“Hey,” Leah reached across to squeeze his arm, “it’ll be okay.”
“Scott’s on his way,” Jayden croaked.
“Who?”
“Darren’s brother.”
“Well, that’s good,” she said encouragingly. “He’ll need lots of people who love him, your Darren. And don’t worry about Cambridge. I can call the college dean and everything for you, once we get there. I’ll sort it out for you. Don’t worry.”
Jayden nodded, chewing on his lip, but it was in one ear and out the other. He couldn’t focus, because Darren had taken an overdose, and he was in the hospital, and the heavy ball of fear and dread had lodged in his throat like a golf ball.
“Jayden.” she squeezed his arm again before returning her hand to the wheel. “You said Darren’s depressed, didn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So…I mean, has he ever…?”
“Not this,” Jayden whispered. “Not…not since we got together, anyway. When he was younger, there were a couple…”
“How?”
“Jesus, Leah, I don’t know! I didn’t ask. I can guess, but…”
“But he survived those, didn’t he, so he’ll sur…”
“Just because you survived the last car crash doesn’t mean this one won’t kill you,” Jayden returned bitterly, and she fell silent. He squeezed his phone in his fist, and took a deep breath, willing it to ring. Willing Rachel to call and say Darren was okay. Willing the hospital to call—not that they’d even know to call him, or want to. Waiting for Scott, even though he could only be a half hour ahead of them, even if he’d jumped straight in his car and gone immediately. Waiting for…for someone, for something, for…
“I can’t lose him, Leah,” he whispered, and it was true. “I can’t.”
It had always been true. He just hadn’t known it.
Chapter 27
On the last day of their exams, Scott had given Darren his old car. It had been a present, sort of, and he’d promptly bought a new monstrosity, because if Darren had a limited sense of fashion and design, Scott’s was even worse. The new car had been a bright orange sports car with lurid yellow racing stripes, and the moment Leah turned into the hospital car park, Jayden picked it out.
“Scott’s here,” he croaked.
His throat still ached, and his face felt puffy and raw, but he didn’t care. He was all cried out—at least, until he saw Darren for himself—and now he itched to know. Not to have to think and worry anymore, but get answers and hold him and know what had happened. The phone hadn’t rung once for the entire journey, and he was twitching against the seatbelt before Leah even parked. He barely waited for her, striding off the moment she had the pay and display ticket on her dashboard. He snapped at the nurse at the reception desk when she took more than a minute to call a ward, and broke into a jog down the relevant corridor when she gave him a cold look and pointed a manicured nail off to her left.
It was a large hospital, and the smell of it took Jayden straight back to that long spring night when Darren had been attacked on his way home, but at least that time it hadn’t been Darren doing anything, he hadn’t chosen it, he hadn’t…
But this part, the uncertainty, was the same. Maybe this time Jayden knew more about why he was in the hospital, but he knew nothing about how he was. An overdose could be anything, he could have taken anything, he could be dying or he could be fine, and ward three didn’t mean anything, ward three just meant ward-bloody-three, and…
He stopped dead in front of the double doors to the aforementioned ward, and felt suddenly sick. Leah rubbed his elbow, but said nothing, and Jayden wanted to hug her and make her go and find out instead. He was scared: his stomach churned, his head ached, and his feet felt glued to the floor. He was terrified to move, and terrified to stay, and…
“Come on,” Leah said and pulled slightly.
She asked at the nurse’s station; another long finger pointed them towards a bay, and then Jayden could hear Scott’s deep voice, and plucked back the curtain. Scott sat beside the bed, looking rumpled and haggard, but Jayden looked right past him to tired, sea-green eyes and sheet-white skin, and the world narrowed to Darren, and Darren alone.
Jayden opened his mouth and didn’t know what to say.
* * * *
It had been like dreaming.
Darren didn’t believe there was any such thing as ‘the last thing one remembered…’ because it never seemed to work like that. The last clear memory, the last proper one, he’d been popping pills like a junkie in his room, but everything between then and now had been there, just…hazy. Dream-like. Real, but not quite real.
