Chapter Twenty Nine #2
on the wall and a view out across what looked like Hampstead Heath.
“I’m thinking... not the Soho walk-in centre,” Laurie said,
breaking the silence that had come down with the departure of the
last nurse.
“No. You’re in the private ICU at Golders Hill.” Sasha was
sitting upright by the bed. His paperwork was gathered up and
tidily stacked on Laurie’s bedside table. “The ambulance took you
to Royal Free, but then your mother turned up.”
“My ma? At the hospital?”
“Yes. Someone had called her. I guess she’s listed as your next
of kin. She stood in the middle of reception with her chequebook in
her hand and demanded that her son be given the best of
everything.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Yeah. You can imagine how well she went down with the junkies
and the A&E docs trying to patch together a busload of tourists
from Cardiff. But it turns out she’s still paying into your
family’s private-healthcare plan, so once you were out of surgery
they brought you here.”
Sasha
was smoothing the sheet on his side of the bed, over and over
again, the movement small but tight with nerves. Laurie tried to
picture the scene. He wondered if Marielle had worn her fur coat
and diamonds—if she’d brought Gibson with her or come on her own.
He was touched at the display of maternal care, but he wondered
which margins Sasha had been swept into while this was going on.
Marielle wasn’t Laurie’s next of kin. “I don’t believe in private
medicine,” he said awkwardly, although that was the last thing he
wanted to talk about now.
“Unless you’re paying for a private shrink for me?”
“That’s different.”
“Well, it’s difficult, isn’t it? I see you there in the chaos,
and there’s Marielle with her magic wand. I didn’t argue. If it’s
any comfort to you, the NHS guys saved your life.”
“The... The surgeons?”
“Yes. You were in there for three hours.”
“I don’t remember any of this. Nothing at all until waking up
here.”
Sasha
shrugged. He turned the sheet over, gave it a knife-edge crease.
“You wouldn’t.” He glanced at Clara, but she was safely out of it,
her face a tear-smudged blur behind her damp hair. “You had a
bullet removed from two inches under your heart. You lost so much
blood they’re still pouring it into you now to try and tank you up.
You got through the surgery okay, but then you went into a coma
and...”
“A coma? Are you kidding? How long?”
Sasha
shook his head. “I am so tempted to tell you it’s 2019 and Boris
Johnson is Prime Minister. Three days.”
“Three days...” Laurie leaned back on his pillows. His throat
was sore from the tube. His skin itched under the electrode pads,
and he sensed that, if not for a muffling opiate layer, he’d be in
a world of pain. These discomforts dried up into ash and blew away.
“You were here for all that time?”
“Yes, I was.” A calm answer to a calm question, but Sasha
stopped flattening the sheet and took a fistful of it, crushing it
instead. “Where the fuck
else would I have been, Laurie?”
Laurie
inched towards him. Clara had him pinned down on one side, but he
could still reach far enough to lay a hand on Sasha’s face. “I’m
sorry. I’m sorry.”
“I thought you were dying, you bastard. For three
days.”
“I’m so sorry. Come here.”
Sasha
stood up. For a moment Laurie thought he would turn and walk away.
His face was wet with tears but almost expressionless beneath them,
as if the lonely fear of those three days had burned something out
of him. Then he sat down on the very edge of the bed. He glanced at
the IV tube, at its connections to the port in Laurie’s wrist and
the bag overhead, as if that had become a habit. Most of the
life-support machinery had now been rolled away, but if Sasha had
had three days here, Laurie was willing to bet he’d have learned
how it all worked. “They were good to you?” Laurie asked softly.
“The doctors and everyone—they let you stay?”
“They were great. They gave me pillows and a blanket so I could
sleep in the armchair over there.” He chuckled, shuddered. “I
could’ve had a ringside seat at your deathbed any time I
wanted.”
“And the papers you were working on—those were about Yosiri
Cuza?”
“Yes. He’s being recalled for a re-examination of his case.
He’s on his way back now with his wife and kids. I’m writing up a
report to show he’s of good character and deserves refugee status
here. Thanks for delivering my envelope.”
Laurie
swallowed. He couldn’t even take the whole credit for that. “I’m
glad it helped.”
“It did. Alan Briggs was fired for corruption. I’ve been
reinstated into my job, if I want it.”
“Good. That’s brilliant.” The words sounded so bloody lame.
Laurie was ashamed of them. Sasha saved him from having to find
more by suddenly letting go of his rigid poise on the bed. He put
his face into his hands. Laurie got an arm around him in time to
guide his collapse. “Oh, Sasha. Sweetheart.”
He
huddled against Laurie’s side. Clara gave a restless snuffle and he
held himself still, but she quieted again. His last constraints
dissolved. Blindly reaching out one arm, he encompassed as much of
Laurie and the kid as he could manage and held on. He broke into
bitter tears.
