(no subject)
Title: Blood Rising (Part Forty-One)
Author: gregoria44
Rating: 16+ for language and physical description, this part
Word count: This part 4,621
Summary: Rock bottom.
A/N: Same as Part One. All comments and concrit always welcome and actively encouraged. Special thanks to haldoor, rivers_bend, extra special thanks to ladywillin and everyone who's reading and commenting. If you have any trouble accessing any of the previous chapters, please message me and I’ll sort something out for you.
Warnings: These are teenagers and this is gay fiction. Stuff happens.
Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine / Part Ten / Part Eleven / Part Twelve / Part Thirteen / Part Fourteen / Part Fifteen / Part Sixteen / Part Seventeen / Part Eighteen / Part Nineteen / Part Twenty / Part Twenty-One / Part Twenty-Two / Part Twenty-Three / Part Twenty-Four / Part Twenty-Five / Part Twenty-Six / Part Twenty-Seven / Part Twenty-Eight / Part Twenty-Nine / Part Thirty / Part Thirty-One / Part Thirty-Two / Part Thirty-Three / Part Thirty-Four / Part Thirty-Five / Part Thirty-Six / Part Thirty-Seven / Part Thirty-Eight / Part Thirty-Nine / Part Forty
Not caring if I’d officially accepted permission to be out of school or not, I ran down the drive, out of the gates and onto the first bus into town I could find. Every traffic light was on red, every stop had an infinite queue of doddery dears needing a chat with the driver.
In town, I flew off the bus and onto another, not even bothering to sit down. I hung off the rail, as close to the door as I could get, sure that the distance from town to hospital had lengthened since my last journey.
I may not have found out how involved Raleigh had been, or what he did or didn’t know, but the warning he’d given was too much of a gloat; too much of a job-done, game-over, statement of fact. He might have been a liar, and he was definitely a bastard, but if he had reason to think Thomas was on his way, I had to believe it. I had no idea what I was going to do when I got to the hospital, no idea how I was supposed to take Thomas on by myself, but I was not going to let Des down a second time.
The bus finally pulled up alongside the hospital, and I was away again: through heavy doors and squeaking corridors, past porters with wheelchairs and trolleys, taking stairs two at a time because I couldn’t wait for the lift.
Skidding up to reception, I was grateful to see the same woman who’d been there both times I’d visited before. There was a twinkle about her as she started to speak, and I could hear the joke about being eager already forming, but she caught the look in my eyes, and let it go. “Are you all right?”
“Has he…? Is he…? Has anyone…?” I couldn’t catch enough breath to finish, let alone order my thoughts into proper sentences.
She stood to lean across the counter and cover one of my hands; I was clutching at the Formica and trying to suck in lungfuls of air. “It’s okay,” she said, “take it easy.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes, as far as I…”
“Is there anyone in there with him?”
“Well, yes, but…”
An undignified sound escaped my throat and she looked even more concerned.
“Let me get someone for you.” She retreated back to reach for the phone. I shook my head to clear it, but she misunderstood and paused. I used the time to grasp at my wits.
“Is it his brother? Tall… dark hair… eyes…” I knew flopping a finger towards my own eyes wasn’t much of a description, but there was no point telling her he looked like Des, and although everyone had eyes, not everyone had eyes like the Dorans. She’d surely know what I meant if she’d seen him.
“Not unless his brother’s a policeman,” she told me, pointedly. “Wait there a second.”
I could have slumped to the floor with relief. If the police were with Des, he wasn’t in immediate danger, and they must be there for a reason: perhaps he’d recovered enough to tell them what had happened; perhaps they’d finally get round to arresting Thomas.
A male nurse I’d not seen before came through the doors and headed over. “Hiya. Steven, is it? My name’s David. Do you want to come and sit down a sec?” He had one of the strongest Scouse accents I’d ever heard, and I followed him to the seats, chest still heaving. “Everything’s fine,” he said, sitting down with me, “you’ll be able to see Des in a minute.”
Sagging forward, I let my head drop, feeling in need of oxygen to the brain. Thomas wasn’t at the hospital and the police were, but what could I say to them? That an evil P.E. teacher had suggested, without actual words, that Thomas might be on his way? I didn’t even know if they’d worked out he was responsible: at a guess, there’d be physical evidence, DNA or whatever it was they looked for at a crime scene.
David briefly touched my arm. “You all right, there?”
“Yeah,” I half nodded, head too heavy to lift properly, “but can I talk to the police, after they’ve finished with Des?”
“It’s nothing to do with me, lad,” he replied cheerfully, “I’m a lowly nurse, not a security guard. No reason you shouldn’t though, eh?”
About quarter of an hour later, two policemen emerged, one of them the officer who’d interviewed me on Friday night. They had their hats under their arms, and their radios turned off, making it seem as though they’d been visiting the mortuary rather than Intensive Care. I blinked away the thought.
The one I recognised perched on the edge of a seat two up from mine and turned his body to face me. The other one wandered over to reception, asking where he’d be okay to use his radio again.
“All right, Steven. The nurse told me you were in a bit of a state just now. Anything I can help with?”
If my words had sounded ridiculous when I’d thought them, they sounded even more Secret Seven when faced with dense black uniform and a naturally cynical expression. “I got it into my head Des’ brother might be here.”
“How come?” He pulled out his notebook.
“Something one of our teachers said,” I mumbled, feeling more awkward by the second.
He took in my blazer, shirt and tie. “You’ve been at school, then?” The question made Duncan’s favourite saying about the police pop into my head: paid by the state to state the bleeding obvious. It gave me a bit more courage, and I nodded. He put his hand on his pen. “Which teacher might this have been?”
