AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The muffled, slurred voice could have belonged to anyone. The swearing, however, sent a fresh wave of dizziness through me. Christ, I needed to get a grip.
“Time to take you through to recovery now, sir,” I declared in a brisk tone. Nausea swirled in my empty belly. I could barely string the words together, but I needed to get him out of here. Get Josie out of here too, so I could collapse in private.
Managing to stand, I dared a proper look. How tall had Matt been? Not particularly, the top of his head had come up to my neck—perfect for tucking him under my arm. Oh God. This guy was perhaps of average height too, but lying supine made it hard to tell. He was thin though, hardly tenting the sheets. Matt had also been slender, all arms and legs and nervous energy, forever jiggling his knee, biting his nails, causing mischief. This guy could scarcely move, let alone hide all my favourite pens. And his poor battered face; he could have been anybody under all that bruising and bandaging. Poking out of the dressing, a tuft of silky black hair taunted me, it took all my willpower not to reach out and stroke it. Oh God. Matt Leeson. My precious, sweet Matt.
If Josie hadn’t chosen that moment to push open the swing doors and holler to the porters, I might have burst into tears. As it was, a lump tugged at my throat and I averted my gaze.
“I’ll take this one through, Dr Valentine,” she said cheerfully. “You take a quick five-minute break and get yourself another cup of tea. Put plenty of sugar in it!”
With a grateful nod, I let her go. The responsibility to discharge patients over to the recovery staff rested with me, not her, but right now I couldn’t guarantee my legs were on board with that plan.
Somehow, I made it through the remainder of the afternoon. Ramil brought me a chicken sandwich, which surprisingly did make me feel a little better, and Josie continued to be her usual attentive self. I anaesthetised Mrs Fortescue in a daze. I dispensed advice regarding her frail physiology to the surgeons, I chatted with enthusiasm to Josie about her impending trip to Greece, and to Ramil about his advanced nurse practitioner studies. But if anyone had quizzed me about those conversations, I wouldn’t have had a clue. Not when Matt Leeson, a boy who had utterly captured, then so comprehensibly crushed my fragile teenage heart lay in a hospital bed just across the corridor.
Afterwards, when Mrs Fortescue had been safely handed over to staff in the high-dependency area and I’d changed back into my normal clothes, I headed for the surgical ward. A routine patient visit, right? Like I performed after all my challenging cases, making sure they were comfortable, and their obs were stable before I headed home. Except Matt hadn’t been challenging. The surgery had been fiddly and long—that was the nature of complex maxillofacial surgery—but from my end of the operating table, he’d been terribly straightforward. So why were my hands trembling and my heart hammering as I searched for his name on the whiteboard?
To my intense relief, he’d been allocated a single room. Whatever happened, I didn’t require an audience. I just needed to see him, to check it really was Matt. Even if he didn’t want to see me, even if the full-grown man was unrecognisable from the funny, smart boy who had enthralled me so completely all those years ago. Christ, would he even remember me?
“Matt?”
I called his name, in little more than a whisper. No response from the bed. Closing the door softly behind me, I stepped farther into the room. The plastic-covered armchair next to his bed had a hospital-issue, threadbare towel draped across it, and I pushed it aside and sat.
Matt didn’t move. He lay on his back with his head propped up on a couple of pillows, his body shrouded in a piece of blue sacking the hospital grandly referred to as a blanket. The blue of the bed linen complemented the varied hues of his bruising—the delicate skin of his face a Jackson Pollock of mottled purples, greens, and violets. He snored, unsurprising given his facial injuries, little puffs of air escaping through swollen lips. An ill-fitting hospital gown gaped at his neck, and below the delicate notch of his collar bones, a smattering of black hair dotted his upper chest. Both arms rested limply by his sides, one swathed in a clean white cast.
On impulse, I reached out and very gently linked his fingers in mine, staring at the sprinkling of fine dark hairs at his wrist, as though I’d never seen a man’s wrist before. I remembered these hands; the long, knobbly fingers and ragged, bitten nails. Hands smaller than mine—I remembered that, too. The feel of them wrapped between mine when no one else was around. Cool and soft. A sob of despair left my throat, startlingly loud in the hush of the room. My beloved Matt after all this time.
