Wildflowers (5 page)

I’ve always been surprisingly good at ignoring things, at pretending I can deal, when I can’t.

When I told my parents what we were doing, they were disappointed. They didn’t go out of their way to make me feel bad, but I know they thought I’d made the wrong choice. I guess my guilt ate away at me. I phoned them less and less, then not at all.

Judy finds a blanket and covers me with it as I curl up on the biggest chair. I feel as fragile as burnt paper, as ash, waiting to be scattered with one sudden gust of wind.

I’m afraid to ask her how Sam is, holding on to the hope she would have told me had anything terrible happened.

“I’ll go and see if there’s any news,” she says as if she can read my thoughts.

I’ve never felt so tired and hollowed out. I slip into a fitful doze where fragments of dreams flow into one another like echoes. Joe becomes Sam, his body laid out in that field, the sky falling around him. Joe’s voice speaks through Sam’s mouth, telling me stories that I told him, telling me without saying a word that he was jealous, that in the end he only held on so tightly because he was scared of letting go.

I jump when the door opens and Judy walks in quickly.

“They’ve taken him to ICU,” she says. “He’s beginning to stabilize.”

My eyes grow wide and relief washes through me like a swollen river bursting its banks.

“He’s not out of the woods, though. They’re still trying to determine what’s wrong. His kidneys are not functioning normally,” she carries on. “He’s having a blood transfusion now.”

I stand up. “Can I see him?”

“Not yet. There’s something else….” She looks at me long and hard. “There are a couple of police officers at reception. They’re asking questions about your car.”

MY CAR.
Fuck.
I run a hand through my hair and close my eyes to avoid looking at Judy.

Not now, fuck, not now.

“Did you speak to them?” I ask quietly. I know I can’t expect her not to have told them where I am—it could probably cost her her job. I need to know where I stand.

“Not yet,” she says shortly. “It’s not your car, is it?”

Slowly, I shake my head.

Stealing a car is not something I’ve done before. It’s a cheap excuse, I know, but I did this for Sam. He wanted to keep moving. Walking caused him pain and we needed privacy—he couldn’t be stuck on some train or bus. I had no car, no money, and the Cadillac had been in the same spot in the library car park for days. The keys were tucked under the front wheel arch. I told myself I was going to return it, but that wouldn’t count for anything in a court of law.

“I’ll speak to them,” I say resignedly. I know I have to take responsibility for this. “I just need to see Sam first.”

I need to face him, and then I’ll face this.

Judy narrows her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I really don’t know what’s got into me today,” she says enigmatically. “Take the stairs and follow the signs up to ICU. I’ll call up and tell them to expect you. You won’t be able to stay long, though.” And with that she slips out into the corridor and vanishes quickly through the reception doors.

The two police officers are standing by the reception desk, talking with a rather irate medic. I walk hurriedly toward the stairs.

The corridor outside ICU is deserted. Low afternoon light floods through the long tunnel of windows, and time seems to slow down. I step in between the shadows, desperate to reach my destination and yet wanting to continue walking toward it forever. I can live with Sam hating me for bringing him here, I tell myself, as long as he’s alive to do the hating. And yet I don’t want him to hate me. He’s so straightforward and guileless that, from him, hate would be worse than from anyone else. There would be no way around it, nowhere to hide and deceive myself I had another chance.

My hand hovers over the intercom buzzer, making a minute into three.

Just get on with it. He’ll still be out for the count
, a little voice says. But I don’t want that either! I’ve got to go and hand myself over to the police after this, and I need him to see me, to know I haven’t just deserted him.

“Are you okay?”

A voice behind me makes me jump. A nurse with a pretty, round face, maybe my age. He smiles.

“I’m… I’m here to see Samir Farooqui.” I say.
Sam.
His name is the only thing I know for sure about him.

At the commune, Sam slept in the small caravan at the bottom of the field. He took me there just once, a long time after we first met but not long after the barn incident. I guess he trusted me fully by then. He didn’t have much stuff, just a few changes of clothes, some paper, and an old book. Everything was dirty. It hurt that no one looked after him.

