Foxes (34 page)

Eventually I let myself be led to a waiting room. I find a chair and bring my knees up, and I wrap my arms around them and bury my face so no one can see me cry.

“ARE YOU
Micky’s next of kin?”

A hand touches my shoulder and I flinch away, nearly slipping off the smooth plastic seat. When I look up, I find a curious doctor peering down at me. He has thick dark hair that reminds me of Dashiel’s and an understanding expression. For the first time in weeks, I wish I could hide behind my hair, but the doctor doesn’t look away from my face like he’s embarrassed or feels sorry for me.

No words come when I open my mouth. My gaze drops to the floor.
Please don’t tell me he died. Please please please. Anything but that.

“Your friend’s heart is very weak. We’re going to have to run some tests, but it looks like he had a heart attack and it may not have been the first. Has he complained of chest pain or breathlessness before?”

Relief that Micky is alive makes my eyes water. I wipe them with my sleeve as I nod.

“He’s extremely malnourished… do you know why?” He asks the question so cautiously, as though he doesn’t think I’m going to give him the answer.

“He’s anorexic.”

He smiles and writes something on the clipboard he’s carrying with him. “Thank you. This information will help us to treat him.”

“Is he going to be okay?”

“We’ll do everything we can,” he says.

“Can I see him?”

“After we have run the tests, you should be able to see him for a few minutes, yes.”

I watch as he slips the clipboard under his arm and walks away, back through the double doors to wherever they took Micky.

The clock on the wall says eleven. I’ve been here for more than two hours.

Worry clenches my heart again now the doctor is out of sight. I bring my knees back up to my chest, put my head down, and wait.

“YOU CAN
see your friend now.”

The doctor is back. I’ve no idea how much time has passed. He doesn’t touch me this time to announce his presence, but still I nearly slip off the chair.

I follow him up a flight of stairs and along a few corridors. This isn’t the hospital where Dollman works, but I glance at everyone in a white coat.

Micky’s bed is next to the nurse’s station. He’s hooked up to a machine that beeps with soothing regularity. I start to pull the curtain around us to afford a little privacy, but a nurse stalks over, pulls the curtain back, and shakes her head.

At first I think Micky is sleeping—he looks so small and lost in the big hospital bed—but when I hold his hand, he wraps his fingers around mine and squeezes gently. He doesn’t open his eyes. The nurse told me he might be too weak to talk. So I tell him I’m here, and I tell him he’s beautiful, that he’s got superpowers that will make him better, that I’m giving him all my superpowers too. I don’t think I can say anything else without breaking down, so instead I look at him and pretend my thoughts can reach him and cocoon him in some safe place while he rests.

My mind tries to map out the contours of his face so I can recall it at will, but I begin to realize trying to remember faces is like trying to grasp smoke. Instead when I close my eyes, what I see is Micky’s sharp teeth when he smiles, the way his eyelashes look fanned against his cheek as he kisses me, the constellations of freckles on his chest as I trace them with my tongue. And if I concentrate hard enough, I can even hear the sudden bright gasping sound he makes when I touch him and he likes it a lot.

Fragile things, every single one of them. Lives are so terrifyingly easy to break. And yet, I love every single second. If I didn’t love it, it wouldn’t hurt so much. If it wasn’t so good, I wouldn’t be so terrified of losing it.

I lean forward and press my lips to his for-once-warm fingers. I sit with him like this until a nurse comes and asks me to leave so they can do the medicine rounds. I tell her I’ll wait outside the ward door until they’ve finished, but she tells me with a sort of exasperated look on her thin face that the rounds take at least two hours and visiting time doesn’t start again until eight—it’s now just after five—so I should go home and maybe have a shower and a rest.

I hang around outside the door anyway. For a few minutes. But as I look around, I start to feel overwhelmed, as though I’m sinking and something bigger than the sky is collapsing on top of me, crushing me with its weight. Too much, too heavy. Everything so unpredictable and unknown.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.