“Ral… er, Mr. Raleigh.”
“Ah.” He flipped a few pages of his book. “We’ve spoken to him. What did he have to say, exactly?”
I thought of Raleigh’s self-satisfied smirk, the choking waves of deodorant and sweat rolling from his pits as he knotted his meaty fingers behind his neck. Anything he’d said would have sounded menacing. “He told me not to come here again because Thomas might turn up. I didn’t know why else he’d have said it.”
“Hmm.” He wrote something down, tucked the book away again. “We’d rather know this stuff than not, all right? I gave your brother my number and the station number; anything bothers you again, give us a call rather than charging over here, okay?” His gaze flicked over my uniform again. “Why aren’t you in school now?”
“They gave me permission to take time off; that’s why I was speaking to Mr. Raleigh.”
“Right.” He stood up and put his hat back under his arm. “Go and see your mate, then. He’s doing better this morning; they’re moving him to a general ward later.”
“Wait…” I stood up too. “Have you found Thomas?”
“Come again?”
“Thomas: Des’ brother, have you spoken to him yet?”
Regarding me narrowly, he raised a hand to acknowledge the other officer, who was calling for him to go. “He turned up at the station this morning. He’s helping us with our enquiries.”
“You’ve arrested him?”
“He’s helping us with our enquiries,” he repeated, and with a curt nod, followed his colleague through the exit.
*
Des appeared to be asleep when I went in. David the nurse had warned me he might be too tired to talk after the police visit, so I quietly sat down and took time to adjust once more to the sight of him. The eyelid under the bandage was slightly less swollen and grotesque, and the purple of his face had darkened to a less unnatural shade of bruising, but everything was as horrible as before.
After a while, I lay my forearm on the bed rail with my chin on top, focussing on his near arm. The slow pace of my fingers on his skin, the regular beeps and clicks of machinery, the warmth of the room, and I floated away, somewhere between asleep and awake.
*
“Ste?”
“Mm?” I lifted my head and wiped at my mouth with a numb hand. It took a second or two, but then I remembered, and looked up to see Des watching me through a half-open eye.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hello.” I moved the chair further up the bed so he didn’t have to speak any louder, and tried to concentrate on the colour of his iris rather than its bloody surround. The eyelid kept drooping shut, but slowly reopened each time: he seemed alert. I managed a weak smile.
“What’re you doing here?” His words were barely more than a breath, and there was no way he could return the smile, but…
“Please tell me you’re not trying to be funny.”
The sigh he gave carried the ghost of humour, raising my hopes a millimetre.
“Never mind what I’m doing here,” I told him. “I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”
He shut his eye for a longer moment, leaving me scared I’d said the wrong thing, but then his hand reached out and found mine. So much seemed represented by the one gesture: I was wanted there, he wanted me there. We were together, and Thomas was at the station, and he wouldn’t be hurting Des again.
After some minutes, he spoke with difficulty. “The police came.”
Unable to close his lips around the ‘p’ sound, he’d left it half formed; watching him try was painful enough. I jumped in quickly, trying to save him the effort. “I know. They were leaving when I got here. They said they’ve got Thomas.”
Against mine, his hand went damp, and his breathing picked up. Even hearing the name was enough, and I immediately hated myself for having said it out loud. “I’m sorry; I’m sorry, we don’t have to talk.”
He’d instinctively squeezed his eyes shut against whatever memory I’d dragged up, forcing a gasp when the movement pulled at damaged skin and muscle. “Everything hurts,” he whimpered, trembling with pain and stress.
“I know,” I quailed, in my own feeble agony at hearing how ridiculous I sounded: as if I could begin to imagine.
His eyes remained closed, and his breath gradually settled. I waited, staring at the black, crusted mess around his eyebrow and temple until he spoke again. When he did, there were too many sounds missing to be decipherable, and I had to ask him to repeat himself. Even then I had to take a guess at some of the words.
“What’s Mark said?”
“Mark?” My mind lumbered with the change of direction. “I’ve not spoken to him since…” don’t say it, don’t say it. “He’s been given time off school, his mam and dad keep saying he isn’t well enough to talk over the phone...” I sped up, trying to cover as much as possible so he didn’t have to struggle through more questions. “School said I could have the week off an’ all, but I didn’t know that this morning, so I’m in my stupid uniform, and Mr. Fullwell told me I should go with Raleigh to talk about things and…”
Des’ hand clamped mine so tightly I actually swore, and his eyelid pulled up again. “Stay away from him,” he grated out, shifting in the bed and straining as though to sit up. “Don’t talk to him.”
With the swollen mask of his face, the melted red of his eye socket and the unnaturally stiff mess of his mouth, it was like being threatened by a reanimated corpse: a ghost of things to come. I forced down a gulp of nausea as the effort became too much for him and he collapsed back into himself, exhausted. The stricken grey of his eye disappeared beneath its thickened, purple lid and didn’t re-emerge.
Disturbed, I glanced up to check David was in sight. He was at the desk, already looking over and waggling a pen between his fingers, probably deciding whether or not to interrupt. I shifted my gaze back to Des. Beneath his injuries his skin had turned bone-white. “Listen, I’ll go. I’ll come back tomorrow when you’ve had more rest; we’ll talk then.”
“Not yet,” he mumbled, then said something that sounded like ‘promise me.’
“I’ll have to go soon anyway,” I replied. “They want to move you to another ward.”