Fuck, it still hurts.

The book was the only possession he seemed to really care for and he hid it behind a hole in the wall under the bed he never slept on. That day in the caravan when he handed it to me, I was touched that he trusted me with something so important to him. He watched me closely while I looked at it, as if waiting for a reaction. But I was perplexed. The book was only as big as my palm and the hard red cover was ripped, the once-gold writing faded almost beyond detection. And more than that, it was in a different language. I now know it was in Farsi and the book was an epic poem. But, back then, I was ignorant and didn’t know what I was looking for. I could see Sam getting impatient. Eventually he pushed my hands away and opened it up on the last page. Neatly printed in the top right corner, in English, was a name.

His name.
Samir Farooqui
. He smiled.

Sitting on his sagging little camp bed, I said his name out loud. “Samir Farooqui. You sound like you should be a poet.” And I grinned, flirting just a little bit.

I knew I should stop, especially after what had happened in the barn, but I couldn’t help it. I loved the way he would dip his head so shyly.

His name explained a lot, actually. Well, it explained his slightly exotic looks: those large dark eyes, that wild mass of hair, his almost bloodless pale skin.
Persian, Iranian.
Though it still didn’t explain what he was doing at the commune alone.

Keep it secret
, he signed.

I put my hands over my heart and nodded. And I have. Until now.

The nurse taps in a code on the keypad. “Are you a relative?”

Should I say yes? Do we look like we’re related? “Judy Taylor was going to let you know I was on my way,” I say instead.

The pretty nurse disappears inside. The door shuts.

“Xavi, right?” His voice wavers through the intercom speaker. “Sam’s boyfriend?”

“Y-y-yes,” I stutter, a little stunned.

How can I say no? If they think I’m his boyfriend, they’ll be more likely to let me see him. I’m sure that’s what Judy was thinking of.

The door opens and I follow the nurse into a dimly lit ward. No late-afternoon sunlight here. Only shadows to hide in. I try not to stare at the people laid out in the beds I pass, try not to count the number of tubes going in and coming out of them.

The nurse stops about halfway down the corridor and goes into a room opposite the nurse’s station. There are three beds inside, all hooked up to humming, beeping machinery. I stand in the doorway.

Sam’s bed is close to the door. He looks so fragile, so young. The huge dark shadows under his eyes make me wonder how he got so bruised. I move closer and note the wires and machinery surrounding him, the tube down his throat, the blinking heart on the machine above his head. He is perhaps twenty-two now, and yet he looks no older than when I first met him.

“When will he wake up?”

The pretty nurse shrugs gently. “Sometimes it takes a while,” he says and leaves me alone.

I touch the end of Sam’s bed. It’s so easy to get lost in memories. That day in the caravan when he showed me his book, that was when I should have known, when I should have realized….

I WAS
still thinking about his name, saying it to myself over and over, when Sam took the book from me and stowed it back in its secret place.

I want to show you something else
, he signed.

I couldn’t help but stare at the inch of smooth skin he exposed as he reached for a blanket draped over the end of his bed. Briefly I wondered if he was doing it on purpose, to tempt me. But that wasn’t Sam. He was completely innocent of manipulation of any sort.

“How many rabbits?” I exclaimed as I stared into the cage at the end of his bed.

Proudly he held up six fingers.

Since they were
…, he signed and measured about four inches with his fingers. The rabbits were now much, much bigger.
I found their mother in a trap. She was in pain.
He shook his head, his eyes sad.

“But how have you fed them?” Surely baby rabbits needed milk.

He showed me a clean rag and a bowl and an empty bottle of milk. He motioned pouring the milk on the rag and it dripping slowly through.

“I never would have thought of that,” I said. “That’s really clever.”

I really was impressed. I wasn’t patronizing him.

Once I had a blackbird with a broken wing too
, he signed.
But Travis threw a rock at it and it couldn’t fly away. He killed it.

Sam wouldn’t look me in the eye as he signed this, which made it hard for me to understand at first.

