(no subject)
Title: Dusty Sunset
Rating: M
Characters: Danny, Nicholas, Doris
Summary: There’s no harder space to fill than one that’s been there all along.
Notes: Takes place during Twilighting, which I was really happy with. But that idea just refused to be done with. Dedicated to zeddish who is a general enabler, and jihad_junk who occasionally also puts ideas into my head.
Doris visits Danny a lot, compared to the others. Her mother was a nurse, so the trauma and tubes don’t make her cringe. She can look at stents and sutures, watch yellow puss being wiped away from reddish skin, can sit - or stand - and be so impassive. The face you wear for an eye test, for staring at the wall.
But she can’t look at his face.
There was that one afternoon when things had been so scary that it was impossible that anything had worked out right (and it hadn’t worked out right, had it? Not in the end). And now, with the clouds sitting low and the air hot and static the way it is when winter is refusing to give up its turn and let spring become summer, now all she can think about is the way Mister Butterman (and he’d been telling her to call him Frank since she was ten, but she was never able to, never able to refer to someone’s dad by their first name) the way he’d had that lost look on his face as she helped him into the van. And it hurt her, the familiarity of it.
“Hello again,” Doris says. She pats idly at the back of his hand, as an after thought. The skin there is a little pale, but comfortably pink. Blood is moving, muscles are breathing, and Danny is alive no matter how it may look. His fingers twitch slightly under her palm, and she pulls herself away, skittish, and embarrassed for being so.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you this banged up, I’ll tell you that,” Doris says once she’s finished rubbing the trembles from her fingers. “Been a while since you been banged at all,” and she laughs like she has a pint in one hand and her game face on. It sounds loud in the hospital room. Echoing and deviant, and Doris pulls a little more into herself.
Those years after Danny’s mum had died, those years of Danny collapsing in on himself the way a barn does, with the structure looking whole on the outside but the thing broken on the inside. Years of Danny being firmly on the outside, and Doris constantly holding her hand out as friends and boys (and boys who wanted to be more than friends) dragged her about, and her saying “Come on, Danny,” so many times that it became an echo. So many times that the words stopped coming, and her hand dropped away, and Danny became this little thing off by himself. And Doris had been so angry about it all, angry because it hurt. Danny all by himself, and he had the gall to go and shut her out.
“How you been then?” she asks, a foot up on the visitor’s chair and her chin on her knee. A parody of comfort in the dim room. “Danny?” And she can pretend for a moment that it’s like they’re kids again, and he’s off dreaming. Or that maybe he can’t hear her over the soft pitter patter of rain outside. The wetness made everything look blue, made it harder to look at Danny than usual.
Doris reached out to brush his fingers with her own, but her hand stopped short without her really meaning it too. The yellow light from the hall glinted off her watch, letting her know that visiting hours had barely begun. She took in a shuddery breath, and hated the way the sound of Danny’s own breathing was so even and slow and fake that it blended in with the ticking of the second hand and the beeping of the heart monitor. She took a shaky breath, and staggered to her feet.
Danny had been in the thick of things when he was younger. He’d been chubby, but good at sport. A little slow in class, but so quick to think things up. No one had ever played house with Danny. It was all robot spies and Batman being kidnapped by monkey butlers. And it had been so much fun. Everything was fun when you were seven. And everyone’s parents was so happy to send their kids off to the Buttermanses for the afternoon, because Mister Butterman was a sergeant back then, and Missus Butterman was on every council you could think of, and Danny was the kind of kid who gave his teacher flowers on her birthday.
Danny had given Doris a Valentine’s Day card, once. Which had been a big deal at the time because she was twelve and in a different year, and he’d done it in the hall when it was crowded. Doris couldn’t remember what it said, though she knew that he’d mentioned her being good at cricket, and that Jenny Sampson (who had the previous week smeared glue all through Doris’ hair) wasn’t worth anyone’s attention, and that Doris should ignore her. Doris hadn’t looked at that card for years and years. She still had it though, somewhere.