“Not that… him… talking…” The words followed each other, but were disconnected and vague. He was losing his thread in a returning fog of semi-consciousness.
“What’s Raleigh got to do with all this, Des?” I asked the question quietly, more for myself than him; not expecting an answer. “It was Thomas did this, wasn’t it?”
For a full minute, he was quiet. In normal circumstances I’d have assumed he’d gone to sleep. Then he whispered, “He was there.”
“Thomas?”
“Before him.”
Raleigh? A sensation like cold water ran down the back of my neck. “He wasn’t there, Des, he couldn’t have been: he was at school. Mark went to see him for the photographs. Do you remember any of that?”
Drifting further, his voice began fading in and out. “Had to tell… ’bout Mark… the photos…”
“No, man, you’re getting it all mixed up: Mark went to see Raleigh, to get the photos for art. You went home.” There was no way his memory of that day was clear. He’d taken a near-death beating and been unconscious for some time.
“He left me… he knew it’d happen.”
Who’d left him? Raleigh? Mark? What the hell? How could he possibly have remembered Mark (let alone me) being at his house? The more I heard, the less it made sense, and maybe that was just it: maybe he was replaying warped snatches of memory and drugged-up dreams.
David appeared next to the bed. “Everything all right, lads?”
“I’m not sure,” I told him, feeling shaken. David checked a monitor and leant over to feel the pulse in Des’ good wrist. Des didn’t react.
“He’s okay, but maybe it’s time to make a move, eh?” David suggested, then winked. “You and me both, as it goes: my shift’s about done and all.”
Nodding, I remembered to ask. “Are they still going to move him later? Where will he be?”
“Depends when there’s a bed available,” he replied. “Give us a ring before you come again, we’ll tell you where he is then.” With a smile, he left us alone.
“I’ll get going,” I said gently to Des, in case he was still aware enough to hear. “I’ll come again tomorrow.” I wondered if he’d be saying anything different by then, or whether I’d have found any sense in what had already been said. Maybe I was the one getting confused, or mishearing.
Standing up, I dithered over how to say goodbye; just walking away felt unfinished.
Over at the nurse’s station, another nurse had arrived to take over David’s shift; they were sorting paperwork and sharing a quiet joke about his plans for the evening. For the moment, Des and I weren’t being watched.
With his hand still in mine, I leant over the rail and carefully, carefully kissed his ear. Before I’d moved away, he whispered something so softly, it took a moment to reach my brain. “He saw us.”
“What was that?”
Nothing. He might have been talking in his sleep; except it was that phrase again.
On my way past the nurse’s station, I said goodbye to David and the other nurse, and went through the doors into the reception area. I felt dog-tired: even the hard plastic chairs looked tempting enough to fold myself into until morning.
Actually, I had no idea of the time, but as it turned out my day still had a way to go.
Standing at the receptionist’s counter was a tall, upright woman in a long, shapeless dress: waiting while the receptionist tapped at the computer. The same moment I saw her, Mrs. Doran recognised me.
“You?” She sounded puzzled, curious, but the look in her eye wasn’t calm and it wasn’t kind and it froze me in place.
She turned briefly back to the receptionist. “What’s he doing here? He’s not family.”
There was an accusatory edge which was returned in the glance the receptionist gave her. “There aren’t any rul…”
“Shut up,” Mrs. Doran told her, and surged towards me. Like Des and Thomas she was tall and impressive, and like them, intimidating when angry. I automatically shrank back, aware how thoroughly she had blocked my exit.
“How dare you come here?” she hissed into my face. “How dare you be here with him?”
If I’d given any thought to seeing her, I might have imagined her upset, crying maybe: for what had happened; for leaving it so long before she’d come to see her son; for waiting, in fact, until there was nothing more she could do for Thomas before turning up for Des.
In a particularly hopeful moment, I might have dared to imagine small, begrudging thanks: for being there when no-one else was.
Instead, her deadly face was centimetres from my own, the furious trenches of crumbling make-up in sharp, sudden focus, her heavy perfume choking me. Making the mistake of looking into her pale burning eyes, I was trapped.
“How could you do this to us?” she spat out. “How could you be so stupid?”
The unfairness of the question was blunt enough to knock aside my own feelings of guilt. Despite the fear, the adrenaline, a desert-dry mouth and the flecks of her vitriol across my skin, I managed not to stammer. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do this.”
“Oh, but you did, didn’t you?” The dramatic shift in gear from spitting anger to coaxing confessional was rapid and disturbing: her voice lowered, becoming crawlingly intimate. “I know what you are, Steven,” she murmured, eyes widening, pupils like tiny full stops. “I know why you’re here. I know what goes through your head when you think about my son.”
Ice filled my blood.
“What did you think would happen?” Her expression twisted into pity and disappointment: the motherliness so nearly believable. “Did you think the two of you wouldn’t be found out? Did you think nobody would notice?”
Embarrassment smothered my reluctance to deny everything, and the weighty pull of responsibility drew me towards her dreadful logic. “We didn’t… I don’t…”
“You stupid, stupid boy,” she whispered.
A soft noise sounded behind me; a change in the air offering a life-saving, head-clearing breath.
“All right, there, lad?”
David the nurse, finishing his shift and leaving the unit, rested a hand lightly on my shoulder. Mrs. Doran’s eyes flicked from mine to his for just long enough, and I was released and steered away before I’d even realised it.
We got as far as the double doors before Mrs. Doran shouted after us. “You’ll never forgive yourself for this!” she cried, “and Des won’t forgive you either.”
*
Through the doors and a little way down the corridor, David stopped. “Well, she seems nice,” he joked.
