I clench my fists and grind my teeth.I can’t do this.
“You can,” Ludo counters, letting me know I’ve spoken the words aloud. “If you survived that fall, you can survive anything.”
“It should’ve killed me.”
“But it didn’t.”
It’s an incomplete echo of our previous exchange, but when I open my eyes, Ludo doesn’t seem angry anymore. Just worried. And I hate that I’ve made him frown again, all the while my heart skips a beat for the fact that he’s worried aboutme. That he cares, for reasons only he understands.
* * *
Ludo
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone suffer like Aidan is right now, and worse than that, I can’t see how he’s ever going to get better when he has nothing but pain to keep him company.
He dozes in fits and starts. When he’s awake, we talk. Well, I do, and he listens, and while he’s sleeping, I study his barren bed bay with building unease. There’s literally nothing here—a water jug, a couple of folded T-shirts, and a hoodie thatI’mwearing. He has no phone, no books or magazines, and until last night he didn’t know how to access a TV.What does he do all day?
But I already know the answer. He thinks and wishes he could stop.
Been there, mate.
I’m still there, but Aidan isn’t like me. He can probably read a book without the narrator taking up residence in his head for a week after. Scan a newspaper without fretting for the rest of the day about impending nuclear war. I study his hands—hardened and scarred—and wonder what he likes to do with them when he’s not climbing trees.
My brain is like a malfunctioning kitchen sink. Sometimes I turn the tap on and nothing happens. Others the sink fills so fast with ideas that I’m scrabbling for the plug to catch them all. It’s late when Aidan’s morphine pump reloads. He takes every drop available and finally falls into a sleep deep enough to last more than ten minutes. His hand is wrapped, like a baby’s, around my index finger. For long minutes I can’t bring myself to pull away, but then the sink threatens to overflow, and I know I must before every scrap of good intention is washed away.
I retreat from his bed and back to my own. My bag is stuffed in my bedside cabinet. I dig it out and rummage through it, emptying the contents onto my bed. Notebooks and pencils. A crime novel my neighbour gave me that I’ll never read. There’s even a newspaper, though it’s days old, and it’s the kind of newspaper no one admits to buying. Me? I bought it for the crossword... honest.
Regardless, it’ll do. I pile it all up and traipse back to Aidan. He hasn’t moved—he’s more immobile than ever—but I linger a moment anyway. Though I know it’s the morphine that’s smoothed the lines of pain from his face, that he has months of recovery to endure, his peaceful expression is everything.
But I still have work to do. I dump my first bounty load in the chair by his bed and set off again.
“I’m hungry,” I say when the night sister questions why I’m leaving the ward. “I want some chocolate from the kiosk.”
She lets me go, and I shuffle through the hospital with socked feet until I come to the all-night shop by the A & E department.
There’s a different vibe in this part of the hospital, a frenetic energy that sets my teeth on edge the moment it hits me. Sirens. Pacing relatives. Blood-soaked patients stacked up in chairs. I’ve never been to this A & E, but sordid déjà vu prickles my skin, and I picture how Aidan must’ve looked when he was first brought in—leg smashed up, bleeding from his head, and unconscious. Or maybe he wasn’t—maybe he was awake and afraid. I don’t know how that feels... to be hurt and scared of what that means. For me, every injury has been a relief.
He’s not like you.
Of course he’s not.
I speed-walk past the A & E waiting area and reach the kiosk. Even at this hour, there’s a queue, and by the time I get to the front, I’m sweating, anxiety pouring out of me so fast I half expect my feet to get wet. I grab chocolate, sweets, and every magazine I can think of that isn’t a bullshit gossip rag. Gardening, photography, fishing. On my way back to the ward, I question the wisdom of gifting Aidan a fitness magazine and dumpMen’s Healthin the bin.
At his bedside again, I stack his entertainment stash on the table. It doesn’t seem enough, but the itch to go back and buy more brings the worst parts of me to life, so I stamp it down and flee.
Back in my own bed, I realise that I’ve forgotten to say goodnight or leave a note explaining the corner shop I’ve dumped on his bedside table. Panic seizes me again, but a nurse is doing the rounds, and a stern glare from her keeps me in bed.
She lingers on purpose, apparently finding the contents of a nearby patient’s chart fascinating enough to sit down and read it. Heart thumping, I curl up in Aidan’s oversized hoodie, drawing it tight around me, hood up, until I’m surrounded by enough of his clean, woodsy scent that my pulse slows and my racing thoughts even out.
I fall asleep.
It’s morning when I wake, and Aidan is my first thought. I scramble out of bed and dash through the ward to get to him, only to find that he’s still asleep, and my collection of things that now seem ridiculous are exactly as I left them.
The urge to gather them up and hurl them in the nearest bin is strong, but my nurse nemesis from the night before is preparing to leave the nurse station.
I take my chance and slope back to my own bed.
When I get there, the surgeon is waiting for me, and Dr Farsi is with him.
