by Clare London
Colin.
“What’s up?” My mouth felt like it’d been swept out with a bristle brush. My cheeks felt suspiciously tight, as if I’d been crying. Sentimentality was a relentless disease, if you asked me.
“Kevin? He’s in hospital!”
“Uh…who is?”
“Marcus! Marcus Armstrong! He got hit by a lorry on the main road last night. He’s pretty bad.” Colin’s voice sounded very shaky.
“Why…? Where are you?” Bile rose in my throat.
“I’m at the hospital. We all are. I mean, it’s just a coincidence. Bernard’s been dating this nurse, and we gave them both a lift here because she was due back on shift, and then…well, we found Marcus had been booked in. He’s been here almost since he left the office. Marcus is here, Kevin.”
“Why are you repeating yourself? Why are you calling?” God, I sounded slow, drug-stupid. I dragged myself up to sitting.
“He hasn’t woken or moved, but he made one noise when they moved him into the bed. They said it sounded like ‘Kevin’. We told the doctor we knew someone called that.”
“That’s me,” I said.
Colin made a small, frustrated sound. “He’s not responding to anything, Kevin. They can see brain activity, apparently, but there’s no response to any of the staff here. He’s just been lying here ever since it happened.”
“A lorry…?”
Bernard came on the line. “Kevin? They think he was distracted, they wanted to know what we knew about him, why he was working so late, why he obviously misjudged the traffic. Apparently, he suddenly stumbled out into the path of the lorry. The driver said Armstrong didn’t even see him, like his mind was elsewhere. I thought it might be the presentation you’ve been working on. Perhaps he was stressing out about it. What do you think?”
I remembered the time we’d both left the office. Ludicrously late to be working, anyway, but also way past Marcus’s usual routine. He’d looked shaky as he walked to the road. His routine was disturbed.
Perhaps he was stressing out about it…He misjudged the traffic…
If he’d left at his usual time, everything would have been as usual. But he’d left late. He probably thought he could make up the time and dodge the traffic. Or had he been so distracted he hadn’t known what he was doing?
Did that sound like Marcus Armstrong? Not usually. But he was worried about the presentation, he’d told me so. Or had he? That had been bedtime-Marcus, with pillow talk. The office-Armstrong wouldn’t have admitted to any stress at all, wouldn’t have broken with routine for anything, let alone spending time with me…
Which Marcus was that?
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I said. Bernard was still talking, but I disconnected the phone and grabbed for my boots.
* * * *
He was all alone in his room, and they let me sit with him. Apparently, his parents were travelling overseas, and he had no other close relatives around. The doctors were waiting for him to wake up, to assess if there was any brain damage. They were hopeful there wasn’t anything seriously wrong apart from a few broken bones, but they’d feel more confident if he’d just come back to consciousness. The longer that lasted, the more likely it was he’d stay in a coma. They repeated that a couple of times, looking at me with a kind of professional reassurance laced with hope.
I just sat on the cold plastic chair beside his bed and stared at the man the notes said was Marcus Armstrong.
But he was hardly Marcus at all—not the one from the office, not the one from my bed. Just a poor, bruised body swaddled in bandages and splints, being fed life from a tube.
The other guys were out in the hall, speaking in hushed tones. Colin had apologised at length for calling me so late, and kept repeating Marcus’s name, in shock about it all. Bernard kept pacing the corridors to find out more news. But there was nothing more to be learned at the moment. It was a waiting game, wasn’t it?
Ellen came in with a fresh coffee for me and kindly took away the previous one I’d never touched.
“What’ll happen to him?” I asked, though of course she didn’t know any more than me.
She shrugged ruefully. “I don’t know. Stay in a coma, I suppose, until he comes out of it, or…”
“No,” I said.
Ellen nodded slowly. “Of course. That won’t happen.”
“He needs someone to be with him.”
“Yes, but they haven’t managed to get in contact with his family yet. I’m sure the staff will look after him, Kevin, and the social services and charities often visit. It can’t be helped. He’ll respond to someone in the end.”
I stared at Marcus. “But I’m here now.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Yes. That’s lucky, isn’t it? A week ago, he’d have had to lie here alone while they searched for someone close to him, someone to stay with him. To care. And now…”
“He’s my boss,” I said. “We’ve been working on the presentation together.”
“Yeah,” Ellen said. Her voice was unusually soft. “We’re not stupid, Kevin, we’ve seen how you are with him. While we’re drooling in fear—well, Colin is—you stand up to him. You engage him. It’s like you’ve already got the measure of him.”