“She’s his mam,” I said flatly, the words wet concrete in my mouth.
“Ah, the famous missing mother.” I could feel him considering me while I looked down at his shoes: solid, sensible, black. They were as far in front of me as I wanted to think.
“Is anyone here with you?” he asked.
The concrete had set: I shook my head.
“Come ’ed.” His shoes turned, began to walk. I followed them.
*
We were in a canteen. David guided me to an empty table amongst other empty tables and pulled out a chair for me. I sat down. “When did you last have something to eat?”
I couldn’t remember, was too numb to feel hungry. He went away for a bit, came back with two large teas in off-white mugs and a three-pack of biscuits. My hand went to my pocket, but I’d used my dinner money on bus fare.
Stupid.
“Forget it.” David sat opposite me. “If I wasn’t a responsible adult, I’d suggest brandy instead. Then you’d have to pay, cos I can’t be affording that on these wages.” I didn’t take in what he was saying, just mumbled some thanks.
He went quiet, and I stared at my fingers which might have been scalding against the mug for all I could feel of them. More than anything I wanted to fall asleep and never wake up, but if I let my eyes close, all I got was the prickle of tears. Crying wasn’t going to help anything.
“You didn’t do this to him,” David said, voice gentle. He lifted a finger and tapped my unmarked knuckles, just the once. “So whatever she was saying about forgiveness, this isn’t on you, you know that?”
“His brother did it.” I watched the steam rise and disappear from the tea clutched between my hands. “She said it’s my fault, but I know it isn’t. She says we… she says we were…”
I stopped, unsure if I wanted to say more. Glancing up, not quite catching his eye, I shook my head, letting it drop until I could feel the steam against my face.
“You experience a lot of people in this job,” David went on, easing past the unfinished sentence. “They can react in a lot of strange ways when something bad happens. Sometimes families seem angry with you, but they’re just upset: they’re hurting; they’re looking for someone to blame.”
I didn’t want to feel sympathy or understanding for any of Des’ stupid family. The heat finally reached my hands, and I snatched them away from the mug and splayed them forcefully against the edge of the table. “But I didn’t do this, and even if I was the reason he did it, why shouldn’t she blame Thomas as well? He’s the one who put Des in here.”
“That’s what I’m trying to say. This brother, this… Thomas, he’s her son too, right?”
“Yeah, but…”
He opened his hands wide, shrugged. “Families,” he said again. “If she blames him, she’s gotta blame herself as well, and I’m guessing from the sound of her, she’s not ready for that.”
“She hasn’t been here.” I persisted. “She’s only come now ’cos the police have got Thomas. She’ll have been hiding him before that.”
“Ey, come on,” he said, quietly. “Don’t let this all get twisted up in your head. She’s here now, so she cares enough to turn up at least. Trust me, some people never do.”
I risked looking at him then. “Even for their kids?”
“Even for their kids. I’m not saying it’s usual; I’m not saying you’re wrong or that she was right to stay away as long as she did, but it’s a start, isn’t it?”
When I didn’t reply, he took a deep breath and went on very slowly and carefully. “Listen… I saw the way you said goodbye to Des, earlier… and the way you are with him… Maybe it’s not such a wild guess as to why his mam’s having a go at you, and I promise you, I do know how difficult that is… I do understand… I have been there.” He paused for a longer moment. “Do you see what I’m saying?”
An ugly pounding kicked in my chest and rushed up behind my eyes. It was too much to open my mouth. Too much to say that I understood. Too much that I knew exactly what he was saying.
“It won’t always be like this,” he added, cutting through the din in my head, “I can promise you that.”
With immense effort, I managed to nod. It was much, much later that I realised exactly what it meant to hear, from a normal adult, that things could improve; that there might be a better life for people like me and Des.
“And you’re right,” he said, “you didn’t do this, and whatever’s going on with you and him, or whatever he did or said, the only person to blame for this is the person who hit him. No-one deserves to get hit, not for anything, but especially not for this. And when all the accusations start flying around, and the chances are it will get worse than today, remember that, okay?”
I nodded again, but for all his kindness, David couldn’t know Thomas was hitting Des long before anything happened with us. There was more to it. There had to be.
If only I could stop feeling so tired and stupid; if only I could talk to Mark, I was sure I could make more sense of everything.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” David was saying, “but you look done in. Is there anyone who can come and pick you up?”
“No.” I found my watch. Five past three. I didn’t have the energy to be surprised we were still on Monday. “It’s all right; I’ve got a bus ticket.”
“Then go home, get some rest. Des is still fairly out of it anyway. If he’s not making much sense now, you wait until they start taking him off the morphine. Let his mam do whatever it is mams are supposed to do for a bit. You never know, it might do her some good an’ all.”
“But then what?” I said, not expecting him to have an answer. “Everything I do causes more problems. I stayed away and Des nearly got killed; I come here and now his mam’s pissed off and yelling stuff. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to change anything.”
“Maybe you can’t yet. Listen, Des is safe enough here for the time being. If you stay away for a few days, nothing bad’s going to happen to him. This sort of thing doesn’t clear up overnight and he’s going to need more help later on to be honest. Give yourself some space, some time. Let things settle down a bit. It’ll be easier to make decisions when you haven’t got someone shouting at you, won’t it? When you’re not so tired?”
I disliked how ready I was to accept his suggestion as a good one: it felt too easy, and I was getting suspicious of everything, including my own feelings. But what else was there to do? I had to trust that David was right. I had to trust that his advice was the right advice. After all, no-one was offering anything better to believe in.
