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“I know,” Chris replied. He really did know, and not just about Afghanistan this time.
“I’ll try to get you in to see him as soon as I can, okay, honey?”
Chris managed a weak smile as Helen let him go and squeezed both of his hands before heading off through the doors that Chris was barred from entering, her heels clicking on the ground and echoing in the corridor. He sat next to Natalie and sighed as she took his hand again and rested her head on his shoulder. They waited together.
* * * *
Jamie kept floating in and out of consciousness. At first, it hurt so much to breathe—the pain in his side was monumental. He saw Chris’s face once, his mother’s, Aunt Helen’s…plenty of faces he didn’t recognize, and that scared him. Jamie was on morphine. He knew he was on morphine because of how it felt—injected into his arm, he could feel it in his veins, travelling up towards his heart and then down through his limbs and then the pain started to dull, leaving him immediately drowsy.
He must have come out of the haze ten times and fallen back in within seconds until he finally had the strength to stay awake for a little longer. It was like coming up from underwater—all the sounds muffled and blurred, then suddenly they were sharp and loud, and they hurt his head.
The voices that roused him were his mother’s and Aunt Helen’s. It took him a moment to tune in, still dazed and his brain still foggy. He hated this feeling so fucking much.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Freddie!” Helen was saying on Jamie’s left. “You are absolutely overreacting to this!”
“Oh really?” his mother replied. “Was it you who walked in on them?”
“So, they were having sex! It’s an entirely natural thing for people in love to do.”
“You think Roberts loves him?”
“Honey, that kid is sitting in the corridor looking like hammered hell right now. He ran out of the house and broke the speed limit trying to find Jamie before he did himself any damage and he held his hand all the way here. You just have to look at his goddamn face to see that he’s crazy about our boy.”
Jamie held his breath, which was a monumentally stupid thing to do because it caused the pain to start again—left-hand side, sixth, seventh, and eighth ribs. He bit his tongue and tried not to let them know he was awake and listening.
“They’ve known each other four weeks, Helen,” his mother replied, her voice closer now as she sat in the chair to Jamie’s right. He could hear the chair squeak as she leaned back. “He’s been through too much. What if he can’t cope with this? What if I let this slide, let them be together, and then Jamie finds out that it’s the worst mistake of his life?”
“Then at least it washismistake,” Aunt Helen said. “If you stop them from at least attempting some kind of relationship with each other, then the blame is always going to be on you. They’re not children, Freddie—they can handle it.”
“But what if he gets hurt?”
“He’s hurt now!” Helen exclaimed. “He’s survived war, and torture, and God only knows what else. He’s strong, Freddie—he can survive a bad breakup. They’re in love with each other, for crying out loud. If it doesn’t work out, then at least they got the chance to find that out for themselves, and if it does work out, then you’ll have the happiest boy alive on this planet.”
Jamie heard his mother sigh. The machine supplying his morphine whirred and he felt the liquid drug push into his vein again. He wanted to rip the damn thing out of his arm—he’d put up with all the physical pain in the world just so long as he didn’t ever have to experience the head fog. His brain fuzzed over, and he knew that he groaned aloud. As he slipped under again, he heard his mother call his name, but was under the black blanket of sleep before he could reply.
* * * *
Chris didn’t know how many hours he’d been sitting on the uncomfortable plastic chair, head in his hands and desperate for any news of Jamie. Natalie had gone a couple of hours ago, unable to ignore her phone and PDA anymore, and the workings of the White House.
He’d called Andy and done his best not to cry to his friend as he told him the tale. Andy had offered to come and sit with him at the hospital, but Chris declined—it had been more than enough just to talk to him, and he didn’t want to leave Andy on his own should he be allowed to see Jamie.
It was Helen who came for him—Chris heard her Louboutins clicking before her head stuck out of the ER doorway and she beckoned him to follow.
“Freddie just had to step out for a conversation with the Vice Asshole,” she said, leading him down the hall. “And I’m going to get a cup of coffee. You have about ten minutes, honey—make them count.”
Helen stopped by the open door of a private room and squeezed Chris’s arm before turning and walking the other way.
He cautiously entered. Jamie’s eyes were closed, and he looked pale and grey against the stark white of the pillowcase under his dark hair, the sheet pulled up under his arms. A purple bruise was starting to form on his right cheek and his left arm was in a cast from his hand to his elbow.
“Oh, God, Jamie…” Chris murmured as he slid into the bedside chair and took hold of Jamie’s uninjured hand, raising it to his lips and giving it a gentle kiss. He bowed his head, feeling tears prickling at his eyes as he stroked his thumb over the back of Jamie’s hand.
“Are you crying over me?” Jamie asked, his voice slightly cracked.
Chris glanced up to find Jamie looking at him blurrily, the corners of his mouth pulled up just a fraction.
“You big baby…”
Chris let out a noise that was somewhere between a sob and a laugh, his vision impaired by tears that were threatening even harder to fall. “Yeah, well, you kinda scared me for a second there.”
