by Amy Daws
Vi steps out from behind him, a meek smile on her face. “Hey, Cam. You look good. You all ready for the day?”
I can’t stop staring at my dad as I say, “I guess so.”
“Good. That’s good.” She clears her throat rather obnoxiously. “Gareth, Booker, Tan…why don’t we go get some coffee for everyone. No coffee for you, Cam. Sorry. You can have some after.”
I nod woodenly as everyone makes their way out of the room. The nurse is working away on my arm, oblivious to everything.
After exhaling a heavy breath, my father nods his head once and steps into the room like it was the hardest decision of his life. He swallows hard as he eyes the nurse fiddling with my IV.
“There you go. All set now,” she says brightly. “I’ve pushed some meds in there to relax you. It will be another thirty minutes. Then we’ll come wheel you to the OR, so just try to relax.” Then she looks from me to my dad before making a hasty retreat.
“Are you…all set?” Dad asks, standing awkwardly beside my bed and squinting at the machines like they might tell him something. His hands shift along the open zipper of his jacket.
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I sigh.
He nods and purses his lips together before saying, “I’m glad you decided to go through with the surgery.” The words get stuck in his throat on their way out but I get the idea.
My brows lift. “It doesn’t mean I know what I want to do after all of this is over.” He closes his eyes like that comment is painful for him, so I add, “I mean it, Dad. I hope you’re not here to convince me to do something, because it won’t work.”
His blue eyes find mine and he shakes his head adamantly. “I’m not here to do that, Cam. I swear. I’m trying to respect your wishes and understand all of this. But I have to be honest. I can’t wrap my mind around the fact that you don’t like football anymore. I thought being a Gunner was what you always wanted. I don’t know how I got so off the mark.”
I recoil. “I do like football, but not like this. Not when I feel like half a man right now.”
He gets a pained look in his eyes and grabs the chair, bringing it to the side of my bed. Resting his elbows on the mattress, he presses his hands together and says, “Son, you are not half a man. You’re not even three quarters of a man. Even as you are now, Arsenal still wants you. They even sent me a letter of intent saying they want you to sign.”
“They what?” I ask, my jaw dropping in disbelief.
“I wasn’t going to say anything because that’s not why I’m here, but I can’t help it. I’m so bloody proud of you! I’ve kept you with Bethnal longer than I should have because it was our home and I love seeing you play with your brothers. But now you have the opportunity to fly, and I’m so chuffed that I want to shout it at the top of my lungs.”
I can’t believe the words he’s just said. A letter of intent? While I’m still injured? How is that even possible? “I don’t even know what to say, Dad.”
“Don’t say anything. I just want to be proud of you. But I need you to know that if you don’t play football again, I will still be proud of you.”
I swallow hard and reply, “It’s not that I never want to play again. I guess I just need to feel good enough to fly on my own first, Dad.” I stare down at my knee that looks perfectly normal, and I still can’t figure out how one appendage can muck everything up like this. “After my injury, when I thought I might never play again, I realised that I don’t know who I am without football. For so long, I let it be the only thing that mattered.”
He releases a shaky sigh and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Son, I understand that more than you could possibly know.”
“How?” I ask. “Your life’s passion is football. Our whole lives, that’s what we’ve always known about you.”
“That was only after I lost your mother, Cam.” His voice cracks and the deep creases around his eyes stack on top of each other as he attempts to hide his emotions. “Christ, I don’t know if I can talk about this.”
My eyes sting as I see painful tears form in his. He never speaks of Mum. Ever. Last year, Vi gave us all a book of poems that she found of Mum’s, and I thought he was going to lose it. The poems were all penned by her and were so incredibly personal. They exuded who she was and what she loved out of life. I swear I could remember how she smelled just by touching the papers.
A grave look washes over his face and he shakes his head. “Camden, I loved your mother with everything inside of me. My heart, my brain, my guts, my everything. Football was just a game I played. I never loved it because there wasn’t room in my heart to love anything else. She filled me with so much passion. Then we had you kids, and when I saw her as a mother, my insides grew. Football still didn’t compete.