*
Author: gregoria44
Rating: 16+ for language and physical description, this part
Word count: This part 4,621
Summary: Rock bottom.
A/N: Same as Part One. All comments and concrit always welcome and actively encouraged. Special thanks to haldoor, rivers_bend, extra special thanks to ladywillin and everyone who's reading and commenting. If you have any trouble accessing any of the previous chapters, please message me and I’ll sort something out for you.
Warnings: These are teenagers and this is gay fiction. Stuff happens.
Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine / Part Ten / Part Eleven / Part Twelve / Part Thirteen / Part Fourteen / Part Fifteen / Part Sixteen / Part Seventeen / Part Eighteen / Part Nineteen / Part Twenty / Part Twenty-One / Part Twenty-Two / Part Twenty-Three / Part Twenty-Four / Part Twenty-Five / Part Twenty-Six / Part Twenty-Seven / Part Twenty-Eight / Part Twenty-Nine / Part Thirty / Part Thirty-One / Part Thirty-Two / Part Thirty-Three / Part Thirty-Four / Part Thirty-Five / Part Thirty-Six / Part Thirty-Seven / Part Thirty-Eight / Part Thirty-Nine / Part Forty
Not caring if I’d officially accepted permission to be out of school or not, I ran down the drive, out of the gates and onto the first bus into town I could find. Every traffic light was on red, every stop had an infinite queue of doddery dears needing a chat with the driver.
In town, I flew off the bus and onto another, not even bothering to sit down. I hung off the rail, as close to the door as I could get, sure that the distance from town to hospital had lengthened since my last journey.
I may not have found out how involved Raleigh had been, or what he did or didn’t know, but the warning he’d given was too much of a gloat; too much of a job-done, game-over, statement of fact. He might have been a liar, and he was definitely a bastard, but if he had reason to think Thomas was on his way, I had to believe it. I had no idea what I was going to do when I got to the hospital, no idea how I was supposed to take Thomas on by myself, but I was not going to let Des down a second time.
The bus finally pulled up alongside the hospital, and I was away again: through heavy doors and squeaking corridors, past porters with wheelchairs and trolleys, taking stairs two at a time because I couldn’t wait for the lift.
Skidding up to reception, I was grateful to see the same woman who’d been there both times I’d visited before. There was a twinkle about her as she started to speak, and I could hear the joke about being eager already forming, but she caught the look in my eyes, and let it go. “Are you all right?”
“Has he…? Is he…? Has anyone…?” I couldn’t catch enough breath to finish, let alone order my thoughts into proper sentences.
She stood to lean across the counter and cover one of my hands; I was clutching at the Formica and trying to suck in lungfuls of air. “It’s okay,” she said, “take it easy.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes, as far as I…”
“Is there anyone in there with him?”
“Well, yes, but…”
An undignified sound escaped my throat and she looked even more concerned.
“Let me get someone for you.” She retreated back to reach for the phone. I shook my head to clear it, but she misunderstood and paused. I used the time to grasp at my wits.
“Is it his brother? Tall… dark hair… eyes…” I knew flopping a finger towards my own eyes wasn’t much of a description, but there was no point telling her he looked like Des, and although everyone had eyes, not everyone had eyes like the Dorans. She’d surely know what I meant if she’d seen him.
“Not unless his brother’s a policeman,” she told me, pointedly. “Wait there a second.”
I could have slumped to the floor with relief. If the police were with Des, he wasn’t in immediate danger, and they must be there for a reason: perhaps he’d recovered enough to tell them what had happened; perhaps they’d finally get round to arresting Thomas.
A male nurse I’d not seen before came through the doors and headed over. “Hiya. Steven, is it? My name’s David. Do you want to come and sit down a sec?” He had one of the strongest Scouse accents I’d ever heard, and I followed him to the seats, chest still heaving. “Everything’s fine,” he said, sitting down with me, “you’ll be able to see Des in a minute.”
Sagging forward, I let my head drop, feeling in need of oxygen to the brain. Thomas wasn’t at the hospital and the police were, but what could I say to them? That an evil P.E. teacher had suggested, without actual words, that Thomas might be on his way? I didn’t even know if they’d worked out he was responsible: at a guess, there’d be physical evidence, DNA or whatever it was they looked for at a crime scene.
David briefly touched my arm. “You all right, there?”
“Yeah,” I half nodded, head too heavy to lift properly, “but can I talk to the police, after they’ve finished with Des?”
“It’s nothing to do with me, lad,” he replied cheerfully, “I’m a lowly nurse, not a security guard. No reason you shouldn’t though, eh?”
About quarter of an hour later, two policemen emerged, one of them the officer who’d interviewed me on Friday night. They had their hats under their arms, and their radios turned off, making it seem as though they’d been visiting the mortuary rather than Intensive Care. I blinked away the thought.
The one I recognised perched on the edge of a seat two up from mine and turned his body to face me. The other one wandered over to reception, asking where he’d be okay to use his radio again.
“All right, Steven. The nurse told me you were in a bit of a state just now. Anything I can help with?”
If my words had sounded ridiculous when I’d thought them, they sounded even more Secret Seven when faced with dense black uniform and a naturally cynical expression. “I got it into my head Des’ brother might be here.”
“How come?” He pulled out his notebook.
“Something one of our teachers said,” I mumbled, feeling more awkward by the second.
He took in my blazer, shirt and tie. “You’ve been at school, then?” The question made Duncan’s favourite saying about the police pop into my head: paid by the state to state the bleeding obvious. It gave me a bit more courage, and I nodded. He put his hand on his pen. “Which teacher might this have been?”