I’m not sure how long I sat there, holding his hand, listening to him breathe, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest. Long enough for the day shift to finish and the night staff to take over. A nurse came in to check Matt’s temperature, pulse, and blood pressure, padding around the bed in rubber-soled shoes. We knew each other by sight, and I stayed silent as she went about her work. He barely stirred.
“He’s a friend of yours?” she queried in a pleasant voice.
Not letting go, I nodded. “Yes. Yes, he is. A…a very old friend.”
“Poor guy.” She washed her hands at the small sink. “He’s been in the wars, hasn’t he? Nothing a good rest won’t fix, though.”
I recognised that as my polite cue to leave, and stood, relinquishing Matt’s hand. Now I’d found him, parting again scared me. A ridiculous emotion, given that he wasn’t exactly in a fit state to walk out of the hospital, so he’d still be here in the morning. The nurse sensed my hesitation.
“We’ll take care of him for you. Looks like you need a rest and some sleep yourself, Dr Valentine.”
SAY SOMETHING
(JAMES)
The well-meaning nurse on the surgical ward had been right; I reached home emotionally drained and running on fumes. Yet sleep eluded me, regardless, as it had done since the day Samantha had packed her stylish bags and tottered out on her six-inch heels, taking our son with her. He came back pretty sharpish—at fifteen, Ryan had been old enough to make up his own mind. He now flitted between the two of us, depending on whichever fridge held the most food and whether he needed a breather from Mike. That made our divorce sound incredibly amicable, and it was, but only because Ryan’s wellbeing served as a constant reminder that Samantha, Mike, and I were supposed to be the grown-ups. If it weren’t for Ryan, I’d have punched Mike’s ugly mug years ago.
To put it bluntly, I’d become stuck in a rut. My career trundled along fine; anaesthesia suited my temperament. I still took pride in caring for patients, and I enjoyed good relations with my colleagues, with one glaring exception. Becoming a future president of the Royal College of Anaesthetists held no interest for me, nor even heading our small department.
No longer young enough to compete without feeling half-dead for a week afterwards, I coached rugby at the local club on Sundays, which helped maintain common ground with my teenage son. I had held onto a full head of hair, even if it had greyed at the temples, and my teeth were all my own. The run-around at rugby kept me in moderate shape; my golf handicap hovered around a respectable twelve. My parents, sister and I were on good terms, and thanks to deceased but prudent grandparents and their tax-efficient will, I owned a rather lovely home with sea views.
During long nights spent staring at a small crack on the periphery of an otherwise unremarkable white bedroom ceiling, I had reached the dreary conclusion that what I didn’t have, or who I knew, or even what I did, couldn’t be held responsible for my general unhappiness. That stemmed from pure loneliness and a sneaking suspicion that I’d always been dull. Was flicking through the Husqvarna brochure an acceptable way to spend Saturday evenings? I thought so, although I’d failed to convince Samantha.
Living on my own for the last two years, save for Ryan’s overnight visits, had made me afraid I had forgotten how to talk to anyone that wasn’t me. By that, I meant talking properly, not superficial work gossip or banter over a beer about last night’s match. And not the unpredictable conversations I had with my teenage son, whose hormonal moods swung from joyful hysteria to wallowing in the depths of despair, in the time it took me to prepare him a bowl of pasta.
Resistance to joining the middle-aged divorcé dating scene hadn’t helped my cause. Never would I become that desperate older man in a trendy wine bar, kidding myself that the young lady tittering at my jokes genuinely found them amusing. And that she wasn’t merely tolerating my company because she’d clocked the smart watch on my wrist, or the even smarter Audi in the car park.
So yes, lonely and dull. Oh, and bisexual. Arguably, the most interesting thing about me, and I kept it to myself. In fact, the human punchbag languishing in a hospital bed not five miles away, was the only living person party to my best-kept secret. God, how I’d mourned Matt over the years. I’d come to terms with it, obviously—a hell of a lot of water had passed under the bridge since then. So why were the giddy heights of passion I’d felt for him, and my crushing desolation after he’d vanished, forever the yardstick against which I compared my attraction to anybody else since?
I wondered if he remembered our adolescent love affair in the same, rosy-tinted light.
The following day was my day off, but I went through my usual morning routine anyway, then drove into the hospital, which meant I arrived on the surgical ward just after eight o’clock. Feelings of apprehension and dread competed for precedence; dread led the way as I knocked, then pushed open the door to Matt’s room.
