Page 32 of Maybe (Mis-shapes #1)

Good news? Was I really coming out with useless platitudes like that?

Keeping a polite six feet between us when my big brother was coming apart in front of my eyes?

Ghosts within swirled, memories of nights in his room after one of Dad’s endless rants when he’d sung pop songs to me and told funny stories to cheer me up, an annoying younger brother.

And a more recent adult version of the same thing, with carbonara, a pep talk, and a never-ending supply of tissues.

We reached for each other at the same time.

He fell into me, and I staggered back, laden with armfuls of Ezra Fitz-Henry.

Laden with everything I’d told myself I shouldn’t want, yet which for every day of the past week without him had felt so right.

My knees hit the big armchair behind me, one of those washable, practical ones pulling out into a bed for parents. I sank into it, bringing him with me.

“Sorry, Isaac,” he sobbed into my hair. “Sorry.”

“Shh,” I soothed. “Sorry for what?”

“For leaving you to face them alone when you were a kid, for how I behaved at the memorial. For calling you when this happened. For kissing you when you were pissed when I was supposed to be cheering you up, and for not taking no for an answer.”

“Shh. You’ll wake him. And stop being so stupid. You never have to apologise to any member of this family for anything. I should be the sorry one. For not chasing after you when you disappeared. Sorry that you had to sleep on the streets. For kissing you back after the gig and then running away.”

Ezra squeezed me harder. “God, this hurts so much, Isaac. Him, being here like this.”

I pushed his tear-stained face away from my hair. His dark, scared eyes searched mine. “Listen, Ez. Jonty’s going to be okay. And I’m going to help you both with whatever you need. From now on, if you’re hurting, then so am I.”

“I shouldn’t have kissed you when you didn’t want me to. You were drunk, and I took advantage. This is my punishment.”

I chuckled. “Punishment? What sort of fucked-up nonsense is that? And I’ve told you. I’m not angry about that anymore. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

He pulled himself together when a nurse stepped in to change the neb and to take another blood gas.

Jonty hardly stirred. Neither did Ezra, clinging onto me even as the nurse quizzed him about Jonty’s favourite foods and which school he attended and wrote down the name of his GP.

I, on the other hand, could barely look her in the eye.

Surely, she must see what was happening, how this wasn’t an ordinary sibling interaction.

But as she walked out, she commented how lovely it was that we were so close, that she wished her sister hadn’t moved five hours away up north.

After she left, Ezra stayed where he was.

We shuffled around, the armchair barely wide enough for his skinny arse alongside mine.

He still clung to me, though, and my arms never moved from their hold around him.

Can’t lie, it was like cradling an angle poise lamp.

When he closed his eyes and his thumping pulse slowed, wetness, like morning dew, still glistened on his long dark eye lashes.

I didn’t think I’d ever tear my own eyes away.

But I guess my week of arduous night shifts caught up with me. Somehow, I nodded off.

A sound at the door jerked me from a half-doze. Jonty’s next round of arterial bloods was due. Ezra didn’t move, his ruffling breath slow and steady, in counterpoint to the rapid rise and fall of Jonty’s thin chest.

“Hey.”

Hovering in the doorway, Alaric raised his chin towards Ezra, who was very clearly occupying my lap. “Your brother, right?”

“Yeah. Ezra.”

“Cool.”

Before I even had a chance to groggily motion him inside, Alaric’s sharp eyes and nimble brain made a few calculations.

Brothers didn’t sleep with their arms wrapped around each other.

Brothers didn’t rest their head on the other brother’s chest, either.

His eyes said everything as he silently assessed the monitors dwarfing the small child asleep in the bed.

“How is he?”

“Better,” I murmured. “We’ve probably avoided him being intubated if his gases continue to improve.”

Alaric scanned the monitors again before his eyes drifted back to me and the beautiful man conked out in my arms. The little room was stifling hot.

