Rhapsody on a Theme

by Matthew J. Metzger

  “You what, you won’t allow it? I’m not a fucking lunatic in the asylum, Jayden, you can’t make that decision for me!” Darren shouted, flaring up.

  “You’re ill, and I won’t fucking let you backslide because you want to get pissed with them and pretend we’re still kids!” Jayden shouted back, going red in the face. “You’re not drinking and that’s it, I will call Paul tonight and tell him you’re not having any alcohol and…”

  “Then what is the fucking point in going?!” Darren snapped. “It’ll be worse for my fucking mental health to be sat around bored and sober when everyone else is wasted and enjoying it, or are you afraid I’m so fucking mental I’ll have half a can of Stella and try to chuck myself off Tower Bridge?”

  “You’re being ridiculous,” Jayden fumed and shrugged half out of his seatbelt. “I’m not discussing this anymore, not when you’re like this, Darren, you…”

  “You’re not discussing it, you’re making a ruling!”

  Jayden opened his mouth—but then there was a deafening blare, a woman screaming, and Darren was simultaneously punched in the face by his steering wheel and in the gut by his seatbelt as, in a deafening crunch of metal and a bang like a gunshot, his seat was rammed forward and his vision went white. Pain exploded like fire on his forehead.

  He smelled smoke.

  Airbag charge, he realised faintly.

  Then nothing.

  Chapter 24

  Jayden’s face hurt. His shoulder hurt too, so intensely that he felt almost confused. He faintly realised that there was a hot liquid on his face, and when he tried to wipe it away, his left hand didn’t want to know, hanging dead at his side. His shoulder felt painful and weirdly numb at the same time, where the seatbelt was still wrapped over it. He felt sick and shaky, like the world was still spinning, and the bang was echoing in his head like a boom in a cave. He was shivering.

  A car crash. They were in a car crash. He’d never been in a car crash before, and holy shit, he felt wrong.

  “Jesus,” he croaked. His back and neck hurt too, but nowhere near as bad as his shoulder. He didn’t want to look. He’d had enough injuries over the years—albeit not car-induced ones—to have a fair idea of why his shoulder hurt so badly, so he tried to focus on the pain in his head. Forehead, specifically, because he’d cut himself, and there was a red tinge to his vision where the blood was in his eyes and…

  Tk-tk. Tk-tk.

  Jayden blinked fuzzily, the tapping noise rousing his mind a little more out of the shock, his vision swimming, and then the quiet caught up to him. “Darren?” he croaked. “Darren!”

  The driver’s airbag had gone off and inflated, and the smooth white surface was smeared with blood, the sight making Jayden’s stomach turn. He called again, reaching out with his right hand, but stopped short of touching, because there was blood in Darren’s hair and his face was turned towards Jayden because they’d been arguing and he was out, he was completely unconscious, just slumped over the airbag and the steering wheel, nearly hanging in his seatbelt, eyes closed and…

  Tk-tk, tk-tk.

  “Darren?” Jayden pleaded, ignoring the tapping on the window. “Darren, can you hear me?” Did he look normal? He didn’t look twisted or broken or anything, so he couldn’t have…he couldn’t have broken his neck or his back or anything, he’d look funny, and anyway the impact hadn’t been that hard, right? If it had been that hard, wouldn’t Jayden feel worse too, or be hurt worse, or something? He’d had his seatbelt partly off, and Darren hadn’t. Or maybe the steering wheel had done something, or they hadn’t been hit straight, or…or…

  There was movement beyond Darren’s slumped form, and the driver’s side door was wrenched open. The car rocked slightly. A man filled the gap, and a dog was barking somewhere. Jayden couldn’t focus, and he felt the panic swelling up like blood in a fresh wound.

  “He’s breathing,” the man called to somebody over his shoulder, then locked eyes with Jayden. He was in his early thirties or so, with calm blue eyes. “It’s cool, mate, we’ve called an ambulance. You all right?”

  “He’s hit his head,” Jayden ignored the question. “You’ve got to…I don’t know, he’s not been well, he could be really hurt.”

