Chapter One
Sharon
Boys Don’t Cry by The Cure
“Fucking work you bastard!” I slam a fist against the glass front of the vending machine. It does nothing but shudder in response.
I don’t need this. I really don’t fucking need this right now.
“Ouch,” a voice says from behind me. I turn to see a short female nurse standing by my side.
Her sky-blue dress uniform looks neatly pressed and her black hair is pulled up in a twist at the back of her head.
The hat all female nurses have to wear is pinned on top of the updo and she looks far too fresh-faced to have worked more than an hour.
With dark hair, a small nose and deep-set eyes that are assessing and cool, I would hazard a guess that she’s of Chinese origin but I could absolutely be wrong about that.
What I’m not wrong about is how much she is judging me for committing grievous bodily harm against a vending machine.
I should apologise. But I won’t. I am too stressed right now and I need my snacks.
“It just swallowed my pound coin and isn’t giving me my crisps or chocolate bar,” I point out.
“How rude of it,” she says with more than a hint of sarcasm.
She steps closer and I realise then that she’s shorter than me, which not many women are.
She’s also smaller than me in clothes size – an eight at a guess – but that’s not unusual at all.
I also inhale a stark floral scent that I can’t place.
Lilies, perhaps? It’s strong but not completely unpleasant. “Have you tried asking it nicely?”
I cock an eyebrow at her. We are much too unacquainted to be bantering like this. But if she can help me get my Wotsits and Danny’s Marathon bar…
“You know a trick that I don’t?” I ask, although it doesn’t sound much like a question because I can already see the answer in her growingly smug expression.
“It’s a little… fragile,” she says as she moves directly in front of me, so close I have no choice but to fall back.
Because I can’t stand that close to her and her smell, which is definitely lilies, and maybe a hint of jasmine, is just like the flowers that grew on the trellis surrounding the front door of my childhood home.
The home I haven’t returned to in many years. “Like all of us on this ward.”
It’s like a bucket of cold water being thrown over me, this reminder of why I’m here. Why she’s here. Why Danny’s here.
“I can imagine,” I mumble.
“But we’re stronger than we look.” The nurse grabs both sides of the vending machine and before words of warning can tumble out of my open mouth, she pulls it towards her, balancing it on its front legs.
Somehow she holds its weight long enough for my crisps and my chocolate bar to dislodge themselves and tumble down to the bottom.
She releases the machine and it rocks back into place with a thud.
“There you go,” she says and when she turns to me her smugness has reached new levels.
God, I hope she’s not Danny’s nurse. I’m sure she’s very good at her job and she clearly knows what she’s doing when it comes to rescuing snacks, but I don’t think I could cope with so much self-righteousness in my face. Not to mention that lingering smell.
“Won’t I get in trouble if I do that and someone sees?” I have to ask because if I’m going to get through the next few days or however long Danny is here, I’m going to need my daily intake of crisps and confectionery.
“Do what?”
“Move the vending machine like that.”
“Like I said, sometimes it works fine. And sometimes it doesn’t,” she shrugs before pulling a fifty pence piece out of her pocket.
“Wait!” I jump forward and put my hand over the machine’s console. “My change.”
“Oh, so sorry. Wouldn’t have dreamed of taking that for myself what with all the millions of pounds I make as a charge nurse.”
I resist the urge to look directly at her face to see just how much of that obvious sarcasm is replicated in her features.
I push the button for my change and it tinkles down into the dispenser just below. Pocketing it, I give her one last look.
She’s smiling at me. Not with me. At me. Like her smile is a weapon.
“Well, good luck with your unpredictable, fragile vending machine,” I say before turning on my heel and hoping I never have to see her ever again.
“You forgot something!” she calls out and despite myself, despite that haughty tone of hers, I turn around and face her.
“What?”
“Your chocolate and crisps.” She points to the bottom of the vending machine.
Fuck, I hiss under my breath.
I walk back and bend down to pick up my snacks, my arm getting wedged in the bucket uncomfortably. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt normally, but with this woman’s eyes on me, I feel certain the metal flap is going to bruise me.
I stand and avoid her face before turning and walking away again.
“Not even going to say thank you?”
I freeze and rack my brain. Surely I said thank you. But I don’t actually recall doing so.
