Chapter Thirty-Four
Sharon
Here Comes the Rain Again by The Eurythmics
The ward is rarely quiet, but right now I’m absently aware that it’s close to completely silent. Too silent at any rate, because it’s quiet enough that I can hear each and every one of Danny’s desperate, rasping breaths.
It’s been like this for nearly a whole day. Danny lying still and mostly unconscious in his bed, taking one difficult breath after another. And other than going to the toilet and fetching sustenance for myself from the nurses’ staff room or the infamous vending machine, I’ve barely moved either.
Kate didn’t come with me yesterday after Orla called.
She stayed at my flat and waited for her uniforms to dry, and then she appeared in the afternoon with them in one bag, her overnight things – and that Magic, magic Wand too – in another, and then with a final other bag that contained several changes of clothes, some toiletries and a couple of Lady Phantom editions for me.
“These ones are my favourites,” she had said as she’d dropped them off by the chair I’m sitting in now.
She’d stayed until the sun had gone down, and I was more grateful than I could ever express for the company. For her explaining how Danny could likely still hear me, for her telling me he wasn’t in any pain, for her bringing me cups of tea, even if I didn’t drink them.
It had been strange to see her sitting on the opposite side of Danny’s bed in jeans and an off-the-shoulder sweater, her hair down and a pair of pumps on her feet.
She’d looked effortlessly beautiful, but still a little out of place.
This ward doesn’t feel quite right without her marching up and down in her uniform so it was no small comfort to see her earlier this morning, all dressed up and with her hair in that familiar chignon.
She hadn’t stayed long. The ward was still very busy, but I knew that every moment she could, she was popping her head around the curtain to check on us.
Each time I know I should ask her how long she thinks he has left. I know I should have asked yesterday. But I can’t. I just can’t.
I also can’t seem to cry, even though my eyes feel permanently hot and tight, like they’ve been open a bit too long. I crave the release that crying would bring and occasionally I’ve hidden away in the toilets hoping tears would come, but they don’t. Perhaps I’m waiting for… after.
After. I can’t think about after. I don’t want to live in an after.
An after without Danny, and selfishly, an after without Kate, because what else do we have tying us together but this ward and Danny and shitty, fucking AIDS?
I berate myself for thinking about Kate like that in a moment like this.
I scold myself for being selfish. Just months ago I would have given my right arm to have experienced what Kate has given me – sex, intimacy, a woman to love and to hold – how dare I want more? How dare I think I’m entitled to more?
“Shaz.” A croak interrupts my thoughts.
I stare blankly at Danny as I see his eyes flicker open, chocolate brown orbs looking at me.
“Danny,” I stand, “you’re awake. Are you… what do you need?”
His smile is tired, but real. “A gin and tonic would be nice,” he says eventually and very, very slowly. As he continues, his voice continues to be slow and painfully laboured, but I don’t interrupt. I want to hear everything. “With a cigarette and a beautiful man or woman on my lap.”
I grin back at him. “Let me see if I can organise the drink. I’m not so sure about the ciggie or the… company.”
“You’re here,” he says and he almost sounds surprised.
“Where else would I be?”
His Adam’s Apple shudders as he swallows with some effort. “With Florence Fucking Nightingale.”
A voice comes from behind me. “Florence Fucking Nightingale is here too.”
Kate’s standing in the small opening of the curtain, watching us with those endless brown eyes.
“Oh God,” Danny groans, “you’re one of those couples. Inseparable and insufferable.”
His eyes close and I half-expect, half-want him to fall asleep. It looks like talking costs him so much.
“But I’m glad,” he adds and his eyes open slightly with another exhausted and exhausting smile.
“You need to rest,” I tell him, squeezing his wrist.
“I need…” He doesn’t finish that sentence. Or maybe he does because his next word is, “Mum.”
It’s my turn to swallow with considerable effort.
“She’s on her way.” I brush his hair off his face.
I wish the dark marks his lesions left weren’t there.
I wish he hadn’t lost so much weight. I wish he was still the beautiful man he used to be.
It seems an exceptionally unfair additional cruelty that he can’t be that man at this moment in time.
“She’s coming very soon. Told me she wants to see her beautiful Danny boy. ”
He leans into my touch, and closes his eyes again. When his lips part a moment later, I know he’s fallen back asleep, for real this time.
I look back at Kate, who is still stood there watching us.
Her eyes are wet and I nearly shout at her, that no, she can’t cry.
Not her. I need her stern words and blunt banter and matter-of-fact efficiency.
I need her to be the bossy woman who provoked so much rage in me when we first met I could feel my blood boil in my veins but now, now she’s a lighthouse in the worst storm of my life.
Now she’s the only thing I think is keeping me from falling apart.
Maybe she picks up on this from my expression but in a heartbeat she’s blinked and her face is stoic once more.
“This may happen,” she explains. “He will fall in and out of consciousness and sometimes he’ll seem quite lucid.”
“But it won’t last,” I say. I had intended it to be a question but it comes out very much as a statement.
“It won’t last,” she confirms. “But… nothing lasts forever, you know.”
I hold her gaze, trying to determine if she’s talking about Danny, about life, or about us. Whatever the truth, it hurts. I look away, bringing a hand to my chest, and rub at the ache.