Laurie
tried to sit up. If he’d still been the dream-hawk in the Romanian
forest he could have spread his wings over both of them. But he was
tied down in wires and pain and couldn’t reach them. He had nothing
to muffle the sound of his own tears: one sob and then another rang
out harshly in the quiet room. He choked on the third and a pain
like something trying to unzip his skin shot down his back.
“Oh—fuck!”
Sasha
jerked his head up. “Loz! No, lie still, okay?” He dragged a hand
across his eyes and captured Laurie’s wrist before he could
dislodge the IV. “You have to keep that where it is.” He cupped his
palm around the back of Laurie’s neck and eased him back onto the
pillows. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you. You can’t move around too
much, and you can’t...” His voiced cracked, and he rested his brow
against Laurie’s for a moment, eyes closed tight. “You’ve got to
try not to cry.”
Laurie
wanted to ask him why. But one side of his face was burning as if
he’d just landed headfirst on gravel, and he flashed back to the
brick shed in the woods—to Stefan Petrica, and a gunshot so close
to his skull that the echoes of it were rebounding still. He’d
forgotten. He’d been shot in the face as well as the back. Sasha
was cautiously dabbing a tissue under his eye, along his jaw. “Is
that... Is it bad?”
“Is it hurting?”
“Mm.”
“You’re getting salt in it. Stop crying.”
“I will if you will.”
“Okay.” Sasha pressed a kiss to his mouth to try and seal that
shaky deal. “You’ve got a nick out of the skin over your cheekbone.
Some burns from the gunpowder too. It’s the least of your problems,
all right? You’ll still be my beautiful Laurie.”
Sasha
was right. The very least of Laurie’s problems. He nodded, then
lifted his head to seek another of those velvety kisses that tasted
of home, of sleepy, sunny awakenings in his lover’s arms. He was
still alive to feel them. “Yeah. It doesn’t matter, does
it?”
“Not one bit.”
“Bloody stupid thing to worry about.”
“Ridiculous.” Sasha kissed him again, lingeringly this time,
then hitched a resigned smile and sighed. “Want me to get you a
mirror?”
“Please.”
Together
they examined the damage. A dressing covered the worst of it, but
Laurie’s tears had soaked off the adhesive down one side. He drew
it back gingerly. There was a scarlet hole the size of a ten pence
piece, and surrounding it in a spray pattern—surreal, almost as if
someone had painted them on with the edge of a feather—blue-black
marks from the powder. “Jesus. Will it scar?”
“The doc said I should be honest with you if you asked about
that. It’ll get much better, but you’ll always have a mark. You’ll
wear it well—like a pirate, or...”
“If you say Action Man, I’ll kill you. There go the pretty-boy
parts.” Laurie shivered. “Not that that’ll be a problem—I’m
destined to be an exhibit in the Blood
Moon carnival for the rest of my
life.”
“What do you mean?”
Laurie
didn’t want to tell him. The land of the living wasn’t just
sunshine and sweet morning love. It was full of sharp-edged rocks,
a heap of them piled up where Laurie had left them, ready to fall.
“Douglas Brett sacked me. It was because of...”
“Because of the video.” Sasha wasn’t afraid of the rocks. His
arm was around Laurie’s shoulders: it tightened gently, bracing him
against the landslides. “But that’s a good thing, isn’t it? You
getting sacked, I mean.”
“Only off this movie. I didn’t check my contract properly when
I signed. If he makes any more in the series, I’m his for the
asking.”
“Oh, like crap you are. Let him sue you. I’ll pay your legal
bills, or...” Sasha reached to tousle Clara’s hair. “Or Clara will,
out of her pocket money. She’s already offered to buy you out of
the film you’re doing now.”
“Has she, the little Rockefeller?”
“Mm. You do have one letter from the states, actually—Mrs Trent
went home to check the mail for us, and—”
“Who did?”
“You’re hopeless, aren’t you, your lordship? The former Mrs G,
your lifelong family servant.”
“Oh.” Laurie blushed, the warmth of his blood making his face
sting again. “Gibson was here?”
“She wept by your bed for three hours. Then she told the
cleaning staff off for leaving some dust on your window sill, blew
her nose and started doing errands. The docs said you shouldn’t be
bothered with too much from the outside world, but...”
“I’d better see the letter. Is it from Ivory Gate?”
“No, it’s not their logo on the envelope. Some kind of legal
firm, looks like.”
“Oh, great.” Laurie took the envelope from Sasha. Someone—Mrs
G, maybe—had restored the leather satchel to him, and the sight of
it almost undid Laurie’s fragile calm. He had to learn to let the
rocks fall, though, roll with the impact of the things that he’d
done. “Let’s have a look, then.”