Ludo’s soft voice brings me back to the present, and I’m so fucking grateful to him I nearly say so. Then I realise he’s asked me the same question twice, and I haven’t given him an answer. “Check the roots and surrounding area for anything that’s limiting nutrition. Then I cut the diseased bits off, but you have to do it right. You can’t just go at it with a saw and hope for the best.”
“In case you end up worse than when you started?”
“Exactly. Trees are like humans. Open wounds don’t do them no good.”
Ludo chews slowly, deliberately, and drops the rest of his orange on my tray—he’s already disposed of the weird meat dish neither of us could eat. Somehow he knew I couldn’t look at it. Or maybehecouldn’t look at it and the distinction between us is blurred.
I don’t like the look in his face though. And I don’t want him to go hungry. “Have my yoghurt.”
“Huh?”
“My yoghurt.” I push it towards him. “I’ve gone off them.”
“Why?”
“Do I need a reason?”
Ludo shrugs and takes the yoghurt and I watch him eat it, tracing every swallow as though I can track the calcium into his slender bones.
Why’s that so important to you?
I have no idea about that either, and perhaps this is what my life will be from now on—a never-ending series of shit I don’t understand. Before... this, beforehim, my existence was simple. I hated everyone and they didn’t much like me, and I was okay with that. Worrying about other people never crossed my mind, and I shoved aside anyone who dared to care about me. Michael said it was as though I flicked a switch in my brain... like I did it on purpose.
Maybe I did.
A nurse exits the nurse station and begins her rounds of the beds, telling visitors they have to leave. Ludo sighs, and immediately my senses jump with a desperate need to find out why. I don’t ask though. That would be simple. Instead I tilt my head sideways and hope he’ll get the hint.
“I have a psychiatrist coming to see me today,” he says. “She wants to change my medication.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “I may have had a mini meltdown over the last few days. I do that sometimes, when my brain can’t decide if it wants to be yellow or black.”
“Huh?”
Another sigh, and Ludo stands, still holding my yoghurt pot and a spoon. “Manic or depressed. Up or down. She doesn’t listen when I tell her I’ll be fine if they’d only let me go home.”
I run my gaze up and down his slim legs... legs that are currently in a far better condition than my own. “You can’t make a run for it?”
“Nah. They’ll section me. Good idea, though. Ten years ago I might’ve got away with it.”
He ducks around the curtain before I can respond, and a heavy weight settles over my chest, like it does every time he slips away. Some days he comes back for an evening visit, but I already know this isn’t one of those days, and an irrational hatred for his psychiatrist spreads through me until it’s all I can think about. I bring my hands to my face and drive my fists into my eye sockets.You have no right to think anything about his psychiatrist. You don’t know shit.
But I want to. And that scares me. Out in the real world, I dip when I catch feelings for people, often after offending them to the point where they won’t come looking for me. But I can’t do that here, can’t do it with Ludo, and the flip side of being desperate for his company has become an obsession.
A nurse brings me a dose of the codeine pills the docs have replaced my morphine pump with. I pretend to swallow them but stash them with my morning dose under my pillow. I’ll take them tonight, when I’m sure Ludo won’t come back, praying they’ll keep me asleep until morning.
You daft prick. But I can’t help it. The solitude that was once my BFF has started to suffocate me, and even if that doesn’t kill me, the irony will.
Later that day it’s my turn for an unwelcome welfare visit—a policeman who wants my accident statement.
“I don’t have one. I was up, and then I was down.”
The vague echo of Ludo’s words bugs me enough to ignore the officer’s resigned sigh. Perhaps he’s found out I don’t have the best history with coppers. Whatever. I don’t care. I have nothing to say to him that doesn’t involve being at the top of the world and then at the bottom.
Up and down.
Yellow and black.
