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The door swung open, and a white coat came out with a phlebotomy carrier of tubes filled with Gus’s blood. As the panel began to ease shut, Daniel got a full view of the patient. The man was sitting up in the hospital bed and glanced over.
Daniel lifted his hand in a wave. Like an idiot.
And then things were closed again.
A muffled “Hello?” permeated the divider. After which, more loudly: “So you’re just gonna wave and walk off?”
Cursing, Daniel entered the room. “Sorry.”
“S’all good.”
Over on the bed, the good doctor was staring out through bloodshot eyes, and seemed to be holding his head carefully on the top of his spine as if he were worried if he moved too fast, he was going to lose something. Like maybe his dinner. But his face was settling into a pattern of bruising that wasn’t getting worse, and the swelling did look a little better—
Gus frowned. “You okay?” When Daniel just blinked, the man said, “Listen, if you got bad news, drop the headline right now. I don’t have the energy to wait for the whole article.”
“No, no—it isn’t like that.” Daniel cleared his throat. “And hey, you’re sounding…”
“Good, right? I had a shower. I got fresh scrubs on. I’m ready to run a marathon.”
“Yeah, you do look… good.”
“You lie, but I’ll take it.”
There was a pause, and Daniel glanced around. “Can I get you anything—”
“What’s on your mind, big guy?” When Daniel hesitated, Gus slashed an impatient hand through the air—then winced, like his shoulder had hurt in response to the movement. “You think I can’t read you? Come on, after everything we’ve been through.”
“You got some recovery of your own to do. You don’t need to worry—”
“I’m ready for a distraction. Trust me.”
Daniel opened his mouth. Closed it.
In the silence that followed, Gus crossed his arms over his chest—then grunted a curse and dropped them back to his sides. “What do you want to know?”
Daniel paced around the bed. Made like he was checking the vitals’ monitor—not that he knew shit about the graph of heartbeats or the numbers off to the right. “I, ah… I’m really sorry about what happened to you—”
“Stipulated. I’m really sorry you got cancer. What’s on your mind?”
After a moment, Daniel said, “I have a question about medication.”
“Oh.”
As he put his palms forward, all crap-shit-sorry,the cane clonked on the foot of the bed. “Ouch. I mean, fuck. Now isn’t the time—”
“No, no, I’m glad, actually.” Gus went to push himself up a little higher on the pillows—and then obviously rethought the idea. “I’m ready to think about something else. What we got?”
As Daniel tried on a variety of dip-the-toe-in-the-water responses, he told himself he needed to drop his pride. Like his doctor hadn’t seen him in pretty much every compromising position possible?
“I… want to ask about the little purple pill.”
Gus’s bandaged eyebrow went up. Or tried to. “Prilosec?”
“Is that what it’s called?”
“You having indigestion?”
“No? I mean, no.”
