‘Holy shit. And I thought I was liked around here. They won’t even give me an extra chocolate pudding, let alone pillows!’
‘You’re clearly not hurt badly enough. It doesn’t pay to be liked, Alfie, it pays to be injured.’
Even though he knew she was joking, he didn’t really know how to respond to that. He knew she was hurt badly, but the extent of her injuries was a mystery to him. Before he had time to formulate an adequate reply, she floored him with a question.
‘Are you OK after what happened earlier? I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation.’
He could almost feel her wince in anticipation of his response.
‘Oh. Yeah. I mean, I thought I was fine, but I guess if you ask that abused pillow I’ve left for dead over there, apparently I’m not.’
She laughed. A shy half-laugh. He wondered if she everallowed herself to laugh fully, or was it always a little held back and contained?
‘We’ve interviewed the victim and they are going to be pressing charges, sir. You want to tell us your side of the story?’
He knew she was just playing but, as the darkness fell around them thick as velvet, he felt a strange urge to tell her things. The feelings and thoughts he’d kept buried deep down were suddenly clamouring to be heard. He wanted to share it all with her. Wanted to let her peek inside his head, even just for a moment.
‘Well, officer, I’ll keep this brief as I know you’re busy: my girlfriend of three years left me a week after my accident because she couldn’t deal with what happened. Apparently it was too difficult for her. So, not only did I have my leg amputated, not only did the wound swell, burst and then become infected, not only did I nearly die from the sepsis,butI was also left heartbroken. Please feel free to cry for me now if you wish.’
He realized this was the first time he had ever really talked about this with anyone. He wasn’t ready to let her see the full extent of his heartache yet, but there was still a small relief in speaking about it. Everyone had been so concerned about upsetting him that they had either chosen to ignore the situation or they would tentatively skirt around the issue, keeping to the very edges of the subject at all times. They had been so focused on healing his physical injury that the pain from his heart was left for him to deal with, in secret and out of sight.
‘Alfie, what is wrong with you?’ Wow, he was not expecting that. Sure, he hadn’t given her the full emotional breakdown of events, but he was expecting at least a little bit of sympathy.‘Why would you still ask after her when she acted like that? You’re too nice for your own good. I know you say you loved her, but to be frank, she sounds like a selfish idiot to me.’
He wasn’t expecting that either. No one had ever been so direct with him before.
‘Well now, officer, that’s no way to speak to one of your suspects, no matter how heinous their crime.’
‘Alfie, are you ever serious? Just for one moment.’
Twice now she’d caught him off guard with her questions. Something was making her bold tonight and he realized he was enjoying it.
‘No one wants serious, Alice. The world is full of shit as it is – look around you, for Christ’s sake! Why make it harder for yourself and everyone else by adding to it?’
He heard the flicker of resistance in her tone.
‘What, so we all have to go around pretending nothing hurts? Pretending that everything is fantastic!’
‘No, but what’s the point of being miserable all the time? People don’t like miserable.’
‘So you want to pretend to be happy for other people? To get friends? Popularity? At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what other people think of you if you’re cut up and bleeding on the inside.’
She was coming at him hard now, taking no prisoners with her words. Surely she couldn’t know that she was hitting him in the places that hurt most. Was she intentionally trying to tear down the defences he’d spent so many years meticulously building?
Maybe he said what he said next because he was tired. Maybe it was because he’d forgotten to close the door on his emotions from earlier. Maybe he was just being spiteful.
‘And clearly being so serious gets you a total of fuck-allvisitors when you’re at death’s door.’ His hand instinctively covered his mouth in a pathetic attempt to take back the poison he’d just spat out at her.
Silence.
He didn’t know what he could say to make anything good again. He just lay there, opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water.
‘I think you’re forgetting the delightful visit from my mother.’
Laughter erupted from both sides of the curtain. Full, real, unapologetic laughter that shook his body and brought tears to his eyes. It was so loud he could see Sharon stirring across the room, but he didn’t care. There was no way of hiding it when you felt this alive.
‘Oh yeah, that one must have slipped my mind.’
‘Goodnight, Alfie.’
