“Not bad. I was pretty sore for a few days there”—the mushy slur in my voice made me flinch, but my jaw was still bruised and puffy, surely they would blame it on that—“but it’s wearing off. Have a seat.”
Sean pulled up the visitors’ chair and Dec sat—gingerly, checking for IV lines—on the edge of my bed. “Loving the hair,” he said, pointing at my head—by this time I was showering and shaving (although both took a long time, and I sometimes had to sit down on the shower floor for a while when a dizzy flash hit), so the zombie-movie vibe had faded a bit, but I hadn’t got around to doing anything about my hair. “You could get into all the cool clubs, looking like that.”
“You should shave off one eyebrow to go with it,” Sean said. “Start a hipster fad.”
“I’m thinking of going for a”—I found the word just in time—“a Mohawk. Think Melissa would like it?”
“I think you could get away with just about anything with Melissa, right now. Go for the Mohawk.”
Dec had been absently tugging the edge of my blanket straight, and watching me. “You seem all right, man,” he said. “I mean, not all right all right, like I wouldn’t advise you to go entering the Ironman or anything. But we were scared you were, like, fucked up.”
“Jesus,” Sean said. “You’re a real sensitive guy, you know that?”
“Come on, he knows what I mean.” To me: “We couldn’t tell what shape you were in, yeah? Melissa kept saying you were basically grand”—which was nice to hear—“but I mean, Melissa; she’s always positive about everything. Which is great, don’t get me wrong, but . . . we were worried. It’s just good to see you’re OK.”
“I am OK,” I said. Which I was, right then, or as near as possible: I had carefully timed my Pavlov-button dose of painkillers, holding off for more than an hour after the beep, through the spine-grating ache building in my head, to make sure I would be at the perfect point in the cycle when they arrived. “I have to get this tooth fixed, but apart from that I basically just need to take it easy for a while.”
“Jesus,” Dec said, examining the tooth with a grimace. “Bastards.”
“Did the cops get them?” Sean asked.
“Nah. They think the guys were mainly after my car, so they’re keeping an eye out for that. But I’m not holding my breath.”
“Hope they drive it off a bridge,” Dec said.
“Fuck it,” Sean said. “You can buy another car. Just take it easy and get better. Speaking of which—” He held up a big, stuffed paper bag and passed it to me. “Here.”
Inside were a sheaf of magazines—Empire, the New Scientist, Commando—a Bill Bryson book, a sudoku book, a book of crossword puzzles, a little model-airplane kit, and half a dozen packets of fancy crisps in a variety of surrealist flavors. “Hey, thanks, guys,” I said, touched. “This is great.” I could no more have done a sudoku puzzle or built a model airplane than piloted a fighter jet, but the fact that they thought I could warmed me right through.
“No problem,” Sean said, giving the chair a baffled look as he tried to get comfortable. “Keep you occupied.”
“We figured, if you actually were all right, you’d be bored off your tits,” Dec said.
“I am bored off my tits. Any news?”
“Oh yeah, there’s news,” Sean said, forgetting about the chair. “Guess what he’s gone and done”—jerking a thumb at Dec, who was managing a nice blend of sheepish, defensive and delighted with himself.
“You’re pregnant.”
“Ha ha.”
“Worse,” Sean said darkly.
“Oh Jesus,” I said, realization dawning. “You haven’t.”
“He fucking has.”
“Jenna?”
Dec had his arms folded and his chin out, and he had gone a fetching shade of pink. “I’m happy. Is that all right with you?”
“Dude,” I said. “Did you get hit on the head too? Remember what happened last time?”
Sean turned up his palms: Exactly. Dec and Jenna had gone out for less than a year, during which they had broken up like six times. The last time had been a dramafest of epic proportions involving Jenna showing up at Dec’s work four days running to beg him through sobs to try again, cutting the letters “FUCK YOU” into a T-shirt he’d left at her place and couriering him the remains, and shooting off furious incoherent wall-of-text messages to all his Facebook friends including his parents.
“That was last year. She was going through a lot. She’s sorted her head out now.”
“He’s going to wake up one morning with his dick in his mouth,” Sean said.
“He should be so lucky,” I said. “He’s going to wake up with a thing, a positive pregnancy test in his face.”
“Do I look thick? I use johnnies. Not that it’s any of your—”
“She’s not thick, either. All it takes is a pin and boom, who’s the daddy now?” I was loving this, every second of it. For the first time since that night I felt almost normal, I felt like an actual real person. I hadn’t realized just how rigid with tension my whole body was till some of it melted away, and the dissipation was so ecstatic that I could have laughed or cried or kissed them both.
“Fuck off,” Dec said, aiming a middle finger at each of us. “The pair of yous. I’m happy. If it all goes tits-up, then you can say I told you so—”
“We will,” Sean and I said, together.
“Be my guests. Until then, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all. And you”—me—“you need to be extra nice to me. Want to know why?”
“Don’t go changing the subject,” Sean said.
“You shut up. Here,” Dec said to me, leaning in, with one eye on the door and a grin lurking. “What meds are you on?”
“Why? You want some?” I tilted my IV bag invitingly in his direction.
“Ah, deadly. Just give us a quick sip.”
He pretended to reach for it; I swiped his hand away. “Fuck off. I’m not sharing.”
“Seriously. What’s in there?”
“Painkillers. The good stuff. Why?”
“See?” Sean said, to Dec. “Told you.”
“He didn’t say what kind of painkillers. It could be—”
“What are you on about?” I demanded.
Dec reached for his inside jacket pocket and, with that eye on the door again, produced a silver hip flask. “We brought you another present.”
“He brought you another present,” Sean told me. “I said he was a fucking eejit. Mix that with serious meds, you could kill yourself.”
“What’s in there?” I asked Dec.
“Macallan’s, is what’s in there. Sixteen years old. Cask strength. Only the finest for you, my son.”
“Sounds like the business,” I said, holding out my hand.
As soon as it came to crossing the line, of course, Dec looked taken aback. “You sure?”
“Jesus, dude, you’re the one who brought it. Or are you just, just prick-teasing?”
“I know, yeah. But would you not Google the meds first, see if—”
“What are you, my mum? Hand it over.”
He threw a dubious glance at the IV bag, like it was an untrustworthy dog that might go for my throat if it was disturbed, but he passed me the flask. “He’s right,” Sean told me. “For once. Google the interactions.”
I uncapped the flask and took a deep sniff. The whisky filled my nose, rich with raisins and nutmeg, with reckless late nights and helpless laughter, idiotic stunts and long earnest meandering conversations, everything that stuck up a middle finger in the face of this godawful place and all the last godawful week. “Oh yeah,” I said. “Dec, dude, you’re a genius.” I tipped my head back and took a huge swallow. It burned beautifully, generously, all the way down. “Hah!” I said, shaking my head.
The two of them were staring at me like I might spontaneously combust or fall over dead at any moment. “God,” I said, starting to laugh. “You should see your faces. I’m fine. Here—” I held out the flask. “You pair of pussies.”
Surprisingly it was Sean who, after a moment, let out a laugh and took the flask. “All right,” he said, raising it to me. “Here’s to living dangerously. A bit less dangerously from now on, yeah?”
“Whatever you say,” I said, still grinning, as he swigged. The booze had hit my system and whatever it was doing in there, it felt great.