Page 3 of Oleander

He coughs again and gestures with his hand for me to sit down. I sit.

“You look dreadful,” I tell him.

“You still don’t mince your words, I see.” Gideon grins, eyes gleaming again with cunning. Cas showed me a photo of him once as a child, aged seven or so, and he’d had that same look in his eyes even then.

I glance down at my hands, let the silence swell between us.

“I say, you turned out quite extraordinarily good-looking, didn’t you?” he says.

I lift my head to find him looking me over appraisingly.

“Cas always had a thing for your freckles, did you know that? And that dimple on the right side of your mouth. You have grown into them both quite marvellously.”

“Is this why you invited me here, Gideon? To flirt?”

He chuckles, but it transforms into a coughing fit.

“Are you in pain?” I ask when it passes.

In a roughened voice, he says: “I have been in pain for as long as I have been alive; this is just a different kind. More immediate, more ghastly to look at.”

“I’m sorry,” I mutter uselessly.

“Me too, my boy. I’m sorry too.” It’s weighty with meaning, his eyes horribly sincere, and it hits me with all the force of a punch to the gut. I’d never imagined I’d hear him say it, not really, not properly, and it feels awful now that he has. It sits there between us, ugly and loud.

I look at my hands again so I don’t have to look at his decaying face.

“They say I do not have long. A few weeks, perhaps.”

It was his pancreas; I knew that much. It had been too late by the time they found it.

Jasper enters carrying a tray with a mug of steaming hot coffee and a bowl of what appears to be soup. He hands me the coffee first before setting the soup tray on a tall trolley table that he wheels over so that it sits in front of Gideon. Lifting a cable, he presses a button and Gideon is raised into a more upright position so he can eat. Lastly, he switches on a light above the bed, flooding Gideon in harsh artificial light.

“Do I need to force you, or are you going to eat that?” Jasper asks Gideon bossily.

“I’ll eat it,” he placates, picking up his spoon.

Jasper looks at me. “Make sure he does, will you? He’s a nightmare.”

“A nightmare that pays you very well, so hush.”

“Money isn’t everything, Gideon, I’ve told you that.”

I watch as Jasper checks the drip hanging by the bed, the one beneath the blanket draped over Gideon, and serves him a concoction of tablets from a little plastic cup.

The familiarity between them feels almost intimate. Jasper gives me a small conspiratorial smile and then disappears from the room, leaving us alone again.

“He’s a godsend...” Gideon muses as he stirs his soup around.

I blow over the rim of my coffee.

“Locked away here with me while his friends travel the world, get married and have children. I’m certain he thinks I’m going to leave him everything.”

“Are you?” I lift my coffee to my mouth.

Gideon grins. “If he marries me, perhaps.”

“You’ve asked him?”