He’d heard a girl crying, and his face sort of stung, and a lot of lights. Dizzy lights, really, because they’d kept flashing past and whirling around his head and he’d not been able to keep track of them. Some woman had kept calling him ‘Darren-my-love.’ Then there’d been a lot of pain, from his hips to his ribs, and someone petting his hair.
The smell of antiseptic really woke him up, though, chasing out the dreams, and there was still someone petting his hair. It was jarring, as though the world had changed from one blink to the next, because they were two different hands, the first in a glove and all stubby, the second familiar. Long, narrow fingers and bony joints and a little twitching tic in the thumb. A left hand. Rachel.
“How are you feeling?” she whispered, because Rachel was a lot sharper than she gave herself credit for, and Darren sighed.
“Like shit,” he croaked. He did. His throat burned, his stomach hurt like he’d taken a beating, and he still felt the piano on his chest. Still felt heavy and lethargic, still felt like the curtains had been closed on the entire bloody universe and he was no closer to escape than when he’d started. When he was younger, attempting had kick-started his brain, forced out the darkness in the wake of the survival instinct that had kept him alive at all, but this time…this time he’d failed. Again. Again.
He cracked open his eyes. The curtain had been pulled around the bed, and he had no restraints. Ah, the NHS. Busy and anonymous; he could go by this evening. They couldn’t stop him. They were too busy and too apathetic to stop him. And they wouldn’t stop him even if they wanted to, because if he stayed, they’d have a psychiatrist in the chair by the morning, and be discussing various anti-depressants, and Darren did have a little pride left.
“I called Jayden,” Rachel whispered, looking pale and drawn in the visitor’s chair, and Darren closed his eyes. Jayden. Oh Jesus, Jayden. What the hell was Jayden going to do?
“He’ll kill me,” he joked feebly, then Rachel twisted into the side of the bed to hug him, planting her face into his neck and grimacing into his skin.
“I’ll kill you first,” she promised softly. Somehow, the edge of kindness dug into Darren’s skin and he felt the warning burn behind his eyes.
“Rachel, I…”
She squeezed. “I understand, Darren,” she said in a low and significant tone, and Darren folded up an arm to grasp her elbow and squeeze it. Her hair smelled of cheap supermarket shampoo, and she was warmer than the bed. Warmer than him. “I do understand.” Of course she did. He’d seen the very edges of her moods too, recognised something in her that mirrored himself. Seen a reason to know her, the odd woman in the flat next door with sex issues. Maybe their reasons were different, but the outcome was the same.
“Why aren’t you at work?” he asked eventually, and Rachel snorted before sitting up and folding her arms.
“I found you,” she said tartly. “By the time the bloody ambulance arrived I was late anyway, so I might as well hang for…for…”
“A sheep as a lamb,” Darren finished, clutching on to the normality of her ranting. He just wanted normality. He’d been here before: the worry, the fussing from friends and family, the bullying nurses and arrogant doctors insisting on him staying, and the amount of fit-throwing he’d have to do to get out…it was all coming, all waiting outside the ward, and he wanted desperate
ly for it to just go away. Had someone called Mother and Father? God, he hoped nobody had called Mother and Father.
“A day as a class,” Rachel challenged and relented a little. “I called Jayden. Some girl called Leah is bringing him down now.”
Leah? Well, Darren supposed, better Leah than Ella. At least Leah was genuinely all right. She was real. When she smiled, it reached her eyes. He’d only met her for maybe a minute, the morning they’d left Cambridge for Christmas, but she wasn’t like Ella, he knew that much. Jayden would be all right with her.
“That was a few hours ago,” Rachel said and grimaced. “It’s nearly noon. You took your time after…well. After.”
Should have taken sleeping pills, Darren thought, but then he hadn’t been thinking, not really. Not properly. “Can you…” He paused, then carried on. “Just flat-sit for a few days? If Jayden doesn’t kidnap me after this, Scott will.”
