“Sophie?”
“Yeah,Sophie. Where’s my girlfriend?”
INTERLUDE
Jodi lay as still as possible, trying desperately to keep his vision under control, but his eyeballs felt like lasers, darting around the room, taking in the cacophony of medical paraphernalia—the machines, the tubes, the IVs jammed in his hands.
It’s a nightmare. It has to be.Yeah, that was it. He was drifting in a dystopian fantasy. The woman in white at his bedside was some kind of zombie motherfucker, and any minute now, he’d remember that he had a lightsabre or something awesome, rise out of the bed he seemed tied to, and cut her head off.
He looked for Sophie. She always appeared in his dreams, even the bad ones, chasing shadows away with her sherberty perfume and lilting laugh, but she wasn’t in sight, and his gut told him she was nowhere nearby. “Where’s Sophie?”
The woman patted Jodi’s hand with a palm that felt unnaturally cool. “She’s not here today, Jodi. What about Rupert? Don’t you want to see him?”
“Who?”
“Rupert, your partner—your boyfriend. You live together.”
Jodi stared and waited for the woman to crack a smile and explain the punch line of her twat-ish joke, but her face remained impassive.Bitch.Glowering, Jodi tried to sit up, but the one arm he could move wouldn’t take his weight. He fell back onto the bed and tried again, struggling against a wave of dizzying pain until he managed to raise his head enough to read the laminate hanging around the woman’s neck.Dr. Rose. “I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
What do you think?Jodi glanced down as sharp pain radiated from his palms to his shoulders. Blood oozed from his palms where he’d dug his nails in too hard. He eyed the wounds, welcoming the pain, hoping it would cut through the thick fog in his head and gift him some clarity.Wake up, dickhead. You’ll laugh about this in the morning.But nothing changed. The woman’s stare remained, and no one fucking laughed.
Jodi’s patience evaporated. “Stop taking the piss. It’s not funny. I don’t know anyone called Rupert, and even if I did, I’m not bloody gay.”
“No one’s saying you’re anything, Jodi, but Rupertisyour partner. He’s been here every day since the accident.”
“Accident? What accident? Where’s Sophie? Is she okay?” Silence. Panic slammed into Jodi’s chest, forcing the air from his lungs as a machine somewhere nearby began a beeping tattoo in time with his speeding pulse. “Where’s Sophie?”
The woman leaned forward. “Sophie’s safe and well, Jodi. It was you who had an accident. I can tell you all about it, but I need you to calm down or we’ll have to come back to this later.”
“I ... can’t breathe.”
“Would you like me to get Rupert for you?”
“No! I don’t know any fucking Rupert—” Pain roared through Jodi’s head. He fell back on the bed as the beeping went off the scale, and a deep, paralysing agony took hold, blinding him. He cried out and curled in on himself, but the sudden movement only brought more pain. “Oh God. Help me. Please.”
Something tugged at one of the tubes in Jodi’s arm. A cold sensation flooded his veins. For long moments nothing changed, then he felt it: a creeping buzz that lapped at the edge of the torture that tied him in a foetal ball on the bed.
The pain faded a little, taking with it some of the crazed panic seizing his chest, just enough for him to snatch a breath as his face seemed to melt into the scratchy sheet beneath him. “Please. I don’t know who Rupert is. He’s not my boyfriend. No one is. I want Sophie. Please. Please get Sophie for me. Please, I just need Sophie ...”
* * *
“... I don’t understand.” Jodi held his head in his hands as he stared at Sophie, trying to ignore Dr. Rose taking notes in the corner. “When did we split up?”
Sophie looked at Dr. Rose, who nodded surreptitiously or probably thought she had. Jodi frowned. There’d been a lot of that since Sophie had finally arrived. Sometime earlier, he’d told himself he would feel better if only she’d just fucking get there. That she’d explain why the last thing he clearly recalled was heading across London to meet her for dinner. That she’d know why his arm wouldn’t move and his head hurt like a bitch, that she’d know why he could hardly remember his name from one moment to the next. But so far she’d done nothing but gaze at him with a sadness he couldn’t quite decipher, and pretty much tell him that he was dumped.
A waft of fruity perfume tickled his nose, and a painful shunt in his brain brought him back to the present. He winced. Sophie squeezed his hand. “What is it?”
Jodi opened his mouth. Shut it. The words weren’t there. Sophie’s gaze darted again to the silent doctor, and Jodi bristled, confusion and frustration conflicting so loudly in his aching head he felt dizzy. “Why aren’t you my girlfriend anymore?”
“We split up years ago.”
“How many?”
“Five. You’re still my best friend in the world, though.” The first flickers of a smile Jodi recognised brightened Sophie’s features. “And I still love you to death.”
Jodi loved her too, but five years was a bloody long time to lose, with or without her, and the harder he thought about it, the less sense it made. “I don’t understand. Have I been in here since we split up?”