“Sharon,” she says and I turn back to her. “Can we talk outside?”
I glance back at Danny and when I stand, it feels like I’m physically pulling against a thread that connects me to him. It’s a relief when Kate doesn’t move further away than just the other side of the curtain.
She waits a beat before talking, her dark eyes searching my face for… something.
“She’s not coming, is she?”
“What? Who?”
“His mum,” she whispers, but she may as well have shot the word like an arrow.
“No,” I admit and it feels like my whole body could collapse with the relief and shame of confessing. “She’s not.”
More concern creases Kate’s brow. “What happened?”
“She…” I can’t repeat these words. I can’t. Not when Danny is clinging to life the way he is.
“Sharon,” Kate pushes me.
“Fine,” I snap. “She said he was already dead to her.”
I don’t hear Kate’s sharp inhale but I see her chest rise and then I see her hold that breath inside.
“Fucking hell,” she says in a whisper.
“Yeah,” I say, keeping my voice a low hiss. “How am I supposed to tell him that?”
“I don’t know, but you have to tell him she’s not coming.”
My jaw falls open. “What? No. No, I can’t do that. That would…” I tut and sigh, frustrated with her, frustrated with myself, frustrated with every damn thing. “He needs something to hold onto. He needs to believe she’s coming.”
“It’s not going to keep him alive, Sharon,” she says gently but each word is another arrow to the heart. “Just because you don’t want to lose him, just because you’re scared—”
“Scared? I’m scared!?” I raise my voice. “You want to talk about being scared, Kate?”
Her mouth closes and goes very small.
“Because how dare you lecture me about being scared when you are terrified of even thinking about a future with me!” I’m not shouting, but I’m not being quiet either.
Kate looks around us. “Not here,” she says and without another word she walks away. I know exactly where she’s going and I dutifully follow her into the family room.
When the door is closed behind us, I collapse into a chair. I’m suddenly so exhausted I’m not sure my legs can hold me up for this conversation, which isn’t going to be easy.
“Sharon,” Kate begins. “I know you’re experiencing a lot of emotions right now, but—”
I cut her off again. “Don’t, Kate. Just don’t.
I know exactly what I feel when it comes to us.
I know exactly what I want, but you… you are the one who is apparently confused or reluctant, or yes, scared.
So please don’t give me a hard time about doing things to try and feel less scared, less fear. ”
“I’m not scared,” she says in a quiet voice.
She’s barely taken three steps into the room and she has her hands clasped together, like she does when she’s talking with patients or their next of kin.
It aggravates me that she’s so composed in this moment while I feel like I’m vomiting up my heart and soul onto the carpet.
“You’re terrified!” I shout at her. “And I get it, I do. I’ve been terrified most of my life. All of my life, really, until…” I sigh. “Until I met you.”
She blinks at me, like she’s seeing me for the first time.
“Don’t you get that? Don’t you see how much you’ve changed my life? Don’t you see how much I…” I stare at her, and I know I’m looking for a sign that I’m safe to say what I want to say next, but I also know it’s not coming. “Don’t you see how much I fucking love you?”
The words hang in the air, dancing around us, and I wish I could reach out and catch them and swallow them back down again because Kate isn’t saying or doing anything.
“And yes, maybe I am saying this because I’m a bit emotional right now, what with my best friend dying out there.
But the thing is, he’s more than my best friend.
He’s my… he’s my fucking family.” I only realise I’m crying when I feel wetness on my cheeks and I have the need to sniff.
“I have nobody else. I called my mum, you see. A week or so ago. I tried to reconnect to make things better, to see if she wanted to have a relationship with me. But she didn’t, she doesn’t.
So forgive me for being terrified myself that I’m going to lose Danny.
Because if I…” I swallow and correct myself.
“When I lose him, I will have nobody. Nobody.”
I wipe the tears from my cheeks, but it’s useless because more come anyway.
I move to reach for a tissue from the box on the table but I’m distracted by movement.
Kate’s movement. She rushes towards me and practically jumps into my lap.
Her arms are around me a second later and she presses her body to mine so hard it’s like she wants us to morph together and become one body, one being, one soul.
“It’s okay, Sharon,” she says as I let myself melt in her arms, all while I scoop my hands under her legs and hold her just as close.
“It’s okay to be scared. You’re right, I am terrified.
I’m terrified of how I feel about you. I don’t know what to do, what to say, what to promise or not promise.
I just know…” She stops and I itch to urge her to continue but I don’t want to be selfish.
Just having her in my arms like this is enough and I don’t want to do anything to jeopardise that.
“I can only make one promise to you right now, Sharon. One promise and I hope it’s enough. ”
“Tell me,” I whisper into her hair, close to her ear.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m right here and I’ll stay as close as you’ll let me be for as long as you need me. You’re not alone. You don’t have nobody. You have… me.”
“I have you,” I repeat, greedy as ever, looking for further validation and maybe confirmation I didn’t just imagine what she said.
“You have me,” she says again and she burrows her head against my shoulder, squeezing even tighter on my body.
And I cry. I finally cry and cry and cry and know that for all the hundreds of tears of sadness that rush out of me, one or two are tears of happiness, and of hope.