“Fine.” I look over my shoulder and see her staring at me, at my less-than-perfect rear view.
She’s probably judging me for the size of my arse.
She’s probably determining my BMI on the spot and labelling me obese.
She’s probably scolding me for buying snacks when I should be losing weight. “Thank you,” I say, tightly.
Her smile is sickeningly sweet. As in, it actually flips my stomach and almost nukes what hunger I had for my Wotsits.
“You’re welcome,” she calls out and then, as if dismissing me from her thoughts completely, she turns back to the vending machine and inserts her money.
“Ugh,” I groan and walk back to Danny with a frown so deep it hurts my forehead.
*****
Danny’s asleep when I return to his bedside. I’m not surprised, and I also shouldn’t be disappointed. But I am. I wanted to tell him all about that nightmare nurse I just met. A pint-sized Florence Fucking Nightingale with superhuman strength.
But Danny needs his sleep. He needs his rest.
He needs to get better.
He will get better.
My resolve is loud in my head, but it’s weak in my body as I fall into the chair positioned between his bed and the blue-patterned curtain I’ve pulled around us.
One of the older wards in Queen Street West Hospital in Notting Hill, which was originally built in the late 1800s, Princess Diana Ward is one of the very few AIDS-dedicated wards in London, and in the entire country.
A typical Victorian hospital ward, the ceilings are tall and so are the windows, but the makeshift curtail rails that divide the space up into cubicles mean nobody has a whole window to themselves.
In fact, nobody has much of anything to themselves because the flimsy curtains don’t provide any kind of privacy or quiet when it comes to some of the more unpleasant noises that fill the ward.
Men moaning and groaning, the occasional yelp of discomfort, confused mutterings that could be innocent sleep-talking or a sign of something much more serious.
The curtains really are just for show. The patients – all of whom are men, I believe – are in this together, whether they like it or not.
I sigh and it sinks my body further into the chair.
I feel like a sack of potatoes and I know I don’t look much different, in my cream jeans that cling to my lower body in all the wrong places, and a white, yellow and grey plaid shirt that stretches over my stomach and breasts, not to mention my hair which I stupidly dyed peroxide blonde a few months ago.
It stubbornly still hasn’t grown out. I’m sure Florence Fucking Nightingale had an opinion on my roots.
But who gives a fuck what she thinks? Who gives a fuck about anything but how Danny is doing? Which is, by any interpretation, not great.
I knew we should have come to the hospital sooner. I knew it was serious. I knew it was the start of… something.
When Danny tested positive for HIV six months ago, we told ourselves he would be fine, that he would have years, that there would be more developments by the time the virus morphed into AIDS.
He took his AZT and he stopped smoking. I cooked him nutritious meals and bought him supplements.
We went on evening walks together and drank tonic water in the pub rather than beer.
We looked after his health like the doctor told us to.
We read about men who had been diagnosed as positive four, five, six years ago and they were still yet to experience symptoms.
But we don’t know how long Danny has had the virus.
He told me he got tested regularly and it was always negative.
But he lied. He lied for a long time.
Even with his two friends from acting classes getting positive results, he didn’t go.
When Hugh became so sick he returned to Cardiff to get looked after by his nan, Danny and I talked all night about how relentless the virus was, but he still didn’t get tested.
Even when his other close friend from that class, Oliver, keeled over in the restaurant where he worked and died of what was later confirmed as AIDS-related meningitis, Danny didn’t think to go get tested.
I’m not sure I can even blame him. When your greatest fear gets that close, you’re hardly going to open the door and invite it in for a cup of tea.
He finally got tested after his cough worsened and wouldn’t go away all winter.
He finally got tested after I told him to, because “the chances are you’re negative after all these years of negative results and it’s just a cold so what do you have to worry about?
” I just wanted us to have that peace of mind.
But I was wrong. I was wrong because he lied.
I’m not angry about that. I’m angry the world put so much fear into him that he chose not to go and get that test again and again and again. Even when it was offered to him. He said no.
I don’t blame him. If it was me, I probably would have done the same thing. I’m good at putting my head in the sand. I’ve done it my whole life.
It’s probably why I’m a twenty-seven-year-old virgin who’s still never been kissed.