Doris’ face is still damp from the washing in the restroom sink, and her pants a little suspect where she’d wiped her hands in an effort to dry them. She pauses in the hall, hearing a voice coming from Danny’s room:
“Causing harm offences.” Doris stops at the doorway, leaning her hip against the door frame, her arms across her chest. Angel is in her chair (she had wondered, the other day, when he would start asking that they all call him ‘Nicholas’; if he ever would), with a book open on his lap and one foot up on the side of Danny’s bed.
Danny’s hand twitches by Nicholas’ foot, and Nicholas nudges it back into place without thinking or acknowledging. “-distinguishable by the degree to which the defendant is alleged to be at fault. The fault elements are crucial in determining the appropriate offence and maximum penalty that should apply in the particular case…” he trails off, and looks up at Doris.
She half expects the moment to be more awkward than it is. He doesn’t look sheepish, or embarrassed, or uncertain. Doesn’t look half the things that any of the other visitors had carried in with them. Although he does slowly lower his foot from Danny’s bed, very measured and cautious, the way a dog tries to creep up on the couch when it knows it’s not allowed.
“Did I take your spot?” he asks.
Doris looks at him for a moment longer, his hair a painful straw yellow against the pale blue of the wall behind him. “Come on,” she says, pushing away from the doorframe. “Let’s have a drink.”
Doris didn’t drink alone, as a rule. And when she did drink, she’d hated going to the pub, hated seeing Danny’s broad back sitting alone at the bar. The pub was closed now, but. They sat on long benches in the hospital cafeteria, blowing on coffee that was too hot, and too black, and would - inevitably - never get finished.
“Do you think he can hear us?” Doris asks, and isn’t too surprised that he doesn’t shrug, doesn’t fall into a movement that would be typical of the Turners, or the Andes. With Danny laid up, she wonders who Nicholas will end up slouching around with (if he has it in him to slouch). She wonders if his visits are official, or personal.
“Hearing is the last sense to go, in a coma patient. And the first thing to return.” And Doris nods, because she’d known that.
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate the reading,” she said. “Be like having his homework done for him.”
“My uncle was in a coma when I was sixteen,” Nicholas says. “I used to go in after school and read the sports section of the paper to him. First thing he did when he woke up was complain about Manchester.”
And Doris laughs - it’s more of a giggle, even though she’s too old for that - before looking down at her cup. “I never expected him to move about so much,” she admits. “It’s not like that on the telly.”
“It’s a good sign,” Nicholas replies. And Doris nods again, because it’s a conclusion that was already inside her own skull.
“It’s hard to believe it was only his birthday a week ago.”
Nicholas nods, and looks somewhere over her shoulder, as if there was something interesting on the wall behind her. “How old did he turn?”
“Thirty-two,” Doris replies, and she can feel her throat getting thick. “He’s a year older than-” she clears her throat, “than I am.”
Nicholas looks back at her, and even though her eyes are lowered she knows the look on his face. A little too blank to be curious. “Are you close?”
And the coffee holds as much of an answer as anything else does. Doris lets out a huff of a breath, and finally raises the cup to her mouth. “Close enough that I visit,” she says. “And fuck, this stuff is awful.”
Nicholas wears a small smile as he tilts his own cup. “I wouldn’t know,” he replies. “I don’t drink coffee.”
Doris sits beside Danny’s bed, the window propped open even though it’s raining hard droplets onto dry soil outside. The room smells the way unfinished clay does when you lick it, a curling sterile earthiness that crawls inside your nose.
“Danny,” she says, “I-.” And then Doris is faced with the familiar feeling of having no words at all. That’s why she liked the small tops in her closet and the eye shadow stacked neatly behind her bathroom mirror. She liked things that could do the talking for her. She cleared her throat, and picked up the book that Nicholas had left behind, the page marked by a folded corner.
“An assault may be committed either intentionally or recklessly, although the courts have stumbled about what recklessness means in this context…”
Nurses bustle over Danny, reaching and poking, and checking his pulse with their fingers even though there’s a clip on one of his fingers that does the checking for them. And when had Danny gotten small enough for them to tower over him and reach down like that, to stretch across his barrel chest like it was so much smaller than it was, than it should be. They move around Doris, and she reads over the top of them. She wasn’t even paying attention to her own voice. Wasn’t half as dedicated as Nich- as Angel was. Catching little words and snippets of murmurs, news to take to those that never got beyond just talking about visiting.
