“You think you’re better than me just because you’re the one on the floor?” Art asks him.
Dominic glances between me and Art. “I think I’m going to press fucking charges if you so much as spit on me.”
“You have no place here,” Art says in a low voice. “She told you to leave. So leave.” With that, he drops Dominic’s collar and steps back, wiping his palms on his jeans. A sneer cracks his features, and I half think he will spit.
“Come on.” I slip my arm into his. “Please.”
Dominic watches me with a blank face. “I’ll be waiting,” he calls.
Art clucks his tongue, still livid. “You’ll be waiting a while.”
I take my bonfire boy by the hand and lead him briskly down the corridor. At the apex of our joined wrists, his pulse rampages on mine, and his palm is slick with a mist of nervous sweat. I swear that the hard muscles of his arm are trembling.
A month ago, maybe more, if someone told me that Dominic would express any kind of desire for me…I’d have felt oddly vindicated. And if he’d shown a scrap of a possessive nature, as he just did, it might have roused the little girl in me. The one who just wants to be wanted. To be loved. But that isn’t what I feel now; far from it. I feel like somebody scooped me out with a spatula.
“I’m sorry,” Art mutters as we approach the stairs. “I don’t normally do that.”
“To be fair, he doesn’t normally do that, either.”
“What, be a pussy?”
I suppress a bitter laugh. “I was going to say, show an interest in me. Turn up for moral support.”
“Oh.” He climbs three stairs and then drops my hand, twisting to catch my eye with a tremble to his jaw. “I’d never give you a reason to feel unsafe. I’m not what he implied I am.”
“Art, I know.” I reach out, smooth my hands down the front of his top. “You don’t have to keep telling me.” No smoke without fire, though. Difficult questions rear ugly heads, questions I’m not sure I have the heart to deal with in the midst of Mills–but they send shivers of goosepimples down my arms, regardless. “Have they moved Mills now? Is that why you came to find me?”
“Yeah. MAU. I’ll take you there.” He chews his lip for a moment before bringing my hand up to his mouth, where he drops a kiss on each of my knuckles by way of apology. “Cait…what was he doing here?”
Ugh. It’s not hard to see from the troubled look on Art’s face that he suspects I told Dominic about Mills. “He found out about it on Facebook,” I say hurriedly. “I suppose Grey or Loki might have posted about me arriving.” All those people on there, wallowing in Mills’ misery, and yet only two of them are actually in the waiting room. Bunch of vultures.
He squeezes my hand again, and then carries on leading me up the stairs. “That’s not what I meant. Why the sudden interest again? What’s his problem? There’s got to be more behind it than just randomly changing his mind. Not that you aren’t capable of inspiring such a thing,” he adds, offering a wry smile. “But there’s something he isn’t telling you.”
“There’s always something he isn’t telling me.”
“Is it because of us?” he ventures.
“Not unless he’s psychic.” I step through the door he holds open, and we start down yet another dimly lit hall. “It started before we did. You’re the guy here…don’t you have any theories?”
“No. I don’t understand him. Not that I’d understand anyone who threw you away, the way he did.” Venom spikes his words, and they catch me unawares. “Probably one of these perversely entitled twats who goes after a woman because he sees what she’s worth and he thinks he should want her. Not because he actually does.”
“Is there a medical term for that?”
He scans a ward list. “No. But there’s a boxing one, and they call it Punching Above Your Weight.”
I spend five seconds too long trying to work out if he’s paying me a compliment, and then we’re outside the MAU. Mom waits on a plastic bench, nursing a cup of water from the cooler. My handbag sits in her lap.
“She’s awake, just about,” she says. “Second bay. Bed three. They’ve said you can go through, but you need to be quick. And quiet.”
“You want me to wait outside?” Art asks.
The truth: I’d rather be alone with Mills for a minute. But then Art would be alone with my mother, and that’s the last thing he deserves. “No. Come in with me.”