As soon as the sky begins to darken, I head outside and pace some unlit section of the car park.
Up and down and up and down.
I wrap my arms around myself and pull at my T-shirt, pinch my skin beneath it. I want to scream, but that would be bad. People would come, and I can’t deal with people right now. I bite my hand.

I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.

I want to feel safe. I want to be back at my shell, in my nest with all my blankets around me, but I’m scared the police will have cleared my belongings away, and it’s too far from here, too far from Micky.

Unbidden I see Dieter lying on the dirty mattress in his room. Jack drunk in Donna’s flat. Vinny on the road after being pushed out of a car. Dytryk hunched up on the wet pavement. Micky cold on the floor of my shell. Kids too young to be on the street getting into cars. Sharks. Predators. Glittering darkness that swallows you and never spits you out.

Too much.

It’s too much. Everything is too much. I don’t want it.

“I don’t want it!” I yell, the words bursting out of me as if some fissure has opened in my skull.

The loudness shocks me and I run. Away from the car park, the hospital. I don’t care where I’m going, just that I’m going and going and going until my lungs burn and my legs can’t take it.

Gone.

“DANNY?”

I look around. I don’t know where I am. Somewhere almost too dark. My gaze picks out bricks and bin lids. There are cobbles under my feet and legs, and I’m shaking badly, my hands clutching and unclutching the fabric of my trousers in some strange rhythm my body seems convinced is helping me breathe.

“Danny?” Louder.

I wince, close my eyes to the brightness that suddenly seems to surround me.

“It’s Diana.” Gentler again. “You’re at my restaurant. I’m going to help you up and take you inside.”

Diana.

A large warm arm slips around my back and struggles to pull me up. The only reason I don’t flinch away is because I can smell plantain curry. I like plantain curry.

“I like plantain curry,” I tell her.

“I know, sweetheart. I know.”

Warmth surrounds me.

Too much light, though.

A door closes the darkness out. I sink down to the floor beside it and close my eyes and listen to the comforting clatter of pans and plates.

The intense aroma of food being heated makes my mouth water.

DIANA BRINGS
in a couple of chairs from the restaurant and gestures that I get off the floor and sit down on one. Today her dress is green and gold—so bright and real it’s like looking at sunshine on grass.

She’s upset. It’s not the onions making her cry, it’s me.

Though this isn’t what she tells me when I ask her why she’s wiping her eyes so much. Surprisingly, I just work it out on my own.

With shaky hands she passes me a bowl of curry and a spoon to eat it with.

The work surface is too high to rest my bowl on, so I hold it in my lap. I like the way it makes my thighs warm through my jeans.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks.

She takes a sip from the mug she’s holding. It has a picture of Bob Marley on it. Bob always looked like he was having a good time. Maybe he was just too good at pretending. Maybe that’s what Micky and I have been doing too.

Actually, I pretty much
know
that’s what we’ve been doing.

I shake my head, barely pausing from spooning curry into my mouth. For a few minutes, Diana watches me in silence as she drinks her drink. I don’t mind.

“How’s Micky?”

I put the bowl down on the floor, then bring my knees up to my chest, rocking a little because it’s sort of soothing if I do it fast.

“Danny?” Diana puts her mug down and brings her chair closer to mine. “I’ve never seen you like this. I’m worried about you. Did something happen with Micky?”

“His heart’s not working properly. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want him to die.” My gaze fixes on hers and I keep it there, letting the discomfort grow. I feel stripped bare and raw.

“Did you take him to a doctor?”

“He’s in hospital.”

She takes a deep breath, and it looks as though she’s struggling with whether or not to reach out and touch me.

“What about his family? Do they know?”

I shake my head.

“He ran away, didn’t he?”

“He left. He’s eighteen. He’s an adult.”

“Barely,” she says softly. “Is there anyone that should know? Anyone who cares about him?”

I don’t know how to answer that question. Yes, there is someone who cares about him, but I don’t know if I can be the one who gets to decide if he sees Micky or not. How can I make that decision?

“Where’s Micky from?”

