“Tom, is it? You OK?”
“Not really.” Tom winces.
“My name’s Marv. Do you know why you’re not OK, Tom?” The paramedic’s riddle-me-this doesn’t seem to be helping Tom’s agony.
“Not a clue,” Tom replies.
“It’s because you’ve dislocated your shoulder.” He places his arm on top of Tom’s and Tom howls again. “Yep. That’s dislocated.”
“Can you just pop it back in?” I ask, using all the expert medical knowledge I’ve gleaned from multiple viewings of Lethal Weapon.
“You really don’t want me to do that, love. Between where your fella’s arm is out of its socket, there’s a ton of nerve endings. The more he moves, the more they tear and, well, nerves being shredded isn’t the nicest feeling, is it, Tom?”
Tom shakes his head.
“Can you get to your feet for me?”
With the driver and Marv on either side of him, Tom gingerly makes his way to the back of the ambulance, a banshee cry leaving his lips every step of the way.
“You coming with?” Marv asks me.
I look to Tom and he looks back with a very eager Yes. I’m glad he does, because this is definitely not how I wanted this evening to end. I climb in the back as Marv fiddles with an oxygen tank.
“Have you had Entonox before, Tom?” Marv asks.
Tom shakes his head again.
“It’s a mix of nitrous oxide and oxygen. Should help with the pain. Until we get you to the hospital, then you can have something a little stronger.” He hands a mouthpiece to Tom and Tom inhales heavily, sucking the oxygen into his lungs.
“Just go easy on it. It can make some people feel a little funny.”
* * *
—
It’s virtually impossible not to laugh at Tom high as a kite on nitrous gas.
For one, it’s done such a number on him, the agony of his arm seems almost inconsequential now. But mostly it’s because he’s currently banging out the entire songbook of the Spice Girls, word for word. He’s already serenaded Marv and me with a perfect rendition of “Wannabe” and “Stop,” and is now a chorus and a verse into a very sultry rendition of “2 Become 1,” informing anyone who’ll listen how he needs love like he’s never needed love before.
He switches out from being Mel C for a moment when he notices Marv’s tattoos. He giggles to himself, not for the first time, and whispers far too loudly.
“That man has got drawings on his arm and on his face.”
I try to shush him but it’s no good, he’s already turned to Marv to repeat himself.
“You’ve got drawings on your arm and on your face.”
Marv, big guy that he is, has probably seen this a million times before and reacts with a simple shake of his head. I, on the other hand, wish I had a video camera and a notepad. This is comedy gold. Tom takes another hit of gas.
“Easy there, Sporty Spice. Not too much. We’re nearly there.”
Tom looks floaty as the ambulance pulls up to the hospital. Like he’s sitting on a giant fluffy cloud of marshmallows and puppies, not a care in the world. I wonder if they’ll let me have a go on the air once we get inside. It looks mega fun.
Just as he seems out of the woods, the ambulance goes over a speed bump, causing him to scream again. I look at Marv to see if there’s anything more he can give Tom for the pain. I have the craziest urge to stroke Tom’s face. To let him know it’ll all be OK.
“They’ll probably give him some morphine. With a dislocation, the pain, unfortunately, only gets worse from here on out. I know someone who’s both given birth and dislocated their shoulder. She said the shoulder was worse, and who am I to argue? He’ll have to have X-rays before they put his shoulder back in. Stick about for that, though, if you can. Once it’s back in”—Marv mimes the international sign for mind-blowing—“the euphoria! He’ll be hugging the doctors and all sorts.”
The ambulance stops, Marv opens the doors, and we get Tom to his feet. He’s still taking tiny steps. What little blood he had in his cheeks has well and truly left his face. A guy about Tom’s age, but with a slightly smaller frame and about fifty percent less hairy, comes running over to him from the entrance. I’m guessing this is Scott.
“All right, mate?” he asks, with a mix of curiosity and affection. Tom rather comically gives him a thumbs-up with his other arm as Marv leads him to the reception area and away from us. Scott uses the opportunity to introduce himself properly, before he registers me as one of the acts from the Showcase.