“He’s just a bloke,” I said.
Ellen’s discreet silence told me she had the measure of me, too.
“The presentation!” I cried, suddenly. “What’ll happen to that?”
“Good God.” Ellen rolled her eyes at me. “Is the corporate gene contagious? Someone else will do it. You’ve made such a damned good job of the notes, we could probably get a performing monkey to do it. Dammit, even Colin…”
“I heard that!” came an outraged voice from the corridor.
I smiled crookedly at Ellen. “It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“No. Of course not. What do you want to do right now, Kevin?”
I glanced back at the bed. “Talk to him,” I said.
“I’ll take the guys for a coffee,” Ellen said. “Call back in on you later.” And she left the room. I could hear her shooing the others away.
I started to talk to Marcus. My voice sounded odd in the quiet room, with nothing but the beeping machines for background. But I quickly got used to it. I talked about the presentation, about the firm. About my friends there, the arguments over whose turn it was to get milk for the kitchen, the fun we had in the car park in the snow, the creaking floorboard under my desk, the day Bernard sat on a box of staples. A load of rubbish like that.
Then I started talking about my flat, and the old man upstairs who wailed Russian ballads whenever he got drunk, and the woman on the lower floor who ate pizza almost every day. The kid in the garden flat, whom I was sure was keeping rats, and the girl on the second floor who refused to believe I was gay and kept asking me to cello concerts. And my boiler that groaned in wet weather, and the paint that flaked off my ceiling one night and made me think in the morning I’d developed some scalp disease.
“Come back, Marcus,” I said suddenly, the words almost speaking themselves. “I’m here for you.”
* * * *
He stirred once, around eight A.M. His eyes opened and I leaped up to call a doctor, but by the time the guy came, Marcus had drifted back asleep, with just a mumble under his breath to show any life at all.
“It’s a positive sign,” the doctor reassured me. “Let’s just allow him to wake in his own time.”
“I’ll go, shall I?”
He put a hand on my shoulder to stop me rising from the chair. He was only a few years older than I was, I reckoned, with a harassed expression and scuffed shoes. “How many hours have you been here now? Mr Cooper, I suspect your company is the one thing that’s likely to bring him back, sooner or later.”
“I don’t want it to be later,” I blurted out.
“No,” said the doctor drily. “Neither do we. I’ll go and get you another coffee.”
I sat silently for a while, watching Marcus’s lips move, maki
ng shapes. When the words suddenly spilled out, they startled me.
“Such strange dreams, Kevin. Full of horrible regrets, things I wished I’d done, people I wished I’d…known better.” His voice was soft and slurred, but I could hear every word.
“Marcus?”
He turned his head towards me, though his eyes were still closed. “I never had the courage. I was scared, Kevin. How pathetic is that?”
“Scared of what?”
“Everything. Nothing. Joining in life. I couldn’t tell you, you see.”
“Tell me?”
He was rambling again. “Wanted to be with you, Kevin. Always did. Didn’t know how. Didn’t see you’d ever be interested. You’re fun, you joke about, you already have friends. I was just your boss. You didn’t see me any other way.”
“You only had to say…”
“Mustn’t give way to it!” he said, his voice suddenly quite firm. He gave no sign of having heard me. “It’s weakness. It’s unprofessional, to harass a member of staff. Have to keep your respect.”
“Oh, Marcus.” I put my hand over his and squeezed gently. As if it would ever have been harassment.
“Every day,” he said, his voice hoarse. “All the same. Everything the same. And wishing I’d done something, said something, found a way to make things happen. Something different, something for me.”
“By trying to dodge a lorry?” I muttered. “You stupid arse.” For one astonishing moment, I imagined I saw a smile on his split lips. Maybe it was the painkillers.
“What are these dreams?” Under the lids, his eyes rolled. “What’s happening to me, Kevin? They’re so vivid. So…”
“Weird?” I whispered, but I don’t think he heard me.
He fell quiet. After another few hours, the doctor came back in. I was still holding Marcus’s hand, though my tired body had drooped down on the edge of the bed.
“Any more developments?” the doctor asked, quietly. He didn’t seem to mind the hand thing.
“He’s talking, just…stuff,” I said.
The doctor nodded. “It happens with a serious head wound. It’s very disorientating. Sometimes there’s truth in the talk, though.” He looked at me curiously. “Sometimes the shock and injury releases inhibitions. Sets people’s instincts free.”
