Page 33 of Sunshine Boy

Rahul had never been so scared in all his life as when he sat by Julian’s bedside in the hospital room. It wasn’t even a private room, like the kind you saw in films. It was one big room with a partition in the middle and some old geezer snoring loud enough to drown out the rhythmic beeping of the machine Julian was hooked up to. That bit was the same as it was in films. The beeping machine, the wires and tubes coming out of him, even the great big one in his mouth hooked up to the oxygen. It was taped down, which looked borderline obscene, like he was some kind of faulty lamp that’d had its plug haphazardly gaffer-taped into place. He wasn’t a bloody lamp. He was Julian Bloody Collier, that’s who. Rock and roll star, sunshine boy, love of Rahul’s life. That Julian Bloody Collier. He wasn’t meant to be lying all frail and ashen in a narrow hospital bed. The pale green shade of the sheets clashed terribly with his complexion for a start -- Julian would never have approved. Rahul sniffled and rubbed roughly at his eyes for the hundredth time. There was no use crying because it was all going to be all right. Julian was going to wake up and everything was going to be fine.

He hadn’t thought it was going to be all right when Julian had walked into the shop some five or six hours prior.

After breaking up with Henri, which Henri had taken on the chin better than any Englishman ever could have, Rahul had just gone to work. What else could he have done? He’d broken someone’s heart (or at least he selfishly, secretly hoped he had -- they call him Rahul “Heartbreaker” Chaand), and knew he had the loving arms of the man of his dreams to fall back into as soon as said man finished chucking his own boyfriend. What did ordinary people do in situations like that? Having been unable to adequately answer this question, he’d done the only thing he could think of and went to work.

One, maybe two, people came in. It was Collier Vinyl, after all. Not Virgin Records. Nothing out of the ordinary. So he’d been a little surprised to hear the bell over the door chime. The smile that’d risen to his face at seeing Julian froze when Julian swayed. The smile vanished altogether when he saw the streak of red that streamed down from his boyfriend’s temple. Julian had choked out his name before his eyes had rolled back in his head and his body crumpled like a rag, hitting the tiled floor with an impact that Rahul wouldn’t forget for as long as he lived.

Time had seemed to slow down and for a second it was like he was outside himself, watching the whole scene play out as if he were watching it on the telly. There was a shopkeep behind the till watching a man bleed to death on the floor. And then all at once he was back in his own body and he was springing up, leaping over the counter, falling to his knees next to Julian. He hadn’t even known where to touch him, so his hands had just hovered over him, indecisive and panicked. Only decades of repetition had propelled him off the floor again and into the backroom to phone 999. He’d waited on the floor for the ambulance, with Julian’s head in his lap, soaking his trousers through with blood but Rahul couldn’t have even begun to care. The wait for the ambulance was the longest wait of his life. He sat there, pushing the hair out of Julian’s face, watching in increasing alarm as what little colour had been left in his cheeks drained, putting his finger under his nose every other minute to make sure he was still breathing. The whole time he kept repeating in his head, Stay calm. Stay calm for Julian’s sake. He needs you. You can’t fall to pieces. Stay calm.

After the paramedics had burst into the shop, everything was lost in a blur. Rahul didn’t really make sense of things again until he found himself alone in a hospital corridor. There’d been a truly horrendous painting on the wall. It might have been a windmill and some sheep if they’d been fingerpainted by a dizzy child. As the reality of the situation had sunken in all at once, he’d pulled the hideous thing off the wall and smashed it on the floor. He’d stood staring at the rumpled print and shards of glass for several moments. As he’d stood there, he’d wished that smashing the painting had felt better. He wished that Julian wasn’t hurt and in hospital. He wished he knew what had happened to Julian. He wished he’d told him he loved him one last time before he’d left the flat. He wished a lot of things, but the painting wasn’t magic, it was just a stupid painting, and it was broken. He’d broken it. He was a vandal now. He’d probably go to prison. A nurse had come round the corner then. He took one look at Rahul and the ruined picture on the floor and sighed. “It’s every other bloody week that’s happening,” he’d said, shaking his head, and escorted Rahul back to Julian’s room.

In the intervening hours he’d tried to keep busy, thinking that if he stayed still long enough he might go mad. He’d tried to ring Mel, unsuccessfully. He’d tried both her flat and the shop, but no one had answered the phone at either. There was no one else he could phone, really. He couldn’t exactly ring up Julian’s mother. Suffering from late-stage alcoholism, she’d been put into care some time ago. Even if he rang up the care home, there wouldn’t be anything she could do, if she understood Rahul at all.

