There is something about loving a person that makes their agony so much worse than your own.
Watching Christian cry outside his mother’s hospital room has been one of the most painful things I’ve ever seen in my life.
I’ve never had to comfort someone for a reason like this. I’m usually the one being comforted.
I didn’t know what to do, really. I can fix people when they have wounds I can see, but heart wounds, I don’t know. I just sit next to him, hold his hand, say nothing because there aren’t words anyway. Not right now.
Blunt force trauma to the head, that’s the verdict.
Someone hit Barnsey from behind with a wine bottle.
Ignoring the implications of what it means that two different heads of two separate Borough families were targeted in such a short period of time, just someone doing that to her in general is unthinkable.
Everyone loves Rebecca. Her boys1 aside, and they love her more than anyone, the entire second floor of Weymouth Street Hospital has been inundated with people in our line of work.
My brother was the first to get here.
Rushed straight over, bit down on his bottom lip when he saw her so he wouldn’t cry — cried anyway.
Julian loves Rebecca. She’s always been patient with him and gracious when he’s made rash decisions, good to him through all the shit with our parents — she’s just a good woman.
Her room is surrounded with security and thank God because it really is the dog’s dinner around here — between Callum Barnes personally vetting every person present and him and Jud being at each other’s throats, which they are. Constantly. Callum blaming Jud for not being there, Jud blaming Callum for letting her have this life in the first place — their arguments crest every few hours and it looks like they’ll come to blows. My money’s on Jud but I also think Callum looks like he probably has a pocket knife hidden somewhere on his body. He’d play dirty to win, I think. Julian and Jonah break up the fights every time they appear, and Jules keeps taking Callum for walks.
Jud isn’t leaving Rebecca’s side. Christian’s finding that difficult to reconcile, I can see it resting on his brow.
Every time his dad touches his mum’s face, Christian stares at his hand, shakes his head a bit, jaw tight, nostrils flared.
I went downstairs at one point to buy some flowers to cheer up her room.
I bought bunches and bunches of light colours, blues and purples and whites, and when I carry them in, Christian smiles over at me tiredly. Stands to help me carry them.
I walk over to her bedside table and put some light purple ones next to her.
“No,” Jud says, staring over at them. “She hates those.”
“What?” I blink, confused.
“She hates peonies—” He picks them up and hands them back to me. “Take them away.”
I peer over at Christian, and my cheeks are maybe a bit hot, but I’ll be fine — honestly, I wasn’t really all that conscious about the types of flowers I was buying in the first place. I don’t know the names of flowers, I know the names of different surgical clamps. Want to know all the types of sutures there are in the world? I can tell you that. I can tell you the names of all the surgical needles — but flowers? Daisies, magnolias, roses and tulips and I’m all tapped out.
So I’m staring over at Christian, frowning because I’m confused, not because my feelings are hurt2 and then he shakes his head.
“How the fuck would you know?” He nods his chin over at his dad.
“Christian—” I shake my head.
“No, actually but— how the fuck would you?” Christian asks, a bit antagonistically. “You don’t know what she likes, you don’t know her favourite food, how she has her tea—”
“Black,” his dad says.
“White with one,” Christian tells him without missing a beat. “You don’t know her, at all.”
Jud takes a measured breath and points down at Rebecca. “That is my wife.”
“On paper, maybe, yeah—” Christian gives him a curt nod. “But she’s been a widow the last fifteen years.”
His dad stares over at him, jaw tight, eyes dark and then he rushes his son. Grabs him by the collar of his shirt and slams him against the wall.
Julian’s on his feet and about to pull them apart when suddenly Christian push-kicks him away. Jud stumbles backwards and then Christian right hooks in him the face.
All those rumours about how good a fighter he is? All true.
With those two moves his dad’s knocked to the floor but that doesn’t stop Christian from kicking him repeatedly in the stomach. My brother grabs him, tries to pull him back, but he cracks Julian in the face too.
Fight or flight, I can see it in his eyes. A decade and a half of trauma and abandonment issues cracking open on his face, bubbling up under him like magma.
“Christian—” I grab him from behind, trying to pull him back. He swings around and I know to duck because his brain’s misfiring, and if I don’t, he’ll hit me.
I’m right, he makes the swing without even looking me in the eyes and I duck and the whole room sort of freezes and all the sound drops away. Christian catches himself, sees me, sees who he swung at.
He grabs me, grabs my arm, touches my face — pulling me into him.
Julian’s staring over at us, eyes wide with worry — but I shake my head.
I’m fine. I’ve shot myself, had my larynx crushed, been held at knifepoint — ducking a swing from the man I love deep in trauma? Child’s play, it’s happy days.
“Shit—” He pushes me to the corner of the room, holding my face in his hands. “Daisy, I—”
“You missed. I’m fine.” I shake my head. “Knew to duck.”
His face pulls in this pained, gut-wrenching way.
His hands are trembling a bit — adrenaline — so I pull him outside. Out into the hallway and then into an empty room, and as soon as we’re in there, he wraps his arms around me, holds me tighter than he ever has and cries.
These big, undone sobs and each one of them fastens my heart a little bit tighter to his.
That goes on for about thirty seconds before he pulls away and looks down at me — those hazel eyes all red and teary. I run my finger underneath them and he sniffs.
“You’re okay,” he tells me, like I’m the one who’s crying. He pushes his hand through my hair like he’s comforting me.
Some people need to feel like they’re in control when they’re losing it.
I give him a smile and a quick nod.
“I’m okay,” I tell him with a quick smile.
“Baby, you know I’d never—” He cuts himself off, his breathing starts to get ragged.
“I know.” I nod quickly. “And once your mum’s better we’ll work on your swing.”
1 And I will tentatively include Jud Hemmes under that umbrella.
2 Even if they are a bit hurt.
