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“Nothing happened when you were in Singapore,” said Taylor.
“Right, nothing?” Jamie pulled his tie undone, yanked it savagely out from around his neck and unbuttoned the top of his shirt. He wrapped his tie around his fist, an ungentle action, a blue silk knuckleduster.
Angus said, “Taylor.”
“It’s nothing,” she said, eyes on Jamie, but daring Angus to disagree.
Jamie took two strides forward until he was looming over Taylor. She tipped her chin up; her defiance was like room freshener, a pervasive smell of chemical flowers. A stillness spell might’ve been dropped over the hospital, over the world. Sound fell away, movement stopped. There was just Jamie and Taylor in a bubble of conflict, watching for each other’s weakness, soaking in each other’s aggression.
Jamie broke. “Fuck.” He shot a look over Taylor’s head to Angus that might’ve punctured an internal organ, spun about and walked away.
Angus called after him, but Jamie ignored it and kept walking. Angus didn’t follow. He slouched against the corridor wall and smacked the back of his head on the hard surface, once, twice.
Taylor came at Georgia so quickly with such fury she flinched, her hands coming up to cover her face, but then she saw Taylor’s expression. Her features were twisted in agony, tears streaming. She was the one eviscerated. Taylor was bleeding out.
“You don’t know what you’ve done.” She pulled at her hair. “You’ve made this so much worse.”
No, Taylor was wrong. This wasn’t Jeffrey all over again. This was much simpler; no one was going have their life overturned because Georgia suggested Damon’s friends sort their disputes out. She wasn’t interfering; she wasn’t trying to fix things, she was only doing what people who cared about other people would do, so why was her stomach churning, why was she swallowing panic, why did it feel like she’d made a terrible mistake?
She looked for Angus. His whole bearing was weary now. He slumped against the wall. “I can’t do this anymore, Taylor. I can’t do this to him.”
“You can’t tell him. You promised me.”
“I’m breaking the promise.”
“What good does it serve? It’ll only hurt him.”
Angus hung his head. “We’ve been around and around this. He’s already hurt. Don’t you think he should know why?”
“I…”
“You love him.” It was so easy to see now. Georgia had thought it was Angus who Taylor loved and since she couldn’t have him, hated on him. “You’re in love with Jamie and he’s in love with you.”
25: Ripped
Damon held the pen and pad but he couldn’t make his fingers form letters. There was no combination of strokes and curves that would express what he felt. He didn’t know what he felt, and if doc patted his hand one more time—patronising fucking gesture—he’d find a way to scream without using his throat. She said dysphasic lesions and subglottic extension and they all knew she meant cancer.
“We’ll need to do a cordectomy and resection the vocal cord,” she said.
“What does that mean, Doctor?” Mum’s voice was hushed like this was church, not his hospital room, and she was speaking to God.
“It means we cut the cancer out, Mrs Donovan.”
“And what happens to Damon’s voice?” said Dad.
“It’s a risk reward equation. We preserve as much of his voice as possible.”
Risk—reward, like this was a game show and there might be a better future behind door number three. He was looking at a future where he spent the rest of his life sounding like a saw rasping on hardwood, best case. Worst case he was holding a device to the base of his throat so he could sound like a bad parody of a talking computer circa 1950 or using a voice program on a tablet to talk for him.
He was utterly fucked.
“What can we do to help, Doctor?” Mum, trying but not succeeding in keeping the emotion from her voice.
A hard squeeze across the top of his foot. Dad.
Doc talked about the appointments that would need to be made. If he didn’t speak up in a second they’d have his future all mapped out for him. He put a hand up to stop them.