  “I’m not a doctor or anything,” the man said, one hand still resting very lightly on Darren’s jaw, two fingers extended over his parted mouth to feel him breathing. Because he was, he was breathing, Jayden could see his back rising and falling in shallow bursts. “He’s breathing all right. You know. Regular, like. I’ve done first aid, right, so he’ll be fine. We’ve called an ambulance.”

  “Is everyone okay?” a woman’s voice called, sounding reed-thin and panicky, and the man glanced aside.

  “You just stay there, love, and flag down the ambulance for me. They’re both okay for the minute. You stay there, you’re doing good, okay.” Jayden guessed that the woman had hit them.

  “Darren,” he whispered again, shifting his attention back and touching Darren’s arm lightly, not daring to shake him or even hold on too firmly. The pain in his own shoulder was becoming dizzying. He felt sick, and his fingers were shaking. “Darren, come on. Come on, please.”

  But Darren wasn’t cooperating, his skin was cool and clammy under Jayden’s fingers, and then the sirens were on top of them, deafeningly loud and filling the car with blue light. The blue bouncing off the red blood looked dizzy and sickening. The man disappeared, and a woman in green took his place, ponytail askew, and then there was a cold wind and there was someone at Jayden’s side too.

  “What’s your name, sir?” a woman’s voice asked, but Jayden kept focused on Darren.

  “Jayden. He’s Darren. He’s got a head injury, you have to help him.”

  “And you’ve dislocated your shoulder, Jayden, so we have to get you out of the car and off to the hospital,” the woman said. “You might have a concussion too. Where do you hurt? Jayden? Where do you hurt, Jayden?”

  “Just my shoulder. Look, deal with Darren first. He’s hit his head and he’s ill, he’s mentally ill and he’s on medication, it could be dangerous, it could be…”

  “What’s he got?”

  “Depression. The doctor put him on…”

  But the woman was already interrupting. “He’ll be fine, Jayden, long as he isn’t going to have a seizure or attack someone or anything like that. Now, have you hurt your neck or your back?”

  “No. Please, you have to help him first, you…”

  She ignored him, palming his back and neck professionally before coaxing him to sit back in the seat. His shoulder exploded in a fiery ball of pain, and for a moment, Jayden forgot everything, even Darren, just hissing through his teeth as she worked the seatbelt off and began to fold a sling around his elbow. He clutched his arm to his chest, trying to relieve the pain, and took a shuddering breath through his nose as it subsided.

  “There you go, dear,” she said, beginning to strap his arm to his chest. “Now…”

  He tuned her out, though, when he heard a deep groan from the driver’s side, and twisted his head painfully to see Darren’s face crease in a scowl and a ripple of tension run from hips to shoulders. He was coming around, his hands curling and his arms coming up to grip the wheel again. He was shaking too, his fingers trembling.

  “Darren?” Jayden begged. “Darren?!”

  “Stay still, lovey,” the woman seeing to Darren said gently, a hand on the back of those curls. His hair was clotted and bloody, knotted into lumps, and Jayden felt sick all over again at the blood smeared on the paramedic’s gloves. “You’ve been in an accident. Can you tell me your name, my love?”

  Darren groaned again, folding a hand up to cover his face, and then roughly pushed off the airbag. “I can feel that I’ve been in an accident, love,” he snarled, and grimaced. “Bloody hell, my head.”

  “Darren, I need you to stay still until I can assess…”

  “Fuck me, who hit me?”

  “You’ve been hit by a Peugeot. Th
e other driver is fine…”

  “Bugger the other driver,” Darren grumbled. “Ow, Jesus. I feel like I’ve gone a round in the ring. Fuck.”

  “You may have whiplash, so I do need you to…” the paramedic began, but Darren snorted.

  “Bugger that. Give me a hand,” he said instead, and suddenly he was hauling himself up and out of the car. The man from earlier was hovering, and Jayden saw him reach out an arm to help—and then both when Darren staggered.

  “Darren!” he called urgently.

  The sway was almost drunken, and Darren’s hand groped for the car door. One knee went lax, as though he were carrying no weight on that leg at all, and Jayden felt his own heart crawling up towards his mouth in panic. But Darren didn’t collapse or faint, and after a minute, straightened again and took a few more drunken steps away from the vehicle.

