He shifts and meets her gaze, surprised to see her. Both his eyes are blackened and the bridge of his nose is swollen. A strip of white gauze across his forehead has turned a yellowy, chemical colour and is dotted with dried blood. One leg is in a cast, one arm in a sling. He is wearing a pale blue hospital gown with a checked pattern that reminds her of tablecloths and old ladies.
‘Pineapple,’ he says, his voice slurring. He tries to smile but she can see the pain as he does so. One side of his mouth is swollen. ‘Sorry, I lost a couple of teeth and it hurts to absolute fuck.’
He looks simultaneously older and younger than she remembers him. On protests, he was always so assured that they all turned to him for direction. But here, in this hospital bed, he looks vulnerable. She has never known his actual age, although Meadow told her once that he was in his mid-twenties. He seemed older because of the way he spoke, which was educated, smart and impassioned. Yet here, in front of her, he reminds her of Hector – the same feeble bravado masking the unacknowledged fear of not being enough.
‘Please …’ he says, gesturing to the plastic hospital chair next to the bed. The word comes out as ‘Plsshh’.
She sits, squeezing her backpack between the chair and River’s bedside locker. On the top of the locker is an unripe banana, a notepad, an open packet of Rizlas, a tin of tobacco and a battered copy ofThe Communist Manifesto.
‘Catching up on your Marx?’
‘Ha! That was in my jacket pocket when I fell. Ditto the fags. The banana’ – he winces as he changes his position in the bed – ‘is hospital issue.’
‘I’m glad you’re OK,’ Cosima says, then feels stupid for saying it.
‘OK is a relative concept. But thank you. I’m glad too.’
‘Are you in a lot of pain?’
‘Yeah. But I’m also on a lot of drugs, so … y’know … swings and roundabouts.’
He tries another smile.
‘It’s nice’ – nissshe – ‘to see you.’
Her cheeks become warm. She isn’t sure why she’s come. She’s only met River a handful of times and, on every occasion, he’s been irritated by her.
‘I … I … don’t know why I’m here.’
‘Don’t know why either. I’ve been a total cunt to you.’
The elderly lady in the adjacent bed looks at River with contempt and hisses, ‘Language!’ at him. Her teeth are in a glass on her locker. A nurse comes and draws the curtain between the two beds.
‘Alone at last,’ River says drily.
‘Total cunt is a relative concept,’ she says.
His eyes crinkle at the edges.
Without knowing why, she reaches across the stiff hospital sheets and takes his hand. He squeezes her fingers. Warmth fizzes through her like a lit fuse. Nothing else needs to be said. She knows. He knows. They know. A calm descends. Cosima has never felt so understood by another person than she has right now, in this moment.
‘So what’s the damage?’ she asks, still holding his hand.
‘Broken leg, broken collarbone, fifteen broken ribs, collapsed left lung and, let’s just say, quite a lot of other stuff. But the doctor said I was very lucky. Apparently I shielded my head when I fell.’
They sit quietly for a while. River slips into a fitful sleep. She thinks this is what he must have looked like as a baby and she imagines meeting his mother one day and how that might feel. Cosima has never had a boyfriend. She’s had sex, obviously, at parties and once in a field behind a pub, but beyond that, she hasn’t been interested in a relationship. Anyone her own age seems trivial and immature. She knows the age difference between her and River would horrify her parents if they ever found out about it, but it holds no anxiety for her. They have so much in common: their outlook on the world, their values, the experiences they’ve been through together, the danger they’ve faced and the passion they’ve felt, united by a cause bigger than them. There is no one else she trusts as much as him.
When he wakes, she is looking at him and the first thing he sees as he opens his eyes is her.
‘Hello,’ she says.
He smiles.
‘Don’t smile. It hurts you too much.’
‘It’s hard not to when you’re here.’
The visiting hours are almost over and she needs to leave soon to get back to school in time for the Sunday night registration.