“Scott?”
“My brother.”
Rachel scowled. “You didn’t tell me about Scott! I need to call him, I…”
“Jayden will have,” Darren started, reaching for her wrist as she half-stood. “He…knows who to call.”
Rachel bit her lip. “…He does love you, Darren.”
Darren closed his eyes.
“He does,” Rachel insisted gently, squeezing his hand. “He was so upset and worried and everything. I know it’s not been perfect, but…but, you know, he does. And I think maybe you should let him kidnap you. It’ll be good for both of you, get you back on track and let you…you know. Recover.”
Recover. Because that was ever going to happen. He’d learned that last night: the dream was over, and there just wasn’t a recovery from this. And how would Jayden deal with it? This wasn’t…this was new for him. Hell, maybe this was…well. Nail. Coffin.
“I’ll call work for you,” Rachel continued. “I’ll say you’re ill, that I don’t know the details. You can…say what you like, when you get back.”
Darren squeezed back. “Thank you.”
“And when you do get back, we’ll…”
Darren tuned her out sharply. He was a middle child; he had lived life long enough in a house of other marauding children to be perfectly attuned to particular sounds, and the heavy tread of boots that came filtering down the ward had just the right speed and weight to be…
“Speak of the devil, and he shall appear,” Darren murmured. Rachel stopped talking, and gave him a funny look, but then the curtain rattled back and Scott marched into view with a face like thunder.
“Um,” Rachel said.
“Just…go, Rach,” Darren said finally, when Scott stood at the end of the bed with his arms folded over his chest and glowered silently at him. “I’ll call you when I get sprung.”
“Which will be fucking never,” Scott snarled.
“Rach,” Darren repeated.
This, at least, was familiar. No matter how bad the bad days were, he had never become…harsh, perhaps, but like Jayden. He’d never weakened: bad day or not, he resisted doing what others said, and most of all, what Scott said. Some part of his brain—of him—didn’t succumb to moods, and that part was pushing to the front in response to Scott’s closed, hostile stance. Whatever state he was in, nobody else ruled him.
“As soon as you get out,” Rachel insisted, then bent to hug him once more, tight and reassuring and a little bit desperate, like she was trying to push some of her own strength across. Darren hugged back, and made a mental note to buy her the biggest box of chocolate liqueurs ever when he was out of hospital. He’d never thought about who was liable to find him, and of course it would have been Rachel. He’d not thought.
She slipped out and pulled the curtain to behind her. The moment she was gone, Scott occupied her chair, folding over the side of the bed and leaning on his elbows, glowering at his own hands. He looked furious, almost dangerous. Darren pulled himself a little straighter in the bed and steeled himself.
“I got a call from Jayden a couple of hours ago,” Scott said. “Want to know what he told me?”
“Not really.”
“He told me,” Scott carried on ruthlessly, “that he’d got a phone call from some bird who lives with you that you’d gone and downed a shit-ton of drugs…”
“Codeine.”
“…and were in hospital getting your stomach pumped until you fucking puked all over the fucking hospital.” Or that was a translation, because Darren was willing to bet Jayden hadn’t said any such thing. “He’d said you’d tried to kill yourself.” That was more like it.
“Well,” Darren said, picking at the thin sheets. This bit sucked. What were you meant to say to that? “It obviously didn’t work.”
Not that, judging by the way Scott’s face contorted. “It didn’t work? What, you actually want to…”
“I didn’t take them to see what they tasted like,” Darren returned, pressing back into the pillow and staring at the ceiling. This was why he never told Scott anything; he overreacted and shouted and generally acted rather a lot like Mother. Darren hated it. He wanted Scott to go away. He wanted everyone to just go away and forget about it and leave him alone. Was it too much to bloody ask to be left alone?
“Why?” Scott snapped.
Darren closed his eyes.
