by B. G. Thomas
Wyatt really did start to roll his eyes—gods, this sounded saccharine—but his mother narrowed hers, and he bit his lip and then smiled.
She nodded. “All right, then!” She settled the recliner back a bit, shuffled in her seat, opened the book, turned a page or two, and began to read. “The air was moist, the coming rain telegraphed by plump, gray clouds, and the blue sky was fading fast….”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
IN THE coming days, Kevin was more grateful than he could have believed for Wyatt’s mother.
She helped. She helped so much.
Together they took shifts, except for the two days when she did go home for her husband’s funeral.
“For Wendy,” she said. “And Mary and Norman Jr.”
He understood, even if it pissed Wyatt off. Thankfully only a little bit.
Kevin didn’t know what he would have done without the woman.
The days turned into a week, and the week into nearly two. One trouble after another, and Kevin wasn’t sure how Wyatt was making it. Kevin was exhausted. His mother was. His friends were—friends who took turns making the nearly hour-long drive to come every evening and try to help.
Words and more words and speeches and doctors’ promises and possibilities all ran together.
Wyatt would go home in a few days.
No, it would be three-to-six days. Three-to-six weeks before he could go back to work.
“Kevin! I’m the store manager! I can’t be gone for that long.”
And thank God for Katherine Grimsley arriving and assuring him his job was his forever—if he wanted it.
Of course he did. He was the manager of one of the most successful New Age stores in the country. There were shops in New York and New Orleans and San Francisco and Chicago that had not lasted as long. And Wyatt had helped put the store online—with Katherine’s help and guidance, and sometimes his ideas instead.
Wyatt’s simple surgery had turned into a major one.
He worried and worried about the medical costs, and Kevin told him over and over not to, but it wasn’t until he shocked his Baby Bear by telling him—sort of—how much he was worth that his words had an effect. He told Wyatt that Google had been very happy to pay a lot of money for some apps he’d created—an app that gently woke you up instead of jolting you up (one he hadn’t needed but came up with listening to Cauley complain), another that immediately sent a message to your closest friends that your phone was dying and you wouldn’t be available, and the one called Pack that offered templates that could be adjusted for the type and length of trips or vacations to help make sure you remembered everything you’d need. And they kept him on retainer for tech support on his apps and for any new ideas he came up with. That’s when Wyatt finally, eyes wide, accepted that Kevin could afford to help him.
Wyatt loathed the drain they put into him. He couldn’t look at all, not at all. A bulb at the end of a tube that came right out his side and filled with some kind of bodily fluids.
But oh, the visitors!
How could Wyatt ever have doubted he was loved?
It made Kevin’s heart swell to near bursting at all the love.
And know he was lucky to have Wyatt in his life.
God, he hoped that was true.
Please let it be true! He would worry and then remember what the Universe heard. No worries that Wyatt might leave because then that would be what he thought about and could therefore manifest. No. Gratitude instead.
But real.
Real gratitude with only Wyatt’s best interests at the center of his mind.
It wasn’t just the Fabulous Four that came to see Wyatt. It was more than that.
Customers came!
Local Faeries—attendees of Queer Men’s Festival. Gentle Ben and his lover—a man nearly as shy as Kevin himself. Bunny and Kirk and Kirk’s lover, Michael. Historical Heloise came by and gave him a lovely necklace of amber that had driven Wyatt nearly mad with appreciation.
And some not so local.
Domi Dearest drove all the way from Eureka Springs, and Greg from Springfield—bartender extraordinaire—stayed the night at the hotel where Kevin had put Wyatt’s mother up. He wasn’t the only one. Lorax had come. And more.
Rat Bastard had called from China, where he worked when he wasn’t at Festival every other year (although the call had been short, after all).
There were so many more, and oh, Kevin knew it had all helped.
There was a Porch Night at the hospital as well, since Wyatt’s hospital stay coincided with Asher’s turn as host. He brought virgin cocktails. It turned out that he’d decided to put alcohol on vacation—the duration of which remained undecided. And he brought a rough cut of his movie, Drunks, and they’d watched it right there in the room together and clapped when it was over. Kevin saw the movie was a little too much for Wyatt—a little too long in his physical state—but he wouldn’t hear of not watching it. Kevin thought in the end it was worth the strain (although it did give him a pretty ugly nightmare of giant bottles of wine and beer and whisky chasing him across a great and endless field).
And the nurses. With their twelve-hour shifts, they would then have three and four days off, and almost to a man and woman, they would stop by if they thought they might not see Wyatt again and love on him—all declaring that they wished all their patients were at least half as sweet as he was—and tell him how wonderful he was.
Sadly, many of them did see Wyatt again.
It all helped, and Wyatt needed it all, because it seemed every time he took two steps forward, something would happen to set him at least one step back.
There was the night that his morphine stopped helping with the pain, and finally the nurses discovered that his intravenous shunt wasn’t working correctly, so they put in a new one. Only, one nurse tried for twenty minutes and couldn’t find a vein—and God, how terrified Wyatt was of needles and how this could set him back a decade on that—but then they called down to someone in the ER to come help. Who should arrive but Doris, and Wyatt had wept in gratitude.
