty plumbing.
Who never dances in public, only in front of his peace lilies. Who only dances with me.
And he’s holding my hand.
“Rash whisperer.” I try to lift myself up with my good arm, except stars litter my vision when I do. I sink back down. “You came back.”
“Yeah. I did.” He strokes my hair. “Some of us are trying not to run when things get ugly. It’s really, really hard, though.”
Luke strokes my cheek and plays with my hair, his soothing voice stretching and warping.
Snippets of the scene in the bar drift back to me. “Tell me about it. Smashing things is much easier.”
He laughs, filling me with joy.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine.”
“And how are you really feeling?”
Luke merits more than fine. Ashamed, embarrassed, and hungover would be good places to start. Those women at the bar deserve free drinks forever, and Ez deserves…I’m not sure there’s a big enough apology invented. I’ve trashed his—our—fucking livelihood.
“The doctors say my arm will take about three to six months to get back to full function, if I follow the rules and do the physio properly.” I study the pristine white cast, debating whether to sock myself over the head with it and put everyone out of their misery.
“Whether I ever make a full recovery from my serious case of stupidity remains to be seen.”
Laying my arm gingerly back down on a mound of pillows, I let my eyes shutter closed. I sound coherent, to my ears at least, but I’m still pretty woozy. “I’ve made a mess of things, haven’t I?”
Luke shuffles his chair closer. “With Ez? Yes, a bit.”
A lump coming to my throat, I steal a quick peek at him. He’s bundled up in his navy hoodie, his pale anxious face peeping out, and my heart fucking squeezes. “I didn’t mean with Ez. With you. Shouting at you. Telling you to fuck off.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I deserved it. I should never have left. I should have stayed and tried harder. Maybe if I had, we wouldn’t be where we are now.”
That sounds ominous. Does he mean here in the hospital, or is it a commentary on the state of our relationship? Is he still holding my hand because that’s what nice hospital visitors do? Alaric held it, briefly. Ez would too, probably, if I hadn’t trashed his bar.
Ah well, only one way to find out.
“Are you still… I mean, are we still…us?” I sound pathetically needy, even to my ears. The anaesthetic drugs swilling around my bloodstream are to blame. I temper it by stealing Ez’s words. “We had a sweet little thing going, for a moment.”
“Yeah.” Is that a glimmer of his cute nervous smile? Please, say it is. “We did, didn’t we?”
“What I’m asking,” I persist, metaphorically crossing everything, “is—am I gonna...um…get to see your well-trimmed and pretty deck again?”
Go me; groggy, in pain, one-armed, losing my sight, and probably my livelihood, yet still flirting like a rom-com hero.
“Yeah.” Luke’s soft little giggle strikes sweeter than any chord I’ve ever played. “I mean, if you want.”
Thank fuck. A giddy, morphine-fuelled smile spreads across my face. I feel it happening, happiness floating through me on a fluffy cloud. In a moment, I’ll drift off on my own cloud, back to that nice druggy sleep I was enjoying.
Luke brings his mouth closer to my ear. I hope he’s about to kiss me. I’ve missed his kisses. “Unless you don’t need me,” he whispers, naughtily, “Now you’ve thrown a big tantrum and got it all out of your system.”
A hot and fresh tide of shame blooms under my skin.
No one’s going to let me forget that any time soon.
I’ll be grovelling to Ez and Jess long after the sting of my surgery fades.
But with Luke in my corner, even that thought can’t wipe the grin off my face.
I give his fingers a squeeze. “Hey, of course I do. Why do you think I only damaged one arm? So I could keep this hand free, rash whisperer, for you to hold.”
Seems I come out with all my best lines when I’m under the influence of something.
It works on Luke, anyhow, because now I do get a kiss, here in the middle of the ward, where anyone could walk around the curtain and see him.
No tongues, which is more me than him, because I reckon I smell like a three-week old tuna sandwich.
“I was starting to worry you were seeing someone else when you went away,” I admit, still bloody needy.
Luke laughs. “As in dating or hallucinations? The latter would have been more likely.”
He kisses me again. Maybe I don’t smell so bad after all.
“You need to tell Ezra about your eyes, Neil,” he says when he pulls away. “And our other friends.”
“I know.”
Even now, with the all-encompassing pain of my arm, my RP sits heavy in the back of my mind. It never goes away. I’ve been running through conversations in my head with Ez about it for months.
I blow out a breath. “I don’t think I’m strong enough for a visually impaired, blind, life. And definitely not strong enough to run a business. If I still have a business. Think of the adjustments I’ll have to make.”
“Yes, you are.” Luke squeezes my hand hard.
“Look at the changes you’ve made already.
Your flat could be an educational template for how to design a living space for people with visual impairment.
How difficult would it be to transpose features of that onto the new bar design?
Have you met Ez? He loves a bloody challenge! ”
“I suppose.” Whether Ez still loves his business partner remains to be seen. The problem is me. It’s always been me. How I let go of this fragile secret without shattering myself.
“And I bet your liaison chap, Derek, has a million great ideas and resources.”
“Huh.” I think I need some more morphine.
“You’ve got me too,” he tags on, before I have a chance to articulate further. That’s much more like it.
“Listen,” Luke carries on. “I haven’t been totally honest with you about my mental health.
But it’s bad. That’s why I only work two days a week, and some weeks I don’t manage that.
My sick leave record is literally that, a hospital record; I’m on first name terms with the staff down in the Occupational Health office.
I shan’t ever have a string of fancy qualifications after my name, like Alaric.
I shan’t ever lead an emergency team at night, like Isaac.
The only reason the hospital doesn’t find a spurious reason to sack me is because decent dermatologists are hard to come by, and when I’m actually well enough to turn up, I’m a safe pair of hands. ”
“Don’t do yourself down. Alaric says you’re amazing, and he doesn’t say that about hardly anyone.”
“Whatever. The point is, I’m carrying on regardless.
I get up and swim and pay my bills and water my plants.
I cook nice meals and hang out with my friends.
And even though I’m not magical and magnificent, the wheels of life continue to turn.
Believe it or not, sometimes I even really enjoy it.
Like when I went on a date to the cinema with a man who’s losing his sight, and he fed me Maltesers and kissed me in a way I didn’t know existed and makes me feel beautiful even though under this hoodie, I’m actually pretty fucking ordinary. ”
He puts a finger to my lips before I can contradict him. “So if a chronically depressed and anxious guy like me can do it, then so can someone who’s only partially sighted like you. And who cares if not everyone thinks you’re magical and magnificent? They’re dickheads.”
Ordinary. He thinks he’s ordinary. Yet here he is, standing in the middle of all my chaos, smiling at me like it’s part of his normal fucking landscape, and finding the courage to deliver the finest pep talk ever.
Then calmly throwing his lot in with mine and quietly undoing my sense of what ordinary ever meant.