“Ral… er, Mr. Raleigh.”
“Ah.” He flipped a few pages of his book. “We’ve spoken to him. What did he have to say, exactly?”
I thought of Raleigh’s self-satisfied smirk, the choking waves of deodorant and sweat rolling from his pits as he knotted his meaty fingers behind his neck. Anything he’d said would have sounded menacing. “He told me not to come here again because Thomas might turn up. I didn’t know why else he’d have said it.”
“Hmm.” He wrote something down, tucked the book away again. “We’d rather know this stuff than not, all right? I gave your brother my number and the station number; anything bothers you again, give us a call rather than charging over here, okay?” His gaze flicked over my uniform again. “Why aren’t you in school now?”
“They gave me permission to take time off; that’s why I was speaking to Mr. Raleigh.”
“Right.” He stood up and put his hat back under his arm. “Go and see your mate, then. He’s doing better this morning; they’re moving him to a general ward later.”
“Wait…” I stood up too. “Have you found Thomas?”
“Come again?”
“Thomas: Des’ brother, have you spoken to him yet?”
Regarding me narrowly, he raised a hand to acknowledge the other officer, who was calling for him to go. “He turned up at the station this morning. He’s helping us with our enquiries.”
“You’ve arrested him?”
“He’s helping us with our enquiries,” he repeated, and with a curt nod, followed his colleague through the exit.
*
Des appeared to be asleep when I went in. David the nurse had warned me he might be too tired to talk after the police visit, so I quietly sat down and took time to adjust once more to the sight of him. The eyelid under the bandage was slightly less swollen and grotesque, and the purple of his face had darkened to a less unnatural shade of bruising, but everything was as horrible as before.
After a while, I lay my forearm on the bed rail with my chin on top, focussing on his near arm. The slow pace of my fingers on his skin, the regular beeps and clicks of machinery, the warmth of the room, and I floated away, somewhere between asleep and awake.
*
“Ste?”
“Mm?” I lifted my head and wiped at my mouth with a numb hand. It took a second or two, but then I remembered, and looked up to see Des watching me through a half-open eye.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hello.” I moved the chair further up the bed so he didn’t have to speak any louder, and tried to concentrate on the colour of his iris rather than its bloody surround. The eyelid kept drooping shut, but slowly reopened each time: he seemed alert. I managed a weak smile.
“What’re you doing here?” His words were barely more than a breath, and there was no way he could return the smile, but…
“Please tell me you’re not trying to be funny.”
The sigh he gave carried the ghost of humour, raising my hopes a millimetre.
“Never mind what I’m doing here,” I told him. “I wasn’t sure you were coming back.”
He shut his eye for a longer moment, leaving me scared I’d said the wrong thing, but then his hand reached out and found mine. So much seemed represented by the one gesture: I was wanted there, he wanted me there. We were together, and Thomas was at the station, and he wouldn’t be hurting Des again.
After some minutes, he spoke with difficulty. “The police came.”
Unable to close his lips around the ‘p’ sound, he’d left it half formed; watching him try was painful enough. I jumped in quickly, trying to save him the effort. “I know. They were leaving when I got here. They said they’ve got Thomas.”
Against mine, his hand went damp, and his breathing picked up. Even hearing the name was enough, and I immediately hated myself for having said it out loud. “I’m sorry; I’m sorry, we don’t have to talk.”
He’d instinctively squeezed his eyes shut against whatever memory I’d dragged up, forcing a gasp when the movement pulled at damaged skin and muscle. “Everything hurts,” he whimpered, trembling with pain and stress.
“I know,” I quailed, in my own feeble agony at hearing how ridiculous I sounded: as if I could begin to imagine.
His eyes remained closed, and his breath gradually settled. I waited, staring at the black, crusted mess around his eyebrow and temple until he spoke again. When he did, there were too many sounds missing to be decipherable, and I had to ask him to repeat himself. Even then I had to take a guess at some of the words.
“What’s Mark said?”
“Mark?” My mind lumbered with the change of direction. “I’ve not spoken to him since…” don’t say it, don’t say it. “He’s been given time off school, his mam and dad keep saying he isn’t well enough to talk over the phone...” I sped up, trying to cover as much as possible so he didn’t have to struggle through more questions. “School said I could have the week off an’ all, but I didn’t know that this morning, so I’m in my stupid uniform, and Mr. Fullwell told me I should go with Raleigh to talk about things and…”
Des’ hand clamped mine so tightly I actually swore, and his eyelid pulled up again. “Stay away from him,” he grated out, shifting in the bed and straining as though to sit up. “Don’t talk to him.”
With the swollen mask of his face, the melted red of his eye socket and the unnaturally stiff mess of his mouth, it was like being threatened by a reanimated corpse: a ghost of things to come. I forced down a gulp of nausea as the effort became too much for him and he collapsed back into himself, exhausted. The stricken grey of his eye disappeared beneath its thickened, purple lid and didn’t re-emerge.
Disturbed, I glanced up to check David was in sight. He was at the desk, already looking over and waggling a pen between his fingers, probably deciding whether or not to interrupt. I shifted my gaze back to Des. Beneath his injuries his skin had turned bone-white. “Listen, I’ll go. I’ll come back tomorrow when you’ve had more rest; we’ll talk then.”
“Not yet,” he mumbled, then said something that sounded like ‘promise me.’
“I’ll have to go soon anyway,” I replied. “They want to move you to another ward.”
“Not that… him… talking…” The words followed each other, but were disconnected and vague. He was losing his thread in a returning fog of semi-consciousness.
