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“Tell you what, why don’t we wait a little while?” Luis suggested, and checked his watch. “You’re due your next meds in half an hour – once they’ve kicked in, you’ll be a little more relaxed, yeah?”
Finn gave him a wan smile. “Fuckin’ doped to the eyeballs, you mean.”
“Yeah,” Luis nodded. “That, too.”
*****
Nothing worked. An hour later, Finn was, as he had put it, ‘doped to the fuckin’ eyeballs’, and still absolutely terrified. As soon as the doctor on call had produced the hypodermic needle he’d pushed himself up the bed so that he was backed against the wall and was now in the throes of a spectacular panic attack.
“Jus’ tie me to the bed again, will you?” he begged, his chest heaving with each word. “Jus’ do that and you can do anything to me. I don’ wanna hurt anyone.” He was utterly exhausted but still fighting, and I was beginning to fear that he was about to be whacked with a fresh dose of midazolam; I’d seen him wreck an entire emergency room in this state.
“Okay, so let me just try something right now,” Luis said in his calm ‘nothing to see here, guys’ voice, and reached into the back pocket of his jeans. He pulled out his phone and scrolled through before giving a little nod of satisfaction and handing the wireless ear-buds to Finn. “Right, my man. I want you to put these in. I’m going to turn the volume up to eleven and you just focus on the noise, alright?”
Finn gave a single tense nod and placed the buds in his ears with shaking hands, and I could hear the tinny rattle of a repetitive drumbeat from where I sat on the edge of his bed. We all waited, hardly daring to breathe, and after a few minutes of listening to whatever music Luis had chosen he shut his eyes and lay down with his head in my lap. He reached for me with his undamaged hand and I took it in mine. I felt my metacarpals creak in his grip.
Finally he tentatively held out his left hand to the intense young doctor who had been waiting in the wings. She stepped forward and injected local anaesthetic around the jagged gash that ran from the centre of Finn’s palm to his wrist, and I used my free hand to rhythmically stroke his clammy forehead whilst the edges of the wound were deftly pulled together. A clean dressing was placed over the doctor’s handiwork, and she gave us a quick smile. “There. Good as new.”
I hugged Finn close and wished that everything that had been ripped apart in him could be repaired as cleanly.
Finn
Luis stepped forward and gently took his phone back from me. “Good work, my friend. Well done.”
“Cheers.” I gave Luis a smile. I was stoned to all hell so it was pretty lopsided by now, but at least I made the effort. “And, um, thanks for the music thing. It helped. What was it? I kinda liked it.”
“Finest music in the world, man. Dubstep.”
Lilith gave a magnificent snort of derision. “You have to be kidding me. Dubstep? Luis, I may never forgive you for this. Good God, you’ll have him listening to rap next.”
“Hey, give it a try,” Luis laughed. “You might like it. Open mind and all that, yeah?”
“Even I have my hard limits,” Lilith said, but she was smiling back at him so I guessed everything was okay.
My nurse glanced at his watch, and I guessed he’d stayed on well past his shift to deal with my ridiculousness. “Right lovely people, I think that’s me done for the day; I just hope the husband’s got supper on, because there’s no way I feel like cooking tonight. Finn, Emelina’s on shift ‘til seven tomorrow – you met her yesterday, yeah? So you know who to shout if there’s a problem, okay?”
“Sure. See you in the morning.” Once Luis had left I shifted across the bed so that Lilith could lie next to me for a while. She cuddled into my right side and I kissed the top of her head, breathing in her familiar clean scent of shampoo and soap powder.
“How’s the hand feeling?” she asked.
“Weird. Numb. Like it doesn’t belong to me. Wish they could do the same fuckin’ thing for my head.” I inspected my alien limb for a moment then muttered, “And I’m really sorry for bein’ a colossal dick.”
Lilith turned so that she could look up at me. “You weren’t being a dick. You were being scared. There’s a world of difference. I’m just sorry I didn’t think of the phone trick. Tomorrow I’ll get Nat to load up one of my spares for you to use, okay?”
“Jesus Lili, you know shit about me that I don’t know about me. I’m twenty fucking five and I still have no idea what music I like, or what clothes I suit, or even if I have a favourite food, so I reckon you’re forgiven for not guessing that some kind of music I’ve never heard of, played loud enough to rupture my eardrums, is going to stop me being a d… I mean, ‘being scared’.” Speech over, I used my good arm to pull her closer. “You’re not scared of anything at all, are you?”
“Hm.” Lilith fell silent for a while, and I could almost hear her thinking. “Birds’ feet. And rats’ tails.” She actually shuddered against me.
I tried – and failed – to hide my laughter by burying my face in her hair. “Really?”
“Really. Nasty, scaly things. Ugh. Just the thought of touching them. And covered in germs, probably.”
“Wow. You learn something every day.”
“Yes you do.” She wrapped her right arm around my rib cage and used my chest as a pillow. “And if you tell anyone, I’ll have to rip your tongue out with my bare hands. Have you got that, Strachan?”
Lilith
We lay in companionable silence as the very last of the evening light faded to velvet black, already too used to making the most of the space in a narrow hospital bed in a relationship that was still less than a year old.
