by Alexis Hall
Anyway. Air hockey did its job too well and we almost missed our flight—dashing through the gate at so much the last possible second that my arse nearly stayed in the UK. At which point, Ellery pecked me on the cheek, muttered, “See you, sucker,” and was whisked off to first class. Well, not first class. Premium class. This was the kind of airline that wanted to manage your expectations.
Trying to ignore the dirty looks I was getting for being the last one to board, requiring pretty much everyone else to tuck in, stand up, or be clambered over, I found my seat and plonked myself in it. And okay, it wasn’t luxurious, but it was…fine. I could totally spend eight and a bit hours like this. Totally. I folded out my little table and then folded it back again. No reason. Just that it was there and it was my folding table, dammit. Yep. Yep. Eight hours. No problem. Also I had my Kindle. Except I apparently hadn’t remembered to charge my Kindle. And I hadn’t paid extra to have a USB socket. Which meant I was going to have to depend on my unwavering mental fortitude and deep wellspring of inner resources.
Oh God. I was fucked.
The plane sat around on the runaway for another forty minutes or so but eventually trundled skywards. Boston, here we came. I tried to sleep, but as ever, when not being conscious would have been awesome, I was helplessly awake and restless.
I checked the time. Ten minutes gone. Wow, the journey was just whooshing by. And I was hyperconscious of not wanting to run out of battery before we landed—since everything I needed was on my phone. After an hour or so, or maybe five minutes, or maybe three thousand millennia, one of the cabin crew came over and told me I had to follow them. Which led to me disturbing my row all over again, and also being briefly terrified that they’d decided I was a terrorist and were going to throw me out the window.
But instead, I was led into the premium cabin, which came equipped with—praise be—reclining seats and electric sockets. I’d been upgraded. Ellery smirked at me from behind her sunglasses. Probably I should have felt bad to be once again benefiting from someone else’s wealth and privilege. But fuck it, I didn’t. Sold out for a slightly bigger chair and a neck pillow.
“Thanks,” I said, getting settled in next to her, and accepting my free bottle of water, because they really knew how to take care of you on ShitAir.
She shrugged.
“I don’t mean to be ungrateful or anything but…was this always the plan?”
“Obviously.”
“Then why did you leave me stewing out there for so long?”
“Dunno. Thought it was funny.”
I sighed and plugged my Kindle into my socket and my phone into Ellery’s. “Of course you did.”
“What’s the matter?” Ellery cocooned herself more deeply in her blanket. “Can’t cope flying economy? God, you’re such a princess.”
“You’re talking to a queer boy, Ellery. I’ve always wanted to be a princess.”
She gave a snort of laughter. “Mission accomplished then.” Whereupon she levered up the arm rest, plonked her head in my lap, and closed her eyes.
Since she wasn’t usually the tactile type, I couldn’t tell if she was experiencing some kind of Ellery-emotion or simply trying to travel in as much comfort as possible. After a moment or two, I touched her hair very gently and, when she made a rough, contented sound at the back of her throat instead of batting me away, began to stroke. She was asleep faster than a cat on a summer afternoon. Typical. With my free hand, I snagged the book she’d brought with her—Harriet Said—and settled down to read.
Chapter 19
It was close to midnight in Boston by the time we arrived, which was disorientating because it felt like we’d already travelled all night. Regardless of time zone, it was still prime Ellery operating hours, so I left her in charge of getting us taxied out to our Holiday Inn. Last time I’d been here, Bellerose had arranged for me to stay somewhere fancy, but it had been a waste of time and money since I’d practically lived at the hospital. Applying this logic to my present arrangements, I’d booked the cheapest place I could find with a hospital discount and a free hospital shuttle service. And actually, it was fine: a generic, brick box of a building opposite a wire-fenced car park and what was clearly a dive bar, and decorated inside with aggressive blandness. Of course, I had to spontaneously upgrade my booking from standard-with-single-occupancy to standard-with-unexpected-double-occupancy, which kind of went over as well as Richard Gere trying to do that in Pretty Woman except for me not being a billionaire businessman and Ellery not being a prostitute. The weird thing was, she could have easily got her own room but it didn’t seem to occur to her. Or for whatever reason, she chose not to. Maybe she really didn’t want to be alone at Christmas.
