Chapter Five
Sharon
Breakout by Swing Out Sister
“So you know how I’m basically dying, right?”
I lower the tattered copy of Woman’s Own I stole from the waiting room and stare at Danny. I’d thought he was asleep.
“You’re not dying. The doctor said you’re responding well to antibiotics and you could get discharged tomorrow.”
“Yes, but I have AIDS. I’m still dying.”
“We’re all dying.” I throw the magazine onto the bed and prop my feet up on its edge too. Danny gives my Doc Martens a look and then glances back at me, making his brown eyes big and endearing.
“But I’m dying faster,” he says with a little pout. “The least you could do is let me win this race. I never win races on account of my underdeveloped calves.”
“You do not have underdeveloped calves.” I tut. “Fine. I will let you win this race.”
Even if it makes my stomach lurch. Even if it sends a stab of pain into my heart every time I think about it. Even if it might kill me too.
“Well, could you do me a favour?”
“A better favour than picking out the best of the waiting room’s magazines and bringing them to you?
Look, this one is from 1988! Practically recent!
You want another favour on top of the daily Marathon bars I buy you, each of which involves me practically shagging the vending machine to release your contraband? ”
“A much better favour than both of those.” He’s still giving me those puppy-dog eyes. “I want to go for a fag.”
“Oh, Danny, no.” I shake my head and plant my feet on the ground again. “You can’t smoke. That would be—”
“Stupid? Dangerous? A risk to my health?”
I purse my lips. “I can see what you’re doing.”
“Then just help me do it,” he hisses.
“Why do you even need my help? Plenty of patients go to the smoking room for a cigarette. I see – and smell – them every day when I arrive.”
“I don’t want to smoke there. Too depressing.
Let’s go outside. We can call it a fresh air break.
But I need your help, I’m…” his gaze drops and he twiddles his thumbs on his lap.
For a second he looks so much younger than his twenty-eight years and I have an urge to scoop him up and take him away from all of this, as impossible as that is. “I’m scared of Nurse Chiu.”
A jolt of electricity courses through me at the mention of her name. I hadn’t seen her when I arrived this morning and I still can’t decipher if it was relief or disappointment I felt. I also can’t explain why I keep glancing at my watch, waiting for the curtain to be yanked open.
“She may not even be working today,” I tell him. “I haven’t seen her. Have you?”
I think my question sounds innocent enough.
“No, but she has a habit of just appearing.”
I snort. “That’s true.”
“Also.” His eyes are soft and big again but his pleading look doesn’t seem quite as put-on as before.
“It’s a long way. I mean, it’s not, but it is for me and two days ago when we went out for some fresh air you insisted I was in a wheelchair and I know I made a fuss about it but…
yeah, I think I could just do with somebody to walk with me. Just in case.”
I hate the way his voice shrank when explaining that.
“Fine, I will accompany you,” I say before pointing my finger at him. “But no smoking. That’s literally the last thing that will help right now.”
Danny rolls his eyes. “If you say so.”
“Right,” I stand up. “Should I get the wheelchair, just in case?”
“No, I want to try.” Danny shifts himself in the bed and his legs fall out of the side.
He’s slow-moving getting up and it gives me too much time to see how the pyjamas I brought him from home seem baggier than the last time he wore them.
I hover near him until he finds his stride and then I move slightly ahead and open the curtain for us to walk through.
We walk slowly, side by side, past the long row of curtains on either side which block off beds, all of which I’d noticed were full the first day we came here.
A few of the curtains are open and I give what I hope are discreet half-glances at the people lying or sitting up in the beds.
From the five or six I see, it’s impossible not to note that they’re all men, they’re all young – in their twenties or thirties if I had to guess – and they’re all alone.
I’ve read countless articles about how AIDS is wiping out so many of this demographic, and those articles have chilled my bones, but it’s quite another thing to witness it first-hand.
To see with your own eyes the type of people affected.
