“More like mislaid his brains down the back of it. I’m surprised you aren’t here, actually, mopping his brow and tending to his more intimate needs. Because when he wakes and finds me sitting here, waiting to give him an absolute bollocking for being such a monumental twat, he’s going to be terribly disappointed, darling.”
Though my chest feels too small for my heartbeat and my hands shake, as Alaric fills in the details, I grab my keys and coat. I’ve been fighting my battles alone for too long. And so has Neil. He needs me, as I need him. I’m stronger now. Braver.Brave enough to be the one who plays a part, who takes a lead. Who rolls up their sleeves and gets stuck in.
The one who stays when things get ugly.
CHAPTER 22
NEIL
If my retinae weren’t horribly damaged before, they fucking are now.
Hello, old friend. A fluorescent strip of light burns through my eyelids, telling me where I am: in a bloody hospital. Turns out it wasn’t a nightmare, then. Just me making yet a few more shoddy life choices. Oh joy.
Mind you, the pain pulsing from my dazzled eyes has nothing on the agony of my arm. I swear some demon’s poking a dagger around in there just for the hell of it. I twist my head to escape the light, sending a shower of fireworks shooting up to my shoulder.
“Fuck,” I yelp. “Turn that bloody light off. It’s killing me.”
Immediately, the intense artificial light is blocked by a blond head. A faintly amused voice lisps, “You’re awake then.”
Groaning, I squint at Alaric through my fingers. “Oh great, they’ve sent a willy doctor.”
“Urologist.”
That is way too complex a word for how my cotton wool brain is computing right now. “Please tell me you’re not here prof…professionally.”
“No.”
Thank Christ. I’ve already embarrassed myself enough for one millennium. The finer details are hazy, but my brain’s not so hungover it’s incapable of signalling the general gist.
“Though,” Alaric continues, examining his nails. “I haven’t checked anything down below yet, so…”
“The fact you need to say that is deeply unsettling.” I root around under my gown with my good hand. Mercifully, everything feels as it should. “Why are you here, then?”
“Somebody needed to keep you alive in the ambulance. Everyone else was too busy serving free drinks to customers brave enough to stay, and cleaning up the bar.”
That’s me told. Wincing, I try to sit up. “Fuck, my arm hurts.”
“Glass slicing through several nerves, blood vessels, and tendons does tend to have that effect, regrettably. There’s a tiny cup of oral morphine on the side here, waiting for you. I advise you to neck it.”
I don’t usually follow Alaric’s suggestions–mostly out of principle, as he’s a bossy bugger—but this seems like a sensible one, especially if it’s the path to oblivion. Once he’s helped me sit up enough to drink it, he stops talking and I’m grateful, because…what the fuck is there to say? I’ve blown things with Ez beyond measure, which means I can kiss any friendship I have with Isaac goodbye too. Gerald didn’t need any more reasons to hate me, and Alaric’s probably only here out of a sense of medical duty.
As for Luke….
I can’t allow my mind to dwell on Luke. It’s too painful, even more painful than my arm. Fortunately, the morphine’s kickingin, except with the added side effect of making me weepy. My lovely, lovely rash whisperer. My sweet man.
I sniff, trying to disguise it as a cough, and the sharp, metallic, and unmistakable taste of blood fills my mouth. Must have banged up my nose, too. Fucking idiot. As the opioid dulls my pain, I float into the gradual slowing and speeding of time. Nurses come and go; Alaric talks on his phone.
“I love him,” someone rasps, just as I fade into dreamland. Pretty sure it’s my voice.
“I know you do, you great big twatwaffle. We wouldn’t be in this bloody mess if you didn’t. Ah, look, they’ve come to take you away for surgery. Be good, darling, try not to break anything else.”
At some point in the time-space continuum, tiny pinpricks of light float before my eyes. I rouse from a sleep far deeper and, dare I say, far pleasanter than the one which swiftly followed me spraying a couple of litres of the red stuff across the floor of the bar. Even my arm hurts less, though it's twice its normal size. The surgeon’s hours of delicate handiwork are wrapped inside a sturdy plaster cast.
Irritatingly, I’m still on Planet Earth and lying on a sweaty plastic mattress atop a narrow hospital bed. I feel hot, vaguely nauseated, and strangely buoyant, like a rubbery, sentient jellyfish. As highlights of my recent escapades come back to me, one horrific shred after another, I also realise I’m not alone. In the chair by the bed, someone shifts and a cool hand folds around my free one.
“You didn’t need to stay, Al. I’m perfectly capable of being miserable on my own.”
“He’s not here,” says a voice.
