Wildflowers (7 page)

“Sam,” I say softly, bringing my lips to his hair. “I’ve been so scared. I pushed you away. I’ve made so many mistakes. I’m sorry.”

His fingers tangle with mine in the sheet, and my T-shirt is wet against my skin from his tears.

I press kisses into his hair like I did that night we kissed in his caravan, except I need this to be the other way round—these kisses should take his tears away, not cause them. His hair isn’t soft like it was that night, and every little bruise reminds me that he’s not well, and all I want to do is carry his pain for him.

He searches my face with eyes so dark and so fucking full of trust, even though he has no reason to ever trust me again. Even though I’ve deserted him, broken promises, rejected him, and betrayed his feelings with a fucking stranger. I close my eyes against the sudden spill of my tears.

“You never wanted this,” he mouths when I finally look at him.

We shift so we’re lying side by side. I pull him closer because I suspect we haven’t got long before a nurse comes to check on him.

I shake my head. “I always wanted this. I was just too scared before.”

BEFORE I
leave, I pull out my dad’s phone from the pocket of my jeans and pass it to Sam. “I’m going to go and buy a phone, and when I do, I’ll call this one so you have the number. If you need me, if you’re scared, just text and I’ll come. I’ll make them let me in to see you, okay?”

He nods thoughtfully, stroking the phone’s shiny cover.

“You can call me whenever you want and I can just be with you at the other end of the line. You don’t have to say anything.” Not with me.

I kiss him tenderly on the cheek.

“I will come back as soon as they let me,” I say, needing this boy in my arms and somehow knowing he needs that too.

Fuck, what I wouldn’t give to be able to take care of him.

A WEEK
passes. Sam is moved to another ward, a renal unit, and we develop something of a routine—I spend every hour here I can, and I don’t leave until they throw me out.

Mostly Sam sleeps. I don’t know if he’s getting significantly better, but he seems brighter and less faded in the time he’s awake. He still won’t talk about what’s wrong with him, though he has dialysis every other day.

He’s dozing in my arms when the curtains around his bed are drawn back with a sudden jolt.

It’s hard not to feel as though I’ve been caught doing something I shouldn’t.

I ease away, trying not to wake him, and slowly and purposefully climb off the bed.

The nurse holding the curtain in her fist is Sister Peters. She glowers at me but doesn’t say a word. I glower back when I hear Sam stirring behind me.

“I thought you might like a shower today, Sam,” Sister Peters says, wheeling round a chair for him to sit in. “You have dialysis later.”

I fold my arms across my chest. “He’s just woken up,” I say.
You just woke him up.

“He can go back to sleep later.” She gestures at the wheelchair.

I can walk
, Sam signs.

I translate this to her as Sam rubs his eyes and glances apprehensively at the chair.

“I know you’re not deaf or mute, Sam,” she says as if she’s talking to a small child, and she pushes the wheelchair close to the side of the bed.

I can’t see him getting in it, if he thinks he can walk. “I could take him to the shower,” I say hopefully.

“No.” Sister Peters keeps her eyes on Sam and won’t meet my gaze. “You most certainly cannot.”

I try not to fantasize about showers with Sam, and I catch him staring at my face with a rapt expression as though he’s all too aware of what’s going on in my head.

I want to take a shower with you
, I sign, hoping Sister Peters really doesn’t understand. Sam lowers his eyes in an echo of that shy look he used to give me whenever I flirted with him.

“Do you have to take him now? Can’t you take him when visiting time is over?” I’d rather spend every minute I can with him, whether he’s sleeping or not.

Sister Peters looks at me long and hard, before leaving the wheelchair where it is.

“There is half an hour of visiting left. But this curtain”—she actually points—“stays open the entire time.”

I have to cover my mouth with my hands to stop myself laughing.

When she’s gone, I take his hand and kiss the palm. “Maybe they’ll let me take a shower with you tomorrow,” I whisper, pouting.

I don’t want you to go
, he signs, his expression suddenly serious.