“So, you’re the person he sacked off our post-gig drinks for.” He gives me a little once-over out of the corner of his eye. “Very un-Tom-like.”
“Oh yeah?” I ask, fishing for more about this wonderful man who I very much intend to spend some time with over the next few days. A brief fantasy of me nursing him back to health runs through my head, until it’s roadblocked by feelings of feminist guilt.
Before Scott can answer, Tom is back with us, plopped down on the seat next to me by Marv, having filled in his information at the desk.
Marv says, “Very nice to meet you, Jess. Make sure our little troubadour looks after himself in the next couple of days. And get ready for the euphoria of the arm going back in. You’ll never feel a hug quite like it.”
Tom, still whacked off his bonce on Entonox, cozies up next to me. Scott eyes us both with a fat dollop of suspicion. As much as the gas is helping, every now and then Tom moves an inch and the pain returns with a vengeance. He grabs my hand and squeezes, waiting for the moment to pass.
Scott leans forward and asks, “You OK, Tom?”
Tom lets out the longest “Yeah” known to man as the wave of discomfort crescendoes.
“You want me to call Sarah for you? Tell her where you are?”
My ears prick up and alarm bells start ringing in my mind and gut at the exact time Tom is called through for his X-ray. He completely ignores Scott’s question, stands, and turns to me with hope in his eyes. “You’re still gonna be here when I come back, yeah?”
I nod while silently screaming, IT REALLY DEPENDS WHO SARAH IS, TOM! Once Tom is far enough down the corridor, I turn to Scott and ask the question that’s been screeching in my head for the last thirty seconds.
“Who’s Sarah?”
I can see Scott wrestling with the dilemma of telling me the truth or lying.
“Please,” I say. “Don’t lie.”
Scott shakes his head in semi-disbelief before answering with conviction. “Sarah is Tom’s girlfriend. They’ve been together just over a year now. She lives in Sheffield. I wanted to say something the second I saw you two together. All cuddly. It’s not like him to do something like this. Like, at all.”
The qualifier at the end of Scott’s sentence does nothing to sate my absolute fury at Tom’s duplicity. I wasn’t going out tonight looking for something. I came here to work. I came here to do a show and then he turns up all fake humble and shyness. The absolute bullshit of it.
I get to my feet in search of Tom. It doesn’t take me long to find him, outside the X-ray unit waiting to go in. He’s on his own.
“Who the FUCK is Sarah?”
He says nothing, just shrugs.
“You bastard!” I yell.
Whether it’s the drugs or not, he doesn’t react the way I expect him to. I was anticipating a defense, excuses, guilt and shame. Perversely, he lets out a little giggle. The same one I found adorable on the journey here. A giggle that makes me want to tear his other arm from his socket.
“Sarah isn’t real, silly-pants,” he tells me, his pupils wider than saucers.
He reaches to take my hand, but I pull it back as quick as I can.
“You’re real, though,” he says, his eyes dopey.
There’s a lot you could forgive a man in Tom’s current state. But th
e lies, the goddamn lies, after I asked him point-blank if he was seeing someone…And this girlfriend? I know he’s off his face, but saying she isn’t real? Who does that to someone? Especially given she should be the one here, holding his hand. The betrayal is infuriating. I get flashbacks to my friends telling me about Olly, and me not believing it until I saw it with my own eyes. Words cannot describe the anger I feel in this moment.
“You absolute piece of shit.”
There’s genuine sadness on his face, fighting to get out from behind the drugs. I have zero sympathy. I want to kick him in the crotch or stamp on his shoulder for good measure. Instead, I simply stand and look at him with utter scorn. In one quick motion I rub at my phone number on his good arm, smearing it to an unintelligible mess. Before I leave, I let him know…
“I hope it hurts, Tom. I really hope it hurts.”