Moving the stent at his elbow since it kept getting irritated by his twitches. And Doris was able to watch them do that without wincing, without her face turning away as they pulled the tape away and the needle out and the metal shone red before the green-blue cover sprang back into place over it.
“Five-point-four (one),” she read. “A person is reckless with respect to a circumstance if: a) he or she is aware of a substantial risk that the circumstance exists or will exists; and-”
And she watches them poke a new needle through the skin at the back of Danny’s hand (when had it started looking so thin and papery?) and tape the cover back so it didn’t irritate things, and tape the tubing down so it didn’t shift, and strap Danny’s arm… Strap Danny’s arm-;
“- b) having regard to the circumstanced known to him or her, it is unjustifiable to take the risk.”
Doris sighs when she’s left alone. Well, not alone. She clears her throat. “(two) A person is reckless with respect to a result if:
a) he or she is aware of a substantial risk that the result will occur; and
b) having regard to the circumstances known to him or her, it is unjustifiable to take the-”
And it was Danny, wasn’t it? So very, very Danny. Because how could he not know? How could he have had that moment of looking, and thinking, and moving so fast and not have had a single thought in his head tell him that this is how it would end? And how could he have possibly thought that he hadn’t already done enough? Hadn’t already been the movie hero and been so brave and so stupid throughout that whole fucking day -
“To take the…”
He’d been smiling. In the station. He’d been proud and happy and it was so strange to see a smile on Danny’s face that wasn’t a flash in a pan, that wasn’t gone when he thought that you weren’t looking. When you couldn’t be looking because things were so dull and painful that your vision blurred like the words on the pages of Nicholas’ stupid book were blurring now and she felt dizzy, felt like Danny’s heart monitor was beeping too loud, too fast.
“Danny.” Doris voice broke; broke, and she hated it. “Oh god, Danny.”
The town was pulling itself together, slowly. Slowly, slowly. Like when you have to drag something a long by a string, but you can’t pull too hard in case the string snaps and everything starts rolling backwards down the hill.
Nicholas had his head together with Tony a lot of the time. He knew things, but not enough, and Tony had a completely different set of known things and gaps, and the two sets of what was in their heads seemed to fit together. If you merged them you would get one completely competent person. And possibly also one person who was fit for dribbling in the gutters.
The Andrews did what they were asked to. And did a lot of things that they weren’t asked to. Doris went with them sometimes, to talk to the families. She was surprised at how often they weren’t surprised. Still, if someone disappears into the air, and you never hear from them, or hear of someone hearing from them. Well, who doesn’t walk down that path in their heads when it’s past midnight and you can’t sleep for worrying?
“Looks like there won’t be a Spring Dance this year,” Danny’s uncle Edward was saying as he handed over cups of tea. Cups with the good edging on them. “What with everything goin’ on.”
“Plus the organisers are all awaiting trial,” Danny’s aunt Jackie says.
“That’ll be a year, at least,” Andrew replies, “for most of them. Did you make these biscuits yourself?”
Doris frowns a little. She’d always liked the Spring Dance. She liked dancing, and even as a girl she’d known that she only had so many years in which to do it. When she’d been too young to go with a boy she’d whirled around and had a laugh, and eventually pestered Danny into having a ‘proper’ dance with her. He’d always been so good about it, a little evil in the way he said little things about the teachers and the eyes they made into her ear. He’d been good at making her laugh.
And then she’d finally been old enough, old enough to be asked by a boy. And she turned them all down. Well, turned both of them down, because she’d known for years who she was going with. And by that time it would do Danny good to get out of the house for a bit, because it had been well over a month. Get him out with friends again so he could stop looking sad.
And all he’d said was “I’m not going.”
“What was that Doris?”
And he hadn’t gone. “Sorry?” she says absently, coming back to herself and the cooling tea in her hand.
Andrew is looking at her, and Andrew is stirring his tea in that uncomfortable way you do when you don’t want to look at someone. “You said something,” Andrew replies. “Just now.”
