“Who does?”
“Dunno. But I kind of expected you’d like grime and shit, with your London speak and all that.”
I can’t place his accent. It’s definitely local, but mildly so, as though at some point he’s been displaced from his roots long enough for them to fade. “I don’t like grime music. And I got into classical when I was a kid. My cousin was a ballet dancer and I spent a lot of time watching him practice.”
“She sounds more interesting than my cousin.”
“Who does?”
“Your cousin.”
“My cousin is a boy... well, a man now, I guess. I haven’t seen him for a long time.”
Aidan grunts. “You can have mine.”
“The skinny bloke who’s always here?”
“Always?”
“Uh-huh. I’ve seen him every day since you got here.”
Something flashes in Aidan’s eyes. It’s so fleeting I wonder if I’ve imagined it. But for once, I trust myself. Or maybe it’s more that Aidan’s expression is usually so painfully blank.
“He won’t come anymore,” he says after a protracted silence. “I think he just wanted to check I wasn’t fucked up enough to be his problem.”
“In what way?”
Aidan gestures at himself, from the plaster encasing his leg, to the butterfly stitches in his temple. “Apparently I might not be able to look after myself when they let me go home. Which makes it his job, according to him.”
“What do you think?”
He shrugs. “I think it doesn’t matter what state I’m in when I get out of here; I’m going home, and I’ll be fine on my own, because I always am.”
I’m missing a lifetime of ways to understand him. I want to tell him that it’s okay to let people help him, but I don’t. Because maybe it’s not. Maybe being self-sufficient is how he survives and I can learn something from him.
I touch his arm again. “Yeah. You’re gonna be fine.”
* * *
Aidan
Ludo comes to talk to me every day, twice, sometimes, if he’s up to it.
I can’t figure out if he’s okay... if he’s getting better. When he touches me, his skin still blazes, and one day I wake up to see that it’s him being sick over the side of his bed instead of me. When it’s over, he looks at me and smiles, and something tells me that his physical ailments barely scratch the surface.
But I don’t get the chance to ask him more questions. An orderly comes to take me for an X-ray, and when I get back, something has changed. The ward smells intensely of the disinfectant fluid the cleaning staff smear over the floors on a daily basis, which is a welcome change from the “lunch” cooking somewhere in the hospital. But it’s not that—it’s Ludo. Something has changed withhim. A different IV is hooked up to him, and an oxygen mask covers his face. He has a visitor too, a kindly looking woman who’s reading a book as he sleeps.
I wonder if it’s his mum, and something sharp scrapes my insides. I loved my mum, even though I’ve spent my entire life angry with her for dying.
The orderly manoeuvres my bed into its parking spot. The space is less cluttered now the big machines have been moved. All that’s left is an IV stand, and a nurse comes to reconnect me.Don’t ask. Don’t ask. Don’t ask.“What’s wrong with Ludo?”
Damn it.
The nurse shoots me a curious glance. “He’s a bit poorly today.”
“What’s wrong with him?”
“I can’t tell you that, sweetheart. Maybe you can ask him later, when he feels better.”
