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Yet, he’d agreed to come.
Perhaps because Tully had asked him and not me.
Not that I had ever asked him. I didn’t want to inconvenience him...
I tried not to think about it.
He wouldn’t arrive until later tomorrow afternoon, so I had a good twenty-four hours to get used to the idea. Twenty-four hours to rest and regain some strength.
I felt so weak and tired. It was disconcerting how just lying in bed and breathing could be tiring.
The doctors came and went, telling me everything that had happened and that would need to happen in the next forty-eight hours. I’d be hooked up to these machines for two days, then maybe I could move to another ward.
Tully sat by my side, listening and nodding. He held my hand and smiled at me, a beacon of reassurance in an otherwise dark and frightful time.
And Iwasscared.
Scared what this meant—for me, for him, for us. For my work, for everything.
Yet Tully never baulked, never faltered, never flinched.
He’d said he’d been scared enough the first day, he’d cried a river of tears. Now he was all positivity and sunshine.
He sat on my bed and fed me small triangles of sandwiches. He said they were ‘coronary friendly,’ and his nose scrunched up as though tomato and cucumber on wholemeal sounded atrocious, but they were the sweetest, most delicious thing I’d ever eaten.
They did kick him out for a few hours, but I slept the whole time he was gone, only waking up when he came back in. He was with Ellis this time, and Ellis took one look at me and stopped.
“Holy shit, that’s so cool,” Ellis whispered. He was staring at my chest, and I moved to pull the sheet up. “Sorry, dude, but have you seen yourself?”
“Leave him alone,” Tully said, fixing my sheet for me. “Yes, I’ve shown him.”
Ellis ignored him, took his phone out and reversed the camera so I could see myself. My chest. The Lichtenburg figures. The red lightning mapping out the veins and arteries under the skin.
“Does it hurt?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No.”
I tried to sit up and Tully helped with the bed. It made it easier for me to look down at myself. The marks were concentrated on my left side, sprawling out like red lightning across my torso and neck.
“Always thought these were cool too,” Tully said. “Until I saw them on you.” He shuddered. “I don’t like the reminder. Maybe I’ll look back at some photos in a few years and think it was cool, but not now.”
I looked up at him. I’d have thought he would have loved seeing them—they were a rare phenomenon, after all—but he really didn’t. I reached for his hand. “They’ll fade. Apparently.”
“Well, I think they’re cool,” Ellis said. I think he’d taken some photos. “You look like one of those hotted-up cars with the flames up the side.”
I snorted, but Tully grumbled and ignored him. He kissed the side of my head. “Did you sleep okay?”
“Mm.”
“The nurse said you’re doing well.”
“If sleeping can be considered an accomplishment.”
Ellis snorted out a laugh, then remembered to keep the noise down. “I better get going. Mum said she’ll be around this arvo to see ya.” He gently patted my leg. “Good to see ya doing well, Jem. You got a bit of colour now.” And then he leaned in and whispered, “And don’t listen to him. The mean-machine flames are fucking cool.”
Tully looked for something to throw at his brother. I could see that he considered the drinking cup from the tray, and I think Ellis saw too, because he grinned and waved as he disappeared out the curtain.
I smiled at Tully. “At least he didn’t call me Lightning McQueen.”