And Doris nods, and puts her cup of tea gently on the table. “I said that I’ve got to get going.” She stands up, and gently brushes herself off, brushing at crumbs and dust that aren’t there for the sake of looking busy. “Someone I need to see.”
Doris’ voice was dull, and tired. She was used to it being that way now, used to hearing its heaviness knocking about her ears. “A risk is unjustifiable is one of fact.” The words didn’t even make sense anymore, except when they did. “Four) if recklessness-” And then they hurt. “Reckless-… Fuck. Danny.”
Doris sighed, a proper sigh, heavy against the beep of Danny’s heart, and the hiss of his breath, and the stillness of his body, and the hum of dialysis. Dialysis. That was a bad sign.
“Danny, please.”
Doris let the book slide down the gap between her knees, hitting her crossed ankles and flopping to the floor. She should be on patrol right now. She should be in uniform, not reaching out with hands that are too old to tremble. Fingers moving gently over cold skin and stiff joints, and tape on the back of his hand holding the needle-
“I hope you can hear me, Danny,” she said, sinking forwards and forwards until her elbows are on the firm softness of his mattress and her hands are tangled up in trying to hold Danny’s. “I hope you’ve been hearing me all along, known that I’ve been here.”
And she had been there. She’d been there since before the hospital, since before Danny’s mum had died. Since before puberty, when Danny would walk her home after girl’s cricket on Tuesdays because her mum thought that eleven was too young to walk home by yourself, even though it clearly wasn’t.
“I need you to get through this,” she said, with stops are starts. And how horrible was it that it had come to this? Pouring everything out at a bedside? “I need you to get better, so that we can both get on with things, you know?”
And she hoped that he did know. “Keep living, and all that.” Hoped that Danny knew that there was a life waiting for him that had stopped, and had been stopped ever since Danny himself had stopped.
“Danny, please?” And her throat was stiff and her words came out like they were twisted sharp things that cut her mouth up inside, that made her mouth thick and clumsy and the room was all blurry again. “Danny. Danny, help. I can’t… I need…”
Doris leaned her head down, and placed a kiss against the skin of the back of Danny’s hand, feeling smooth tape over cold skin against her lips.
“Just wake up already.”
Rating: M
Characters: Danny, Nicholas, Doris
Summary: There’s no harder space to fill than one that’s been there all along.
Notes: Takes place during Twilighting, which I was really happy with. But that idea just refused to be done with. Dedicated to zeddish who is a general enabler, and jihad_junk who occasionally also puts ideas into my head.
Doris visits Danny a lot, compared to the others. Her mother was a nurse, so the trauma and tubes don’t make her cringe. She can look at stents and sutures, watch yellow puss being wiped away from reddish skin, can sit - or stand - and be so impassive. The face you wear for an eye test, for staring at the wall.
But she can’t look at his face.
There was that one afternoon when things had been so scary that it was impossible that anything had worked out right (and it hadn’t worked out right, had it? Not in the end). And now, with the clouds sitting low and the air hot and static the way it is when winter is refusing to give up its turn and let spring become summer, now all she can think about is the way Mister Butterman (and he’d been telling her to call him Frank since she was ten, but she was never able to, never able to refer to someone’s dad by their first name) the way he’d had that lost look on his face as she helped him into the van. And it hurt her, the familiarity of it.
“Hello again,” Doris says. She pats idly at the back of his hand, as an after thought. The skin there is a little pale, but comfortably pink. Blood is moving, muscles are breathing, and Danny is alive no matter how it may look. His fingers twitch slightly under her palm, and she pulls herself away, skittish, and embarrassed for being so.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you this banged up, I’ll tell you that,” Doris says once she’s finished rubbing the trembles from her fingers. “Been a while since you been banged at all,” and she laughs like she has a pint in one hand and her game face on. It sounds loud in the hospital room. Echoing and deviant, and Doris pulls a little more into herself.
Those years after Danny’s mum had died, those years of Danny collapsing in on himself the way a barn does, with the structure looking whole on the outside but the thing broken on the inside. Years of Danny being firmly on the outside, and Doris constantly holding her hand out as friends and boys (and boys who wanted to be more than friends) dragged her about, and her saying “Come on, Danny,” so many times that it became an echo. So many times that the words stopped coming, and her hand dropped away, and Danny became this little thing off by himself. And Doris had been so angry about it all, angry because it hurt. Danny all by himself, and he had the gall to go and shut her out.