At the ward doors, we press the beeper for entry and cover our hands in stinging antibacterial gel. A nurse takes us through to the correct bay, her finger pressed to her lips, and we tiptoe past sleeping patients to find Mills’ bed in near-dark. We’re ushered in beside her before the nurse whips the curtain around.
There’s only one chair beside the bed. It’s too late to disturb an orderly for another. So Art sinks into it and pats his knee; I climb on his lap, huddling like a child. The drip stand looms over us, punctuating the silence with its soft tap-tapping, and I follow the line of its transparent tube to where it buries itself in my little sister’s arm. She is half-tucked sideways, her skin a murky shade of grey and her eyes closed and swollen.
No words pass our lips. Time ticks by on the ward clock, its face visible through the crack in the curtain. Then a different kind of tap meets my ears; and another, and another.
Mills’ tears fall from her cheeks like bullets. I reach over and scrunch her fingers tight, so tight, in my own.
“I’m here,” I whisper.
Chapter Twenty-Five
She doesn’t want to talk, but I have so much listening to make up for that I commit every sound she makes to memory with a silent squeeze of her hand. Wordless, chemical sentiment lives in her every lurch of breath or stifled sigh; now, I take the time to translate. To communicate my feelings for her with the touch we’ve avoided for so long.
Mills and I, we’ve spent our lives with defenses up. Mom has always been so forthright and outspoken that if we didn’t shout the loudest or have the best argument, we just weren’t heard. It meant we quickly lost patience with those who couldn’t do the same, but it also separated everyone around us into two categories: those who were interesting–and threatening–and those who were weak. Life in a sea of sharks breeds paranoia, and look where we are now–me, piecing myself back together after the interesting threat that was Dominic, and Mills, fighting to keep her head up while she learns to swim.
It isn’t Mom’s fault. She didn’t design the world we live in; she just tried to equip us as she saw fit. I guess we came up wanting. But I can’t bear to sit beside my sister like this and contemplate that we’ve failed.
“Mills.” I clear my throat, shifting about on Art’s lap. “Will you talk to me?”
She breathes quietly. Doesn’t open her eyes. “Cait,” she murmurs.
“How’re you feeling?”
“Not so good,” she croaks. “Surprisingly.”
I have a hundred things to say to her. Mostly why? closely followed by WHY? But it’s not the place, not the time.
“You gave us a fright,” I manage.
Something unintelligible rolls across her features, as if she’s uncomfortable with anything even resembling a compliment. “Owned.”
At this, Art sits up bolt straight and digs his fingers into the flesh of my inner thigh. A second later, he realises the strength of his grip and eases off, but it’s impossible not to notice what appears to be panic. He’s been on edge since we got here, and while lack of sleep and Dominic’s appearance haven’t helped, there’s something else afoot. More than your standard boyfriend’s concern. It’s been there since the moment he woke me, crawling blind beneath his words.
That’s often the way of it, he told Grey. Don’t blame yourself.
He told me his experience of depression was first hand. What if…? God.
A splutter chokes up from Mills’ throat, and she begins to heave and cough.
“Jeez,” she chokes. “My mouth feels like someone shat in it.”
“Cait, I’m–”
“You’re having some water,” I say firmly. And she’ll bloody drink the lot, too.
Nurses cluster around the ward’s front desk, peering at computer screens and sorting through trays. One checks through Mills’ notes to make sure she isn’t nil by mouth, and then promises to bring over a jug of water. I’m tempted to ask questions about my sister’s condition, but for now, I’m just grateful she isn’t on a ward with a name worse than Medical Assessment Unit. It doesn’t feel like it, but things could be a lot worse than they are.
Before returning to the bed, I decide to check on Mom. She and I haven’t had chance to properly talk, alone, in way too long, and she doesn’t have an Art here to let her break a little. I suppose I just want to make sure she doesn’t feel alone.
I find her on a corrugated metal bench in the hall, drowsing in the crook of her own arm and drooling slightly on the sleeve of her green cardigan. She looks like grandma, all drawn up and far away; a hand appears in my chest then, clutching my heart from the inside. It’s been six years since she died and I still miss my grandma–but not half as much as Mom must right now.