“What’s Raleigh got to do with all this, Des?” I asked the question quietly, more for myself than him; not expecting an answer. “It was Thomas did this, wasn’t it?”
For a full minute, he was quiet. In normal circumstances I’d have assumed he’d gone to sleep. Then he whispered, “He was there.”
“Thomas?”
“Before him.”
Raleigh? A sensation like cold water ran down the back of my neck. “He wasn’t there, Des, he couldn’t have been: he was at school. Mark went to see him for the photographs. Do you remember any of that?”
Drifting further, his voice began fading in and out. “Had to tell… ’bout Mark… the photos…”
“No, man, you’re getting it all mixed up: Mark went to see Raleigh, to get the photos for art. You went home.” There was no way his memory of that day was clear. He’d taken a near-death beating and been unconscious for some time.
“He left me… he knew it’d happen.”
Who’d left him? Raleigh? Mark? What the hell? How could he possibly have remembered Mark (let alone me) being at his house? The more I heard, the less it made sense, and maybe that was just it: maybe he was replaying warped snatches of memory and drugged-up dreams.
David appeared next to the bed. “Everything all right, lads?”
“I’m not sure,” I told him, feeling shaken. David checked a monitor and leant over to feel the pulse in Des’ good wrist. Des didn’t react.
“He’s okay, but maybe it’s time to make a move, eh?” David suggested, then winked. “You and me both, as it goes: my shift’s about done and all.”
Nodding, I remembered to ask. “Are they still going to move him later? Where will he be?”
“Depends when there’s a bed available,” he replied. “Give us a ring before you come again, we’ll tell you where he is then.” With a smile, he left us alone.
“I’ll get going,” I said gently to Des, in case he was still aware enough to hear. “I’ll come again tomorrow.” I wondered if he’d be saying anything different by then, or whether I’d have found any sense in what had already been said. Maybe I was the one getting confused, or mishearing.
Standing up, I dithered over how to say goodbye; just walking away felt unfinished.
Over at the nurse’s station, another nurse had arrived to take over David’s shift; they were sorting paperwork and sharing a quiet joke about his plans for the evening. For the moment, Des and I weren’t being watched.
With his hand still in mine, I leant over the rail and carefully, carefully kissed his ear. Before I’d moved away, he whispered something so softly, it took a moment to reach my brain. “He saw us.”
“What was that?”
Nothing. He might have been talking in his sleep; except it was that phrase again.
On my way past the nurse’s station, I said goodbye to David and the other nurse, and went through the doors into the reception area. I felt dog-tired: even the hard plastic chairs looked tempting enough to fold myself into until morning.
Actually, I had no idea of the time, but as it turned out my day still had a way to go.
Standing at the receptionist’s counter was a tall, upright woman in a long, shapeless dress: waiting while the receptionist tapped at the computer. The same moment I saw her, Mrs. Doran recognised me.
“You?” She sounded puzzled, curious, but the look in her eye wasn’t calm and it wasn’t kind and it froze me in place.
She turned briefly back to the receptionist. “What’s he doing here? He’s not family.”
There was an accusatory edge which was returned in the glance the receptionist gave her. “There aren’t any rul…”
“Shut up,” Mrs. Doran told her, and surged towards me. Like Des and Thomas she was tall and impressive, and like them, intimidating when angry. I automatically shrank back, aware how thoroughly she had blocked my exit.
“How dare you come here?” she hissed into my face. “How dare you be here with him?”
If I’d given any thought to seeing her, I might have imagined her upset, crying maybe: for what had happened; for leaving it so long before she’d come to see her son; for waiting, in fact, until there was nothing more she could do for Thomas before turning up for Des.
In a particularly hopeful moment, I might have dared to imagine small, begrudging thanks: for being there when no-one else was.
Instead, her deadly face was centimetres from my own, the furious trenches of crumbling make-up in sharp, sudden focus, her heavy perfume choking me. Making the mistake of looking into her pale burning eyes, I was trapped.
“How could you do this to us?” she spat out. “How could you be so stupid?”
The unfairness of the question was blunt enough to knock aside my own feelings of guilt. Despite the fear, the adrenaline, a desert-dry mouth and the flecks of her vitriol across my skin, I managed not to stammer. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t do this.”
“Oh, but you did, didn’t you?” The dramatic shift in gear from spitting anger to coaxing confessional was rapid and disturbing: her voice lowered, becoming crawlingly intimate. “I know what you are, Steven,” she murmured, eyes widening, pupils like tiny full stops. “I know why you’re here. I know what goes through your head when you think about my son.”
Ice filled my blood.
“What did you think would happen?” Her expression twisted into pity and disappointment: the motherliness so nearly believable. “Did you think the two of you wouldn’t be found out? Did you think nobody would notice?”
Embarrassment smothered my reluctance to deny everything, and the weighty pull of responsibility drew me towards her dreadful logic. “We didn’t… I don’t…”
“You stupid, stupid boy,” she whispered.
A soft noise sounded behind me; a change in the air offering a life-saving, head-clearing breath.
“All right, there, lad?”
David the nurse, finishing his shift and leaving the unit, rested a hand lightly on my shoulder. Mrs. Doran’s eyes flicked from mine to his for just long enough, and I was released and steered away before I’d even realised it.
We got as far as the double doors before Mrs. Doran shouted after us. “You’ll never forgive yourself for this!” she cried, “and Des won’t forgive you either.”
*
Through the doors and a little way down the corridor, David stopped. “Well, she seems nice,” he joked.
