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“How long have you been completely blind?” Taylor. And even through the mist of confusion he knew she was shitty.
“What happened?”
“You walked into a truck.”
Run over. No wonder everything hurt.
“Anyone see who hit me?”
“No one hit you. You stepped out on the road and walked into the back of a truck carrying building supplies. You nearly decapitated yourself on metal scaffolding.” Angus. Equally pissed.
That can’t be right. Shaking his head made him want to vomit again. “Where am I?”
“Prince of Wales. You’ve been out of it a couple of hours.” Angus, now closer. Damon had no sense of where Taylor was and there was no point trying to open his eyes again.
“Georgia?” Was she here too? Why wasn’t she talking, touching him?
“Georgia, the cabbie and the truck driver scraped you off the road and called the ambulance. She called me at the Blink, she’s been here for hours, but she had to get back to work.”
He groaned. He remembered Georgia was working double shifts this week. He’d barely been able to get his hands on her since spending Sunday night in her bed. He’d planned to spend this weekend there too.
“What’s wrong with me?”
Angus snorted in derision and Taylor jumped in. “You’re blind. When did you go completely blind?”
He shook his head and had to swallow bile, coughing against the plug of it in his throat.
“Leave it, Tay.” Ah, thank God for Angus.
“I won’t. I want to know how long he’s been losing sight. How long it was going to take to tell us? You nearly fell off the stage because you couldn’t see the great fat glow-in-the-dark line we painted there for you. You went para-fucking-sailing and you didn’t think it might be smart for one of us to know what was going on with you.”
“Tay, if the bastard wants to keep secrets from people who’ve had his back his whole fucking life, then there’s nothing to talk about.”
Oh shit. Angus’ fury hurt more than all his other aches. “Look, it’s not what you think.” His head hurt, his reasoning, persuading, placating brain space was clearly so distended it had ceased all activity. It was exactly what they thought and he had no words to tell them any different.
“I stopped the nurses calling your parents. You need to tell someone if you want them here. You have concussion. Six stitches over your eye. You’re banged up but nothing is broken.”
What registered as new information was tell someone, meaning Angus was bailing. Angus who’d never walked away from any stupid thing he’d ever done. Always had his back. There was zero point appealing to Taylor. You didn’t need to be sentient to know that. Might as well sleep again; he was useless to the world awake.
The next noise he heard was Sam. “Nah, he looks bad, but it’s only concussion.” He opened his eyes and Sam said, “Hey, he’s awake. Call you later.” Then Sam was closer, the side of the bed rattled. “Mate, you could’ve lost an eye.”
There was a gruff laugh, Jamie or Angus, hard to tell. Who was Sam talking to on the phone?
“Seriously stupid, man. What were you thinking? Angus is so pissed off with you.” So it was Jamie in the room. “Taylor has cut you out of her will.”
He grunted and it hurt his head. Lost an eye, trust Sam. It was funny, but better to have lost an eye than his best friends, than his new girl, because if this didn’t scare Georgia off, he was the luckiest man alive.
And he was already the luckiest man alive. And the stupidest. He could just as easy have gone under the truck. He’d spent the whole of the week since opening his eyes to nothing but black in denial. He didn’t call Lina, his parents. He didn’t arrange for a long cane. He risked his life in front of all the people he loved most for a Sunday thrill-seeking expedition because he’d needed to prove to himself that nothing was going to change.
“You’re right, Sam.” The words were hard to get out past whatever was wrong with his throat. “That you, Jamie?”
“Yeah, mate. Shit, Damon. Georgia is shook up. She thinks it’s her fault that she didn’t put you in the taxi.”
“Oh fuck.” He lifted his head and the world tilted on a new axis, but he sat up anyway and let it spin till he felt like he might throw up his heart. He deserved to feel this bad, but it wouldn’t right things with anyone. “How long do I have to stay here?”
“Tonight,” said Jamie. “You can come home tomorrow if you check out okay.”
He wanted to go home now, but his chances of getting anyone to help him do that were severely impacted by the fact he’d been such a fuckwit.
