Page 30 of Tribute Act
“How’s Mum today?”
“Better,” he said. “I packed her off to the hairdressers his afternoon. You know how she is though—she was refusing to go till Rosie told her point-blank she needed to get her bloody roots sorted out.” He laughed warmly, and I saw Mack glance up. He had a great laugh, did Derek. Infectious. Something about it just made you smile and wonder what was funny.
After a bit, I slipped off in search of a wheelchair for Mack. It took me a while to track one down, but eventually I was back at Rosie’s bedside with my prize.
“Your carriage awaits,” I told Mack, gesturing at the wheelchair.
Mack grimaced. “I can walk.”
“Nope,” I said firmly. “We agreed on the way down here that we’d be taking wheels back to Ward Fourteen—and by the way, we’ll also be taking them out to the car.” When he opened his mouth to protest, I ploughed on. “That’s nonnegotiable, my friend.”
Rosie laughed again, and my heart warmed to see her eyes glinting with real humour. It felt like months since I’d seen her like this, and so soon after surgery, it felt like a miracle.
Mack wasn’t laughing though—he was grimacing as he levered himself up and again as he dropped into the wheelchair. “Fine, I’ll use the bloody thing,” he gritted out, “but only to get out of this place, then I’m back to my own two feet.”
“At least you’re getting out,” Rosie said. “I’ll be stuck here a couple more days at least.” She scowled. “I can’t wait to go home. The food’s awful, and they wake you up at the crack of dawn for breakfast and make you go to sleep super-early at night. It’s like being a little kid.”
Her expression was disgusted, but there was no real fire in her.
I went to her and hugged her. I wanted to hug her tight but she was too sore for that, so I contented myself with a gentler embrace and pressing a kiss to the top of her head.
When I broke away, turning back to the wheelchair where Mack sat waiting, I caught an oddly poignant look on his face that brought a lump to my throat.
“Hold me.”
On the other side of the bed, Derek sat, staring down at his loosely linked hands.
By the time we got back to the flat, Mack was grey with exhaustion. He’d skipped the hospital lunch tray and I’d abandoned the Macky Ds plan when he fell asleep in the car on the way home, so I suggested we have some lunch.
“To be honest, I could do with a nap first,” he said.
“Okay. Do you need any help?” I hesitated. “You know, with your clothes or anything?”
He didn’t seem to register my embarrassment. Too tired probably. “Nah, I’m fine,” he said and headed for the bedroom like a zombie.
After a couple of hours, I tentatively looked in on him. He was sleeping on top of the covers in his clothes. I fetched a blanket, and draped it over him, closing the door quietly after me.
It was a few more hours before he finally got up, bleary-eyed. I’d made chicken soup by then, and he ate two bowls. He attempted to watch TV with me for a bit, but after a series of jaw-cracking yawns, let me steer him back to bed. A minute after he lay down, he was out like a light.
He emerged from his bedroom at eleven the next morning, looking marginally better, though still pale. When I presented him with a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, he stared at the plate in disbelief.
“Soldiers? You made me toast soldiers?”
I blushed and glared at him. “What’s wrong with that? I always have soldiers with boiled eggs. Doesn’t everyone?”
He laughed. “No one over the age of ten, I reckon.”
I didn’t mind him teasing me. It felt like a toe over that invisible line of his.
I was back to work today, though only for the lunch shift. Katie and Denise had agreed to put in a few extra hours to help out, and I’d arranged the rota so I’d be home every day by four to check up on Mack.
The next few weeks passed uneventfully. Each day, Mack stayed awake a little longer and did a little more. He watched TV, played on the Xbox, noodled around on his guitar. I even caught him reading one of my books once, despite him having said he wasn’t much of a reader.
It was a strangely relaxing time, not just for Mack but for me too. I’d cook dinner in the evenings, and then we’d watch a movie or play Xbox, sitting side by side on the sofa, controllers in hand. Or we talked.
We talked a lot actually. Mack wasn’t the chattiest guy in the world, but he was an amazingly good listener, attentive and interested, always asking questions. He made me feel like whatever I was saying was fascinating. And despite his reluctance to talk about himself, I managed to wheedle some information out of him about his childhood.
He talked a bit about what happened after Derek first left his mum. They’d lived in Essex then and he’d still been seeing Derek, though it sounded like the visits had gradually decreased over the years, especially after Derek had moved to Cornwall. Then, when Mack had been thirteen, his mum got a job as a live-in warden in a sheltered housing complex in Perthshire, in her native Scotland. He wasn’t really up for talking about how he’d felt about that move, but from his reticence, I suspected it hadn’t been a great time for him. It wasn’t the best age to move schools after all.