“Oh. Well that’s me fucked then. Don’t think I’ll be nabbing anything for a while.”
“You can’t use crutches? Not that they’ll be much good if you’re pushing a trolley.”
Aidan sighs. “I could probably make do and hop along behind it... maybe, if they’d let me up, but I’m having surgery tomorrow, so I’m going to be flat on my back again for the foreseeable.”
I somehow forgot about the doctor I saw loitering on my last visit. And that Aidan has been due to have surgery any day now. My heart turns over, and the pins in my wrist seem to throb. “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah. And my X-rays are messed up, so it’s going to be a longer procedure than they thought.”
“How long?”
“Four hours.”
“Jesus—” I slap my hand over my mouth, for my benefit and his. However stoic my new friend is, he’s got to be worried. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Aidan stretches out a muscular arm and beckons me closer. “That’s pretty much my reaction too. How long did your operation take?”
“I don’t know. They sedated me before the anaesthetic, so I lost track of time.”
“What about after? Did it hurt?”
He’s definitely worried.I consider bullshitting him to ease his fears, but I can’t do it. Even with honourable intentions, dishonesty has never done me any good. “It hurt a lot at first. Use the morphine pump. If you’ve not had any for a few days, it should knock you out.”
Aidan’s gaze flickers, but the shadow is gone before I can decide if I’ve imagined it or not, and I realise that I’m hovering by the TV like a weirdo.
I venture ever closer to him and hand over the remote. “It’s got Freeview. Just use the channel buttons to flick through.”
“What were you going to watch?”
“Um...” Again, the urge to make something up is there. Again, I suppress it. “The weather. I can’t really watch anything else.”
I wait for him to ask why not, but he doesn’t. He turns the TV on and jerks his head at the empty chair beside him. “I’m down with the weather.”
He’s humouring me. He has to be. But I sit anyway and help him find The Weather Channel. A storm is brewing, apparently, with gale-force winds and heavy rain. Aidan’s habitual frown deepens and I can’t help but touch his arm... with my fingertip, obviously. “What’s wrong?”
“Hmm?”
“You’re thinking hard enough to break something.”
“In my brain?”
“Maybe.” I try for a grin and hope it’s convincing.
Aidan opens the cabinet on the other side of the bed and retrieves a yoghurt he’s saved from dinner. He hands it to me with a shrug. “Storms mean damaged trees, which means work, lots of work that I’m missing out on while I’m stuck in here.”
I peel the lid from the yoghurt pot and pry the plastic spoon from its hiding place. The yoghurt is fudge flavoured. At home when I’m fighting the urge to be manic or crawling out from under a vicious low, it’s the only thing I can eat. “Are you worried about money?”
Aidan snaps his gaze from the TV. For a moment he seems cross, and then his face softens enough for me to dip the spoon into the yoghurt. “Iwasworried about money,” he says, “until the surgeon came around. Now I’m so fucked there’s no bloody point.”
I retrace the few conversations we had about the tree surgeon work he clearly enjoys. He works for someone... but the name escapes me. “Will you lose your job?”
“Nah, Bernard likes me too much, but technically, I’m a subcontractor—if I don’t work, I don’t get paid, and I was already in the shit before this happened.”
I tap my fingers on Aidan’s bed rail. His tone is casual, but genuine worry lines his lovely face, marring his rugged good looks. “Your boss won’t bung you a few quid?”
“Dunno.”
“Have you asked him?”