And to see that so many of them are alone, even during hospital visiting hours.
Danny has slowed a little and it takes me a moment to realise, which I’m grateful for.
It gives me half a chance to compose myself so by the time I’ve turned and fallen back into step with him, I’ve sniffed away a few rogue tears.
As we approach the lifts, I can’t help but give the nurses’ station a quick once-over.
There’s no sign of Florence Fucking Nightingale.
Again I feel a weird mix of relief and disappointment and I immediately dismiss both.
I don’t know the woman; why am I letting her affect me so much?
Fine, so she likes women, she likes Lady Phantom, and it’s undeniable that those cold stares she gives me do something to the lower half of my body.
None of that means anything. She’s arrogant, unreasonably rude, and has made it blatantly clear just how little patience she has for me.
And yet after I saw her reading the comic at the bus stop, I did start to wonder if we could be…
not friends, exactly, but not the enemies we seem to have made out of each other.
We have things in common – Danny’s welfare, Lady Phantom and apparently a possible gay subplot between her and the Director – and it could be greatly advantageous if I felt more comfortable asking her questions about Danny’s care.
Also, I don’t know any women who like women in London.
In fact, I don’t know any other gay or bisexual women, full stop.
It would be nice not to make a foe out of the first one who crosses my path.
But that’s foolish. I’m not here to make friends. I’m here to help Danny get better.
We descend in the lift in silence. Danny is firmly gripping the metal bar on his side and I try to avoid looking in the mirrored walls because the temptation to judge him too unwell to do this is too great. I have to trust he’ll tell me if he doesn’t feel up to this.
There are a small number of more corridors to navigate on the ground floor before we finally emerge outside and I wish I didn’t now know exactly where to go. I wish I had the novelty of not knowing this hospital so well already.
As we walk slowly out of the main entrance on Queen Street and down the ramp that leads to a couple of benches where there are already patients sitting, and smoking, Danny reaches for my arm.
Without saying anything, he tucks his hand into the inside of my elbow and squeezes me.
Or rather, he tries to. There’s next to no strength in it. I bite back a sigh.
I sit Danny down on one of the benches and then stand to the side.
There’s not quite enough room for my large backside next to him and the other patients there.
I nod silent greetings to a few of them and the people with them, and then I look back at Danny…
who is pulling a packet of Marlboro Red out of his pocket.
“Daniel Lewis Morgan!” I exclaim before propping my hands on my hips. “You promised.”
“I did,” he admits with only a sliver of remorse on his face. He puts a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. “But I’m already going to hell according to most of this country so I may as well try to get one of the good seats.”
The woman beside him snorts. Heat rises in my cheeks. Am I making a big deal out of this?
No. No, I’m not. The man has pneumonia for fuck’s sake.
I reach over and grab the cigarette from between his lips. He sighs forlornly and then puts another in his mouth.
The woman next to him snorts again. Well, I’m glad someone is enjoying this show because I am not.
“What about everything we’ve been doing for the last six months?” I ask Danny, keeping my voice as low and level as I can. “You just want to undo all that hard work we’ve been doing to boost your immune system? To give yourself a fighting chance?”
Danny leans back against the bench. “It’s swimming upstream, Sharon. I’m basically a hapless pink salmon. This virus is going to do what the fuck it wants, when it wants. It’s AIDS, Shaz, not a common cold.”
The woman stands and, with a look that could kill, shuffles away from us.
Oh well, at least I can sit down now.
“But you could have years and years and years ahead of you.” I try to sound convincing, I really do.
Danny holds my eye contact before he speaks again. “Or I could only have weeks or months.”
I hold his gaze until a coughing fit squeezes his eyes shut and has him covering his mouth. His body shakes and the rattling noise of his chest somehow manages to drown out the passing traffic.
It feels like a terrible thing to do, but I take full advantage of his indisposition to swipe the other cigarette from his admittedly loose grip.
