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“Good. That’s really good, Maison.”
“Good.” He looks like he doesn’t believe that though. There’s a slight tremble in his body. “I’ll—uh—maybe I’ll see you later? Only if you’d like.”
There isn’t a single cell in my body that wants to wait for that. I’m still upset, but nowhere near enough for it to affect how much I care about this man. This stupid, stubborn, self-sacrificial man. “I could come with you.”
His breath audibly catches. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“It might—he’ll ask me stuff. About what happened. I don’t want you to have to hear all of that.”
“You don’t want me to have to hear it or you don’t want me to hear it?” I ask, because they’re two very different things.
“The first.”
I reach out, taking his hand slowly in case he wants to stop me. The moment our fingers slot together, he’s clinging to my hand. “Then let’s go.”
Dr. Deacon’s door is open, the man sitting at his small desk frowning down at a file. He looks up when we appear in the frame. His eyes seem to fall on me first before moving to Maison. His expression is perfectly blank, which is a far cry from the kind, understanding man that he was when he treated both me and Matt. It makes me feel uneasy. If he’s mean to Maison, I will kick his fucking ass.
“Maison,” he says, speaking carefully in the same sort of way I noticed they all talked to us survivors at first. Almost like we were skittish animals, nervous and untrusting, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation. I suppose they were right. I wait for Maison to tell him not to treat him like that, but the man bristles beside me, and I realize something—there’s a chance Dr. Deacon is right in this instance too. There’s a chance Maison is just like the rest of us but delayed because he refused to let himself properly heal. “I’m very glad you decided to come.”
Maison averts his gaze to the floor, his hand tightening around mine. I squeeze him back to reassure him that I’m here.
“I piss blood in the mornings,” he says without preamble, his voice wrecked. When he takes in a breath, his whole chest seems to shudder. I hope it means a weight is lifting. I know one is lifting off of mine, even as worry for his health starts ramping up in my gut. “My nose was broken, but I popped it back into place. Same with my right shoulder, which was dislocated. I had a hard time with lights for the first few days and my ears wouldn’t stop ringing. Probably a concussion. Now, it’s mostly just headaches.”
Dr. Deacon never takes his eyes off Maison, but his hands are grabbing for paper and a pen. He starts jotting things down, the letters messy and rushed but miraculously not running into each other.
“I’ve got dizziness and nausea, but I haven’t been great at eating, so I’m not sure what’s causing those. My ribs are at least bruised, but they might be cracked.” He turns his head, hiding his face from me. “I was bleeding for the first three days—you know, from… from where they—”
I press against his side, placing my cheek to his shoulder, and squeeze his hand again. He leans into me.
“The bleeding… there stopped. No pain when I have to use the bathroom. My throat was—it was pretty fucked up for a few days, but I can swallow now without any pain. They—uh—they knocked a tooth out. I think I swallowed it. It was all unprotected, obviously, so… there’s that. I could be—I could have…” He shakes his head. “And I’m not really sleeping.”
Dr. Deacon nods, his hand still moving. When Maison still hasn’t said anything by the time he’s finished, he grabs the paper he wrote on—what seems to actually be the back of an envelope—and a file that was on the bottom left corner of his desk. He stands. Maison immediately steps back. Dr. Deacon holds up a hand and sits back down. “I can work from here. At least at first.”
“No. I—I don’t know why I did that.” Maison drops my hand and moves into the room, acting like a completely different person now. He hikes himself up onto the exam table nearby without so much as a flinch and gives Dr. Deacon a smile that’s easy and charming and so believable it startles me. “Look all you want, Doc.”
Dr. Deacon frowns, but he stands once more and approaches the table. He glances back at me just before reaching it. “Is Nolan staying?”
Maison’s bravado wavers as his panicked eyes search me out. I nod. “I can stay.”
“If you want,” he manages, sounding nowhere near as confident as he did a second ago. He shrugs, but it comes off as more of a flinch.
“I’ll stay,” I say firmly.
“Alright.” Dr. Deacon gives me a smile. “Please close the door for us then, Nolan.”
While I close the door, I hear Maison mumble something that sounds like, “Don’t want to talk about the sex.”
I’m unable to hear if Dr. Deacon responds, but when I get closer, he’s saying, “Let’s talk about the concussion first. I won’t be worried about the headaches for another week, but if the ear-ringing or light-sensitivity comes back, or if you throw up from how bad the headaches get, come to me.” He gives Maison a very pointed look. “Come. To. Me.”
Maison rubs the back of his head. “Okay.”
He’s not going to come to him.
Maybe Dr. Deacon knows that because he then turns to me and raises an eyebrow. I can’t help but laugh a little. “I’ll make him.”
“Good.” Before Maison can do more than huff indignantly, the doctor is moving on. “Talk to me about not being great at eating. What exactly does that mean?”
