by B. G. Thomas
“I won’t. You’ve got your car and—”
“Don’t ask me to leave you again.” To Wyatt’s shock Kevin got down on his knees, held his hand even tighter, and kissed him ever so lightly. “It was horrible being away from you. And I don’t want that again.”
Wyatt could hardly breathe. His heart was pounding.
“Okay,” he said.
And then Kevin kissed him again.
Before they took him back to his room, the nurse bent nearly as close as Kevin had. “I’d hold on to him, sugar.”
Wyatt smiled. “Giiiirrrrrrlllll,” he said.
WYATT HAD a late lunch and it wasn’t much—a sandwich of sorts because he’d missed lunch, and he was pretty pissed about it. He was starved. Kevin let him know he’d have a good dinner, and he even brought him a piece of so-so pizza (he consumed it anyway) from the cafeteria and some soft serve. It wasn’t peanut butter, but it wasn’t bad. Cheesecake. And of course there was hot chocolate. And it really was hot.
The menu actually had some pretty good options. He ordered the roast and mashed potatoes and candied carrots. And ice cream for dessert.
But then, right before dinner, they came in to let him know.
“It’s your gallbladder, Mr. Dolan-Owens.”
“Huh?” he asked, looking away from Kevin, who was reading to him from what he’d come to think of as “their” Stephen King novel.
The surgeon—at least that was how he introduced himself—was a very big, very heavyset bear of a man with a beard streaked with gray, and he told them that they had figured out what was wrong. It was Wyatt’s gallbladder. “It needs to come out. Pronto.”
“Pronto?” squeaked Wyatt, and his voice broke besides.
Gallbladder. That was what Saffron had said. Then “pronto” hit him again, and he asked when that was.
“First thing in the morning,” Dr. Lyons (who should have been named Bear) said. “We thought it might have to wait until day after, but a patient had to be bumped, so the slot is open and we’ve put you right in it.”
“But tomorrow?” A fear so great it made Wyatt want to burst into tears began to mount upon his shoulders. But then Kevin sat on the edge of his bed and laid a hand on his chest and kept the dark thing at least partially at bay.
And then there was some explanation about how it was no big deal, that he’d done hundreds of such procedures, it was done laparoscopically, and if everything went as well as he expected, Wyatt could be home day after tomorrow, and didn’t that sound good?
The going home sounded wonderful and now there was a big warm presence helping fight off the dark fear, but he had no idea what lap-ro-scop-ick-ly meant.
So then Dr. Lyons said that meant that instead of an incision, his gallbladder could be taken out through a very small hole, and that in six months he wouldn’t even be able to tell where it had been done.
“Really?” Wyatt said, his vanity joining the brawl. “Because I don’t want a scar.”
“Oh, scars can be sexy,” Kevin assured him, but for once Wyatt ignored him.
“I mean it.” The very idea of surgery terrified Wyatt, and not for the first time did he reflect that his father was far away in a hospital of his own facing who knew what? But the idea of no scar? Or at least one that would go away fast? That was good. “My chest is my best feature,” he said proudly, although it came out as a whine.
“Hardly,” Kevin said and squeezed his shoulder.
“We’ll have some paperwork for you to sign, and no eating after midnight. In fact, let’s make it nine.” He consulted with the two people standing with him, then said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, then, Mr. Dolan.”
“Dolan-Owens,” he called after the big man, and as soon as he was out of the room, Wyatt burst into tears.
KEVIN, ALL six feet of him and all those muscles, somehow climbed into bed with him and held him close. He assured Wyatt that all would be well, that everything would be okay, and he so wanted to believe it. Then he asked once again if Wyatt wanted him to call his parents.
“No!” Wyatt said adamantly. “Do. Not. Call them. I mean it!”
Kevin didn’t like the idea, but he told Wyatt that he wouldn’t.
He hated the fact that Wyatt had to go through all this, and he hated that he didn’t want his family to know what was going on, but it wasn’t like Kevin’s own family would have jumped aboard a plane. Yeah, right! So he hated instead that both their parents were missing out.