“You are still not going to smoke,” I tell him. “Not while I’m around you anyway. And by the way, I plan on being around a lot.”
He groans and I’m not sure if it’s because of this declaration or because of the coughing.
I glance at my watch. “Come on. If you want to walk, we should walk. I only have thirty more minutes and then visiting hours are over.”
“You know you don’t have to come,” he says, voice strained. “Not every day.”
I blink at him even though he’s not looking at me. “But I want to.”
“You have a life, Sharon. A job. A boss you don’t like. A mortgage to pay. And at some point I’d like it if you could meet a woman.”
“You and me both,” I mutter, “but that’s not important right now. Your health is important.”
He makes a loud tutting sound, and I turn to him to expect a scathing look but instead he’s staring at the passing traffic with nothing but despondency.
I open my mouth to say more, to tell him something that will make him feel better, but I don’t have anything. No words. No jokes. No quippy retorts. Instead I close my lips, look down at the two cigarettes in my hand and, yet again, fight the urge to cry.
I need to do better than this. I need to get stronger for Danny. I need to…
“I see one of my patients is trying to escape.”
A clipped voice fills my ears and, next to me, Danny’s whole body tenses.
“Nurse Chiu,” he says and I look up to see her standing in front of us, a woollen cardigan over her uniform and her hair down. It floats around her shoulders, jet-black and blowing in the breeze.
“Hello, Danny,” she says, much more softly. In fact, when I finally take my eyes off her hair, I see she’s smiling. “Enjoying some of London’s finest fresh air?”
She inhales for effect and I realise she’s being… sarcastic. She’s joking with us. Or with Danny at least.
“Well, actually, I was hoping to pollute my lungs a little more with a cigarette.” He raises his pack slightly.
“Oh, I see.” Kate drops the smile but it’s impossible to say what kind of expression replaces it.
“I told him he shouldn’t,” I jump in. I don’t feel the need to defend myself; rather I want her to know I stopped him before she assumes the opposite and fires more sharp words at me.
She doesn’t reply to me, just turns her head and studies me like she’s just realised I’m also here.
Charming.
“Why are you trying to stop a grown man from doing what he wants?” She asks me so coolly I swear the temperature drops.
“I’m not trying to—”
“Yes, you were,” Danny butts in and I don’t need to see his face to know he’s smiling. I can hear it.
“But surely smoking is a terrible idea? He couldn’t even breathe without oxygen four days ago!” I point out.
Kate Chiu shrugs. “What’s one cigarette going to do?”
I narrow my eyes on her. Surely she’s not condoning this.
“In fact,” she pulls back the sleeve of her cardigan to reveal a small gold watch, “do you have a spare? I could do with one before I head up there. Got a meeting before my shift starts so I’m looking at fourteen hours on my feet.”
My jaw drops.
“Of course, Nurse Chiu,” Danny nudges me. “Sharon.”
I remember the two cigarettes in my hand. Dumbfoundedly, I open up my palm and present them to Kate and Danny.
“Please.” Kate looks at Danny as she reaches for one of the cigarettes. Her nails dance over my palm and annoyingly, frustratingly, it makes my hand shiver. “Call me Kate.”
“Alright, Kate,” Danny says as he picks up the remaining cigarette and pops it in his mouth. “Do you have a light?”
She shakes her head, mutters something about giving up years ago and then she’s moving to ask a nearby patient for a lighter. When she returns she has a lit match that they both lean close to.
“Is this really fucking happening?” I ask and turn to Danny. “Are you actually smoking with your charge nurse?”
Danny exhales a cloud of smoke away from me. A smile breaks out on his face. “Looks like it.”
I’ve not seen him smile like that in a long time.
When I turn away, because seeing that smile and realising how long it’s been just hurts too damn much, I catch a grin on Kate’s face. But it doesn’t seem to be one of pleasure. It’s a smile of triumph and glee.
I was right. Thinking of Kate Chiu as anything close to a friend is completely and utterly foolish.