They’d come to get Julian then, wheeled his bed right out and carted him off like last week’s groceries. For tests or something. Rahul wasn’t allowed to come. He’d folded up Julian’s clothes instead, nice and tidy. They might be blood-soaked, but they could at least be tidy. He’d even tried to get the scuffs out of Julian’s old Chelsea boots. When there was nothing left to do, he went out to the waiting room to chain-smoke until he saw them wheeling Julian back. He’d tried to ask the orderly what the tests were, what the results had been, but the orderly said he didn’t know, he only worked here. Rahul had only just kept himself from cursing at him.

At some point later the doctor came round, the same one that had seen to Julian in A&E. She was a kind-faced woman with big, clear-framed glasses. She explained to Rahul that Julian had a severe concussion. He’d had a small skull fracture and they’d stapled it together like a school art project. Had to shave the side of his head to do it. He looked mental now. And not in the mental way that Julian spent hours getting his hair to look like. Rahul had tried to tell the doctor how important Julian’s hair was to him, but she’d just looked at him as though he might be suffering from a concussion of his own. Julian would be livid if he woke up. When he woke up. When.

The doctor had said he’d wake up. If his brain didn’t keep swelling. Because if it did, they might have to drill a hole in his head. Might have to keep him in a coma. But he’d wake up probably. If he didn’t get an infection. An infection that could cause blood poisoning and kill him. Other than that, he’d definitely wake up.

Rahul used the inside of his jumper to wipe at his face. He wasn’t crying. Because Julian was going to wake up. He would. He would. Because he couldn’t die when Rahul hadn’t told him he loved him one last time. He couldn’t die before they’d made love one last time. Played on stage one last time. Smoked a spliff. Listened to a record. Laughed. Hugged. Fought. Made up. He couldn’t die. He just couldn’t die --

A coughing, gagging sound snapped Rahul out of his self-pitying spiral. When he looked up to see Julian’s eyes open -- eyes bluer than the sky, eyes he thought he’d never get to see again -- and feeble hands clawing at the breathing tube down his throat, he thought he might faint from sheer relief. He sprang up, his first instinct being to help him. Then he remembered he wasn’t a qualified medical professional and he had no idea how to remove a tube from someone’s throat. Instead he mashed the button for the nurse and held Julian’s hands down, both to comfort him and to keep him from hurting himself.

Julian’s eyes were wide and panicked, not quite seeing Rahul. He continued to gag as his throat struggled against the invasive tube. Rahul wanted to weep with joy that Jules was alive, awake, but he had to put himself aside again in order to be strong for someone who needed it. He didn’t mind. That was his role in Julian’s life. He wouldn’t have it any other way.

“Shhh,” he soothed, thumbs stroking circles into the smooth skin of Julian’s wrists where he had them pinioned to his chest. “You’re all right. Just breathe through your nose, Jules. It’ll be over soon. I’m here. It’s me. See? I’m here.”

Blue eyes finally locked onto him and, after a fraction, the fight began to drain out of him. He breathed steadily through his nose, in and out, and his gagging subsided. Rahul continued his comforting, if banal, litany until a nurse appeared after what Rahul felt was a practically criminal delay.

“Good to see you awake, love,” the nurse chirped cheerfully, as if she were an old friend running into Julian at a coffee shop and not witnessing the miraculous recovery of a coma patient. But she did efficiently divest Julian of the dreadful throat tube, which, though it sent him gagging again, filled him with visible relief. The nurse proceeded to check his pupils with a little light and ask him a few questions concerning the year and if he knew where he was. The year was 1988, and he knew he was in some sort of hospital probably. Even though his throat was gravelly enough for a Tom Waits double-act, the nurse found this satisfactory and told them she’d fetch the doctor.

Rahul had been on pins and needles watching her work. As soon as she was gone, he launched himself at Julian, covering his thin frame with his own in a massive bear hug. For a single second, Julian was tense as a washing line. In the next instant he was struggling like mad, weak arms flailing away more than they’d even done when he had the breathing tube in. Startled by his reaction, Rahul pulled back straight away. Julian immediately wrapped his arms across his chest protectively, red spots on his cheeks and eyes too shiny.