And then he decided—remembered—to just accept and know that the Universe was unfolding as it should.
“I’ll be here,” he told Wyatt. “I will be waiting right here. I’ll keep the bed warm for you.”
“You will?” Wyatt asked him, eyes filled with tears and fear and something else. “You promise?”
Promise? Was that it? Was Wyatt somehow assured that it would be okay because Kevin would keep the bed warm for him?
“Yes, Baby Bear. I promise.”
So he held Wyatt close, and asked him if he wanted Kevin to read to him, but Wyatt decided he wasn’t in the mood to hear Stephen King. So Kevin read him a romance story by someone named Jude Parks, and that made Wyatt happy—or if not happy, at least a little happier.
It was a funny book, and sweet as well, and that was what Wyatt needed.
Then some nurse or other came in and needed a blood draw, and Wyatt bore it, and Kevin was glad he didn’t get upset again, because he surely hated getting poked by needles. He even complimented the nurse on her haircut, and she laughed and patted at it as if she were trying to remember what she’d done with it that day. Kevin marveled once again at what Wyatt did to people.
His little bear—and God, he prayed that Wyatt was his little bear—nodded off a while after, and Kevin climbed carefully out of bed. His left arm had gone to sleep, but he hadn’t wanted to upset Wyatt by getting up.
Kevin read a little from Leap and the Net Will Appear! And then it quite suddenly hit him that he hadn’t talked to Theresa in days.
He went out into the hall and stood in a place where he could watch Wyatt while he made his call. Theresa answered right away and asked how gay camp had gone, and he told her just how it had gone.
She was pretty stunned, to say the least. By all of it. She let him know she couldn’t pick out what surprised her the most.
“Who is Wyatt?”
“I’ve told you about him.”
“Never,” she swore.
And looking at Wyatt’s sweet face, jaw shadowed by days of not shaving, through the open door, Kevin couldn’t imagine how that could be true. How could that be? How could he have not talked about Wyatt? At least since he’d broken up with Cauley.
“Little guy,” he said. “Was in a relationship with a total turd. A cub.”
“A what?”
“A young bear.”
“Wait a minute….” Her voice faded. “Maybe…. Maybe something about a little cute bear…. Sings crazy songs onstage?”
“Yes!” cried Kevin and then ducked his head at the annoyed look from a passing nurse.
“Wait…. You’re telling me that you—Kevin Owens—are in love?”
“Yes,” he said and could almost see her face.
“Well, hot dog,” she said. Then: “Wait. Crazy. Songs. On. Stage. You’re not getting involved with another—” And thank goodness she had the good grace not to finish her sentence. Another Cauley. Some respect to the dead at least.
“No,” he said. “Wyatt doesn’t have a tenth of the ego.”
“Which could send him right to the same me—”
“Theresa! Enough. Stick with the ‘hot dog’ and be happy for me. And I am happy.”
“Except for the part where he’s in the hospital,” she replied.
“Yeah. Except for that.”
“I’ll pray for him,” Theresa said. “And I’ll light a candle too.”
“Thank you.” He smiled and felt some warmth in the midst of the worry that was so hard not to feel.
“Do you need me to fly out?” she offered. Of course she did.
“There’s nothing you can do,” he said. “But I’ll keep you informed.”
“Any idea when you’ll be coming home?”
The question made his stomach turn into lead. Home. Away from Wyatt. “At this moment I have no idea. And it’s not like I have a nine-to-five job.”
“Nope. That’s mine. Speaking of which, I have some work to do here.”
“Okay,” he replied.
“Love you,” she said.
“Me too.”
They switched off and he went back to Wyatt’s room, and just as he did, Wyatt’s cell phone began to vibrate on his tray table. He picked it up, not wanting even that much noise to wake Wyatt up. He needed his rest.
He looked at the screen and his eyes went wide. Shit.
Mom flashed in blue.
God.
He answered without thinking about it. “Hello?”
