The bag of grapes is half empty. I should leave. Something disarming about seeing him like this—stripped of his dogmaticGeraldness—makes me feel I’m somehow trespassing. Regardless, I’m glad I made the effort to return. I’d hate to be alone in a hospital bed with no one caring. I always feel a lurch of sympathy for the patients who don’t appear to have anyone.
So I linger, watching over him and stealing his grapes until the bag is empty except for the stalks. Almost all the other visitors have left.
“Bye then, Gerald,” I say in a clear voice, in case he’s faking to get rid of me. It’s excellent acting if he is. To check, I place my hand over his, resting neatly down by his side. I can’t recall the last time I held someone’s hand. Anxious urology patients don’t count. An unconscious housemate’s hand probably doesn’t count either, but I’ll take my kicks where I can get them. “I’ll come and pick you up tomorrow, yeah?”
I give the hand a squeeze, holding onto it way longer than I should. Everyone else in the ward already thinks we’re partners anyhow. At this point I’m entertaining the man opposite as much as myself. Gerald’s fingers are much cooler than before and, nope, no furious snatching away. He’s out cold. Having enjoyed our back and forth, I’m almost disappointed.
I could grow quite fond of him if he stayed like this. As if going in for a kiss, I lean over the bed, mostly for the benefit of the disapproving bloke facing. He clearly hasn’t ever seen a man hold another man’s hand before. Instead, I merely skim my lips over Gerald’s mouth then trail them along his cheek, to whisper in his big ear.
“Night, sweetheart. Sleep well.”
Waves of disgust radiate from the bigot in the bed opposite, so I lean even closer. “And carry on snoring hard for me, you sexy diesel-powered generator.”
CHAPTER 12
GERALD
I contemplate an Uber home, to save bothering Alaric. But on standing to leave the ward, my vision wobbles like a dodgy camera lens. I have to hurriedly sit back down on the bed and pretend I only stood up to stretch. The idea of lugging my bag down to the main hospital entrance and then making small talk with a stranger turns my stomach. So Alaric it is, all spry and chatty and glossy-lipped. Wafting his cut-grass smell around the interior of the car, he shimmies into the driver’s seat.
“I brought you a throw,” he says, “for your knees, to keep warm. And a cushion from off the sofa to hold against your belly.”
“It’s less than a twenty-minute drive.”
I soon discover the cushion works well, providing support as we judder off. I never checked my housemate held a driver’s licence or insurance cover; I simply assumed. As he crunches the gears at the carpark barrier, I’m still unsure.
“You’ll be quite sore for another day or so,” Alaric witters on. I’d rather he concentrated on the traffic. “Have the hospital prescribed you some oral morphine? If not, I can get a few days’worth for you from the pharmacy in Sutton Common if I call the GP for a script first. I think you’ll need something for tonight, at least. It’s a good thing you live in a ground floor flat, isn’t it? Stairs would be a bugger right now, wouldn’t they? Especially those spiral ones—you can’t get anything up and down those, even when you’re hale and hearty. Mattresses are the worst. I remember when my mum had a hysterectomy and came home from the hospital, which I know is a bigger op than an appendix, but she was….”
A captive audience on the front seat, I’m ensnared in a never-ending podcast, one with no editing and no clear topic. Every time I think he’s winding down, Alaric licks his glossy lips, takes another big breath, and launches into something else. The hazards of soft cheese in pregnancy or a boarded-up shop window or the time he lanced an abscess on someone’s arse and it was under so much pressure that the pus spurted high into the air, hitting the operating theatre lights.
Around the time we pass the golf course, I stop bobbing my head and throwing in the occasionalhmm. He doesn’t appear to mind. I’ve already stopped counting the number of times he saysand then. Instead, with the comforting cushion clutched to my achy belly, I lean my head against the window and let it all wash over me, like soothing white noise. Bizarrely, I nod off.
“Do you want me to phone work for you, to tell them you’re going to be absent for a couple of weeks?”
I jerk awake like I’ve been tasered. “What?”
“Work, you know.” Alaric smiles across at me. I’d rather he watched the road. “That repetitive chore we’re obliged to turn up to and complete, day after day after bleeding day, in order to pay for incommodious necessities like food and water and electricity. Otherwise, we’d all grab ourselves a pair of binoculars and some yellow galoshes and become lighthousekeepers in the Outer Hebrides. I don’t actually know what galoshes are by the way—I just like the word.”
“Would—“ I’m befuddled. Why the fuck are we talking about lighthouse keepers?
“I…um…run it by me again,” I say. “Not the lighthouse part. The two weeks bit. Surely, I’ll be back to normal by Tuesday or Wednesday, won’t I?”
Alaric smirks. “Well, sweetie, that depends on your definition of normal. And if I’ve learned anything in the last decade spent cruising the London gays, one person’s normal is another person’s very glittery crimson flag.”
Perfectly summing up the difference between the two of us.
“You can say that again.”
“Don’t look at me like that!” Still irritatingly cheerful, Alaric pretends to slap my leg. “My version of normality is just as valid as yours! But if you think you’re going to be bouncing out of bed and putting in an eight-hour shift at the coalface, then doing whatever it is you do to get those abs so deliciously chiselled, and, after that, popping home to take that imaginary dog for a canter, it ain’t happening any time soon. Or you’ll find yourself back in the hospital.”
My head’s reeling from his answer, on so many levels. An intriguing section of which I’ll examine later and at length. For now, my muzzy brain can only concentrate on one thing.
“Two weeks,” I clarify as we pull into our street.
He nods. “If not longer. Honestly, Gerald. You had a nasty sepsis developing there. You’re going to feel whacked. You should take it easy. The giddy world of optometry can manage without its kingpin for a fortnight, can’t it?”
A fortnight. My thoughts jam, and I take a deep breath. No need for outright panic. We have another six weeks before the show, and this time last week, me and Elsa were already runningthrough the routine faultlessly. But how good is a dog’s memory? Would she forget her steps after a two-week hiatus?
“I don’t give a stuff about work.” The car comes to a lurching standstill. “I’ll get sick pay.” Fortunately, I have an allocated space outside the flat. “It’s the…” I refuse to refer to Elsa as an imaginary dog, though it’s tricky without explaining the whole shebang. “Did you phone Mrs Gregson like I asked and tell her I wouldn’t be coming?”