After a while they—whoever they were—decided it was time to take him off his meds button and convert him to oral ones instead, and of course that didn’t work as fast.
There were more tears, and this killed Kevin, especially when he could see how hard his Baby Bear was trying to be brave.
But at least he was getting out of bed and moving around. The ubiquitous “they” were pleased with his progress.
Through and through it all, there was Becca, Wyatt’s mother, and soon she was fawning over not only her son, but Kevin as well.
She read to Wyatt too, from a book called Wish You Well, by David Baldacci, a book that Wyatt admitted “would have made me stick my finger down my throat a few short weeks ago.”
But he’d changed his mind.
“I’m enjoying it so much,” Wyatt said. “I feel like a little boy again when Mom was reading me all about one fish, two fish, red fish, and blue fish or that book I was crazy about, The Enormous Egg, which was all about the farm boy whose chicken lays a triceratops egg and….”
And oh, to see what was happening between Wyatt and his mother made Kevin’s heart swell with joy. All that love.
If only….
But no, Kevin decided not to even go there. He knew his own mother cared not one whit, or maybe she might have called him once in the last six years.
God, and then Wyatt had a relapse.
More pain.
Another endoscopy.
But no jokes, Wyatt confessed, about wanting the spray to help with his gag reflex—“Although I could use it with you!” he’d said while muddled on the returned morphine drip, embarrassing the hell out of him in front of Becca.
She only blushed a tad herself and said something like, “Well! And I thought it was just your sweetness my boy liked!”
Kevin nearly thought he would die.
The infamous “they” thought Wyatt’s problem might be due to his liver leaking
bile into his abdominal cavity, and he could very well need yet another operation.
Wyatt had wept helplessly in Kevin’s arms, and all he could do was hold his Baby Bear and love him and tell him that all this would end, he promised. Promised with all of his heart and soul and mind.
Pain.
And more pain.
Terrible dreams.
An evening of total amnesia after he’d been given too much anesthesia during the second endoscopy.
It all ripped Kevin apart.
There was simply nothing he could do.
He finally broke down crying while Wyatt was off at some test or another, and to his shock, Becca had comforted him.
“You’re right, you know,” she told him. “This will end. Wyatt—all of us—will get through the tunnel and into the light on the other side.”
“You sure that light won’t be an oncoming train?” Kevin asked, and then she hugged him and held him tight—her head resting even lower than Wyatt’s on his torso—and let him know that there were no more oncoming trains.
He was almost done.
She knew it. “A mother knows things,” she said.
And then, as if she really had somehow known—and why would he really doubt it?—there came good news.
The procedure “they” decided on was something called an ERCP, or an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography. No incision. A scope was sent down his throat and into his abdomen. And the surgeon had decided the leakage was actually very small, and there would be no need to install a “stent.” He might be going home soon.
It all seemed impossible.
The last problem was that he was still draining, more than he should’ve been, and they couldn’t figure out why.
Finally his doctor came by and sat with him. He asked for privacy and asked Wyatt just that. “You tell me, Wyatt. What’s going on? Don’t you want to go home?”
Kevin knew he should have gone out into the hall, but he couldn’t. Neither could Wyatt’s mother. They both stood there, on the other side of that curtain, listening.
“Of course I do,” Wyatt said in a voice so weak it made Kevin want to cry again.
“I’m not sure that you do. Nearly two weeks not enough?”
“Yes. I hate it here.”
“Wyatt, then show us. We’ve done all we can do. You’re healing… but you’re not. It’s like you’re preventing yourself from going the last step. Like you’re afraid to go on. Afraid to go home. Like you’re holding on to something.”
Wyatt insisted that the doctor was wrong and sent him away, and when Kevin and his mother went back in, he refused to talk about it.
Oh my sweet lover, Kevin moaned inwardly. If there was only something I could do.
And that was when possibly the worst thing that could happen, did.
Howard showed up at the hospital.
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
WYATT WOKE to some commotion on the other side of the curtain that kept him from being viewed by people walking past his room. He didn’t like that, being observed when he didn’t know about it.
But now it kept him from seeing what was going on.
“Just what the hell are you doing here?”
“I have a right—”
“What right? What right do you have to be anywhere near him after what you’ve done?”
“This is important.”
Wait! That voice! Gods… it was….
“And unless you’re going to call security or something, Hodor, I’m going to see him.”
And with that, Howard stepped from behind the curtain.
It was a complete shock. Wyatt froze. He could all but feel the color drain from his face.
Howard didn’t look good. It wasn’t that he looked sick exactly. But his color was off. There was the strange, almost jaundiced, shade to his skin. And bruises under the eyes. He’d shaved his beard—Howard—but then it had started to grow back, and, gods, had there always been gray in it? Wyatt didn’t remember if there had been. And his eyes, that dark slate of them that Wyatt had always found so gorgeous, looked faded—washed out.
Wyatt had to fight to keep from shaking.
“Howard,” he said, and cursed himself for the tremble he heard in his voice. “What are you doing here?”
Howard took a step and Wyatt could see there was some kind of smudge on his sweatshirt. Ketchup, maybe. Or spaghetti sauce.