“Sets them free?” I stared back at him.
In the bed, Marcus sighed.
* * * *
So what had really happened in the last few days?
The staff let me stay there in the hospital room all through the next day. I propped myself on the bed beside Marcus as he slept. He didn’t speak again, but his eyes moved a lot under the lids as if there was activity going on inside. And so I had plenty of time to replay in my mind the amazing week I’d had. Some version of Marcus had come to see me—climbed into bed with me. Loved me. Yet that had never happened in real life.
Not yet, anyway.
But it was the same man. No doubt. Just…a different phase.
Marcus wanted to get to know me, he’d said so. I hoped against hope that was true. He’d just never known how to approach me. All that need tied up inside the very precise, very fierce Marcus Armstrong. Until the day things started to change. We’d worked hard on that presentation, laughed and argued over it until it was something we were both proud of. And although I’d doubted it at the time, perhaps I’d stirred things up enough to break routine. Made Marcus want to break free.
Pity his first encounter had been with a lorry.
“Could be more between us, don’t you think?” I whispered. “You’ve taken the first step. I’m still here. In fact, I always have been.”
The unforgiving Mr Armstrong had been the most unforgiving with himself. Yet his needs kicked back inside him. The conflict must have been awful for him, confusing and painful. That would have been disorientating in itself. And then the accident knocked things further adrift.
I think I must have been in shock myself, considering the way my thoughts were going. A serious head wound could release things, the doctor said.
What if it was more than just words?
What if, trapped unconscious for these past hours, living out the strange dreams he said he was having, a different side of Marcus was free to travel, to come visiting? Just for a few virtual hours, scattered here and there in time. Stepping back into days already passed, but days on which he’d perhaps wanted to act on his emotions for once—but hadn’t had the nerve.
I watched the movement of his eyes, remembered his anguished murmurs in his half-unconscious state. Who could say what power his mind had, everything in turmoil, and an epiphany about his life weighing on his mind? It had nothing to do with the bloody presentation!
“Have you been visiting me from a dream you wish was real?” I whispered.
His eyelids flickered.
Shit, I was mad, too. As mad as my memories of Marcus smiling, touching, frowning, kissing…
He’d come to me, that was as real as his hand I was still holding. I didn’t know how, or from what time, whether it was from his subconscious wish list or a premonition of what could be in the future. But he’d come to me and he’d showed he loved me, and so there was a chance it could happen, just the way he—and I—wanted.
Wasn’t there?
And after all…as a direct result of him visiting me in his dreams, I was here with him today.
Calling him back.
* * * *
When he woke again, finally, I nearly missed it.
I felt his arm stir under mine and I snapped awake. I’d been drowsing again on the side of the bed. It must have been much later that day because the corridor outside the room was only dimly lit, but I had no idea what time.
“Hi there, gorgeous,” he said. His voice cracked, his breath was low, but there was no mistaking the words.
I sat up straight and stared at him.
His eyes were much clearer, but now his expression was shocked. “Good God. Mr Cooper, I don’t know what came over me, I never called anyone that in my whole life.”
I started to laugh, then when he frowned at the noise, I dropped the volume. But I didn’t compromise on the grin. “That’s okay, Mr Armstrong, I like it.”
“You…you do?” He looked startled, but there was a flicker of pleasure in his eyes, a softening of the corporate frown.
“Yeah. I like it a lot.” I leaned over the bed, still grasping his hand, his pulse beating in time with mine. “And it’s a good place for us both to start again, wouldn’t you say?”
THE END
ABOUT CLARE LONDON
Clare took the pen name London from the city where she lives, loves, and writes. A lone, brave female in a frenetic, testosterone-fuelled family home, she juggles her writing with the weekly wash, waiting for the far distant day when she can afford to give up her day job as an accountant. She’s written in many genres and across many settings, with novels and short stories published both online and in print. She says she likes variety in her writing while friends say she’s just fickle, but as long as both theories spawn good fiction, she’s happy. Most of her work features male/male romance and drama with a healthy serving of physical passion, as she enjoys both reading and writing about strong, sympathetic and sexy characters.
Clare currently has several novels sulking at that tricky chapter 3 stage and plenty of other projects in mind…she just has to find out where she left them in that frenetic, testosterone-fuelled family home.
For more information, visit clarelondon.co.uk.
ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC
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