The ward lock takes a moment to beep and let me back in. I smother my hands in more of the cold, sour-smelling gel, and pad quietly back towards Mills’ curtain. Pure, bone-deep exhaustion has a hold of me now. Each step is a conscious effort.
Hushed voices behind the curtain make me pause.
“You promised me,” Art says.
Mills bites back a sob. “I know.”
“You promised Aid.”
“Funny thing about promises,” Mills says, her tone bitter, “is that they stop mattering when everything else does.”
The fist around my heart claws to tangle in arteries and veins.
“I told you, I know what it’s like,” Art says. “But you can’t fathom how utterly irreversible it is, even when you’re not here, the damage you leave…cleave…”
“But I’m still here, aren’t I?” she whimpers.
He gives a miserable, incredulous little laugh. “Only just!”
I’m about to pull the curtain back when someone taps me on the shoulder. I nearly jump out of my skin.
“Miss McCoe needs get some rest now,” says a male nurse. He has a friendly, round face and ears that stick out beneath his white-blond hair. “We’ll need you to make your way out.”
“When will we know what’s happening with her?”
“The doctors will do rounds in a couple of hours, around eight. We’ll know more then.”
“Thank you.”
He pulls the curtain back with a slow tear of a sound. Art sits back from his hunched position, raising elbows from his knees. Mills lowers her red eyes. A water jug with a blue top has been placed on the table reaching over her bed, and she pulls at the cup handle repeatedly. Like a tic.
“Time to empty out,” the nurse tells Art, who bows his head and sighs.
I’ve never seen him look so lost. I’ve also never had so many questions to ask him. That little exchange made my blood run cold, and I’m simultaneously miserable for what he’s been through without telling me, and livid that he might have been hiding information about Mills.
It’s not hard to see that he knows this. The moment he meets my eyes, he gulps, like a bonfire snuffed to cold smoke.
“Night, Mills,” I whisper, brushing my fingers to the rise of her foot. “You have your phone?”
“Mom took it,” she grumbles.
“I’ll be back soon. Promise.” But I remember what she just said about promises, and find the word tastes like bile.
Art heaves himself up using the arms of the chair. He shoots Mills a single nod of acknowledgement, and she returns with the kind of silent understanding I thought she shared with me. Maybe not so much.
When he takes my hand, there’s a hesitant twitch to his thumb, the one that normally strokes so firmly. Panic still eats at him, and now it gets its teeth into me.
“Cait?” Mills calls.
I twist back. “Yeah?”
“Finish the book?”
I stare at her tired, bloodshot eyes, at the way she still clutches her cup. “As soon as I get back.”
***
The clock on the car dashboard reads 8:52 AM. Golden hues of daylight are glorious and painful–they yank off my eyelashes one at a time. This could be any sunrise, and yet it’s the first one my sister might not have seen. I want to be sick.
A bottle of water lands in my lap, and Art finishes the gesture with a quick caress of my knee.
“Drink that,” he instructs.
“Not sure I can face it.” I pull the sun shade further down the window. “Just need to stay awake.”
“Cait. You can’t go to work in that state.”
“You’re going,” I retort.
“It’s not my sister who’s in trouble. I’ll be alright. And I’ll explain to Hazel–she’ll understand. It’s not like you do this all the time.”
“I’m coming,” I mutter. “Unless I get called back to the hospital, anyway.”
Mom said she’d ring if there was any progress, and Art convinced me to come home. He wants me to sleep off the night at his place while he goes to work; I’m not sure I can face dreams, though. Because they’re waiting. Their albino eyes glint in dark corners whenever I turn away. What I need to do is go home to my copy of The Waves and read it from cover to cover so I can work out what the hell’s wrong with my sister.
He hasn’t said a word about his conversation with Mills, but he knows I heard them. He’s been tense and stiff-bodied since we got back in the car.
I take a deep breath and push his name out of my mouth. “Art.”