  “M’all right,” Darren called back, then the man and the paramedic were walking him away and…

  “Okay,” Jayden said. “I want out the car now.”

  * * * *

  They were taken in separate ambulances, and Jayden remained calm—well, sort of—until he was taken into a ward off A&E and still couldn’t find Darren. His pleas for information started as polite requests and ended up in swearing at the doctor who came to put his shoulder back in.

  “You’re not doing fucking anything until I know my partner’s okay!” he snapped, and part of him knew it was completely irrational, but the majority just didn’t care. Darren had had blood in his hair and had been knocked out and…and…

  But nobody would find Darren—or even someone who had been treating Darren—and one nurse had gotten annoyed with him because he couldn’t give her another emergency contact (because his emergency contact was Darren, for God’s sake!) and then his phone started going off in his pocket, and it was probably a nurse at the other end of the hospital trying to call him to say Darren had been in an accident and he knew, thank you, because…

  Then Rachel arrived.

  She appeared at the entrance to the bay like a skinny angel in baggy jeans, then flew across it to the foot of Jayden’s bed and said, “Heard you’re being awkward!” with inappropriate, Rachel-esque cheer.

  “Rach, go and find Darren,” he ordered. His shoulder was still dislocated, and he hadn’t let them put it back. He couldn’t shake the fear. But with it still hanging out of the socket, it was too painful to move, and he needed to know. “Please, they won’t tell me how he is, and he was unconscious and…”

  Rachel scowled. “You what? I’ve just seen him, he’s about five bays down. He’s the one who called me.”

  “How is he?” Jayden demanded desperately, clutching at the information. “He hit his head on the steering wheel, there was blood everywhere and he was…”

  “Yeah, he’s getting stitches now,” Rachel said. “He split his forehead open. Kind of neat. Want me to bring him round when they’re done sewing him up?”

  “Is he all right?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine, about five stitches in his forehead and a bit of glass fished out of his cheek. Smashed his glasses up,” she said and grinned. “Going to have a glorious shiner, mind, his eye’s already started going black. Aren’t you going to that wedding next week?”

  Jayden began to finally relax. Rachel couldn’t lie to save her life, and she wasn’t shy about breaking bad news, and she knew Darren, she knew what he looked like when he wasn’t okay…because that was what Jayden was really scared about, because Darren had walked away from the car, he’d been coherent (if irritable) when he’d come round, but what would a head injury do to him, how would it…?

  “Bring him here?” he repeated beseechingly.

  “If I do, will you let the doctor put your shoulder back in, because that,” she jabbed a finger in the direction of his left shoulder, “looks disgusting.”

  “When you’ve brought him,” Jayden bargained, and she sighed heavily before disappearing. He waited, fidgeting with the urge to just get up and follow her, but he’d nearly passed out from the pain of getting out of the car, so figured maybe it wasn’t a good idea. The nurses already all thought he was a complete prick anyway, they might just leave him there, and then…

  “Darren!”

  Rachel pushed Darren in, like a tugboat steering a destroyer. Darren was very white in the face, a narrow gash along the edge of his hairline held together with a neat run of tiny black stitches, blood all down his T-shirt, but he was walking normally and his hair was damply fluffy instead of glued together with rusty clots.

  “Oh my God,” Jayden said and reached. Darren caught his hand and squeezed it. His fingers were warm and steady. “Are you all right? You were knocked out, and—they’ve checked, right, that you’re okay? Are they going to keep you in?”

  “Relax,” Darren drawled. “I’m fine. Not even a concussion.”

  He perched on the edge of the bed, Jayden’s hand in his lap. His fingers were warm, and—okay, so Rachel was right and he was going to have an amazing black eye in the morning, a ring of ferocious purple and stinging deep blue and framed by several little scratches around the eye socket, and the black stitches under his hair looked weird, but the relief was so staggeringly sharp that to Jayden he’d never looked more beautiful.

  “Are you going to let the doctor put your shoulder back?”

  “I guess,” Jayden said, and Rachel vanished again, probably to drop him in it. “You’ll stay though, right?”

  “Yeah.” Darren squeezed his hand again. “If you want. Why were you freaking so badly?”