Travis.
On my first day here, throwing Sam on the ground and kicking him. The dead bird in his bed.

I moved closer and put my arm around Sam’s shoulder. With a sigh, he leaned his head against me.

It was wrong to want him, but fuck, I felt so much tenderness toward him. Was I getting the two things confused?

We sat like that for such a long time that I began to get pins and needles in my arm. I shifted a little to move it, enjoying the contact with him too much to want to break away completely, and he turned in my arms and hugged me awkwardly.

It’s just a hug
, I thought, as I moved backward until I was leaning against the wall, lifting Sam with me.
Just a hug
, I reminded myself as I stroked down his back and felt him push his hips closer as I reached the waistband of his jeans. Just a hug… except I was hard as fuck and slowly losing a battle with my self-control.

His breath was on my neck and his lips ghostly soft against my skin. His arms were wound tightly around my shoulders and his erection pressed needily against mine. Beneath my fingers, the muscles of his back felt like coiled springs, ready to release their tension under the pressure of my touch. I was aware of every tiny movement his body made against mine, all the places we were touching through our clothes. I wanted him so badly… even thoughts of Joe weren’t dissuading me. I pressed my face into his shoulder so I could bathe in the sweet and musky smell of him.

“Oh fuck, Sam,” I whispered.

Slowly he raised his head and looked at me searchingly.

“You don’t want to do this,” he mouthed.

I didn’t know whether to shake my head or nod. I wished he wasn’t giving me the choice.

His lips were so close to mine, so full and velvety. I wanted to know what he tasted like, what his tongue felt like in my mouth.

“You don’t want to do this,” Sam mouthed again.

And as I held him in my arms on his shaky bed, I knew it wasn’t true. Being with him was
all
I wanted.

I leaned forward to brush my lips against his, so, so softly, as though we were kissing through a veil. His hands went to my hair, holding me there, pressing our lips together, unmoving. Slowly I opened my mouth against his, ran my tongue along his lower lip. His eyes were squeezed shut as though in prayer. When I pulled back slightly, I saw there were tears on his cheeks.

“Sam?” I whispered, gently wiping the tears away with my thumb.

But he pulled my head toward his and kissed me openmouthed, searchingly, crashing our teeth.

I’d never been kissed so desperately. I could feel the tears staining his cheeks beneath my fingers and the gasped, broken sobs as he gulped for air.

I didn’t want to think why he was crying—I just wanted him to stop. I wanted to stop his pain with my mouth, my tongue, with every feeling inside me that was bursting to get out. But eventually he dissolved uncontrollably, and I held him against my chest and pressed kisses into his hair.

That evening, when I returned to our room, Joe asked me where I’d been. I’d been gone for hours. I knew he wouldn’t believe any story I made up, so I told him the truth—that I’d been with Sam. I didn’t want to lie, anyway. I’d had enough—I was exhausted by questioning every feeling, exhausted by the guilt. I lay down on our bed and pulled a pillow over my face—I didn’t trust myself not to spill like an overflowing bath. If Joe had confronted me there and then, I would have told him everything. But he didn’t do anything I expected him to—he just curled up beside me on the bed and pulled me into his arms. I remembered how much I once thought I’d loved him, how much I didn’t want to hurt him, how much his sleeping with other people hurt me.

He pulled the pillow over our heads and kissed me, reaching down to unbuckle my trousers and sliding his hand inside my underwear. There was no struggle, no fight for dominance. I can count on the fingers of one hand how many times we had just made love simply, sweetly.

That night I got drunk. Things were easier to handle when I was drunk. As the days sped by, I started to get drunk more and more.

Day began to blur into night. My world became a starless dark, and I was utterly incapable of carrying out the jobs we were supposed to do. I didn’t ever handle my feelings or try to untangle the mess they made inside me. After that day, I only ever tried to drown them.

“WE NEED
to put him on dialysis.”

The pretty nurse is back. I’ve been in here for nearly an hour, just watching Sam’s chest rise and fall, listening to the gentle bleeps and whispers of all these machines. Sam hasn’t regained consciousness yet.