“It’ll be okay,” I say, gripping his fingers. “I’ll stay in the hospital like I always do. I’ll come back this evening. Then I will go and sleep on the floor somewhere. I’m never far away.”

Sam shakes his head. “I’m scared,” he mouths, and we just stare at each other.

I desperately want to ask him what it is he’s scared of, but I know he won’t answer.

You should have let me go
, he signs.

“What? You don’t want me to go
and
I should have let you go?” I smile, trying to lighten this sudden inexplicable shift in his mood.

He frowns, and shakily sucks in a lungful of air.
I didn’t want this. I wanted… to say good-bye. I wanted….
Briefly he closes his eyes.
And then you could have just gone and got back on with your life after.

After? After he’d died? “Are you fucking joking?”

I drag my hand through my hair and stand up, needing space. But Sam keels over on the bed, his shoulders shaking, and my anger dissipates like wisps of barely existent smoke. I drop to my knees in front of him and take his hands in mine.

Fuck.

“How could I have ever got over you?” I say, feeling his tears fall on my fingers like rain. “Tell me you don’t believe that?”

THERE’S A
three-hour window before visiting hours start again. I hate leaving the grounds of the hospital, but I need to get out of there. I need to run.

In minutes I find myself in the countryside, my feet pounding down an uneven country track, past thick green hedges, fields blanketed with the sunshine yellow of flowering rape—the still summer air heavy with pollen and bees.

When I can no longer catch my breath and my legs are about to buckle beneath me, I stop and call my mother with the cheap phone I bought the other day. Sam still has my father’s phone—my father hasn’t asked for it back.

My parents are staying in a hotel not too far away from the hospital. They booked in for a week. So far I’ve seen them every day. They tell me they like it here in this out-of-the-way place, the lush greenness of it, the peace. And it is peaceful. A place quiet enough to die in.

I sink down on the grassy verge next to the road with the phone pressed to my ear, my hand covering my eyes.

I broke my promise.

You should have let me go.

He wanted me to let him die.

I’m sorry
, I think.
I couldn’t. I don’t know how.

TIRED AND
emotionally numb, I walk the couple of miles to my parents’ fancy hotel. It’s late afternoon and I find them on the sunny veranda, drinking tea. It’s the first time I’ve seen them outside the hospital since they arrived.

I sit down at their table, feeling sweaty and so out of place—it’s far too fucking civilized here.

We talk, very tentatively, about what I’m going to do. We talk about Sam getting better, even though I have no idea if he will, just that right now he’s not getting worse.

“WE’VE BEEN
thinking and…. Xavi, if you and Sam want to come home, just for a while, until Sam is well enough, we’d love to have you.”

How can I tell her that Sam wanted, in no uncertain terms, to check out permanently barely more than a week ago? Right now, I think he still wishes he had. Any relationship she sees us having is, at the moment, pretty one-sided.

“Thanks,” I say. “I’d like to think about it.”

But I can’t think about it. All I can think about is living indefinitely at the hospital, sleeping fitfully on the hard plastic chairs, and eating fast food until my money runs out completely. When that happens, I don’t know what I’ll do.

Before I dropped everything for Sam, I was casually renting a box room in a small semidetached house. Now I’ve been gone for four weeks, leaving my rent unpaid, I’m sure they’ve rerented my room and chucked my stuff. All that I now own is tucked away in a duffel bag next to Sam’s bed. My heart is tucked away beside it.

On the way back to the hospital, my father takes a wrong turn and we end up driving through the walled town on the hill, down the street with the Mexican café. I can’t help looking at the place as we pass by, my stomach in knots.

Simon is sitting sullenly behind the counter, reading a magazine.

If we had never stopped here, none of this would have happened, I wouldn’t have had time to think, and maybe Sam would be just a body in my arms, a face I’d dream about, an ache I’d never be able to erase. Maybe I’d lie down with him and wait for the wind to scatter me like the seeds of the wildflowers in that field by the sea.