Rahul had a terrible sinking feeling in his stomach, one that was wholly unlike the dread he’d felt earlier when he’d thought Julian might never wake up. This was a back of his mind suspicion, the kind you can’t put a finger on until you’re lying in bed, just about to fall asleep, and it comes to you all of a sudden. Because in that moment, just like when Rahul had first met him, Julian had reminded him of his mother’s Pomeranian. When she’d first adopted the thing, it had been rescued from an abusive home. Its owner had used to beat it, poor little fluffy creature. And after Rahul’s mother had brought it home, whenever you tried to pet it, it would shy away from you, shaking, eyes big and afraid, because it thought you were going to hit it just like its old owner had. That’s what Julian was like now, and there was an alarm bell going off somewhere in Rahul’s head. It told him that something was wrong, something had happened. But in a deeper, scarier place in Rahul’s mind, he knew exactly what was wrong and what had happened.

It was in the perfectly straight bruise that encircled Julian’s throat like an angry red collar. It was in his split lip and gash across the flat bridge of his nose that was too much like the edge of a posh, gold ring. But just like any coward, Rahul’s mind tried to protect him from the truth. For just a little bit longer. He wanted to have this moment. Just this. Couldn’t he just have this?

He took Julian’s hand instead, pulling it from his chest and bringing the knuckles to his lips. “Fucking Christ, Julesy, you really had me going there,” he laughed wetly. “You had me worried sick, you know that? When you came into the shop looking like Night of the Living dead, I thought ‘this is it.’ Then you went down and I thought I’d lost you for good.”

“Sorry ‘bout that,” Julian rasped. He’d settled a bit, his eyes losing that panicky look and becoming soft and melancholy as Rahul spoke. “Didn’t mean to give you a fright. I just… I just wanted to be safe. And when I thought ‘safe,’ you were all I could think of.”

Rahul dared reach over and gently caress Julian’s sallow cheek with two fingers. Julian closed his eyes and leaned into the touch. Rahul didn’t want to know the answer, but he had to know all the same. Taking a deep breath, he began, “Julian, what happen --”

“There’s our brave little punk rocker,” came a warm voice from the door. Doctor Dayal stood there, clipchart in hand. Rahul instinctively let go of Julian’s hand, though he felt guilty about it almost immediately. So what if the doctor knew they were gay? She was a professional. It wouldn’t influence how she treated Julian. But the part of him that had been keeping his truth secret for so long refused to let its guard down, even in the face of logic. It’d take time to demolish the wall he’d spent years erecting, brick by brick.

The doctor approached and introduced herself, even shaking Julian’s hand before explaining his current state. When she told him about the stitches in his skull, he reached a hand up and recoiled when he felt prickly baldness where long, luscious locks used to be.

“Your concussion is severe, but you’re lucky you didn’t suffer any brain damage,” she said frankly, with an air of severity. “Especially considering the sort of blunt force trauma you received. Can you tell me how this happened, Mr Collier?” Her eyes briefly darted in Rahul’s direction, which he felt insulted by in a way he couldn’t completely describe.

“Oh, you know,” Julian started, all cheeky, gap-toothed grin and mischievous eyes. “Had one too many and was dancing round in my pants when, would you believe it, I slipped on a satsuma and WHAM went right down onto the coffee table. I saw stars just like in the cartoons and everything. Thought Bugs Bunny was gonna come and take me away. But nah, it was just my mate Rahul instead. Owe him my life and all that.”

“I see.” She cast another suspicious glance at Rahul, noticeably unimpressed and unconvinced by Julian’s pants and satsuma story. For one, you don’t get bruises on your throat from hitting your head on a table. “Well, try and be more careful in the future. And, if you have anything you feel you need to report, whatever it may be, I have resources for you. I’ll have the nurse come by with them before you check out tomorrow.”

Julian’s brow creased. “Tomorrow?”

“Yes, we’d like to keep you overnight for observation, at the very least. If I had my way, we would keep you for a few days, but they tell me we need the beds. Welcome to Thatcher’s Britain.” She smiled sardonically and pushed up her glasses. Rahul decided he liked her a great deal, even if she did suspect him of abusing Julian.

“Do I have to?” Julian whined, fidgeting with the hem of his thin hospital blanket. He was starting to sound more like his old self by the minute. “I’m feeling all right, doc. Honestly. I just want to go home and sleep in my own bed.”