Eglinton Crescent, Edinburgh
August 3, 2015 (Morning now)
Back at the hotel, the lights are off. I make the assumption that Julia is still dozing. I sneak in as quietly as I can, but when I fill a glass of water for some much-needed hydration she whispers, “Is that you?”
Under normal circumstances I’d tease her for asking a question that can only have one answer: yes. I mean, even if it was a horrible murderer, the answer is still yes. Everybody can only ever be them. As—more’s the pity—tonight has expertly illustrated.
She asks how the show was and I say great. She asks how my night was and I say awful. I don’t elaborate on the Man of my Dreams turned Cheating Little Shit for fear of stressing her out and triggering another migraine. I don’t mention how “he’s just another Olly.” I’ll fill her in in the morning. In the harsh light of day. I strip down to nothing, throw on an old T-shirt and shorts and crawl into bed next to her.
“Can we get out of this city as soon as possible tomorrow?”
She murmurs something I can’t quite make out and I take it as a yes. Goodbye, Edinburgh. Goodbye, Tom. What a crushing disappointment you turned out to be.
Part Two
OPPORTUNITIES
11
Justin Fucking Bieber
Tom
Cliftonhall Yards, Edinburgh
May 15, 2016
There are three ways I’ve considered getting in touch with Jess and three reasons why I’ve talked myself out of it. The reasons all boil down to lack of nerve, insecurity, and an exceptionally low opinion of myself. I can find facts and figures to back me up on all counts. The ways of reaching her, however, all have their own drawbacks.
1. Social media. Her pages are for friends only. Putting in a request for said status would almost certainly be shot down in a hail of bullets so large it would make King Kong’s execution look like a single pop from a BB gun. I can see bits on her Twitter and Instagram (probably more than is healthy), but sliding into her DMs is just a big, fat, simple NO.
2. One of her gigs. I bought tickets. Twice. And bottled it on both occasions. The second time I even made it to the venue before turning tail and running. My main excuse for this is…it’s her job. Turning up unannounced at someone’s place of work is a stalker move right out of the How to Be the Best Stalker You Can Be stalker handbook. I’m a few bad things, but this I’m not.
3. Ringing the smudged number. In her haste to erase herself from my life, Jess didn’t do the greatest job of deleting her number from my arm. But she did do just enough to make it a lengthy and potentially futile endeavor. I have about seven of the eleven digits, scribbled down on a piece of paper after I was released from the hospital. On one particularly low and lonely evening I did try and fill in the gaps, but all I received for my troubles was angry strangers telling me I had the wrong number.
This last method of contact reminds me why I shouldn’t be doing any of the above. She doesn’t want to see me. She made that clear. While her decision to leave the hospital was based on a lie (my lie), there’s no earthly reason why she wouldn’t fight that lie. “Oh, sorry!” I hear her saying, sarcasm dialed up to eleven. “You didn’t lie to me, you lied to everyone you’ve ever known. You sound like a top bloke, then! Let’s get married!”
Another truth I’ve wrestled with since we parted ways is, well, I’m embarrassed. Embarrassed of the lie, for sure, but also the incident itself that led to the lie being uncovered. I’m a big guy. If two people jumped me, shouldn’t I have defended myself a little better? This experiment in masculinity is failing at every point.
And so I go on, alone.
While I think of her at least twice a day, it’s Christian’s face I see everywhere.
Looking like Marlon Brando and James Dean, on the cover of every music magazine. He’s ubiquitous. Which I believe is Latin for all over the sodding place. In some photos he’s smiling—or smizing, to be more accurate. But mostly he’s doing the sultry “two too many buttons open on a designer shirt” thing. He almost always has scantily clad women draped across his torso, like they’re the window dressing and he’s the center of the universe. Men want to be him. Women want to screw him. And vice versa, I’m sure.
Because Prince Charmless is the next big thing. The beneficiary of a solo—repeat solo—album deal that will see him make hundreds of thousands of pounds, that will see him tour the world, that will see him live the life we intended for ourselves.
