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Ben felt himself blush again. “You don’t have to do anything. You already saved my life.”
Simon’s eyes were an appropriate shade of silvery-blue. His gaze should have seemed chilly but it wasn’t. Those wintery-colored eyes were as warm as a perfect sunny day in June. “You know what they say about saving a life, don’t you?”
Ben did, or thought he did. “I owe you my life now?”
“No, not quite.” Simon squeezed Ben’s hand again. “The saying is that once you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for it.”
“Oh, right. That’s some sort of Chinese saying or something, right?”
Simon laughed. “No. But it is a quote from a good movie. And it means you don’t owe me a thing, Benny. I’m responsible for you.”
Ben frowned. “That doesn’t seem very fair to you.”
“On the contrary, I feel it’s more a great privilege.”
Ben’s heart thundered away in his chest. Simon didn’t mean it. Of course he didn’t really mean it. It was just a saying. Or a quote from some movie. Whatever. It was just words. Ben’s head knew this but his stupid, contrary, wicked heart wanted something else entirely.
Something it could never, ever have.
6
Simon Has Justifications
Friday, December 15
Northwestern Memorial Hospital
The Loop
By noon Ben had fallen back asleep and the doctor still hadn’t made an appearance. Simon’s stomach rumbled and he decided it was as good a time as any to get a late breakfast. After buying a bowl of oatmeal and fruit at the cafeteria, Simon sat down, got out his phone, and turned it on, as this was one of the areas of the hospital where cellphone use was allowed.
He had several texts and voicemails. Most were from his mother, there were a few from Celia and Jeff, and even one from his sister. Who knew going dark for just over twelve hours would alarm so many people?
Ignoring the voicemails for the moment, Simon scanned the texts.
Jeff:what happened? Security said there was an incident you were involved in just after you dropped me off
Jeff:please call me back
Jeff:where are you?
Mother:Stop ignoring my calls, Simon.
Mother:This isn’t funny.
Celia:your family is quite concerned but I told them, very nicely, to fuck off. I hope you’re having a fun time, whatever you’re up to.
Simon chuckled at Celia’s text and replied back that he was indeed alive, then he thanked her for being nice when she told his relatives to fuck off. Not in the mood to talk with his mother first, Simon called Jeff instead. He could spread the news around that he was not dead in a ditch somewhere. For the love of god, he was forty-eight years old and ran a multi-billion dollar company for twenty-five years. But he stopped answering messages for half a day and apparently his family expected the worst. At least Celia wasn’t concerned, having not forgotten that he was a fully functional adult.
After finishing his breakfast, Simon found a quiet corner and called Jeff.
“Uncle Simon! What’s going on?”
“I could ask you the same thing, kid. Why all the excitement?”
Jeff sighed. “My mistake was calling your mother to ask if she’d heard from you. We got into an argument, like we always do, then she got hysterical, apparently, and started calling every hospital in the area to see if you’d been admitted to any of them despite me telling her repeatedly that I was not under the impression you were on death’s door. All I did was say that security had told me you’d been involved in an incident and she freaked out. Like she always does.”
“I’ll call her next and calm her down.” Or try to. His success rate with getting his mother to chill was nowhere near one hundred percent.
