Shawn's Law (23 page)

I looked down and all I could see was red. Red all over Mum’s hands, red all over my shorts, red all over my skin, red all over the stick poking out from my thigh.

“That shouldn’t be there,” I said, pointing at the stick. I made a move to pull it out, but my mother stopped me.

“No. Leave it there, Shawn. It will cause more bleeding if you pull it out.”

I looked at my mother and felt all emotional. She was being a mother. It sounded stupid, but I had missed my mother being a mother. For most of the time, she was the patient and I was the carer.

I felt tears spring to my eyes. “I love you, Mum.”

She looked up with a smile. “I love you too, Shawn. Now just lie there quietly so we can take care of this.”

Lisa was back, several towels and bandages in her hand. “The ambulance is on its way.”

I was feeling really dizzy by then. “Leese?” I whispered. “I think I’m gonna faint.”

Lisa helped me to lie flat, speaking words that I couldn’t understand. I tried to pat her hand. “I’m sitting on a capsicum plant,” I told her.

“I know. I’m just glad it wasn’t a rose bush.”

I’m not sure if I agreed with her or not. I don’t remember.

Harley

Shawn.

S
HAWN
LINGERED
on my mind for days.

I missed him. I hated him. I loved him. I missed him. I wanted him. I was angry at him. I needed him. I missed him.

I threw myself into work and tore through the contracts waiting for me. I worked sixteen-hour days and didn’t allow myself time to dwell on him.

I googled Rory Davidson’s details and found myself staring at the handsome face of the man who I wished were dead. He was all charm and good looks. His blond hair was tousled just enough to make you think he was oblivious to his appearance. On second glance you could tell he’d shaped his eyebrows, just ever so slightly, which made me think that it was just a façade.

There were pictures of him before his arrest, then several of him in prison garb, entering court, or being escorted by police to prison vans. He even looked good in orange.

I spoke with Matt, who gave me the name of a volunteer who might be able to help my dad with his location problems. The volunteer gave me the phone number of his ex-landlord. He put me in touch with a young man who didn’t know much about what I needed, but pointed me in the direction of his father who was recovering from an appendectomy in the hospital.

I didn’t wish to bother the poor man if he was so sick, but the son told me that his father was leaving the country the day after he got out of hospital. Either I spoke with him while he was recovering, or miss out on the deal of the century.

I parked my car in the hospital car park and looked at the four-story building I had to enter. The last time I’d been there was with Shawn. The time before? With Shawn. The time before that? With Shawn.

I vowed not to think about him and made my way to the main entrance, bypassing the emergency room where I’d gone with Shawn.

Damn. Stop thinking of the guy!

I checked with the desk for what room my patient was in, then made my way to the lifts. The hospital was Catholic-run, and all the wards were named after saints. I wondered if getting Shawn a saint would help him with Shawn’s Law. I wondered if there was a patron saint to help against clumsiness.

The lift dinged and opened, so I stepped out and looked at the signs for direction. I turned to the right, walked down the corridor, and waved to Estelle, who was sitting on a chair outside of a room, reading a book.

I’d gone two steps before it sunk in.

Estelle. At a hospital. Shawn.

I stopped and turned back to her. She was still reading, and there was no sign of her wearing pajamas or a hospital wristband—which meant she was visiting, not staying.

Shawn.

Shawn’s Law.

Shit.

In those next couple of seconds, I forgot that we had broken up. It didn’t matter that Shawn was in love with another man and was just using me. It didn’t matter that Shawn didn’t see our relationship as a “forever” deal. It didn’t matter that he could find more things to hurt and kill himself in a square kilometer radius than even Bear Grylls could manage.

All that mattered was that he was near and I needed to assure myself of his well-being. If he was still breathing, then all was okay. I barreled into the room.

He was there. On a bed with several machines hooked up to him, but he was alive. I stopped and stared at him, assuring myself that he was breathing and that he still had all of his limbs attached. Lisa was at his side and turned to me in surprise.

“Harley!”

My vocal chords were frozen. I was still checking for Shawn’s injury. Another snake? A rabid swan? A venomous funnel-web spider, even though we didn’t have them in Perth? If there was one, I’m sure Shawn would find it.

“What are you doing here, Harley?” Lisa asked. Shawn was staring at me in shock, mirroring my own emotions. That left Lisa to hold up the conversation. “How did you know Shawn was here? How did you find out?”

Shawn and I were still making goo-goo eyes at each other, drinking in the sight of the other person, who we hadn’t seen for a week.

“What happened?” My vocal chords unstuck enough for me to push two words out.

Lisa, who was the only one in the room not suffering from shock, narrowed her eyes at me. “So you didn’t find out? You’re here by accident?”

Accident
was an unfortunate turn of phrase, but it made me gasp. “You had an accident? Or did
he
hurt you? If he hurt you, I’m going to rip him limb from limb and feed his own entrails to him.”

Shawn gaped at me from the bed and didn’t misunderstand just exactly who the
he
was. “Of course he didn’t hurt me. How could he hurt me? He’s behind bars.”

“I’m sure you would find a way.”

This time it was Lisa who gasped.

“Oh, my God. I didn’t believe him, but Shawn’s right. You
do
blame him for Shawn’s Law.”

“Huh?” I was confused.

“You,” she cried. “You think that if a psychopathic serial killer managed to escape from prison and hurt my brother, it would be
Shawn’s
own fault he got hurt?”

“What? No, of course I don’t think that.” I didn’t. Did I?