“Hello?” came a strained response. And was that… a sob? “Who is this?” It was a woman’s voice. Of course it was. “Mom.”
“My name is Kevin. I’m… a friend of Wyatt’s.”
“I see.”
“This is Wyatt’s mother?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied. “Can I speak to Wyatt?”
“Ma’am, he’s asleep.”
“Well, can you wake him? This is—” And then she did sob. “—important.”
In that moment Kevin decided to lie. Partially. Because he was having a bad premonition about this call. “Ma’am. He’s in the hospital.”
He heard her breath catch. “What?”
“He’s sedated. He’s having his gallbladder out tomorrow morning early.”
“Oh, my precious Lord,” she said with a gasp. “Why? Why?”
Was she asking him? “Because he needs to have it out. I don’t know why—”
“Why does the Lord sometimes choose to put so much on our plates?”
He had no clue. Not one single one. “Ma’am, is there something I can tell him?”
There was a long pause. “Wait until tomorrow to tell him,” she said then.
My plans exactly, he thought, and then told her precisely that.
“It’s his father,” she said, and that time he did hear the hitch in her voice. And a strangled sob.
“Ma’am?”
“He’s dead. Wyatt’s father died a half hour ago.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
WHEN WYATT woke it was hard not to tell him. But Kevin knew when Wyatt was too nervous to eat even ice cream that he had made the right decision. Wyatt had “enough on his plate” simply dealing with the fact that he was going into surgery the next morning. It was taking all of Kevin’s comforting skills just to keep him calm. Add his father’s death onto that?
No way.
Kevin got Big Nurse to give him something to help him sleep—simple Benadryl because she didn’t want any kind of added narcotic in his system, not when he was going into surgery.
“What if they have to cut me open?” Wyatt asked Kevin.
“They’re not going to have to do that. Right”—and Kevin was glad when he suddenly remembered her name—“Janis? Tell him.”
She came over to the other side of Wyatt’s bed and, to Kevin’s surprise, reached out and took Wyatt’s hand. “Sweetie, it’s a laparoscopic surgery. Three tiny little holes.”
“But they said there was a possibility that they’ll have to cut me open,” Wyatt said and it was clear to Kevin he was trying very hard not to whine. “And if they have to, I have to have a pretty scar.”
Her eyebrows shot up, and she laughed and told him that he needed to stop worrying and that with a laparoscopy, a “pretty scar” was a given.
“You don’t understand,” Wyatt said. “I’m going to Men’s Festival in less than six months, and I’ll be running around in nothing but a sarong, and I have to have a pretty scar. I can’t have people pointing or being grossed out. My chest is my best feature and….”
She squeezed his hand. “It’s all going to work out in the end, dear. I know. One way or another, you’re going to be fine.”
So Kevin read All Alone in a Sea of Romance—apparently it was a true story, he remembered now that the guy who wrote it had been on Ellen—and wasn’t fifteen minutes along when Wyatt began to snore.
Then he went to his recliner—Big Nurse had found it for him so he could spend the nights—and somehow fell asleep, the worrying he’d made Wyatt swear not to do following him into his dreams.
WYATT DECIDED when he woke up that he was not going to fret. He wasn’t sure how, but he made up his mind. He checked his phone to see if there were any messages, but it had died in the night. Kevin apologized profusely for that, but before they could do anything, the transport orderly arrived, and thank the gods, he was another hottie.
Kevin rolled his eyes and Wyatt could only say, “I’m only noticing, Kevin. It’s like that line from The Color Purple. You know the one?”
“The one about how Shug is just like honey. ‘And now I’m just like a bee’? Because that is what it is with you and me, Baby Bear. You’re the honey, and I’m like a bee. I can’t stay away from you.”
Wyatt blushed and his heart skipped at least two beats, and the orderly went on doing whatever he was doing, oblivious. “The one I meant,” Wyatt said, “is the one where Shug says that she thinks it pisses God off when you walk by the color purple in a field and don’t notice it.”