  “I dunno.” Jayden flushed. It had been stupid, he knew, but…but he had, all the same. “I…I have no idea. Panicked? I don’t know, you were unconscious and bleeding and I…I got scared, because we’d been arguing and you’ve been ill and you could have been really hurt and you had a head injury and God knows what that could do and…”

  “Mm, okay,” Darren said, his voice dropping into a deep murmur. His soothing voice. “For the record, be grateful they didn’t put you in the same ambo as me.”

  “Why?”

  “I threw up on an orderly.”

  “That sounds concussed,” Jayden fussed.

  “No, it was the huge bruise from the seatbelt,” Darren said. “I got winded. Doctor reckons that’s actually why I blacked out—combination of the smack in the head and the punch in the gut. I have a stripe.”

  “He does!” Rachel called, bouncing back into the ward. “It looks amazing!”

  “Ah.” The doctor was back, trailing in Rachel’s wake, and Jayden clutched Darren’s hand tightly. “I am informed I might be permitted to see to your shoulder now, Mr. Phillips?”

  Darren’s face smoothed into that façade Jayden remembered so, so well from school. The I’m about to be a massive tool face. The one he got from his mother. “Jayden had concerns that were not addressed by your medical team,” he said briskly. “As the doctor for a patient with mental competency, you should always be seeking his permission to treat. Why is this any different?”

  The doctor’s lips thinned angrily, but he huffed through his nose and came around to the other side of the bed. “Sit up for me, Mr. Phillips.”

  “Your name?” Darren prompted.

  “Sorry?”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Dr. Jacobs.”

  “Noted,” Darren drawled.

  “Darren, cut it out,” Jayden muttered, wincing as the doctor palmed the shoulder, leaving flares of throbbing pain in the wake of his hands. He squeezed Darren’s fingers tightly. “This is going to hurt,” he said, and his voice was almost a whine.

  “Well, yeah. A popped shoulder hurts like hell, I’d know.”

  Jayden gave him a look. “When did you ever pop your shoulder?”

  “Few years back,” Darren said, and Jayden eyed him suspiciously. “What?”

  “I didn’t know you did that, when did—JESUS!” Jayden yelped as the doctor quickly, expertly, and incredibly painfully slammed the shoulde
r back into its socket. Almost instantly, the flash of pain subsided, but Jayden ground his teeth against the memory of it, his vision blurring, and when Darren stroked his hair and murmured something soothing, he realised he was crying. “Oh Jesus. Ow. Jesus.”

  “It’ll ease up in a minute,” Darren said.

  “I’d keep it in the sling a couple of days if I were you, Mr. Phillips, but you’re young and fit and it was a clean dislocation. Let it rest, then gentle exercise until it’s healed. See your GP if it gives you any problem or you’re concerned.”

  “That’s it?” Jayden mumbled, still clenching his jaw. The shoulder throbbed dully, and he wiggled his fingers against his chest. “I’m discharged?”

  “This is A&E. We’re busy,” the doctor said flatly. He looked haggard, as though he’d been on shift for hours, and Jayden felt a very dull pang of pity. Darren looked mutinous, though, and Jayden pre-empted the words by sighing and pulling on his hand.

  “I want to go home,” he said thinly.

  “Okay,” Darren slid an arm carefully around him, and Jayden sagged gratefully into his side. The T-shirt was ruined, he decided vaguely. “Rachel’s going to take us home. She’s just getting some sheet on head injuries from the quack who saw to me, and then we’ll go home, all right?”

  Jayden wound his fingers into Darren’s shirt, buried his nose in the top of his good shoulder, and inhaled.

  Darren smelled of petrol, smoke, and blood. But underneath, when Jayden concentrated, he could smell Darren himself, and finally relaxed.

  Chapter 25

  By eight o’clock that evening, Jayden was absolutely shattered.

  He had twitched all the way home in Rachel’s car, still jittery, and Darren had bundled him off to bed in a strict no-nonsense manner he’d definitely picked up from Mrs. Peace (or whatever she was called after the divorce. Ms. Akbar?). Then the phone hadn’t stopped ringing for a couple of hours—Jayden’s mum, after the hospital had finally decided to call her; Darren’s brother, for the same reason; Ethan, after seeing Rachel’s laughing Facebook update that tagged both of them as having been in a smash…