Chapter 34
Derek is spiderweb ensnared in the hospital bed, wrapped in cords and bandages and lines.
From what Mark can gather at first glance, Derek is plugged into a heart monitor, a pulse oximeter, a blood pressure cuff, two IVs, and drainage tubing.
Or they are plugged into him. It’s hard to tell which way the system flows; he looks like a cyberhuman, like Luke Skywalker in the bacta tank.
Derek’s eyes are groggy from drugs, his lids pouched.
His normally coifed hair is matted, his face crusty from sleep, and he is too drugged and traumatized to remember to ask Mark about strep throat.
Mark has never seen him less than shiny. In fact, with the Teflon exterior scraped off, he looks profoundly mortal.
He continues on in a rasp, his vocals still shot from the intubation. “Thought I was gonna die. Sparkly glow, tunnel of light, all that.”
Mark draws close to the bed. “You didn’t see who yanked the hose?”
Derek’s head rolls back and forth on the pillow, a weary no. “Random act of violence. You know how this city’s getting.”
Mark’s insides are boiling with suspicion, paranoia, and fear, but he contains himself. “Where’s Alexa?”
Derek takes a long blink. He looks like a lost little boy. “She came last night. Had to get home. To sleep, you know. Needs to stay strong with me in here.”
But he cannot hide his loneliness, the terrible vulnerability writ large across his face.
“I’m sorry,” Mark says, because he cannot think of anything else to say. And he realizes that it is more than a knee-jerk response, that he actually means it.
“Missed my femoral artery by this much.” Derek lifts a trembling hand and measures a few millimeters between his thumb and a forefinger made bulbous by the pulse ox. “Nerve damage, they said.” His words slightly blurry. “Vascular injury needs another surgery.”
“But you’re gonna be okay?”
“Won’t be getting back to kickboxing anytime soon.”
“How long are you out?”
“Two, three weeks,” Derek says. “’S why I asked you here.”
Mark looks at him, puzzled.
“I know we’ve had our differences.” Derek’s forehead is tight with concentration, the way Maddy’s gets sometimes.
It is taking all his focus to speak. “And I never realized how much I can count on you. Not until I was lying here thinking about who needs to take the reins on product operations while I’m out. ”
Mark knows that Derek is right, that he is the best choice to get the company back on track, but he cannot believe that he is hearing it from Derek.
Derek makes a weird noise. It takes a moment for Mark to identify it as a whimper.
Derek’s eyes get glassy. He is crying. The sight of it, for some reason, is awful. His face jerks unattractively. He looks so different from his impeccably groomed self.
Something gnaws at Mark’s chest. Pity? Empathy? Whatever it is, it works like acid on his resentment, dissolving it into a puddle of dismay.
“Alexa only stayed twenty minutes,” Derek says, slurring with tears and morphine. “How long would Rebecca have stayed if it was you? Or you for her?”
Mark knows in this moment that lying would not be merciful. So he tells the truth. “All night,” he says. “All the way through.”
Derek closes his eyes, tears clinging to the gunk on his lashes. He nods once, a dip of the chin, only down. He knew the answer already. “Can you run things while I’m out?”
Mark says, “If you trust me to.”
“I do. Thank you, Mark. Thank you.” A wobbly hand rises, trailing lines and cords.
Mark takes it. It isn’t a handshake. More like they hold hands for a moment, the touch oddly intimate.
He looks down at Derek’s tear-glassy eyes, and something passes between them.
“’M sorry,” Derek says. “. . . Sorry.”
His head sags to the side as he drifts off.