“How you been then?” she asks, a foot up on the visitor’s chair and her chin on her knee. A parody of comfort in the dim room. “Danny?” And she can pretend for a moment that it’s like they’re kids again, and he’s off dreaming. Or that maybe he can’t hear her over the soft pitter patter of rain outside. The wetness made everything look blue, made it harder to look at Danny than usual.
Doris reached out to brush his fingers with her own, but her hand stopped short without her really meaning it too. The yellow light from the hall glinted off her watch, letting her know that visiting hours had barely begun. She took in a shuddery breath, and hated the way the sound of Danny’s own breathing was so even and slow and fake that it blended in with the ticking of the second hand and the beeping of the heart monitor. She took a shaky breath, and staggered to her feet.
Danny had been in the thick of things when he was younger. He’d been chubby, but good at sport. A little slow in class, but so quick to think things up. No one had ever played house with Danny. It was all robot spies and Batman being kidnapped by monkey butlers. And it had been so much fun. Everything was fun when you were seven. And everyone’s parents was so happy to send their kids off to the Buttermanses for the afternoon, because Mister Butterman was a sergeant back then, and Missus Butterman was on every council you could think of, and Danny was the kind of kid who gave his teacher flowers on her birthday.
Danny had given Doris a Valentine’s Day card, once. Which had been a big deal at the time because she was twelve and in a different year, and he’d done it in the hall when it was crowded. Doris couldn’t remember what it said, though she knew that he’d mentioned her being good at cricket, and that Jenny Sampson (who had the previous week smeared glue all through Doris’ hair) wasn’t worth anyone’s attention, and that Doris should ignore her. Doris hadn’t looked at that card for years and years. She still had it though, somewhere.
Doris’ face is still damp from the washing in the restroom sink, and her pants a little suspect where she’d wiped her hands in an effort to dry them. She pauses in the hall, hearing a voice coming from Danny’s room:
“Causing harm offences.” Doris stops at the doorway, leaning her hip against the door frame, her arms across her chest. Angel is in her chair (she had wondered, the other day, when he would start asking that they all call him ‘Nicholas’; if he ever would), with a book open on his lap and one foot up on the side of Danny’s bed.
Danny’s hand twitches by Nicholas’ foot, and Nicholas nudges it back into place without thinking or acknowledging. “-distinguishable by the degree to which the defendant is alleged to be at fault. The fault elements are crucial in determining the appropriate offence and maximum penalty that should apply in the particular case…” he trails off, and looks up at Doris.
She half expects the moment to be more awkward than it is. He doesn’t look sheepish, or embarrassed, or uncertain. Doesn’t look half the things that any of the other visitors had carried in with them. Although he does slowly lower his foot from Danny’s bed, very measured and cautious, the way a dog tries to creep up on the couch when it knows it’s not allowed.
“Did I take your spot?” he asks.
Doris looks at him for a moment longer, his hair a painful straw yellow against the pale blue of the wall behind him. “Come on,” she says, pushing away from the doorframe. “Let’s have a drink.”
Doris didn’t drink alone, as a rule. And when she did drink, she’d hated going to the pub, hated seeing Danny’s broad back sitting alone at the bar. The pub was closed now, but. They sat on long benches in the hospital cafeteria, blowing on coffee that was too hot, and too black, and would - inevitably - never get finished.
“Do you think he can hear us?” Doris asks, and isn’t too surprised that he doesn’t shrug, doesn’t fall into a movement that would be typical of the Turners, or the Andes. With Danny laid up, she wonders who Nicholas will end up slouching around with (if he has it in him to slouch). She wonders if his visits are official, or personal.
“Hearing is the last sense to go, in a coma patient. And the first thing to return.” And Doris nods, because she’d known that.
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate the reading,” she said. “Be like having his homework done for him.”
“My uncle was in a coma when I was sixteen,” Nicholas says. “I used to go in after school and read the sports section of the paper to him. First thing he did when he woke up was complain about Manchester.”
