Chapter Three
Sharon
The Look by Roxette
I have got to stop working in the ward, I think, as I roll my head for the umpteenth time since I’ve been sitting at this bus stop in the dark.
It’s not good for my back and I’m hardly focused when there are ominous noises echoing off the walls.
I’ve heard grown men make all sorts of sounds over the last few days.
Desperate calls for help, groans expressing how much something hurts, loud, bone-shaking sobs as they…
I don’t know, experience some godawful symptom, discover a new lesion or maybe, maybe, just face up to what their futures hold.
What Danny’s future holds.
I can’t say if I start crying again or if I just didn’t stop after I sat down here and waited for the number 94 to take me home.
Except two number 94s have come and gone and I haven’t got on them.
I can’t seem to make myself leave the hospital that stands behind me, all grey concrete and orangey-yellow illuminated windows.
That’s why I’ve been working in the waiting room.
Because I want to stay close to Danny, even when I can no longer be by his bedside once visiting hours end.
I sniff and wipe my eyes on the back of my hand. I should be carrying tissues. I should bulk buy a ton of them. God knows I’m going to need them. I’ll add it to my list.
When I move my hand away, I see a figure in the distance approaching the bus stop. I really don’t want to have company right now, even if it’s just a…
Oh, fuck. It’s her. Florence Fucking Nightingale.
To my dismay she doesn’t keep walking by me down the street but she comes to perch on another seat at the bus stop. Admittedly the seat furthest away, but fuck, there goes my opportunity to cry in peace.
I wait for her to say something. To tell me off for working in the waiting room – I know she saw me at least once – or maybe to bollock me again for asking about repeating that blood test. But she doesn’t say anything.
She simply clutches her bag to her closely and stares straight ahead into the passing traffic.
Well, I’m not going to say anything to her, I decide with all the spite my body can muster, which is a considerable amount. Too much, perhaps.
But it’s hard to feel anything but angry at her, at myself, at the world now I know Danny has AIDS.
The doctor answered my question from my list yesterday about what the future could look like – “impossible to say, every journey is unique” – and I’m still reeling from how useless an answer that was.
Calling it a journey, describing it as unique, like we’re talking about a round-the-world cruise or something. It made me want to spit feathers.
It did cross my mind that this Kate Chiu actually didn’t ask the doctor my questions and rather answered them herself in her brisk and blunt tone, but Danny had assured me she had asked each one and made accurate notes.
He also reminded me that he’s not incapable of asking his own questions, of managing his own health, but that’s not what I’m doing. As his nearest and dearest, really the only family he’s got right now, I want to have as much information as I possibly can. Information is power.
And it’s not just that I’m the only family Danny’s got.
It’s that he’s the only family I’ve got.
That stark realisation releases a sudden hiccup of a sob from my body.
It’s an ugly noise, all guttural and loud enough to be heard over the roar of a passing double-decker bus on the opposite side of the road.
It jolts me forward and I clap my hand to my mouth as if to stop any more such noises.
I certainly don’t want Florence Nightingale to see me like this.
But it’s too late. In my peripheral vision I see her turn towards me. I close my eyes tightly, as if not being able to see her will make me invisible to her, but that only squeezes out more tears.
“It’s okay to be upset,” she says a beat later when there’s a break in the traffic.
“I know that,” I snap back.
Silence falls again and I want to make the most of this time to stop crying, to stop looking weak in front of her, but it seems impossible. It’s like the floodgates have opened on my tears and nothing I do can slow their flow.
“Here,” her voice says again and I finally let myself turn towards her. She’s holding out a folded tissue.
I stare at it for a moment, weighing up what it would cost me to take it. Does it give her some strange advantage over me? Will I never hear the end of it tomorrow when I come to visit Danny again?
But then I feel snot start to trickle out of my nose and I’m suddenly more mortified at the prospect of her seeing that than I am about anything else. I take the tissue, being careful not to let my fingers touch hers.
After I’ve dabbed at my eyes and blown my nose, I hear her scoff.
“You really are terrible at saying thank you.” She shakes her head.
“Thank. You,” I tut and then I have to bite my lip to stop myself smiling, or, worse, laughing, because I think that’s the third time I’ve said those words in such a disingenuous way to her. So maybe she isn’t completely to blame for our clashes.
“You’re. Welcome,” she says and that urge to laugh grows when I note how she’s repeating her own tight reply.
Silence returns, and this time my tears do disappear.
Another 94 comes and goes. At least she’s not waiting for the same bus as me.
I know I need to get on the next one. I need to get home.
I need to do another hour of work. Iron and fold some clean clothes for Danny.
Eat something more nutritious than cereal or SlimFast. I need to find a way to make this work with the rest of my life, because it is my life now.
“How do you do it?” I ask without looking at her.
“Do what?”
“Work there, on that ward.”
She sighs. “Do you mean because of the risk to myself?”
I turn to her then. “No, not that,” I say.
If I’m honest, that hadn’t crossed my mind once since the first time I saw her touch Danny so gently.
I just assumed the staff is careful and, of course, they know more than most how to avoid transmission.
“I mean because of the sadness of it all. The illness. The loss. The death.”
It feels like I should win a prize for saying that last word.
“AIDS patients aren’t the only people dying, you know.” She says it with a tone that I realise is more honest than harsh, but still it bristles. “No matter where I worked, I’d be dealing with all that – illness, loss, sadness, death – on a daily basis.”
I think about that for a moment, and then stop myself when I realise I’m trying to find a way to argue with her, but I can’t.
“What do you do?” Her question surprises me.
“I’m a PA. Personal Assistant.”
“Oh. For just one person?”
“Yes, to the Managing Director of Royal Crescent Bank.”
“Of which branch?”