At some point in the night, Ezra had discarded his sweater and his black T-shirt had parted ways with the low waistband of his black jeans, to reveal a pale expanse of hard white belly.

“Very tasty,” Alaric commented, humourlessly.

“Is he always so monochrome, or does he come in a range of colours?”

“Probably just a creamy-white like the rest of us.” I wasn’t in the mood for games. “You’re the urologist, not me. Do you want me to wake him up and ask?”

“The way you two are entwined around each other, you’ve already found out. Canteen’s still open. Time for a coffee and a little chat?”

Caffeine. I could never say no to that, even though the stuff in the canteen had been obviously filtered through a used jock strap.

Ezra would need something too, when he woke.

Carefully, I peeled myself away, whispering I’d be back soon.

He nodded, hardly stirring. A fierce desire to smooth back his hair and kiss him gripped me.

Instead, I took a last peek at him and trailed after my friend.

Picking up our takeaway drinks, we then rode a lift to the surgical wards.

Alaric swiped us through a door marked no entry.

With practised ease, he pushed open a fire exit and I found myself on a small flat roof with no safety rail, overlooking a plain brick wall. Cigarette stubs littered the ground.

“Smoker’s corner.” He reached for his own cigarettes. “I got the code from one of the porters in exchange for um… a favour.”

If I didn’t ask, I wouldn’t know. I stayed silent as he lit up, letting the cool dawn air wash over me.

“So,” Alaric began, because I sure as hell wasn’t going to. “Talk me through the hot goth you were using as a blanket down there.”

Where did I start? That he was the love of my life?

That he always had been and always would be?

Or could I persuade Alaric that, because there was only one chair in Jonty’s hospital room, we were awkwardly sharing it?

From the expression on Alaric’s face, I wasn’t entirely confident I’d get away with it.

Love, like a wheezy chest, was difficult to conceal.

“He’s Ezra. It’s complicated.”

“Yeah, you said that before. But I just passed my MRCS exams first time and with flying colours. I think I can probably keep up.”

“He’s also my brother.” I dry swallowed, not sure where to go from there. What was the relationship status for ‘I don’t know what’s going on’?

Surprising Alaric was a perennial challenge, but on this occasion, I overcame it with ease. By the time I finished, and clarified a few details without gabbling so much, his eyebrows were in his hairline and a grey worm of ash teetered from his forgotten cigarette.

“Fuck,” he managed eventually. “They didn’t put all that in the obit, did they?

Now give me the abridged version. The one that says you’re not genetically related, because, if you are, then that is some seriously fucked up shit you and that black-and-white streak of piss have got going back there.

I mean, it’s fucked up whatever, but… Christ. No wonder you’re such a stress merchant. ”

“He’s not my genetic brother. My dad adopted him when he married his first wife; my mum was wife number two. His was number one.”

“Thank heavens for that. Nothing to worry about, then.” Alaric’s tone dripped with sarcasm.

“Ezra isn’t in a relationship with Jonty’s mum, though. He… he’s only into men now. Always has been, really.”

“All men, or men specifically related to him?”

“We… we haven’t done anything about… so far. He… um… well, okay, we have a bit. But I told him we shouldn’t rush into anything.”

Alaric smoked some more. “Isaac, sweetie,” he said eventually, holding me with his firm gaze and thumbing behind him. “If that’s your jam, plenty of other guys out there rock the Marilyn Manson-Jesus vibe. I could even introduce you to a couple. Why the hell couldn’t you go for one of them?”

Because they didn’t lie awake at night writing love songs . They didn’t have an eagle tattoo on their left hipbone. They didn’t convince the twins pinned moths came alive at night and crawled inside their ears.

They didn’t learn to fly, then fly away.

“Ezra needs me. We need each other. We… I told you, it’s complicated.”

“No shit. What about the rest of the family? How’s that going to go down, when you break the happy news to your mum you’re being boned by your stepbrother?”

“I… erm… I haven’t had time to think all that through, yet. But I perhaps wasn’t going to use that phrase.”