Maybe I still will.

WITH HALF
an hour still left before visiting time begins, there’s not much to do but sit in the hospital café and wait. My parents stay with me. They want to see Sam now that he’s awake. I think they want him to see that they care about him, and I know he needs that. I’m not even sure why they’re doing it—because they can see he means something to me? Because they like him for who he is?

I’d rather it was the latter. I’d rather he had that.

All I can think about is being up on the ward, of pulling those cheap hospital curtains around Sam’s bed and climbing in beside him. I want to show him how I feel without words. I want to be intimate. I want skin contact. It’s not even about sex. I need him. I want to show him that sometimes it’s good to be alive.

“What does Sam like to read?” my mother asks casually, bringing me out of my thoughts. She looks beautiful today, all glowing, her hair shining like spun gold. It makes me feel safe that she is here, that my father is next to her, the both of them steady and constant. “I’m just going to go to the shop. Do you think he’d like a magazine, or a book?”

“Magazine,” I say quickly. “He likes nature.”

How little I know of his likes and dislikes, though. How little he knows of mine.

ON THE
way up to the ward, I see Judy. She tells me Sam’s scan results have come back and the consultant has been to see him. I didn’t even know he’d had a scan.

My parents tactfully stay with Sam only half an hour or so before they leave. The pretty nurse I saw on the first day here tells me they’re going to move Sam again later this evening, this time down to a regular ward. Each small piece of good news feels like another layer of fog being blown away from my thoughts. The nurse watches with a soft smile on his lips as I pull the curtains around Sam’s bed.

“Thank you,” I mouth.

I decide to be blunt with Sam. If they’re moving him down to a regular ward, he must be improving. I can
see
he’s improving, but I’m scared to believe it. Two weeks ago he was dying before my eyes.

We’re spooned together on the bed, Sam’s head resting on my shoulder, his back curled against my front. “So, what did the consultant say?” I ask gently, my lips close to his ear.

He twists to look at me, studying my face before he replies. “I don’t work,” he mouths.

“What do you mean you don’t work?”

“Parts of me are broken inside. I’m broken.”

He turns away. Conversation over.

I trace the length of a rib through his gown and watch his eyes slide shut. I wish he’d look at me.

“Talk to me,” I murmur and press my face to his throat, feeling his pulse against my lips but not kissing him, not yet. We have become close, but we’ve crossed no lines. I pull back after a few seconds to look at his face. I’ve never actually demanded that he talk to me before—not that that was an actual demand, more a wish to persuade him.

Eventually he shakes his head, but still he doesn’t look at me, and now my blood begins to throb sickly in my ears, because the secrets and the mystery of him is sometimes too much to bear.

He shifts away from me.
Why are you here?
he signs.
Really?

His question catches me off guard. So much for my hope of building his trust in me by being close.

I swallow and move to sit up. “Do you want me to be here?”

Is it as simple as that? What I want?
he signs quickly with a look of frustration.

“Yes.” I don’t know what he wants me to say.

Until something better comes along
, he signs and turns away to stare at the chair.

“What?”

When he turns back, the emotions that play across his face and fill his eyes are a mixture of hurt and anger and something else—something colder. It might be regret.

I never want him to look at me like that again.

I wanted you and you went and fucked someone you barely knew instead.

The words twist inside me as though they’re threaded with fucking razor wire. I want to shake my head, but he’s right. That’s exactly what I did.

“I was scared.” It comes out a whisper. “I told you.”

But I can see he doesn’t care what I say right now.

So you want me now? Or later? Or next week? Next year? Never?
He blinks, and tears spill down his cheeks, but he doesn’t crumple.
I need to know so I can prepare myself.

I cup his face in my hands. “I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry. I’m sorry I left you that night at the commune. I’m sorry I fucked Alex. I’m sorry I broke my promise.”

His shoulders start to shake, so I pull him against me and wrap my arms around him tightly. He smells so right… I can’t even explain it.