He stares up at his ceiling, shifts his weight and grimaces. The headache from hell should have kicked in by now after all that drink. Instead, he’s aware only of a weird ‘out-of-body’ numbness. Shock, perhaps. Maybe the effect of Jerry’s potion. Or just a debilitating tiredness. What he desperately craves now is sleep. Not another night of mental torture, but sleep, deep and dreamless, in all its merciful release.
It is tempting but irrational to blame Jerry. Sooner or later, something like this was bound to happen, even without the drug. The cramped conditions, his exhaustion, Alex becoming such a free spirit. Confined together in this tiny, cluttered flat, an accident of some kind was all but inevitable. No doubt Gulnaz could have told him that, and Prentice, and the nurse up at A&E. He wonders whether Gulnaz had seen it coming right from the outset. Maybe that was why she’d insisted on home-helps and wooden spoons and door handles with blunt edges. But did she appreciate just how much it was her fault? She must have seen just how dangerous Alex was becoming. Or was she so blown away by his progress that it blinded her to the obvious? Alex’s determination to master the crutches and charge about the place, not the least bit bothered by the knocks and tumbles, only too happy to be hoisted to his feet and let loose again. He was a time-bomb; an accident just waiting to happen. And even trained nurse Gulnaz had failed to spot it.
But then again, what she didn’t know, and what Daniel is now sure of beyond any reasonable doubt, is that what took place today was no bloody accident at all.
What happened after she’d found him in the shower remains something of a blur. He remembers being corseted in cling film and led in his dressing gown to the ambulance. Then a lot of sitting around in A&E. Then losing his rag with the nurse, not so much because of the pain, or because of the long wait – he actually failed to notice the time passing, and the breathing space gave the alcohol a chance to pass through his system; he could at least stand when he was called. No, it was the nurse’s summing up that had so pissed him off, telling him he was lucky. Why do people always say that to someone who’s just been randomly picked out of a crowd and had great misfortune heaped upon them? Why do people always say, ‘It could have been worse’? Well, okay, in theory anything ‘could have been worse’. Tell the poor bugger who gets knocked down by a bus that he could have been hit by a meteorite at the same moment, or swallowed up by an earthquake. Tell Mrs George that instead of just falling ill with cancer she could have caught double pneumonia and had a heart attack on the same day. Of course Daniel’s burns could have been worse. Had he not turned off the gas a little before taking the pan from the ring; had the sink been ever so slightly nearer to the stove; had he been wearing pyjamas or, heaven forbid, nothing at all instead of jeans and tea-shirt, then of course the water would have been that bit hotter when it poached his cock – burning right through instead of just leaving it pink as a lobster. But if that nurse expected gratitude then she shouldn’t have warned him that pissing might make him cry. She most definitely should not talk about luck after instructing him to avoid sex for three weeks.
Three weeks. Three bloody weeks! Maybe that was it. Alex’s intention all along – why he’d chosen that moment to jump him. Because the stupid jealous bastard couldn’t bear to have his weaker, cowardly, unpopular, unloved twin enjoying a good humping when he himself was just an impotent dick on crutches.
Time to shift again. The options are seriously limited when you’re forced to lie on your back. A coffee table straddles his hips, draped in sheets and blankets – an improvised tent that cocoons him. One of Gulnaz’s inspirations. She hadn’t even come with him to the hospital. Someone, she’d said, was needed to watch over Alex.
So much rebuilding to do before they can properly connect again.
His mind is wandering. He’d looked like supermarket pork in that cling film. Sleep is coming at last. Did anyone eat the roast? Is he dreaming now? Merciful sleep. The intimacy they’d shared has slipped through his fingers like sand. Almost certainly his fault. These things always were. Too many words left unsaid. Not enough attention given to the little things. Everything assumed and never asked. She had waited for him to come home. Her touch was tender. But so are his wounds. This burning invades every movement, every detail. How did he become stretched out beneath a scorching Sahara sun, unable to find shade? Who are these people running? Someone is shouting ‘fire!’ They’ve trapped him at the end of a corridor; his belly is crushed against a searing-hot fire-door. He’s sinking beneath the weight of dying bodies, unable to breathe, darkness closing in. Body and pain separating. A ball of pain that sleeps beside him throughout the long night.