“Then she started to die on me,” his voice wobbles and he covers his mouth. My jaw clenches at the intense pain he still feels after all these years. After a few seconds, he continues, “I put her through painful surgeries to try to give us more time with her. But when every bloody doctor came out with those masks on their faces and that look in their eyes, I knew it was all for nothing.”
“Dad, I’m sorry…I didn’t—”
“I don’t talk about it because I’m ashamed. I couldn’t cope with the idea of losing her. With every passing day, she got worse, and my insides deteriorated more and more. My passion died. I was awful to her in the end. Gareth even had to step in a couple of times. When I think about how I treated her and all that he had to shoulder at such a young age, the guilt consumes me. Before I knew it, she died and I was drowning in so much regret that I thought if I could just focus on you kids, things could get back to how they used to be. I could find my passion again. But I was a crap father. If it wasn’t for Vi, who knows how bad things would have gotten.”
I reach out and cover his clasped hands on the mattress. “You did the best you could, Dad.”
He shakes his head, apparently not believing me. “When football came back into my life, things magically got better. Watching you boys practise with Bethnal Green made me happy because it made you happy. I let football become my new passion.
“Then you went down at that match. After your brothers carried you off the field and we came into this hospital, I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing like I did with your mum. I couldn’t wait for everything to come tumbling down around me again.”
“So you started talking to Arsenal,” I say, seeing the picture come into focus so much more clearly now.
“I’m not proud of the way I handled things. I wanted to look past the present and focus on the future, which was wrong. So I’m here now and I’m not going to talk to you about Arsenal, or Bethnal Green, or football anymore. If you don’t want to have this surgery today, let’s postpone it. We have loads of time.”
I look closely at my dad, who’s gazing at me with wide, open, accepting eyes—eyes that are telling me he’ll drive the getaway car. This is a man who knows love. Not the love of football like I always thought. He loved my mum. He loved her so deeply that he lost himself when he lost her. I can relate to that. Maybe I can find my passion again someday, whatever it might be.
I swallow around the knot in my throat and say, “I want to have the surgery, Dad. And if you’re okay with sticking by my side, I’d really like that, too.”
His blue eyes pierce through my soul. “I’m not going anywhere, Cam.”
A while later, the nurse returns and her mouth drops open at the sight of my completely packed room. Dad is in a chair that he pulled up next to my bed. Vi is sitting at the foot with Hayden now tucked up next to her. Gareth and Booker are sandwiched shoulder-to-shoulder on the window ledge, and Tanner slides himself up off the floor at her entry. Everyone has coffee in hand except me.
“It’s time.” She smiles awkwardly and stands back from the door.
“I’ll walk down with him,” Dad says right away.
“No, Dad, I’m good. You can go to the waiting room with everyone else. I’ll be fin
e.”
“Are you sure? I can walk down with you,” he says again.
“Or I could,” Vi adds, her clear blue eyes touching me with motherly softness.
I shake my head with a laugh. “No. I’m good you guys. I promise. Go get more coffee. I’ll see you all afterwards.”
After a handful of awkward hugs, Tanner comes in last and whispers, “You’ve never looked uglier.”
I punch him in the ribs before he pulls away, smiling as the wind gets knocked out of him. “You’re pretty much insulting yourself there, Twin Genius.”
He waggles his eyebrows at the nurse and makes his way out of the room.
“I apologise for him,” I state in a nonplussed tone.
“Oh, it’s fine,” she giggles. “You have a lovely family.”
That I do, I think to myself as she pushes me out the door.
“Ah, Mr. Harris.” Dr. Prichard’s voice bellows from around the corner, causing the nurse to stop us in the doorway. “I was just coming to see you.” He’s out of breath as he grabs hold of the side rail of my bed. “Are you excited to get back on your feet?”