“Do you think that it’s Shawn’s fault that he didn’t see the snake, and it bit him? Is it Shawn’s fault that a swan attacked him? Is it Shawn’s fault that he didn’t know what a venomous bull ant looked like, or a blue-ringed octopus? Is it Shawn’s fault that he was burnt saving our mother from boiling water? Is it Shawn’s fault that the mechanic forgot to put brake fluid back in his car? Is it Shawn’s fault that someone rear-ended him and he hit a power pole, which then broke and flattened a police car? Is it Shawn’s fault that the nurse mixed up the medicines and gave him an injection for female hormones instead of an anticoagulant, which caused all his pubic hair to fall out and not regrow for two months? Is it Shawn’s fault that he was mistaken for some famous movie star and was besieged by screaming girls who tore his clothes off and left him partially naked in the city? Is it Shawn’s fault that the lift broke down in the hospital and he was stuck for four hours with a laboring woman?”

I was trying very hard not to laugh, which was getting me into more trouble. But really? Did all those things actually happen to Shawn?

“Do you think my brother’s a joke? Is that it?”

“What? No.”

Lisa’s voice was raising and she was nearly screeching at me. “You do. You’re standing there laughing at him. He told me you make fun of him, but I didn’t think you had it in you. Go away and don’t come back.”

Suddenly there was a big guy at my elbow ushering me out of the room. I tried to resist, but he’d been pumping steroids or something. “Wait,” I cried as I was dragged away. “That’s my boyfriend.”

The big guy kept pulling me along until we were standing in front of the nursing station where a stern-faced woman scowled in my direction. “I’m sorry, sir. But this is a hospital, and we cannot have people shouting and screaming in our rooms. There are sick people here who need peace and quiet.”

“I wasn’t the one shouting. It was—”

I was politely talked over. “So I am courteously asking you to calm down or leave. I don’t wish to call security, but I will.”

“It wasn’t—”

“Am I not making myself clear, sir?”

I huffed and made myself remember my manners. “You’re making yourself very clear, but I wish to point out that it was not me who was shouting. I was simply visiting my boyfriend. It was his sister who was doing the yelling.”

“Your boyfriend?” came the reply from my shoulder. I sighed and turned to give the person a long-suffering piece of my mind about it being my right to be gay if I wanted to. The asker turned out to be a nurse in her early twenties with spiky blonde hair. I opened my mouth to give her a soliloquy about gay people when she said, “Don’t you mean ex-boyfriend?”

There was a little bit of a crowd around me by then—white-clad nurses and orderlies all staring at me with accusing eyes. I counted seven people and shifted uncomfortably. This felt awfully like a witch-hunt.

“This is Shawn’s ex-boyfriend?” one asked.

“This is Harley?” came the next question, this time from the opposite side of the crowd. I turned in surprise. How did they know Shawn? How did they know me?

“I can see why they call him Hippy-Hotpants.” The sentences began flowing around me from all directions.

“He’s no longer Hippy-Hotpants, remember? Now we just get to call him Dumbass.”

“He does have a nice arse.”

“Don’t go perving on the guy who broke Shawn’s heart.”

“Oh, yeah. Whoops. Dumbass.”

“How dare he show his head here?”

“Does anyone have an accidental injection we can give him?”

“I have an accidental accident I can give him. My baby is broken up about this guy.”

More people joined the gathering. Still they muttered among themselves. They were closing in on me, and I physically couldn’t move from where I was trapped against the wall of the nursing station.

“I think we should kick him out of the ward.”

“The ward? The hospital.”

“How dare he think he can walk out on Shawn like that?”

“Didn’t you hear? He thinks Shawn is an idiot.”

“He’s the idiot.”

“I know.”

“Dumbass, you mean.”

“Yeah, sorry. Dumbass.”

“We should make him apologize.”

“We should make him crawl back to Shawn.”

“But does Shawn want him back?”

Now, I’m a seasoned protestor. I’ve protested logging of the old-growth forests and faced down angry loggers fighting to keep their industry alive. I’ve protested the use of live animals in ancient Chinese medicine and stood tall against some frightening characters. I’ve been bullied, pushed, punched, and threatened with axes, knives, and bats. I’ve had people point guns in my direction. Yes—I’ve done it all, and have never been as scared as I was surrounded by twenty or so unhappy nurses baying for my blood.

It was the white-clothes-squeaky-shoes-needles scenario multiplied by a fantastically large number.

I paled.

“I don’t like him.”

“I liked him when Shawn first told me about him, but he’s turned out to be a rat.”

“Shawn deserves better.”

“But what if Shawn wants him?”

“Then Shawn can have him, but he still deserves better.”

I reminded myself that I was a man, and that balls are not something you should use just for procreation. I drew up to my full height.

“Hey. How come I’m the bad guy here?” I asked.

I didn’t have to wait long for a reply. “Because you broke up with Shawn.” To my surprise it was the big steroidal guy who answered. Was there
anyone
on this ward who didn’t know?

“Me? He told me he was in love with his criminal boyfriend and was just using me until Rory got out of jail.”

The looks I received ranged from exasperated to disbelieving. I had a sinking feeling in my stomach. Finally someone answered me. “And you believed him?”

I stopped and thought about it. Did I really think that Shawn was so idiotic as to believe that a serial killer loved him? Was Shawn so desperate that he would wait twenty years for the love of his life to get out of jail after he murdered four people? Was Shawn so stupid to believe he was in love with a man that he’d had coffee with twice?

I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that there was one stupid person in our relationship, and it wasn’t Shawn. Before I could gather my wits—which I was doubtful I ever had in the first place—the torturous crowd began annihilating me.

“I heard this guy puts Shawn down, blaming him for Shawn’s Law.”

“What?”

“Yes, I heard the same.”

“How is Shawn to blame?”

“I don’t know but apparently this Harley guy does.”

“No. How could someone be so callous?”

“I don’t know.”