I huff out a laugh but then swallow it when I see the innocence in her face. “The Managing Director of the whole bank. In the City.”
“Oh,” she turns to look straight ahead again. “I see. That must be a demanding job.”
This time I don’t hold back a quick, jeering laugh. “Not as demanding as your job. You literally save lives for a living.”
Kate’s face becomes completely blank. Empty. Lost. “Not as many lives as I’d like.”
I clamp my mouth shut, realising how stupid what I just said was, but my stubborn streak has me refusing to admit it, least of all apologise for it.
So I don’t say anything and after looking down the road to see if a bus is coming – it isn’t – I pull out the final report I still have to edit for my boss and start reading.
I’m not sure if she does it because I’m now reading something, but Kate pulls a magazine out of her bag and opens it up. At first I don’t look at her. I don’t care what she’s reading. I just feel relieved that I no longer have to talk to her.
But then curiosity gets the better of me, and it’s not about her magazine. It’s about her. I want to look at her.
Under the golden glow of the streetlight above us, her features have a sepia hue to them, like an old photo.
I realise then that that’s what she looks like: timeless.
Her skin is pure and unblemished. Her mouth is small and has a perfect Cupid’s bow top lip.
Her chin is pointed like the flawless tip of a heart.
And when she looks down at the comic she’s holding out in front of her, her dark eyelashes kiss the top of her full cheeks.
Wait. Comic.
I lean a little closer.
“Lady Phantom?” I say before I can stop myself.
Kate closes the comic and studies the cover before turning towards me. “Yes. And?”
“Is it… is it the latest edition?” I haven’t been able to get one yet and I just know when I go on Saturday all my usual shops will be sold out.
“It is.” Her eyes narrow at me. “Do you read Lady Phantom?”
“I love Lady Phantom.” More words spill out of me involuntarily along with a mortifyingly gushy-sounding sigh. “She’s the best.”
The corner of Kate’s mouth twitches, just once. “She is pretty cool. Although I have a soft spot for the Director.”
“Oh, yeah,” I nod with a light laugh. “She’s hilarious.”
“I sort of have this hope that they’ll become a real pair.” Kate’s gaze turns heavy and almost hypnotic. “You know, like… lovers.”
My jaw drops open and then I turn my body towards her, shoving the report back in my bag. “I have been literally wanting that to happen since they introduced the Director in issue five.”
“The Phantom Makes a Friend? I loved that issue.”
“I know. I really thought they were going to make Phantom some lone wolf, which would have been so cool, because isn’t that the whole point of her, to prove to us that women can be who they want to be, independent and self-determining and just generally completely fine all on their own?
” Kate nods thoughtfully. “But then when the Director saved her from the Rogue Ghost, I found that even more powerful, because maybe we’re not supposed to do everything on our own.
Maybe it’s okay to ask and accept help every now and then. ”
“You got all that from issue five?” Kate shakes her head. “I just liked how they were basically scissoring when the Director frees her from the conveyor belt she was tied down to.”
My mouth falls open again and it takes quite a lot of effort to close it. Did Kate just say that? Out loud?
“Oh, don’t look so shocked. You’re gay, aren’t you?” Kate tuts at me and it pokes the bear that she so easily turns me into.
“So what if I am?”
“We’re literally talking about two women falling in love, so why would me saying scissoring shock you?”
I barely blink that time but still, I feel the reaction inside me. All heat and fullness and a sort of antsy feeling like I have an itch I desperately need to scratch but I don’t know where it is.
“It didn’t shock me, I just wasn’t expecting it, that’s all. And I certainly didn’t see it that way.”
“Hmm,” Kate opens the comic back up again. “You’ll see it now,” she says to the pages in front of her. “Next time you read Lady Phantom you’ll see the hints everywhere. They are totally going to end up together.”
“But that would be…”
“Scandalous?” She looks at me again and I see something in her dark eyes I’ve not seen before. Excitement. Joy. Delight. It brightens her whole face and, damn it, it also melts a piece of me.
“Yes,” I say. “Which is why they’ll never do it. We don’t even have a gay man superhero.”
Kate scoffs, loudly. “They’re all queer as far as I’m concerned.
” I flinch at that other word. One that more and more people seem to throw around these days, but it’s always been a word that provokes deep discomfort in me.
Thankfully, Kate is oblivious. “I mean you only have to look at what they’re wearing. All that Lycra? Please.”
I smile to myself. “Danny always says that Batman and Robin have a clear top and bottom dynamic.”
“Exactly. Look, I’m not saying that they’ll actually have them kissing on the page, but they’re going to keep dropping hints. They’re going to make it as clear as they can. So, keep your eyes open.”
“I will, but…” I feel my shoulders drop, “don’t be disappointed if that doesn’t happen. Lady Phantom is getting more popular – she sells out every week – and you know when these superheroes go mainstream they will have to play by the rules.”
Kate wrinkles her nose. “I hate playing by the rules.”
I snort. “That doesn’t surprise me. Apart from, obviously, the rules of your ward.”
Her head snaps towards me. “We have those rules for a reason.”
“All rules exist for a reason, which is why I’ll say again, don’t be disappointed when they give Lady Phantom a male love interest.”
Kate shrugs. “They can do that, as long as they keep dropping hints about her really being in love with the Director.”
I shake my head and then stretch forward. There’s a bus coming. It’s a 94.
“I guess we’ll both just have to wait and see,” I say as I stand and gather my bags. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I suppose.”
Kate nods at me, and she’s back to the brisk, firm and dismissive nurse she was on the ward. “See you tomorrow.”
Her head is back in the comic before the bus has even pulled up.
I turn back to ask her if I can borrow that edition one day this week, but then realise how stupid that would be.
I’ll find a copy eventually, somehow. The last thing I need is to feel like I owe Florence Fucking Nightingale something.