Unimpressed, Alaric snorted. “You can dress it up however you like, but it ain’t going to change the message, is it? I mean, you do you, Isaac, but ultimately, you’re laying out one hell of a bloody rocky road for yourself.”

I studied Alaric, the most honest friend I had.

I exhaled through my nose, a slow, controlled breath that did nothing to ease the weight of my family’s expectations pressed against my ribs.

I imagined breaking the news to my mother and her response, thick with disappointment.

The only saving grace is that your father isn’t alive to see it, Isaac.

“I know.” I rubbed my palm across my stubbly jaw. I needed a shower, a shave, and a change of clothes. “But Ezra is more than my brother. He always has been. He’s a solid part of me, and I… I want to be with him.”

Coolly, elegantly, Alaric crossed his legs, like we were in a swanky Soho bar not perched on a broken hospital trolley in sweaty scrubs with a forty-foot sheer drop not three yards away. Telling all to Alaric was my first test, a practice run. I cared what he thought.

“I understand if you don’t approve,” I said cautiously. “But I guess that’s something I’ll have to get used to.”

He laughed and stubbed out his fag end on the damp wall behind us. “You’re all right, sweetie. I’ll still respect you in the morning.”

“Where’s Daddy?”

Jonty’s weak, breathy question, muffled behind his oxygen mask, shook me from my nap.

Oh fuck, I knew this would happen. Unless I was in doctor mode with a stethoscope around my neck, little kids scared the bejesus out of me. Talking to them never came naturally. My voice would rise three octaves; they smelled my desperation like bloodhounds sniffed out baby rabbits.

“He’ll be back in a mo; he’s just gone to fetch us all a bite to eat.”

“I saw you at the swings, didn’t I? You’re Isaac.”

“Yes.” I threw my nephew a nervous smile, crossing my fingers he’d leave the more probing questions for a later date.

“I don’t feel well.” Jonty pushed the mask up onto his forehead. “Do I have to keep this on?”

I glanced over at one of the monitors. “You can take it off for a minute. But when one of the nurses comes back in, they’ll probably tell you to put it on again.”

“Daddy says you’re a doctor.”

“Yes.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “That’s why you’re here.”

“Yes. But I’m not one of your doctors. I’m just here as a friend for Daddy.”

“He likes seeing you.” Jonty examined the infusion set running into the back of his hand. “He’s always talking about you to Mummy, and he’s writing a song about you. What’s this thing for?”

“It’s delivering one of the medicines that makes the passages in your lungs less tight and swollen. A song about me?”

“Yeah. He’s been working on it for ages. It’s called Maybe .”

“Is it any good?”

Jonty wrinkled his nose, contemplating. “It’s okay. It’s about love and stuff. I don’t think Neil and the band will ever sing it—it’s just going to be for Daddy to sing. About you. Can I have a drink, please?”

Yep, children still floored me. Even sick, breathless ones.

Ezra came back a minute later, climbed onto the bed with Jonty and snuggled against him, wires and all. “All right, my little drama queen?”

Like a small sun, for all his hair was dark and he was out of puff, Jonty still managed one of his heart-stopping gappy smiles. Flooring me all over again. When Ezra planted a raspberry on the side of his head and then tucked him under his arm, I blamed lack of sleep for the lump in my throat.

“Yes, Isaac’s been telling me what all the numbers mean. Can I be a doctor when I grow up?”

“You can be anything you want, mate.” Kissing Jonty in his mussed hair, Ezra’s dark, unreadable eyes stared into mine. “But last week, you insisted you were going to be the school-crossing bloke—make your mind up.”

Not long after, a nurse arrived with Jonty’s morning meds. The consultant would be starting her rounds soon. Ezra persuaded Jonty to eat a little bit of toast; then he phoned Carly and put her on loudspeaker so they could have a three-way conversation.

My cue to go. I was falling asleep in the chair.