“Hmm?”
“Did–did you know she’d planned to do this?”
His knuckles turn pale around the steering wheel. “No.”
“I know what I heard,” I say quietly.
Neither of us can look at each other. Even in the mirror, his eyes are low.
“When we went to get coffee that morning in London,” he says, “she made a throwaway comment about it. About the world not needing everyone, about it not noticing one person gone. Something about grains of sand on a beach.”
“Nobody can count them all,” I say, nauseous.
His knuckles pull whiter. “Jesus.”
“She’s not very well, is she?”
“No, babe.” His voice cracks. “I’m sorry.”
More tears swarm in, hot wasps, and I slap at my cheeks, frustrated at myself. Crying is just so fucking useless.
“Don’t.” Art swats my hands away, his gaze darting between me and the road. “Lovely, you’re strong. Crying doesn’t change that. It’s just water, it just wants out…”
“What did she promise you?” I grind out.
“That she wouldn’t do anything stupid.”
“Ha. Well.” I drive my nails into the pale flesh of my wrists. “And you…you talk about all this like you’ve been here before. Like you know more about this than me.” I spit the words, resentment twisting them to barbed wire.
“I had a rough time,” he says into his lap. “I told you that.”
“And that’s all you have to say?”
“It’s all I can say.”
I’ve never been angry at him before; it’s a hot creep of a sensation, a boiling shower held to the base of my spine. What am I even angry at? The more he drops out these little comments, the more it sounds like Art had a good go at throwing himself out of a lighthouse a few years back…and I get why anyone would want to leave that behind, but doesn’t he think I deserve to know his secrets? God knows, he’s almost inside mine.
I fumble about with the water bottle, still squinting in the bright sunlight, despite the shade. The lid shoots off somewhere and lands around my feet–no matter. I sink the whole damn bottle just to shut myself up.
“I need to go home,” I tell Art. I’m fighting to keep my eyes open. “I have to read the book Mills gave me.”
“See how you feel when we get back into town. I won’t be late home, and when I get back, we can go to the ho–”
“I need to go home,” I repeat. My tone drags into a slur.
“Alright.” He gives me a thin, rueful smile. “I just want to take care of you.”
The next few miles drift by in grim silence. I put Perfect Crime on again, and after that, I don’t remember shit.
***
There’s a pillow in my mouth. Three full, round inches of blue cotton. I spit it out, cough a lot, and rub the sleep from my eyes, half expecting the siren wail of Vicky’s alarm, but…nothing. Not a sound until I roll sideways a little and then something papery rustles beneath my back.
The ceiling is not my ceiling. It’s Art’s, beams and all. This is his bedroom, his blue bed, his elephant rug and his ugly glass-and-white contraption of a bedside table, currently piled with a new bottle of water, huge bar of chocolate and a neatly folded fresh towel.
I blink some more and then fish the paper out from under me.
Lovely, it reads. Didn’t want to wake you. I’ll be back around 7. Help yourself to whatever you need, call me whenever you want. Sleep well. Love Art xxx
P.s. Spoke to Hazel. She said not to worry x
Bastard didn’t take me home after all.
Stupid, secretive, overly-considerate bastard. I’d cry again but I’ve got a head full of concrete, and eyes all out of tears.
On closer inspection, he’s plugged my phone into his charger just beside the chocolate. I throw myself at it, suddenly terrified I’ll have missed a call from Mom; there’s nothing but a message from Drew.
Oi. Where r u? Not at work?
Polite as ever, I see. I should tell him what’s happened, but I barely have the energy to stand.
It’s just gone four in the afternoon. I’ve been asleep for hours, and am still wearing last night’s dress–now crumpled to buggery. Mom seemed to think little would happen with Mills over the weekend, so I suppose she’ll be getting some rest of her own (or at least, I hope so). My skin, soaked in the scent of Art’s bed sheets–spices, toothpaste, the faint musk of sex–itches to be elsewhere. To rush back and find Mills in the pages of The Waves.
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