Despite the fact it was still early in the UK, I collapsed onto the bed almost as soon as I saw it. Doing nothing and not moving for eight hours was exhausting, okay? I could feel Ellery staring at me.
“I’m going out,” she announced.
I jammed my face into the pillow. “We just got in.”
“Which is why I’m going out.”
“Do you even know anything about Boston?”
“People live here. How hard can it be?”
“So, what, you’re just going to…wander out into the night?”
She thought about it for a moment. “Yeah.”
“I’m sure that’s how people get murdered.”
“It’s America. I’ll buy a gun.”
“Ellery.” I sat up again abruptly. “Do not buy a gun.”
“Just a little one. I wouldn’t get an assault rifle or anything.”
“Actually, I read it was harder to get handguns because something something concealable something something regulations something something right to hunt shit.”
“Oh, okay. I’ll get an AR-15 then. Thanks, Arden.”
“You better”—I glared at her—“be winding me up right now.”
She grinned. “Guess you’ll find out soon.”
Sighing, I reflopped. “At least take my coat.”
“So I can put my assault rifle in it?”
“No, because it’s really fucking cold out there.”
“Whatever, Mom.”
I wagged a finger at her. “I have your best interests at heart, young lady.”
“You’ll never understand me.” She stamped her foot. “And you’re not my real mom either.”
She left a few minutes later, though she did take my coat. I sent a message to Nik to let him know I’d made it and passed out not long after. It felt like no time at all had gone by before Ellery was poking me awake again.
“So”—she jumped onto the bed, still in my coat and her boots—“are you intending to see Nik, you know, the friend you specifically came here to see, or are you going to sleep forever?”
I clung to the duvet and made sad noises.
“You’ll miss breakfast.”
That got my attention. “Have you even been to bed yet?” I asked, staggering towards the bathroom in my purple unicorn boxers.
“Bed is boring.”
“What did you do last night?”
I almost heard her shrugging. “Stuff.”
“Wow, thanks.” My words came out muffled around my toothbrush. “I feel I have a much better understanding of the life of the city now.”
“No problem. Anytime.”
“Besides, we can’t see Nik ’til after four. He has physical therapy or whatever and we shouldn’t interrupt.”
“Oh no,” Ellery drawled. “You poor thing. Whatever will you do in this unfamiliar place?”
“Go back to bed?”
“Well, since you’re being so pathetic about it, I guess you can come with me.”
I spat, rinsed, and stuck my head back into the room. “Gosh, are you sure?”
“What can I say”—she gave me one of her not so much dead as long ago decomposed pan looks—“I’m a saint.”
“Will you at least tell me where we’re going?”
She blinked. “
No.”
Where we were going, I discovered, after a shower, breakfast, a thirty-minute ride on the Boston Not-Tube, and a five-floor climb to the top of a library, was Warren Anatomical Museum. Though “museum” was a bit optimistic—since it was a room with some glass cabinets in it, all of which were full of gross stuff.
Ellery was there for, like, nearly two hours. I mostly sat in the corner. Because as far as I was concerned, once you’d seen one dislocated pelvis or deformed foetus in a jar, you’d kind of seen them all. Ellery tried to cheer me up afterwards by offering to buy me lunch, but I think she was taking the piss.
“You,” I said as we headed east towards the harbour and the rehabilitation hospital where Nik was staying, “are the weirdest tourist.”
This earned me my first scowl of the day. “I’m not a tourist.”
“We just went to a museum. Where you enjoyed yourself.”
“Shut up. I did not.” She pulled her feet up to rest against the seat. “I just like stuff other people might not have seen.”