And Doris laughs - it’s more of a giggle, even though she’s too old for that - before looking down at her cup. “I never expected him to move about so much,” she admits. “It’s not like that on the telly.”
“It’s a good sign,” Nicholas replies. And Doris nods again, because it’s a conclusion that was already inside her own skull.
“It’s hard to believe it was only his birthday a week ago.”
Nicholas nods, and looks somewhere over her shoulder, as if there was something interesting on the wall behind her. “How old did he turn?”
“Thirty-two,” Doris replies, and she can feel her throat getting thick. “He’s a year older than-” she clears her throat, “than I am.”
Nicholas looks back at her, and even though her eyes are lowered she knows the look on his face. A little too blank to be curious. “Are you close?”
And the coffee holds as much of an answer as anything else does. Doris lets out a huff of a breath, and finally raises the cup to her mouth. “Close enough that I visit,” she says. “And fuck, this stuff is awful.”
Nicholas wears a small smile as he tilts his own cup. “I wouldn’t know,” he replies. “I don’t drink coffee.”
Doris sits beside Danny’s bed, the window propped open even though it’s raining hard droplets onto dry soil outside. The room smells the way unfinished clay does when you lick it, a curling sterile earthiness that crawls inside your nose.
“Danny,” she says, “I-.” And then Doris is faced with the familiar feeling of having no words at all. That’s why she liked the small tops in her closet and the eye shadow stacked neatly behind her bathroom mirror. She liked things that could do the talking for her. She cleared her throat, and picked up the book that Nicholas had left behind, the page marked by a folded corner.
“An assault may be committed either intentionally or recklessly, although the courts have stumbled about what recklessness means in this context…”
Nurses bustle over Danny, reaching and poking, and checking his pulse with their fingers even though there’s a clip on one of his fingers that does the checking for them. And when had Danny gotten small enough for them to tower over him and reach down like that, to stretch across his barrel chest like it was so much smaller than it was, than it should be. They move around Doris, and she reads over the top of them. She wasn’t even paying attention to her own voice. Wasn’t half as dedicated as Nich- as Angel was. Catching little words and snippets of murmurs, news to take to those that never got beyond just talking about visiting.
Moving the stent at his elbow since it kept getting irritated by his twitches. And Doris was able to watch them do that without wincing, without her face turning away as they pulled the tape away and the needle out and the metal shone red before the green-blue cover sprang back into place over it.
“Five-point-four (one),” she read. “A person is reckless with respect to a circumstance if: a) he or she is aware of a substantial risk that the circumstance exists or will exists; and-”
And she watches them poke a new needle through the skin at the back of Danny’s hand (when had it started looking so thin and papery?) and tape the cover back so it didn’t irritate things, and tape the tubing down so it didn’t shift, and strap Danny’s arm… Strap Danny’s arm-;
“- b) having regard to the circumstanced known to him or her, it is unjustifiable to take the risk.”
Doris sighs when she’s left alone. Well, not alone. She clears her throat. “(two) A person is reckless with respect to a result if:
a) he or she is aware of a substantial risk that the result will occur; and
b) having regard to the circumstances known to him or her, it is unjustifiable to take the-”
And it was Danny, wasn’t it? So very, very Danny. Because how could he not know? How could he have had that moment of looking, and thinking, and moving so fast and not have had a single thought in his head tell him that this is how it would end? And how could he have possibly thought that he hadn’t already done enough? Hadn’t already been the movie hero and been so brave and so stupid throughout that whole fucking day -
“To take the…”
He’d been smiling. In the station. He’d been proud and happy and it was so strange to see a smile on Danny’s face that wasn’t a flash in a pan, that wasn’t gone when he thought that you weren’t looking. When you couldn’t be looking because things were so dull and painful that your vision blurred like the words on the pages of Nicholas’ stupid book were blurring now and she felt dizzy, felt like Danny’s heart monitor was beeping too loud, too fast.
“Danny.” Doris voice broke; broke, and she hated it. “Oh god, Danny.”
The town was pulling itself together, slowly. Slowly, slowly. Like when you have to drag something a long by a string, but you can’t pull too hard in case the string snaps and everything starts rolling backwards down the hill.
