The Love of My Afterlife(90)
A nurse arrives and, after checking my vitals, sits beside me and rubs my back in slow, steady circles, telling me that I need to calm down. She talks me through breathing in and out until the beeping slows to a steady pace once more.
“Are you in pain?” she asks.
I nod.
“On a scale of one to ten?”
I remember that when Jonah accidentally visited Evermore, he was having dental surgery. He had been knocked out. An unconscious visitor, Merritt had called him.
“Ten,” I say immediately. “I need the strongest thing you have.”
* * *
Well, that didn’t work. To my great disappointment, I wake, not in Evermore, but three hours later still in the hospital. My head is throbbing, and Cooper’s uncle Lester is staring at me from above. Behind him are Amy and Malcolm. Amy’s eyes and nose are red. Malcolm is just pale, his lips almost the same colour as his skin. They’re a mess. They’ve already lost Merritt and now this. And it’s my fault.
I sit up, the room tilting slightly as I do so, a sharp bolt of pain surging through my knee.
“Well, at least someone’s awake,” Uncle Lester says, to which Amy gives him a hard glare and Malcolm tells him to pipe down. Uncle Lester presses his mouth together and becomes immediately enamoured with a sign on the wall detailing the hospital’s fire safety policy. I notice that his eyes are shining with tears too. My stomach dips. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“How are you feeling, love?” Amy says, pulling up a chair at my shoulder, while Malcolm remains standing at the end of my bed, hands in his trouser pockets, looking almost as if he’s in a trance. I swallow down the bile that rises to my throat.
I did this. I did this to them.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I…Cooper was driving me, and I think I distracted him. We were laughing and…”
“He was laughing?” Amy says, a slight smile glinting in her eyes before it’s quickly replaced with worry.
I nod, about to tell them that I had just found out his real name, and then deciding against it because, after all, they were the ones who saddled him with it.
“How long will you be here for, do you expect?” Malcolm asks, his voice weak, like he’s got nothing left to give. “The doctor told us you had surgery?”
“Yeah. My knee is…I won’t be walking for a while. And my ribs…well, I’m fine. They say I’ll be here for another week at least. I didn’t want them to move me away from Cooper. If it was up to me, I’d be down there with him right now.”
“Do you need anything?” Amy says, taking hold of my hand like she’s not met me only three times before. I bite the inside of my cheek to hold back the sob that swells in my chest.
I shake my head no, although I haven’t even considered the fact that I don’t have anything here with me beyond the handbag that I took to Mr. Yoon’s party. I have no change of clothes, no toothbrush, none of my medication.
“I have everything I need,” I say as brightly as I can manage. “Honestly, I appreciate you coming to see me, but I’m okay. You go, be with Cooper.”
Malcolm takes a deep breath. “Cooper mentioned you didn’t have family here in London. If you need some help when you leave—you’re more than welcome to stay with us. We have room.”
“That’s kind, but you really don’t need to…We’ve not been dating for very long and…”
“Long enough for Cooper to be the happiest he’s been in a long time,” Uncle Lester says, his bottom lip wobbling. “And that’s all we need to know.”
I nod my thanks, knowing that I won’t take them up on the offer. I couldn’t cause them more hassle than I already have.
“I’ve been chatting away to him for the past hour and a half. I wonder if he can hear me…” Amy mutters, almost to herself. “I hope he at least knows he’s not alone.”
I want to desperately tell her that he’s with Merritt. But I know it would complicate things even more. Bring up further pain and questions I wouldn’t know how to begin to answer.
“I think he can hear you,” I say. “I think wherever he is, he’s okay.”
Amy starts to cry then, loudly, right from her belly. Her whole body crumples. Uncle Lester and Malcom rush to her, helping her up.
As they leave the ward I start to shake. I press the buzzer for the nurse, and this time a different one arrives. I tell them I’m in pain. A ten, I say again. And soon enough they inject me with something that sends me right back to the warm nothingness. I drift off, hoping desperately that by the time I wake, Cooper will be back in the land of the living.
46
The next three days bring nothing more than sporadic waves of consciousness. I wake in the morning and am wheeled down to see Cooper while my brain is still fresh from sleep. I spend half an hour talking to him, pleading with him to come back.
In between waking and sleeping, various people come to visit me, though I’m mostly hazy and not much use to anyone. I vaguely remember Mr. Yoon popping in, speaking to me through the VOCA. And Frida brings me a packet of Marks & Spencer’s nightdresses and a box of black thongs because they had no full briefs available. I think I have conversations with people, but the only ones that seem to remain in my memory are the guttingly one-sided ones I have every morning with Cooper.