“She’s his mam,” I said flatly, the words wet concrete in my mouth.
“Ah, the famous missing mother.” I could feel him considering me while I looked down at his shoes: solid, sensible, black. They were as far in front of me as I wanted to think.
“Is anyone here with you?” he asked.
The concrete had set: I shook my head.
“Come ’ed.” His shoes turned, began to walk. I followed them.
*
We were in a canteen. David guided me to an empty table amongst other empty tables and pulled out a chair for me. I sat down. “When did you last have something to eat?”
I couldn’t remember, was too numb to feel hungry. He went away for a bit, came back with two large teas in off-white mugs and a three-pack of biscuits. My hand went to my pocket, but I’d used my dinner money on bus fare.
Stupid.
“Forget it.” David sat opposite me. “If I wasn’t a responsible adult, I’d suggest brandy instead. Then you’d have to pay, cos I can’t be affording that on these wages.” I didn’t take in what he was saying, just mumbled some thanks.
He went quiet, and I stared at my fingers which might have been scalding against the mug for all I could feel of them. More than anything I wanted to fall asleep and never wake up, but if I let my eyes close, all I got was the prickle of tears. Crying wasn’t going to help anything.
“You didn’t do this to him,” David said, voice gentle. He lifted a finger and tapped my unmarked knuckles, just the once. “So whatever she was saying about forgiveness, this isn’t on you, you know that?”
“His brother did it.” I watched the steam rise and disappear from the tea clutched between my hands. “She said it’s my fault, but I know it isn’t. She says we… she says we were…”
I stopped, unsure if I wanted to say more. Glancing up, not quite catching his eye, I shook my head, letting it drop until I could feel the steam against my face.
“You experience a lot of people in this job,” David went on, easing past the unfinished sentence. “They can react in a lot of strange ways when something bad happens. Sometimes families seem angry with you, but they’re just upset: they’re hurting; they’re looking for someone to blame.”
I didn’t want to feel sympathy or understanding for any of Des’ stupid family. The heat finally reached my hands, and I snatched them away from the mug and splayed them forcefully against the edge of the table. “But I didn’t do this, and even if I was the reason he did it, why shouldn’t she blame Thomas as well? He’s the one who put Des in here.”
“That’s what I’m trying to say. This brother, this… Thomas, he’s her son too, right?”
“Yeah, but…”
He opened his hands wide, shrugged. “Families,” he said again. “If she blames him, she’s gotta blame herself as well, and I’m guessing from the sound of her, she’s not ready for that.”
“She hasn’t been here.” I persisted. “She’s only come now ’cos the police have got Thomas. She’ll have been hiding him before that.”
“Ey, come on,” he said, quietly. “Don’t let this all get twisted up in your head. She’s here now, so she cares enough to turn up at least. Trust me, some people never do.”
I risked looking at him then. “Even for their kids?”
“Even for their kids. I’m not saying it’s usual; I’m not saying you’re wrong or that she was right to stay away as long as she did, but it’s a start, isn’t it?”
When I didn’t reply, he took a deep breath and went on very slowly and carefully. “Listen… I saw the way you said goodbye to Des, earlier… and the way you are with him… Maybe it’s not such a wild guess as to why his mam’s having a go at you, and I promise you, I do know how difficult that is… I do understand… I have been there.” He paused for a longer moment. “Do you see what I’m saying?”
An ugly pounding kicked in my chest and rushed up behind my eyes. It was too much to open my mouth. Too much to say that I understood. Too much that I knew exactly what he was saying.
“It won’t always be like this,” he added, cutting through the din in my head, “I can promise you that.”
With immense effort, I managed to nod. It was much, much later that I realised exactly what it meant to hear, from a normal adult, that things could improve; that there might be a better life for people like me and Des.
“And you’re right,” he said, “you didn’t do this, and whatever’s going on with you and him, or whatever he did or said, the only person to blame for this is the person who hit him. No-one deserves to get hit, not for anything, but especially not for this. And when all the accusations start flying around, and the chances are it will get worse than today, remember that, okay?”
I nodded again, but for all his kindness, David couldn’t know Thomas was hitting Des long before anything happened with us. There was more to it. There had to be.
If only I could stop feeling so tired and stupid; if only I could talk to Mark, I was sure I could make more sense of everything.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” David was saying, “but you look done in. Is there anyone who can come and pick you up?”
“No.” I found my watch. Five past three. I didn’t have the energy to be surprised we were still on Monday. “It’s all right; I’ve got a bus ticket.”
“Then go home, get some rest. Des is still fairly out of it anyway. If he’s not making much sense now, you wait until they start taking him off the morphine. Let his mam do whatever it is mams are supposed to do for a bit. You never know, it might do her some good an’ all.”
“But then what?” I said, not expecting him to have an answer. “Everything I do causes more problems. I stayed away and Des nearly got killed; I come here and now his mam’s pissed off and yelling stuff. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to change anything.”
“Maybe you can’t yet. Listen, Des is safe enough here for the time being. If you stay away for a few days, nothing bad’s going to happen to him. This sort of thing doesn’t clear up overnight and he’s going to need more help later on to be honest. Give yourself some space, some time. Let things settle down a bit. It’ll be easier to make decisions when you haven’t got someone shouting at you, won’t it? When you’re not so tired?”
I disliked how ready I was to accept his suggestion as a good one: it felt too easy, and I was getting suspicious of everything, including my own feelings. But what else was there to do? I had to trust that David was right. I had to trust that his advice was the right advice. After all, no-one was offering anything better to believe in.
*