“I’ve been on my feet quite well for the past month now thanks to you,” I murmur. “But yes, I’m ready for all of this to be over.”
“I’m sure you are. I have a paper here I am hoping we can get you to sign before we wheel you in. It’s a basic release form to use your name in a medical article. The British Medical Journal is here to do a human interest story on Indie and me, and they’d like permission to reference you by name in the article.”
My cheery mood plummets as he hands me the piece of paper. “Does Dr. Porter know about this?”
His eyes squint a bit. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I told her several days ago. She’s quite keen. Her med school research project on the graft we placed in your knee is the talk of the hospital.”
“Right,” I grind out through clenched teeth. Shaking my head, I sign my name with the pen he hands me and feel something sharp digging into my back.
“Thanks, Son. We’ll see you in there…or after.” He winks and scampers away with an infuriatingly patronising waggle to his walk. He hasn’t a care in the world, oblivious to the fact that he’s completely crushed mine.
Here I thought Indie came to my flat to talk me into having the surgery because there was an ounce of her that actually cared—a tiny shred that might want what’s best for my well-being.
Well, Camden. This isn’t the first time she’s made you look like a fucking wanker.
If I could be any more done, I would be on fire.
As we begin moving down the hallway, I lean forward in the bed and ask, “Nurse, can you check my back and tell me if there’s a knife sticking in it?”
I PRESS DOWN ON THE metal bar with my foot to kick on the water in the wash basin and begin the exhaustive process of scrubbing in for surgery. I don’t wear rings, watches, or bracelets because it’s one less step I have to deal with. I start with rubbing the antimicrobial soap scrub on my hands and arms, then move to cleaning out the subungual areas with a nail file. After that, it’s the two-minute timed scrubs on each side of my fingers, between my fingers, and the back and front of both hands. Finally, I move on to my arms. The whole process lasts ages.
Ages that I can do nothing but think about Camden and what he’s doing. Who’s with him? How he’s feeling? Is he nervous? Did he have a blowout with his dad, and is that why he’s having the surgery? I want to know all of these things and could have figured a lot of them out if I’d stopped by his room before the procedure. But I was a coward.
My heart is over-flowing with new feelings. Feelings that don’t do well bottled up. Saying any of this to Camden right now would be selfish, though. This procedure is difficult enough on him without adding our personal drama into the mix. I just have to hold my tongue, get through this, and hope that we can figure things out afterwards.
“Ah, Indie! There you are,” Prichard’s voice says from behind me as I go to do my final hand rinse. “You’re scrubbed in early.”
I want to tell him it’s because he tried to kiss me the last time we were in this room together, but I bite my tongue. “Just wanting to make sure everything is setup right.”
He cuts me a look as he ties his mask around his face and says, “I just came from Mr. Harris’ room.”
“Oh?” I ask, trying to remain calm but wanting to know everything in an instant. “How did he seem?”
“He seemed fine. Just fine. I got him to sign a release form so you can reference him in your interview with The British Medical Journal after surgery. It was something the hospital PR gal said we needed. I reserved the consult room in Hallway D for you to sit and talk with them when we wrap up here.”
“You told Cam—I mean, Mr. Harris about the article?” I ask, my voice tight and pinched.
Prichard moves over next to me at the basin and eyes me from behind his mask. “I did. Is that a problem?” he asks, revealing nothing with his eyes.
“No, no problem at all,” I grind, grateful that Prichard can’t see me chewing on my lip nervously behind my mask.
He begins scrubbing in, still watching me instead of his hands. “He seemed a bit put-off by it, but he signed anyway.”
My mind goes haywire.
What must Camden be thinking? Does he think I only came to him because of the article? Damnit, I should have told him! Why do I suck so bad at relationships? I can’t seem to stop screwing things up with him. Maybe I can catch him before the surgery.
Movement through the window to the OR catches my eye, and I see a nurse pushing Camden in on a stretcher. The pained look on his face makes me feel a sudden and overwhelming urge to draw a foul.
