Chapter 86
“You need to get yourself home, love,” the nurse said.
“Can’t,” Eli mumbled, the brightness of the phone screen hurting his eyes, then—
Then he jumped up from the chair and was making a beeline for the door.
Out of surgery. ward 3 bay 2 theres a green curten by the door.
He forwarded the text to his mother and broke into a light jog as he headed for the stairs. It was irrational, the way his heart was pounding against his ribs. He knew Rob, he knew Danny—if there was bad news, Danny would have come and got him in person, or…or called, if he couldn’t leave Rob. Neither of them said heavy shit by text, they weren’t those kinds of guys, and yet…
And yet Eli’s fingers felt hot and wet with Rob’s blood again, the phantom sensation disturbing and chilling. It hadn’t been that bad—Rob had still been conscious when they took him in the ambulance, after all—but then…how could that much blood not be bad? It had been everywhere, and Rob had been so white…
His shoes squeaked on the gleaming floor of ward two, his shadow flitting along the darkened bay windows like a phantom. Or like the grim reaper, which was a thought so chilling Eli forced it away and looked for the green curtain like a man in a desert looks for an oasis. He found it right down the end, and beyond it, quiet broken only by the beeping of machines.
But the squeaky shoes had done him a favour; a curtain twitched near the end of the bay. A dreadlocked head poked itself out—just as a hand clamped down on Eli’s arm.
“Out,” the ward sister said firmly.
“No, I have to see—”
“Family only, out,” she repeated. She was tall and broad-shouldered, the uniform making her look as feminine and caring as a broody rock. Dark circles were smudged under her eyes, and she looked worn down but resolute. Eli was not staying.
“He is family.” Danny appeared like a welcome mirage. “He’s Rob’s partner. He needs to be here.”
The nurse eyed him suspiciously, and Danny turned on the weird charm, big dark eyes and hopeful smile totally disarming his usual looks.
“Please,” Danny said. “Rob’s—he’s got some issues, yeah? And tonight’ll have upset him, if Eli’s here, he’ll keep calm.”
The nurse softened. “Alright,” she said, and huffed at Eli. “You need a badge, though.”
Eli hovered long enough to be presented with one, then shot into the cubicle. He had no time for Danny’s lies and the nurse’s badges. He only had time for—
His breath caught.
Rob looked…small. It was a ridiculous thought, but he did. His skin was chalk-white. He’d been dressed in a hospital gown, one of his tattoos peeking out from the green robe, the ink looking almost wet on his paler-than-pale skin. Eli wanted to touch him to feel the heat, to make sure he was—
But he was breathing. The gown was rising and falling in a gentle, familiar pattern. An oxygen tube had been taped under his nose, but there was no mask. He looked oddly fine, despite the colour of his skin. Eli sank gingerly onto the edge of the mattress, hands hovering in the air uncertainly.
“Is…is he…?”
“Out like a light—they had to do surgery to close the hole,” Danny said, collapsing into the visitor’s chair. He looked worse than the nurse, eyes ringed in black on the skin and red on the whites. His dreadlocks were sticking up every which way. “Twenty-six stitches and he’ll need, like, blood tests and every piss he takes in the next week tested ‘cause the knife nicked his liver.”
“Oh God—”
“But he’ll be ‘reet.”
“He’s—?”
“Doctor said he’d be fine,” Danny said, his face breaking into an exhausted smile. “He didn’t black out. I mean, like, blood everywhere and he needed two transfusions, doc said, but he was still swearing at me when we got here. So I figured…you know, it couldn’t be that bad, and the doc said unless something goes stupid wrong like he gets killer AIDS—”
Eli managed a hoarse laugh, daring to reach out and stroke his fingers gently through Rob’s hair. When nothing happened, he petted a little harder and allowed those rough strands to soothe his jangled nerves. “The doctor did not say killer AIDS, Danny.”
“He meant it,” Danny defended himself. “He so fucking meant it. But yeah, he’ll be alright, they said.”
“Thank God,” Eli whispered. He slid off the mattress to snag the second chair and drag it up to the head of the bed. Eli settled in to card his fingers through Rob’s hair and kiss his boyfriend’s forehead absently. Rob’s skin was cool and slightly clammy. Eli rested a cheek against it to look down that long body and observe the way he breathed, the relaxed points of his feet at the very end, the gentle slope of his arm down his stomach to where—
To where Danny’s hands were both clamped around Rob’s. Eli frowned.