We had to change lines at Haymarket, something Ellery navigated with far too much comfort for someone who had been to Boston exactly never. Honestly, I was glad she was with me. My last visit had involved a car ride to and from the airport, and a daily walk between my hotel and the hospital, my memory a blur of white corridors and long roads, and a too-flat, too-wide river that didn’t look anything like the Thames. Of course, now I was seeing underground tunnels and skulls with holes through them, but what could you do?
Nik’s hospital was right on the tip of a peninsula in one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods—which is to say, it was substantially younger than the crockery at your average Oxford college. The building itself was sleek and glassy, with a we care about sustainability look to it. Inside, it was clean and bright, and slightly corporate, which, while it wasn’t cosy, was more reassuring than you might have expected. It suggested they wanted you rehabilitated and out of there—an approach I could get behind.
Nik was waiting for us in the lobby. I’d seen him over Skype a bunch of times, and I knew intellectually that he was in a wheelchair now, but it turned out my mental image of him had adjusted way less than I’d realised, and so the sight of him was a little bit jarring, like when your glasses-wearing friend suddenly gets contacts. But it only lasted a second or two. And then I was just so, so happy he was there.
“Nik.” I gave an excited squeal and scampered across the floor to meet him. “Shit—what’s the best way to hug you?”
“Wait until we’re both sitting down.” He gave a wan smile. “Because if you pull any leaning over me crap, I will punch you in the face, I swear to God.”
Honestly, I was already conscious of being loomy—which was extra uncomfortable because I was used to Nik being taller than me. “Wow, is that what they’re teaching you in physical therapy?”
“No. But it would definitely be therapeutic.”
“Punching me?”
“It would be a principled punching, not a personal one.”
I pulled a face. “I don’t know if that makes it worse or better.”
“This is weird.” He spun away with a deft, and somehow expressive, motion. I’d never been cold-shouldered by a wheelchair before.
“You’re the one threatening physical violence two seconds after I’ve got through the door. I’m still glad to see you, though.”
“Actually, you looked traumatised.”
“I’m not traumatised,” I protested. “I’m just not used to you being in a wheelchair.”
“Using a wheelchair.”
“Pardon?”
“I’m supposed to think of it as using a wheelchair. On account of how it’s not something that limits me. It’s a tool I use to get around.” He sighed. “Although I’m not sure what the difference is, given it’s a tool I only use because I have to.”
“Um…”
“Because I can’t walk.”
“Nik, I—”
“Because my spine is fucked.”
“Hi,” said Ellery. “I’m Ellery.”
Nik turned back. “What the hell? You brought a random? To my hospital?”
She tucked her hands into her hoodie pockets. “He didn’t bring me. I tagged along. My home life is so busted that between spending Christmas with my family or travelling halfway across the world to meet a grumpy stranger using a wheelchair, you were my best option.”
There was a long silence.
“Okay.” Nik let out a long, rough breath. “So I do actually feel sorry for you right now.”
Ellery smirked. “Last brownie for me.”
“Can we,” I asked, possibly ill-advisedly, “go sit down somewhere? Because I really do want to hug you, Nik. I mean, if you want to be hugged.”
“Café? It’s depressingly nutritional.”
“I thought you’d be into that.”
“I was…I guess I am, but I keep wondering what’s the point.”
“What do you mean?” I narrowed my eyes at him.
“Oh, just. I went to a lot of trouble to take care of this body. I ate healthily. Went to the gym every day. And it still betrayed me.”
“I think the fact you got hit by a car and are still alive is evidence of your body coming through for you. Not the opposite.”
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Well.” That was Ellery. “I’m going to bounce.”
Nik’s fingers twitched guiltily in his lap. “I’m sorry. I’ve been an unwelcoming dick. Arden’s told me a lot about you, so it’s good to finally meet up.”