“And what’s that got to do with him?” Kevin bobbed his head in the orderly’s direction. The orderly who was now telling Wyatt he needed to get off his bed and into the wheelchair.
“Never mind,” Wyatt said. Because seeing Kevin looking at him the way he was, Wyatt wasn’t sure he would ever want to notice another man again in his life. Even if it only meant he was wanting to appreciate what the gods had made.
Then he said his good-byes with Kevin, and the orderly pushed him out the door.
As they headed down, Wyatt once again mentioned his “pretty scar” worries, only to have the guy say, “Don’t worry, dude. Chicks dig scars.”
“Like that’s gonna help me!” And then he was amused that it was obvious the orderly guy didn’t get what he was implying.
Once arrived and settled in pre-op, Wyatt decided to make “pretty scar” a joke and entertained the nurses there with the story of orderly guy not getting why he wasn’t excited about chicks digging his scars.
A pretty redhead giggled and said, “Yep, that sounds like Jesse.”
The consensus of Wyatt and nurses alike was Jesse was “a hottie, but not too bright.”
That’s when he reminded the nurses that they had to ensure him he’d have a pretty scar, even though they, too, assured him that with laparoscopic surgery, he wouldn’t have to worry about that.
“Now, before I see you on the other side of this,” the cute redhead said, “is there anything else I can get you?”
Wyatt looked thoughtful for a moment and then couldn’t resist.
“Why, yes! Yes, there is!”
“What’s that, Mr. Dolan?”
“You know that stuff they sprayed down my throat the other day during the endoscopy to suppress my gag reflex?”
Redhead looked at him curiously. “Why… yes….”
“Is there any way you could get me a couple of cans of that for me to take home?”
Her brows came together in confusion. “Why would you need that?” she asked.
Wyatt didn’t say a word.
Waited for it….
Waited….
Then her red brows shot up under her bangs, and she cried, “Mister Dolan!” and turned a brighter shade of red than her hair. She rolled her eyes. “Sorry, I don’t think I can do that.”
Wyatt pouted.
Dr. Lyons showed up a few minutes after that. Once more he was sort of pompous and had a severe lack of personality.
And a total lack of humor.
“Mr.
Dolan, I am here to make sure you are healthy and well and possibly save your life. A pretty scar is not part of my job description.”
And then Wyatt surprised even himself.
“Doctor,” he said in all sincerity and found himself once more fighting off a rush of fear and wishing Kevin were here. “You don’t understand.” And he told him all about skinny-dipping at Camp and taking his shirt off at bars. “Please? My chest is the only thing about me I like. I can’t have an ugly scar. Please? Pretty scar?”
Dr. Lyons was clearly startled by Wyatt’s speech and assured him once more that there really wouldn’t be a bad scar with the type of surgery he was performing.
“Pretty scar,” Wyatt repeated one more time, and Dr. Lyons was gone.
The nurses, each and every one, made sure he knew that Dr. Lyons was a great surgeon and that before Wyatt knew it, he would be going home.
And then Wyatt was wafted away on a wave of anesthesia.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
WYATT CAME slowly awake in the recovery room, and the first thing he thought was that at least these curtains weren’t as hideous as the last.
After moments of hearing only muffled voices and being confused by the strange feeling all down his chest—everything was so numb—he called out for a nurse.
It was the cute redheaded girl, he was happy to see, but when he saw her nervous smile, he felt a jolt of worry.
And then he knew.
He knew before she said it.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Dolan—”
Owens-Dolan, he thought.
“—there was a complication.”
“Can I see Kevin?” he said, tears stinging his eyes, and then his throat closed for a moment, preventing him from saying more.
She sighed. “They did have to open you up after all.”
Gods! No! No, no, no, no….
And he began to cry.
“Oh, Mr. Dolan,” she said and took his hand. “It’ll be all right. I promise.”
“Owens-Dolan,” he managed through his tears.
And then he drifted off.
HE WOKE in his room, and Kevin was there, and his eyes were red, so Wyatt knew he’d cried too.