Page 29 of Darling
“Bye, Leah.”
??
The only other time I’ve been in a hospital was when I ‘accidentally’ hammered a nail through the palm of my hand. I was helping to build one of the new‘habitats’and, as usual, feeling an affinity for the son of God.Normally, we’d be patched up in the main house by Blake or Alex or one of the elders, depending on what it was, but when my hand was still bleeding a couple hours later, and when Blake expressed concern that I probably needed a tetanus shot, my mother insisted we go to the emergency room. Jeremiah hadn’t been happy. With me or my mother. But she’d been persuasive that day, and he’d relented, handing her the key for the truck and watching us drive off down the dirt road. The doctor had stuck me with a needle, sewn me up with butterfly stitches, called me a good boy, and sent mehome to receive my punishment.
A week of painting the communal bathrooms while reciting Proverbs 21:25 aloud to one of the elders every hour on the hour:
He who follows righteousness and mercy finds life, righteousness, and honour. A wise man scales the city of the mighty, and brings down the trusted stronghold. Whoever guards his mouth and tongue keeps his soul from troubles. A proud and haughty man—“Scoffer” is his name; He acts with arrogant pride. The desire of the lazy man kills him, for his hands refuse to labor.
It hadn’t been an accident, and Jeremiah knew it, but it hadn’t been laziness, either. I’m not even sure what it had been. Something to make me feel alive? This had been about a year after seeing the porn and a year after Leah had left, and I was so fucking alone and so fucking scared. I understood that I was wrong. That I was a demon in the eyes of the Lord because I was gay. I’d thought about running away at the hospital, but I couldn’t do it because I wouldn’t know the first thing about life outside HHM. Plus, I’d loved those stolen hours at the hospital with my mom, just her and me in a way it had never been. She’d been worried about me, she’d spoken in panicked little sentences all the way to the hospital, bitten her nails and listened carefully as the doctor told her how I should be looked after. She looked relieved as she brushed a hand through my hair, and then, before I had time to think about it, we were in the truck on our way home.
You can still see the scar now. I rub at it sometimes, as though if I rub it hard enough, I can still feel my mother’s love from that day.
The woman at the desk of St Joseph’s lifts her head and gives me a motherly kind of smile.
“Hi there,” she says.
I contemplate putting on a British accent, but the only other time I’ve done a British accent is when imitating the girls fromLove Islandto make Amata laugh, and I really don’t think this is the audience for it.
“Hi, I’m here to see Christian Darling, he was brought in last night. He’s in recovery,” I say confidently.
“You family?”
“He’s my dad.”
She doesn’t even blink before moving to her computer and tapping on the keys. “He’s in cardiology, it’s on four. You’ll need to check in at the desk up there.”
“Will do.” I skip away from the desk like I’ve just pulled off a jewel heist and take the elevator up to level four, following the signs for cardiology. It’s less hectic here, less chaotic, and I feel less like I’m committing a crime as I walk up to the desk. This time it’s a guy, dark skin and dark eyes that trace over me as I get close.
“Hi, I’m here to see my dad, Christian Darling. They told me he was up here.”
“Your dad?” he says slowly. It’s the first alarm bell I get. The second is the way his eyes narrow a little, head tilting sideways. “Didn’t I talk to you on the phone last night?”
Fuck. I have like a second to decide since any delay whatsoever is likely to ruin this even more. “Oh, I think that was my brother,” I say smoothly. It settles him a little, and he nods, moving to stand.
“Right, okay, cool. Well, all guests need to sign in here and wash their hands over at the station.” He points at a sink by the side as he comes around the desk. “I’ll go make sure he’s awake.”
“Amazing, thank you so much. Um, can you maybe not tell him it’s me. We, uh, haven’t spoken in a bit and I don’t wanna shock him…” I didn’t want Christian to think his son was here,and then it’s just me.
He frowns at this. “Um, I think I have to…”
“Yeah, okay then, sure. Do what you have to do.”
He disappears down the corridor and into a room on the left-hand side as I scrub at my hands. When he comes back, he tells me I can go in. I honestly can’t believe it’s been this easy. He’s a fucking diplomat. Isn’t there security? Isn’t he sort of important?
As I approach the door, I get my first wave of uncertainty about what I’m doing here: He’s likely going to know it’s me and not his son. Surely he’s spoken to his son at some point already, and he’s probably still in England. He could be pissed off that I’ve done this.It’s not sensible, he’d said, and I ignored that and socially engineered my way into his hospital room. It’s giving demon twink. It’s giving stalker. Shit, maybe I should leave. But now I’m at the door and it’s slightly ajar, and I just need to know he’s alive and okay. I take a deep breath before I step inside.
He’s sitting up in bed, a pair of dark-rimmed glasses on as he reads the newspaper. He’s dressed in the usual blue hospital gown, wires jutting out from the collar and his hand, and the green line of the heart monitor beeping reassuringly. When I close the door behind me, he lifts his head from the paper and stares. He still looks hot. He almost died, is dressed in one of those horrible blue hospital nightgowns, looks like he hasn’t slept in a month, but is somehow still hot as fuck.
I stay by the door.
“Hey,” I say. “Sorry, I told them I was your son; they wouldn’t have let me in otherwise.”
He doesn’t reply. He just stares blankly, like he’s never seen me before. Is his memory okay? Do heart attacks affect memory? I don’t think they do, but he’s looking at me like he has no clue who I am.
“You okay?” I come closer, shucking the tote I’m carrying off my shoulder.
“I’m alright,” he says at last.