The psychiatric nurse who’d escorted Jodi to the waiting room peered around him, a kind, sympathetic gleam in her life-hardened eyes. “Come on now, Jodi. We talked about Rupert today, didn’t we? He’s taking care of you.”
“If you say so.” Jodi’s eyes drifted to the window. There was nothing there, save a car park and a few tired trees. Rupert wondered what was holding his attention for so long. “Can we go home now?”
Rupert sighed as the nurse spared him another professionally pitying smile. An ever-fading glimmer of hope had carried him through the long months that had passed since Jodi’s accident, but it was almost gone now. It had left, unbidden, the moment he’d realised Jodi had lost five years of his life.
“He’s missing five years,” Sophie whispered, her face streaked with tears. “He thinks we’re still together.”
Rupert sat down heavily, his breath leaving his lungs in a soft whoosh. His head had known this was coming—his short, fractured exchange with Jodi had told him so—but the stupid, naive idiot in him had held on to the hope that it was all a fucking bad dream.
But it wasn’t a dream. Jodi was missing five years—five years that held the entire life he and Rupert had built together. Their past and present. Their future. Rupert stared hard at the hospital floor, sure he could see the remnants of their broken dreams, ready to be ground into the linoleum by the heels of whoever passed by next. He closed his eyes and whispered the question he already knew the answer to: “Did you tell him who I am?”
Sophie’s voice cracked. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know what to say.”
Rupert had wanted to be angry with her, but he couldn’t. After all,hehadn’t told Jodi, and no one else had either. How could they, when Jodi had reacted so badly to the doctor’s first, failed attempts? Rupert remembered Jodi curled in a ball, sobbing in pain, and then later, when the drugs had kicked in and two days of silence had taken hold, and it had felt like they were back to square one.
Fuck that. Rupert couldn’t be the reason Jodi’s recovery faltered, and there seemed little chance Jodi would remember on his own. Save for a few minor details about random things—where the airing cupboard was, the name of next door’s cat—he hadn’t remembered anything, and he’d shown next to no interest in trying. No one knew the best way of persuading him either. Prompting him. The psychiatrist—one of a long list of outpatient appointments Rupert had brought Jodi to that week—had been his last hope, but his private consultation with Rupert hadn’t gone well.
“In cases like Jodi’s, it’s often best to allow the mind to heal in its own time. We can help him, of course, but pushing him to remember things he might not be equipped to cope with yet could be catastrophic.”
Jodi’s neurologist, Dr. Nevis, had agreed.“Try to be as honest as you can, but avoid planting ideas in his head. It’s better to use intact memories to stimulate acceptance of new information.”
Arguing that the “new information” was their whole bloody lives had been pointless, and he’d known the doctor was right. What the fuck had he expected? That they could sit Jodi down, hit him with every little detail of the lifetime he’d forgotten, and expect him to accept it all and just get on with it?
It wasn’t going to happen, but that crippling realisation had left Rupert lost. Jodi had walked into the accident as a man who’d often described himself as a loose bisexual, but he’d woken up looking for his girlfriend with no memory of being anything other than straight, like he’d lost his entire sexual identity. And that had left Rupert as not much more than a barely tolerated babysitter.
“Rupert?”
Rupert came back to the present with a surprised jolt. Up till now, Jodi hadn’t addressed him by name. Shame he didn’t sound too happy about it. “Yeah?”
“Are we going, or what?”
There was no “or what.” Rupert gave himself an internal shake. It was time to go home. He said goodbye to the hovering nurse, took Jodi’s arm, and led him out of the hospital. Jodi didn’t protest. He’d given up on that after Sophie had scolded him for being rude. Besides, Rupert wasn’t taking his weight and guiding him for fun. To the outside world, Jodi probably appeared to walk pretty well, save the slight drag of his left foot, but when he’d had a long day, his balance often deserted him, leading him to stumble and trip, something that could do him far more damage than discovering he liked a bit of cock.
They made it outside. Rupert’s stomach growled as the McDonald’s opposite the hospital caught his eye. Breakfast felt a long time ago, but he knew there was little point asking Jodi if he wanted to stop. Jodi seemed to exist on bread, cornflakes, and an occasional packet of crisps. Gone were the late-night fry-ups and random Wednesday roasts. And it didn’t help that Rupert and Sophie between them could barely fry an egg.
“You didn’t have to cook for me,” Rupert said. “Jesus, boyo. It’s two a.m.”
Jodi glanced over his shoulder, half an eye still on the mammoth pan of pasta he was adding bacon to. “Can’t have you going to bed on an empty stomach. Besides, gives me stuff to do when I’m pining for your pretty face.”
A bus ride later, they were at the Shoreditch pharmacy to pick up Jodi’s prescription refills. With that done, Rupert ushered Jodi out and steered him toward the Tube station.
“Where are we going?”
“Home. That okay? Or did you want to go somewhere else?”
“It’s fine.”
Jodi’s expression remained, as ever, blank and uninterested, but something made Rupert look again—a slight inflection in his dull tone, a nervous flicker in his dark gaze—something. “Are you sure? We can grab some food if you like?”
Whatever Rupert thought he’d seen evaporated as Jodi scowled. “You’ve asked me that three times today. I’m not fucking hungry.”
“I asked you at breakfast, lunch, and dinnertime, and I’ll probably ask you again before bed. You gotta eat, boyo.” Rupert kept his tone mild with considerable effort, though he could tell Jodi was baiting him, probably hoping Rupert would snap at him and then feel guilty enough about it to leave him alone.
But he was out of luck today. Rupert didn’t fancy a silent journey home, even if it meant boring himself to tears with the sound of his own voice. He took Jodi’s answering glare with a shrug and retrieved their Oyster cards from his back pocket. “How did you get on with the occupational therapist yesterday? You never told me.”
Jodi didn’t answer, distracted by swiping his Oyster card at the ticket barrier, a simple process made more complex by the damage to his cognitive thinking. Even evaluating the task seemed to take several seconds longer than the queue forming behind them was prepared to tolerate. Not that anyone said anything—it wasn’t London’s style—and thankfully, Jodi was occupied enough to remain oblivious to the pointed frowns grumpy commuters sent his way.
The escalators came next. Rupert took Jodi’s arm and guided him on, something he’d done even before the accident, having seen too many gruesome incidents in Tube stations and shopping centres to trust anyone he loved to travel on them safely. In the past, the gesture had amused Jodi no end. Not anymore. Now, he didn’t seem to notice Rupert’s deathlike grip on his good elbow and there was little life in him as they reached the crowded platform.