AN OVERWHELMING SENSE OF DÉJÀ Vu casts over me when the nurse positions me in the OR. Once again, Dr. Prichard says something that leaves me reeling minutes before I’m going to be put under. God, what an arrogant arsehole.
And, once again, Indie is in the forefront of my mind. After everything my father said about my mum and how she was all he loved, I wanted it. I wanted a chance to care for someone that much. To put it above football. Above everything.
And, bloody hell, I hate the fact that after all he said, it was Indie’s face that crept into my mind. My heart. My soul.
But if what Dr. Prichard said is true, then I’ve been reading her all wrong since day one. When I held her in my arms that night at Old George and felt her pain, I wanted to move mountains to take it away. I would’ve given anything. Been anything. Done anything. I wanted to be whatever she needed in that moment.
I think some deep, dark part of my mind thought that when this surgery was all over, there would be hope for Indie and me. That maybe by getting me out of the hospital and away from the stress of her job, we’d have a fighting chance. Her coming to me a couple days ago to convince me to have the surgery filled me with the hope that perhaps she cared more about me than she did about all this hospital bullshit.
Now it’s all for naught.
Now it feels like all of this was truly just so she could get ahead. They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Well, maybe she’s just like her family and is incapable of truly hugging someone and accepting all that entails.
She used me like a puppet, and lying here on this table while they literally stick cords to my body means I’m still letting her pull the strings.
It has to stop.
I shove away a hand that’s sticking a pad to my chest.
“Mr. Harris, we’re just getting these in place. Then we’ll have you move to this table.”
“I’m not doing this.” My voice sounds distant and mumbly.
“What’s that?” a mask-covered face asks, moving to stand over me.
“I said I’m not doing this. I don’t want the surgery.” I swallow against the meds coursing through my veins and will myself to think clearly.
“Mr. Harris,” a new nurse states, joining the other person standing above me. Her brows knit together as
she adds, “We can give you something stronger for the nerves.”
“You already gave me a bunch of shit and I hate it. I said I’m not having this surgery. I meant it. Get me out of here.” I move to sit up but my head spins.
Several hands reach out and grab my shoulders, attempting to lay me back down. But I’m stronger than all of them, even doped up on painkillers. I swing my legs off the stretcher, wincing at the rubbing sensation in my knee that I feel whenever I twist it a certain way. It’s probably the magical graft that Indie put in—the one that needs to come out. Well, fuck it. It can wait. I begin ripping off the sticky pads on my chest and sides.
“Mr. Harris, please! We can help you with whatever you need.”
“I need to leave,” I growl, but my dramatic scene comes to a screeching halt when familiar toffee eyes find mine.
Indie is standing four feet in front of me, gowned completely in blue from her head to her toes. Red, curly hair peeks out the bottom of her scrub cap as her eyes squint sympathetically through cheetah-print glasses. She’s holding her freshly washed hands up in front of herself, and her mouth is covered by a mask as she asks, “Cam, what’s the matter?”
I laugh incredulously and glance over at Dr. Prichard. He’s currently scrubbing his hands in the sink and watching the scene through the window like the creepy voyeur he is.
“Like you even care,” I answer.
Pulling her brows together, she takes a step forward. “Of course I care. What is it?”
“You could have told me about the medical journal. You could have mentioned it and I would have listened. But this was all an act, wasn’t it? All you care about is this bloody surgery and getting your name on paper.”
Her face turns pink as she looks around the OR. “Can you all please clear out?” she asks firmly.
The staff stare in wonder, unmoving.
“Clear out!” she shouts, and everyone scampers with a jolt out the door, leaving us behind with only the hum of machines and the beeping of monitors to keep us company.
Despite their departure, I can feel their eyes on us through the windows. Indie notices the same thing and sighs heavily at the ridiculous fishbowl we find ourselves in. She turns to face me again, pulling down her mask and revealing those large red lips that are now pursed into a frown. “I wanted to tell you about the feature, but not until you made up your mind about the surgery.”