“Thanks, but I’m still leaving. You two need time to catch up.” She scuffed her boot against the pristine floor. “I can come back another day.”
“I’d like that. I’ll try to be nicer.”
“Don’t bother. Nice is bullshit.” And with that, she stomped off, pulling up her hood against the Boston chill.
Nik and I went to the café—and it was actually pretty nice considering it was a café in a hospital. It still had that diligently clean and functional air, but the windows running all down one side kept it light and airy, with the outside world just a finger’s brush away. I had one of their whole wheat pasta salad things and Nik had a coffee, which I didn’t offer to carry and he didn’t ask me to help with.
The tables had been carefully laid out—lots of space and the furniture itself was light, so I could easily drag my chair up next to Nik. And from that position, I was able to turn my body into his, and get my promised hug. Despite our conversation in the lobby, he squeezed me really tight.
“I’m sorry,” he mumbled.
I snuffled into the side of his neck. He smelled just like he always did: soap and the freshness of summer days. “Please don’t worry about it. I’d rather know when I’m doing something annoying.”
“Everything annoys me.” He disentangled us, but gently. “It takes all I have not to lash out on the people trying to help me.”
I gazed at him, biting my lip. “Is it…really hard?”
“Not being an ungrateful git?”
“The whole…rehab thing.”
“Yeah, Arden.” I guess I deserved the look he was giving me. “It’s really hard. It’s boring and frustrating and exhausting.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know. I guess I took it as read you didn’t think I was eating fairy cakes and making balloon animals over here.”
“But you always said you were fine—oh shit, I’m the worst friend ever.”
One of the shrugs that had become familiar to me from Skype. “It’s not your fault. I liked being able to pretend it wasn’t a big deal. That I was still…you know. The same.”
“Nik, you are the same. And I can see what good progress you’re making. I mean, last time I was here, you were in a bed covered in tubes. Now you’re whizzing around and—not to objectify you or anything—your arms are seriously jacked.”
His mouth pulled downwards. “Don’t pity-objectify me.�
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“Oh my God. I’m not. I wouldn’t.” He didn’t answer, so I pressed on. “You know I’ve had a queer boy crush on you forever. I mean, okay, I put thoughts of my penis aside when I was legit worried you were going to die. But now you’re not, I promise I’m still creepily into you.”
“The first thing you saw when you looked at me was the chair.”
“Only because I wasn’t used to it. Now I’m perving over your muscles just like old times.”
“Nobody’s ever going to look at me the way they used to.” His hair had got quite long in the intervening months, giving him a touch of the David Hasselhoffs, and now he pushed it impatiently out of his eyes. “And I know that’s a fucking shallow thing to be obsessing over when I’m surrounded by people who’ve suffered strokes or brain injury or lost their actual limbs.”
I shrugged. “I think you can probably obsess about whatever the hell you want.”
“They’ve got these phrases they use here: maximum possible recovery, best quality of life attainable, optimum results for you, highest level of function. It’s meant to be encouraging but it’s also about managing your expectations. Making sure you know that it’s different for you now. That this is how it is and how it’s going to be. And you can’t take anything for granted ever again.”
“You can take some things for granted, though.”
“I’d say walking is pretty baseline for most of us.”
“Bit of a sweeping statement considering the amount of times you’ve watched me fall over literally nothing.”
He laughed—harsher than I was used to, but it was so good to hear.
“And anyway,” I continued, “walking only feels baseline because the world is set up in a way that ignores people who don’t use their legs to get around.”
Nik snorted. “Did you read that on Tumblr?”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. And the point is, just because you’re moving differently now, doesn’t mean you’ve stopped being you.”
“It’s not that simple. Rationally, I know I’m not my legs or my spine or the titanium inside my body. But sometimes I get so fucking claustrophobic, like I’m in prison, except what I’m stuck inside is me.” He finished the last swallow of his coffee and crumpled up the environmentally friendly cup. “I don’t know how to feel that way and still understand who I am.”