“Oh God, Wyatt….” Howard’s voice faded away as if someone had slowly turned down the volume of his voice. Kevin, maybe? But then he began again. “I heard… I’m so sorry….”
Wyatt blinked at him. Sorry?
“This is all my fault. Christ, Wyatt! What have I done?”
Huh? “What did you do, Howard?” Beside try to destroy me, that is, Wyatt thought.
Howard’s eyes were a bit wild. “You being here. I couldn’t believe it when I heard. You’re this sick already? Oh, Wyatt, I did this to you.”
Wyatt blinked again. “I don’t understand. How did you do this?”
Now Howard looked confused. “The HIV. You’re here because of that, aren’t you?”
It hit Wyatt. Howard thought he had HIV. They’d never talked after that day at the store. Howard thought he was in the hospital because he had AIDS.
Then, in some strange mockery of Howard’s words that day, Wyatt said, “I don’t have it, Howard.”
Howard froze. Shook for a second. Took a step back. Stopped. Then took three forward. “You don’t?”
Wyatt shrank back for a second. He’s mad. He’s mad I don’t have it.
Howard staggered, fell into the ugly orange chair. “You don’t have it,” he said, a whispered statement and not a question. “My God.” Then louder and eyes growing wet—
Am I really seeing that?
—“You don’t have it! Oh my God! You don’t have it?” A question at last.
Wyatt shook his head.
“How is that possible?”
Wyatt shrugged.
“I… I don’t believe it. Wyatt…. You just don’t know the relief!” And then, to Wyatt’s astonishment, a tear fell down Howard’s face. Howard’s face. Howard’s! Somehow, Wyatt, in dim nightmares, had imagined this conversation ending with Howard being furious. Shouting. Screaming it wasn’t fair. That he—Wyatt, a stupid little faggot—should have it. That he—Howard—should be free of it and Wyatt forever. Instead, this?
Howard was shaking his head. “I don’t believe it. For weeks I’ve been trying to decide whether to come to you and tell you something, and then I heard on the Faerie Grapevine that you were here….” The Faerie Grapevine—the official e-mail newsgroup for Heartland Queer Men’s Festival. “I just assumed that my HIV—”
His HIV….
“—had hit you harder than me. I’ve just known I gave it to you. I never thought for a moment I couldn’t have. I seroconverted months before I found out. I fucked you so many times during that time. I assumed…. Oh, Wyatt!”
And he jumped from the chair and dashed forward to the bed, and Wyatt saw that he was going to hug him and cringed back into the pillows, and that stopped Howard short. Oh, and the sorrow that took over Howard’s face.
“I’m sorry…. Of course. You don’t want me to touch you.”
Tears suddenly welled up in Wyatt’s eyes. “It’s not that I don’t want you to touch me, Howard. But I don’t want you to hug me.” Never again.
Howard stepped back, hit the chair with the backs of his legs, and then slowly settled back in it. The pain was raw on Howard’s face, but Wyatt knew then that he couldn’t concern himself overmuch with that. He didn’t wish him ill. But there was a line. “You said you’ve been wanting to tell me something, Howard. What was it?”
“I—I…. That I’m leaving.”
Leaving?
“I asked for a transfer with the company. And I’m going to put the house up for sale.”
“I see,” Wyatt managed through his shock.
“Unless you want it…?�
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His voice. So hesitant. Unsure. What the hell was going on?
“The house?” Wyatt asked, dumbfounded.
“Yes. I know you love it—loved it.”
I did. Once upon a time. But now? With what it represented? “I… I… I’m sure I couldn’t afford what you’re wanting for it.”
“No!” Howard shook his head back and forth, almost violently. “I’d just let you take over the house payment. We’d work out something later.”
Take over the house payment?
Move back into his…. But no. He quite clearly realized he didn’t want to live there. Not at all. Because it wasn’t his anymore. It was only a symbol of something that had never really been. Wyatt sighed, but then somehow felt something… stir upon his shoulders. “No, Howard. I don’t want it.”
Was that a flash of pain in Howard’s eyes?
“I… I guess I can’t blame you.” Howard cleared his throat and then set his shoulders. “All right, then. Okay, so, so then you should know I’m going to give you half of what I get for it.”
Wyatt would have fallen if he hadn’t been lying down.
“I’m moving to Birmingham—”
Birmingham? Alabama?
“—which isn’t like I’m moving to San Francisco after all, where you could pay a million dollars for a house half the size of ours.”
Ours.
“The HIV care there is really good. I want that. I understand they have the biggest HIV research hospital in the country.”
Treatments. Gods. Well good, then. Everyone deserves quality care. And he knew then, to his surprise, that he meant that. And that strange… stirring on his shoulders continued. So: “Good, Howard. That’s good.”
“It’s not a death sentence anymore, right?” Howard asked, looking like a child instead of the huge strong man he’d always been.
Was Howard asking him or was this a rhetorical question?
“There are people that say it’s no harder to deal with than diabetes these days. Of course, my mother just had her right foot removed because of her diabetes, so I think she might argue with the whole ‘easy’ thing, you know?”