He’s not dead. Nero stood in the small waiting room, cramped with coppers, hospital staff, and Tom, talking in the soft, respectful tones that washed over Nero as he missed every word . . . all but three: he’s not dead.
The relief that washed over Nero was dizzying, and he couldn’t bring himself to feel like a dick for jumping to such dramatic conclusions. Besides, if his belated take on what had landed Lenny in hospital was anything to go by, his fears hadn’t been that far-fetched.
“Do you know when he’ll be discharged?” Tom asked the doctor standing close to Nero.
“In the morning, I’d imagine. We need to stitch his leg and observe that bump to his head. I’m not anticipating any problems, though. He’s in good shape, considering.”
“Considering what?”
Tom and the doctor swivelled their eyes to Nero, staring at him like he’d grown horns. Perhaps he had. Tom thanked the doctor and took Nero’s arm, guiding him out of the room he’d steered him into just minutes before when he’d found him wandering the corridor, lost in a haze of grief that had turned out to be wonderfully misplaced. “I forget how feral you and Cass get around authority. Come on. Let’s get you a cuppa.”
“I don’t want tea. I want Lenny.”
“I know, but the police are with him at the moment, and then he needs to rest. Just come and sit for a few minutes, and let me explain what’s happened. That way you can save Lenny the trouble, eh?”
The logic broke through the addled haze in Nero’s mind. He reclaimed his arm and followed Tom to a vending machine at the end of the corridor. “Start at the beginning, ’cause it don’t make no fucking sense to me.”
“I don’t know the beginning, Nero. I just know that Gareth Harvey was given bail when he shouldn’t have been, and allowed to go missing, which left him able to come after Lenny, and the other people he’d formed obsessions with. Lenny fought him off, but the police won’t tell me what happened to the others, which leads me to believe they weren’t so lucky.”
The haze returned, darker this time. Nero dropped into a nearby chair and steeled himself for the specifics he’d somehow managed not to hear the first time—the details that had passed him by after he’d realised Lenny was alive and in no danger of being otherwise. “This happened in Hampstead?”
“Yes. Lenny left Jake around eleven, presumably on his way to wherever you were—he didn’t tell Jake where he was going—but he was attacked outside the Tube station. There was a struggle, and he hit his head, but he fought long enough for security to come to his aid. He was unconscious for a while, which is why they called me—I was listed as his emergency contact when I intervened on Lenny’s behalf a few months back.”
Shivers of rage rippled down Nero’s spine. “I want to stamp on that bloke’s head.”
“Understandable, but you won’t get the chance. He’s been arrested, and I was given the impression he probably won’t be released for a very long time.”
“They said that last time.”
“Actually, they didn’t, but they also failed to inform Lenny when Gareth Harvey was granted bail, so they aren’t entirely blameless.”
Nero couldn’t speak, though he was furiously certain that there was something Tom wasn’t saying. Tom sighed and laid his hand on Nero’s shoulder.
“Listen, I know you’re angry with the police, and they made a mistake that ultimately they’ll have to pay for. For you, and Lenny, the important thing is that he’s going to be okay. Let someone else sort out the rest of it.”
“Someone like who? You?”
“If it’s necessary, yes. It’s my job to take care of you all, including you, as much as you don’t want me to.”
Nero leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. A mottled blemish on the shiny hospital floor sucked his gaze in like a vortex. “Why are you nice to me when I do nothing but fuck you off?”
“Because who you are doesn’t change who I am, and it doesn’t stop me liking you, even when you do your best to make yourself thoroughly unlikable. Now, drink this tea and get yourself together. I expected Lenny to go into shock, not you.”
Dick, but Nero didn’t mean it. He drank the weird vending-machine tea and listened as Tom explained the finer details of Lenny’s injuries, and how he’d sustained them—a blow to the head, and a gash in his leg that needed extensive stitching, a broken finger from punching his assailant hard enough to fracture his own bones. He’s the tiger, not me.
The thought made Nero smile and remember the leather and silver jewellery stuffed in his pocket. He retrieved it and held it out to Tom. “How did the receptionist get this?”
“I gave it to her,” Tom said. “The paramedics found it in Lenny’s pocket, and I thought it might reassure you when you arrived.”
Nero didn’t have the heart to tell him how epically his good intentions had been wasted on Nero’s morbid imagination. He stood, drawn to Lenny, just as a nurse approached and waved him forward.
“The police are gone,” she said. “You can sit with Lenny now.”
Nero’s imagination was clearly having a field day. He followed the nurse to a bed and peered around the curtains, half expecting to find Lenny stricken and wired up to a million machines. The reality was almost benign. Were it not for the slight graze on Lenny’s cheek, and the bandages on his hand and leg, he could’ve been asleep at home, in Nero’s bed—in their bed. Head flung to the side, hair flopping in his face, how many times had Nero seen Lenny like this?
Not enough.
Nero took Lenny’s uninjured hand. Lenny’s eyes opened, unfocused and devoid of emotion, until he saw Nero and gifted him with a watery smile.
