Edited- 7th October 2011.
We all drain our cups and pile into Mum’s ageing blue car. Elsie takes the front seat without question. She knows I don’t want to look out of the windscreen. Whenever I do there’s only one thing greeting me. Instead I stare grimly at the hairy floor mats covered in crisp crumbs and wait the ride out as fast as I can. At least the instructor’s car smelt clean and official, so the crowded, stale scent of Mum’s car is no worse than usual.
The hospital car park is so thoroughly ordinary I want to write to Hollywood and complain for raising my expectations. Red brick, with ambulances moving around lethargically, well-cushioned consultants climbing into their cars, exhausted junior doctors and nurses coming off early morning shifts, whole families bringing small children laden with flowers and get-well cards for sick relatives. I look around shiftily but there’s no one I know in the car park.
Elsie and Mum have been here so often they know where they’re going on instinct so I just follow their lead. The nurse on the desk nods to us. ‘Here to see Will?’ she asks, looking at me with a questioning smile.
“This is my brother Andrew,” Elsie supplies. The nurse must know because her mouth goes round and she nods, waves us through silently.
Elsie and Mum continue through a couple of corridors. They suddenly turn into a room on the right. I can hear them greeting Will’s own mother. I fill my nostrils with the disinfectant smell of the hospital before standing in the doorway.
Will’s bed is surrounded by machines, an IV drip in his arm, a heart monitor beeping, a ventilator over his face. He looks clean, too clean, as if they’ve wiped off everything that made him him, that cheeky grin, the gelled hair that came along with everything about Will Jameson, the rugby captain, adored by everyone except those who hated him. Here he’s just a boy in a hospital bed.
His mother shares his black hair and general good looks, but as she looks up strands of silver catch the pale light. “Andrew,” she says faintly.
I press my lips together and incline my head instead of smiling because smiling would feel wrong. “Mrs Jameson.”
“My husband is at work,” she says, her voice on the point of breaking. “Just getting things in order. Things start to go awry when the boss is away.”
Elsie nods, taking the chair beside her as if they do this all the time. I guess they do. “Has there been any change?”
“None.” Mrs Jameson takes a shaky breath. “They’re… they’re talking about pulling the plug.”
My stomach leaps. I drag my eyes away from Will, look out into the corridor. A nurse walks past and smiles at me. “Everything okay?”
I shake my head and shift so I’m completely outside the room. I lean against the window and shut my eyes. So I’m a killer after all and not just a life-destroyer.
“Andy’s taking it hard,” I hear Mum say. “He just doesn’t know what to do or say-“
“He’s here,” Mrs Jameson says softly. “That means a lot to me. Make sure he knows that.”
There’s a pause, then a rustling of clothes and the sound of a chair scraping on the linoleum. “I might go get a coffee. Do you think you could watch Will?”
“Of course,” Elsie says softly. “Take all the time you need.”
Her low heels click across the floor and her head pops out to me. “Those windows show shadows, you know,” she says and amazingly, she winks. Her fake-tanned hand reaches down and squeezes mine. “Will would like it if you saw him. I know he would.”
“Mrs Jameson, I’m so sorry,” I say, choking on the words not knowing what else to say. “I can only imagine how angry you must be.”
“I am,” she says frowning as if she hasn’t really thought about it yet. “But not at you. Are you a Christian, Andrew?”
The question takes me by surprise. “No,” I say. “Agnostic.”
She shrugs. “I am. Will is too. I’m beginning to think God had a reason for this. I only hope that he has a reason to bring Will back too. Whatever happens, it’s meant to be, and I think Will would like to see you and have the chance to forgive you.”
I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I think I may have drawn blood. There’s a part of me that may have found the words laughable at some point but now how can they be? Mrs Jameson is praying for her dying son and yet I’ve done nothing for him. Even though I don’t agree with her, I bow my head and say softly, “I’ll give him that chance,” which seems to please her.
She inclines her dark head and then moves down the corridor, hips swaying in her jeans. I twist around the doorframe once more. “Andy,” Mum says eagerly, “come see Will.”
She says it as if he’s an interesting animal in a zoo. I grimace, Elsie mirrors it. For all our fights over the years and all our saying that we’ve grown apart, sometimes we really do share thoughts. I shuffle a little closer so I can see the bump where Will’s nose was broken in rugby, his knuckles that have dealt so many punches to Christian Connolly and his ilk. Although we were not friends and I detested him for everything he was, I was lucky he had never really taken a dislike to me in return.
“He’s asleep,” I say with a shrug.
“He’s in a coma,” Mum says patiently. “Not just asleep.”
“Mum, do you have to make everything worse all the time?” Elsie says angrily. It’s not for my sake though. Her eyes are damp. I may be a clueless boy but even I can tell she considered Will more than a classmate. Perhaps that’s why she and Anita stopped being friends.
“I’m simply explaining the situation,” Mum says in that same fake voice she’s used since it happened.
“I’m aware of the situation,” I say. “In case you can’t remember, it’s my fault.”
“Don’t talk about it like that, Andy, it was an accident.”
“It was still me,” I say grimly, watching Will, waiting for a flicker of life, any indication that he’s still in there. There’s none.
Elsie must feel tension bubbling because she stands up, takes Mum by the arm. “We should go give Mrs Jameson some attention, leave Andrew with Will for a while. Right?” She looks at me, wondering if that’s what I really want.
“Y-yeah,” I say, considering being alone with Will better than being with my mother as she tries to make everything sound alright. “I mean, it’s not like I’ll talk to him or anything. But… five minutes?”
Elsie smiles smugly to herself as they leave, proud to have evaded conflict. She wouldn’t have so much practice playing peacemaker if she didn’t start so many arguments in the first place. I learned quickly in secondary school that not starting trouble was the best way to stay out of it.
And yet here I am, sitting alone with Will Jameson, who started every fight.
The monitors whirr and beep to themselves. I look outside to the corridor which is empty all of a sudden. For the time being, there’s only me and Will.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him truthfully. “Really sorry. It was an accident.”
No response. Of course there’s no response.
“So, you’re a Christian, huh? So did not see that one coming.”
The heart monitor pumps out its rhythm.
“But where the hell were you going in such a rush anyway?” I ask. “You sprinted out. Did you run out of hair gel? Did you lose a bet on a Heineken cup game?”
Will does not answer to either and I stop. The silence seeps back into the room as if someone is blowing up a balloon.
I stand up, not able to take it anymore. I’ll just leave, find Elsie and Mum, allow Mrs Jameson back to her post with no interruptions from the person responsible for this whole mess. I never liked Will before. There’s no reason I should pretend to like him now. I look down at his expressionless face once more.
Something makes me reach out my hand. I’d like to say it’s some indescribable force, but it’s probably just my own sub-conscious, telling me I should offer Will some affection before I go. My fingers reach out and touch his hand, all knuckles and angles.
An electric shock jumps between my skin and his, static searching for the ground. I jump back.
And so does Will.
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