And where are we? Still gigging in bars and halls within a two-mile radius of our houses, playing to a handful of people, under a brand-new band name. Is it simply jealousy that makes me hate his very existence? Pride? A feeling of betrayal? A feeling that, without us, he’d be modeling turtlenecks in some door-drop clothes magazine which offers three tops for twenty-five quid?
The answer is, it isn’t any of those things. Christian may have taken the money and run on that night at the Showcase (when it was clear to the suits that he was the main attraction), but it’s the night in question that I can’t stand to think about. His face is simply a reminder of my mistake, and what it cost me. The old self-loathing comes back with a vengeance and instinctively I reach out to touch the top of my arm. Some of the nerve endings in it are dead, never to return. Another reminder of the repercussions of my lie. A lie I was convinced couldn’t hurt someone. But it did. It hurt a couple of people, actually. Scott’s a pretty moral guy and since that day I’ve dive-bombed in his estimation. I’m sure I have. One quick reveal of the truth would set him straight, but I still don’t have the courage for that. I wonder if I ever will.
That night, after my arm was set right, the doctor told me he’d never seen anyone look so forlorn when their shoulder was put back into place. He said he’d been kissed by big hairy bikers and once had a pregnant woman so overcome with emotion she promised to name the baby after him, simply because he was the one who made the pain stop. The disappointment of me just sitting there, when I was supposed to feel such euphoria, was, he said, one of the strangest things he’d ever experienced.
I didn’t tell him why. I didn’t tell Scott either. In fact, we’ve never mentioned the night in any detail. Some friend I am. One positive thing I did do was “break up” with Sarah a month later. As much as Scott wanted to talk about it, I just kept repeating that it was “one of those things” and that we were “just gonna be mates now.” He asked, only once, if it was something to do with the “girl at the hospital.” I lied again and said it wasn’t.
Here, in the same rehearsal space we’ve been in for three years now, it’s back to the music. It’s the music that will save me. It’s the same setup. Just minus a lead singer. There’s one notable addition to the room. We’ve put up a dartboard on one wall. A picture of Christian’s face is on it. Nobody else is here yet and so I’m filling the time by hammering arrows into his forehead. Pulling them out and doing it again. When Scott arrives and sees my borderline psychotic ritual, he shakes his head in disbelief.
“You really have to let it go,” he tells me, wit
h the patience of a saint who’s been stuck on the M8 for two hours and cares not a jot. “It’s been ten months.”
He picks up his guitar and tunes up, as I throw another three darts into the board and Christian’s forehead. Brandon enters and sits down with barely a nod, puts his headphones on and starts drumming, oblivious to our conversation.
“It’s been nine,” I tetchily correct him, remembering that day in August like it was the most monumental of my life. The gig. The glory. And above all that, the girl. Jess. Then the descent and disappointment of reality.
“That night should have been everything for us,” I complain.
“We got a manager out of it,” he counters.
“A band manager who works part-time at his dad’s accountancy firm.”
“A band manager who helped us get an EP out next month.”
“On a shitty label.”
“On a decent indie. You’ve been glass-half-empty for almost a year now. Can’t you just be happy with what we’ve got?”
“It’s not exactly EMI and private jets, is it, Scott?”
He forgets tuning for a second and throws his arms in the air.
“Sorry, Tom, I didn’t realize you wanted to be Justin Fucking Bieber.”
He stares me down and I stop chewing on the inside of my cheek long enough to realize I’m being the biggest prick this side of a needle factory. I start to laugh. He starts to laugh. And we’re back to where we should be.
“Look,” he continues. “Forget Prince Charmless and his twenty-album deal and his pool parties and supermodel GFs. That was never what we wanted.”
“It wasn’t?” I ask half ironically. Scott arches his eyebrow. I accept his point. “OK, it wasn’t what we wanted. But I wanted to be the one to say it wasn’t. I wanted to be the one who’d say, screw you and your money and your sellout lifestyle. Not them. Picking him over the rest of us. D’yae ken?”
Perfect Timing Page 8