“Don’t ignore me, Darren!” Scott snarled, shaking his shoulder roughly; Darren winced as the old scar tissue rubbed around the joint. “What the fuck is going on with you? You went weird when you were like twelve and I put it down to being a teenager and all that shit and then you were gay or whatever, so I figured that can’t be easy when you’re a kid, and you lashed out a bit, sure, and those couple of times you broke your leg I swear weren’t accidents and…”
“They weren’t,” Darren interrupted quietly.
Scott paused. “You’ve done this before.”
“Yes.”
“How many times?”
“Three.” At least, although the first time was so pathetic it barely counted. Maybe four or five, if you counted the car, but he hadn’t even gone properly into the wrong lane, so Darren didn’t think those were real attempts. They hadn’t been the big thought-out things anyway, just…a lapse. A moment. So they didn’t count.
Scott sighed gustily and ran both hands through his hair. “Jesus, Darren,” he muttered.
Bitterly, Darren wondered why this came as any kind of surprise. He’d been in hospital three times because he’d tried to do it and failed. Once had even been from an overdose. How Scott was finding it a surprise now was beyond him—but then, that was Scott. The oblivious, cheerful, untouchable brother. The one nothing ever really affected, and if it did, not for long. The one who just sailed through fucking life, and…
“You’re coming home,” Scott said finally. “If you think I’m leaving you here to do it all over again, then…”
Oh, hell no. “I’m not going anywhere near Mother and Father in the middle of a divorce.” He wasn’t going anywhere near them without the divorce, never mind with it.
“You can’t stay here!”
“That doesn’t mean I’m going back to Mother’s,” Darren said sharply. Misha had turned into a tween-ager with an attitude problem worse than his, and Mother was the same obnoxious narcissist at Christmas as she’d ever been, and if Darren didn’t have to stand in the same room as Father and the disappointment that had shrouded him ever since the stabbing ever again, he’d die satisfied.
“Then you’re coming back to mine,” Scott said flatly. “You’re not bloody staying in bloody Southampton in the flat you tried to off yourself in, and pretending it’s all fucking okay!”
“If you can’t be quiet…!” a nurse shrilled, flipping open the curtain and scowling at Scott. She softened at Darren and added, “Would you like some tea, dear?”
“Coffee?” he suggested.
“Mm, I’ll make you a cup of tea,” she said, and Darren relented.
“Milk and sugar, please,” he added, and she nodded, scowling at Sco
tt before twitching the curtain shut again and clacking away in her low heels.
“You’re coming to mine and that’s final,” Scott said sharply.
“No, I’m not,” Darren said equally sharply. Cooped up in Scott’s tiny flat in Northampton with his fury even for two days would be unbearable enough; for whatever Scott counted as a recovery would probably induce a homicide, not a suicide. “I’m leaving tonight, and if Jayden doesn’t strong-arm me into going back to his, I’m going to back to Rachel and my flat.”
“If you fucking think…!”
“If you fucking think that this means you can make my decisions for me, Scott, you’re mistaken,” Darren spat. “Even if they bloody sectioned me, Mother would make that decision. Mother, or maybe Father, but certainly not my half-brother.”
Scott flinched; Darren stared up at the ceiling and clenched his jaw, wishing he’d never had to say it. He’d never said it before.
“I’m going back home this afternoon,” he told the ceiling, “and you don’t get to make any other decision for me.”
“Darren…”
“No.”
“Daz.”
The pet name burned around the edges of Darren’s ears, and he ground his teeth. “No,” he insisted. “I…”
Then the curtain swept back, and every ounce of Darren’s resistance died. Because there stood Jayden, white-faced and red-eyed and silent, even as his mouth worked to speak, and just the sight of him, pinch-faced and distraught, made Darren feel instantly worse than he ever had before.
Chapter 28
Darren looked ill.
Well, of course he does, the little voice in his head piped up, but Jayden noticed it anyway. He was white-faced, dark circles under his eyes, and looked small and thin even though he couldn’t have lost any weight from an overdose. There was a cotton bud taped to the inside of his elbow, and a note scrawled on the whiteboard on the wall that he wasn’t to be given any painkillers or sleeping aids.
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