“You.Just you.”
Something shifts in his eyes again.There’s a ripple of words there now, and a hundred questions, but I know he won’t voice any of them.
I try to shrug it off, as if I didn’t mean what I said.“I just don’t like being seen like this.”
“Of course.Never show your vulnerability.”
“Never.”
“Well, I’ve seen you now,” he says softly.“Now I know that even you come apart sometimes.”
Ah, Doctor.You’d best not be here when I finally fall for real.
As I drift backinto a painful sleep, the world blurs at the edges, and I’m caught between wanting to die peacefully and holding on out of sheer stubbornness.Time slips by in a hazy fog until a voice cuts through it and pulls me back.
“So you are alive.”
I jerk my eyes open, disoriented.The room feels… off somehow, like something’s shifted.
“You’ve not moved in an age.”
“What the hell…?”
“He’s gone to work.”
“Ah.Right,” I say, the disappointment sharper than I mean it to be.
“He called me at six in the morning.Six in the bleeding morning.Can you credit that?”
“I have no idea what you’re on about…”
“No one would take his shift.He tried to swap it, but the useless shower wouldn’t lift a finger.”
“Useless shower?”I repeat, still lost.
“They do nothing for him at all in that kip of a hospital.Him, on the other hand…”
“He kills himself for the lot of them,” I finish.
“He has no life at all.They’re bleeding him dry.”
“Of course he has a life.”
He gives me a slow, pitying look, like I’ve missed the point entirely.
“You shouldn’t be talking about him like that, you know.He is your father.”
“I know very well who he is.But do you?Do you really know, man?”
“What do you mean?”
“Ah, forget it.You wouldn’t understand.Anyway, I’m here to look after you now.”
“You?”
“And believe me, I’m not the worst thing that could happen to you.”
“Look, kid, I don’t need a nurse.”