Nicholas had his head together with Tony a lot of the time. He knew things, but not enough, and Tony had a completely different set of known things and gaps, and the two sets of what was in their heads seemed to fit together. If you merged them you would get one completely competent person. And possibly also one person who was fit for dribbling in the gutters.
The Andrews did what they were asked to. And did a lot of things that they weren’t asked to. Doris went with them sometimes, to talk to the families. She was surprised at how often they weren’t surprised. Still, if someone disappears into the air, and you never hear from them, or hear of someone hearing from them. Well, who doesn’t walk down that path in their heads when it’s past midnight and you can’t sleep for worrying?
“Looks like there won’t be a Spring Dance this year,” Danny’s uncle Edward was saying as he handed over cups of tea. Cups with the good edging on them. “What with everything goin’ on.”
“Plus the organisers are all awaiting trial,” Danny’s aunt Jackie says.
“That’ll be a year, at least,” Andrew replies, “for most of them. Did you make these biscuits yourself?”
Doris frowns a little. She’d always liked the Spring Dance. She liked dancing, and even as a girl she’d known that she only had so many years in which to do it. When she’d been too young to go with a boy she’d whirled around and had a laugh, and eventually pestered Danny into having a ‘proper’ dance with her. He’d always been so good about it, a little evil in the way he said little things about the teachers and the eyes they made into her ear. He’d been good at making her laugh.
And then she’d finally been old enough, old enough to be asked by a boy. And she turned them all down. Well, turned both of them down, because she’d known for years who she was going with. And by that time it would do Danny good to get out of the house for a bit, because it had been well over a month. Get him out with friends again so he could stop looking sad.
And all he’d said was “I’m not going.”
“What was that Doris?”
And he hadn’t gone. “Sorry?” she says absently, coming back to herself and the cooling tea in her hand.
Andrew is looking at her, and Andrew is stirring his tea in that uncomfortable way you do when you don’t want to look at someone. “You said something,” Andrew replies. “Just now.”
And Doris nods, and puts her cup of tea gently on the table. “I said that I’ve got to get going.” She stands up, and gently brushes herself off, brushing at crumbs and dust that aren’t there for the sake of looking busy. “Someone I need to see.”
Doris’ voice was dull, and tired. She was used to it being that way now, used to hearing its heaviness knocking about her ears. “A risk is unjustifiable is one of fact.” The words didn’t even make sense anymore, except when they did. “Four) if recklessness-” And then they hurt. “Reckless-… Fuck. Danny.”
Doris sighed, a proper sigh, heavy against the beep of Danny’s heart, and the hiss of his breath, and the stillness of his body, and the hum of dialysis. Dialysis. That was a bad sign.
“Danny, please.”
Doris let the book slide down the gap between her knees, hitting her crossed ankles and flopping to the floor. She should be on patrol right now. She should be in uniform, not reaching out with hands that are too old to tremble. Fingers moving gently over cold skin and stiff joints, and tape on the back of his hand holding the needle-
“I hope you can hear me, Danny,” she said, sinking forwards and forwards until her elbows are on the firm softness of his mattress and her hands are tangled up in trying to hold Danny’s. “I hope you’ve been hearing me all along, known that I’ve been here.”
And she had been there. She’d been there since before the hospital, since before Danny’s mum had died. Since before puberty, when Danny would walk her home after girl’s cricket on Tuesdays because her mum thought that eleven was too young to walk home by yourself, even though it clearly wasn’t.
“I need you to get through this,” she said, with stops are starts. And how horrible was it that it had come to this? Pouring everything out at a bedside? “I need you to get better, so that we can both get on with things, you know?”
And she hoped that he did know. “Keep living, and all that.” Hoped that Danny knew that there was a life waiting for him that had stopped, and had been stopped ever since Danny himself had stopped.
“Danny, please?” And her throat was stiff and her words came out like they were twisted sharp things that cut her mouth up inside, that made her mouth thick and clumsy and the room was all blurry again. “Danny. Danny, help. I can’t… I need…”
Doris leaned her head down, and placed a kiss against the skin of the back of Danny’s hand, feeling smooth tape over cold skin against her lips.
“Just wake up already.”