“Arizona. He told you.” I know she’s just trying to help, but Diana’s questions just make me think of Benjamin da Silva. How he’s not in Arizona, though. Or at least, he wasn’t.

I suddenly catch sight of the clock on the wall above the cooker. It’s nearly eight. My heart surges.

“I have to get back to the hospital.”

As I get up, my fingers brush against my pad in my trouser pocket. The card Benjamin da Silva gave me is tucked inside it to keep it safe.

All I wanted to know when Dashiel was missing was where he was. What had happened. Not knowing was awful, and it hurt so badly. It crushed me. And the first thing I felt when I knew they’d found his body, before the grief devastated me, was this shocking and terrible
relief
.

“He has a brother. He misses him. I have his number in my pocket,” I admit.

“Is calling Micky’s brother likely to do Micky harm?” she asks.

I don’t know. I remember how Benjamin told me he loves Micky, that he loves him whatever. I don’t think he’d
ever
want to harm him.

Diana reaches behind her back and passes me her phone. I stare at the handset uncertainly.

Although the card is in my notepad, I don’t need it. I memorized the number. Taking a gulp of air, I dial it.

“HELLO?”

Benjamin sounds like Micky—all twangy and cowboy film–like. I can’t speak. My mouth opens, but that’s as far as I get before my brain seizes up and I can’t decide what to say.

“Hello?”

With a sigh, he hangs up.

Feeling even more nervous, I dial again. Diana gives me an encouraging smile, so I turn around and do my best to pretend she isn’t watching and listening.

“Hello?”

I know he’s going to hang up quicker this time, so I say hello back really quickly. “Is this Benjamin da Silva?” I remember to ask.

“Yes. Who is this?”

“It’s about Micky….”
Crap.
I swallow. “I mean
Dominic
.”

“Dominic?” he says a little breathlessly, and I can sort of picture his whole expression suddenly transforming into one as full of hope as his voice.

“He’s in hospital.”

“Oh my God. What?” he says, somehow managing to sound at once shocked and confused and questioning whether I’m telling him the truth.

“In St. George’s Hospital in London.”

“Is he… is he… okay?”

“No. He had a heart attack.”

His breathing goes all funny.

“Oh my God,” he repeats over and over. A voice in the background asks him if he’s okay, and I think he must say yes, because everything goes quiet.

I wrap my arm around myself. I don’t know what to say.

“Are you… did I speak to you at the Albert Hall?”

“Yeah,” I say when I realize he can’t see my nod. “Micky doesn’t know I’m calling you.”

“What’s your name?” he asks quietly.

“Danny.”

“Thank you, Danny! I’m in Berlin right now, but I’m… I’m going to try and get a flight tonight…. St. George’s Hospital? In London.” I hear paper rustling, voices. “It’s just me, okay. I’m going to come on my own. If Dominic is worried I’m going to tell the rest of the family, I promise I won’t. Will you be there?”

He speaks fast like Micky.

“Yeah,” I say quietly. “I’ll be there.” Sleeping in the corridor if needs be.

“Do you have a phone number?”

I have my phone—Micky’s phone—in my pocket. I give him the number.

“Thank you, Danny. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

DIANA DRIVES
me back to the hospital in her car. The only reason I accept her offer of a lift without question is because I know it’s going to take me longer to walk and I want as much time with Micky as possible. When we get there, she says she’s going to grab a cup of coffee and wait in one of the waiting rooms for me. I don’t know how to tell her not to.

MY HEART
does this excited leap when I see Micky sitting up in bed as though he’s not sick at all, just resting in a bed in a weird hotel full of other slightly sleepier people and their strange machines. The way he smiles and the way his eyes fill with tears when he catches sight of me, like I’m what he needs more than anything and he hardly dares to believe I’m there, is almost enough to break me. He holds his arms out.

“I’ve done something, and I’m scared you’re going to hate me,” I say, not letting myself go to him without getting this out.

“Whatever it is, I can guarantee I will never hate you,” he says croakily, as though he has complete and utter faith in me. “Come here.”