"Kjaere" (Nick/Greg, 8/12)
Jun. 18th, 2008 12:42 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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nickngregTitle – Kjaere
Author -![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
black_dahlia63
Characters – Nick Stokes, Greg Sanders, various OC’s
Spoilers - Fannysmackin’
Rating – PG
Warning – Serious angst, but hey…people kind of expect that from me by now, right?
Disclaimer – not mine, don’t sue.
Thankyouz toelmyraemilie and bflyw for creative input and moral support.
AN: The story covers the time span of a year, and will update by one month each chapter.
Previous instalments here.
May 7th, 6.15 p.m – Ponce Inlet, Florida
“Do you need the flight numbers again?”
“No, I got all that in your email,” Luke said as he sat in a lounger on the balcony with his feet propped on the railing. “It’s stuck on my fridge - are you faxing me back the consent form?”
“You have to stop putting my kids on your show, you know,” the voice at the other end of the phone responded, and there was a gurgle of laughter that brought a smile to Luke’s face. “Do you have any idea how many calls we were getting from girls wanting to talk to Max the last time they were up there?”
“Wasn’t it about fifty?” Luke responded. “That’s what he told me.”
“It was more like fifteen,” his sister replied, and there was a distant “Mo-om!” at the other end of the line. “Max, go finish packing, okay?” and after a short silence she spoke again. “Seriously, Luke -”
“I won’t go over the top,” he said. “You know that, Faith, I’ll look after them like they were my own.”
“I know you will,” was the answer, delivered in a slightly softer tone. “You need some of your own, though – I mean it.”
“What do you want me to do? Fly out to Malawi and buy them?” but despite the jovial tone in which the words were delivered, there was a tightness in Luke’s chest, because he and his sister had had this conversation more times than he could remember. “That’s fine for some people, but -”
“Why couldn’t you adopt? Plenty of people do, people with a lot less money than you,” Faith told him. “I see how you are with my two, you’re so good with them -”
“I get to give them back, though,” he replied, shaking another Marlboro from the pack and pausing to light it. “I’d need someone with me if I had my own, because I’ve seen -” and he swallowed hard. “You can’t raise a kid on your own, sis.”
“Get someone with you, then,” was the uncompromising answer. “You know what I think about that, all those – pickups of yours -”
“Yeah, and I get to give them back too,” he told her. “Face it, I’m over forty now - I’m not going to change, am I?” and before he could continue speaking there was a shrill beeping at the other end of the line, which was quickly followed by a cry of, “Mom! Ben burnt a Pop Tart in the toaster!”
“Go on,” Luke told his sister. “Go sort those no-good boys of yours out.”
“Smartass,” was the affectionate response. “I’ll call you tomorrow once they’re on the plane – love you, baby brother.”
“Back atcha,” Luke said, and once he’d ended the call he swung his feet down to the floor; stubbing out his cigarette, he rose from the lounger and headed back indoors.
There was a wall in the living room that was almost full of framed newspaper clippings, magazine articles and photos. Some of the photos were black-and-white, slightly fading shots of family members who had died before Luke had gotten the chance to know them; there were pictures of his parents, pictures of two of his sisters and their children, scattered randomly among snapshots of Luke with the Hog Heaven team and with the various celebrities he’d encountered while filming Road Trip. He’d never been the type to fill albums with photos, but he liked this wall; he could look at it and track his entire life, from a grainy photo of a small boy to the man that boy had become.
Standing in front of the wall now, he shoved his hands in his pockets and studied the display for some time. Eventually, his eyes were drawn to a photo he had added five weeks previously; it had been one of a series he’d burned to a CD and given to Nick and Emily to take home with them, and for some reason he’d printed a copy of this picture and framed it.
It had been taken on the day when he’d brought Emily to the shop with him; she was sitting on an upturned packing crate, half her hair free of its ponytail, leaning forward with an intent expression on her face as she looked at something – and, from the heavily-tattooed forearm that appeared in one corner of the picture, Sol had been showing her whatever the something was.
Looking at this photo now, Luke thought about the phone call he’d received just over a month ago; he’d been stressed and tired after a week where he couldn’t remember sitting down for more than five minutes at a stretch, and when his cell had rung for what seemed like the thousandth time he’d barked, “What?” without looking at the number. A split second later, though, he’d seen Nick on the display, and an apologetic Southern accented voice had said sorry if it’s a bad time, but she wouldn’t get ready for bed until I let her call everyone and tell them - and then the little girl’s shrill voice had half-deafened him.
“Luke! Luke! Greg held my hand!”
There had been no more calls since then, but emails had gone back and forth between them on a regular basis – and the messages from Vegas had done nothing to bear out Luke’s hope that Nick’s little family would come out of this unscathed.
He looked at us today – really knew we were there.
Hardly any movement on his right side.
He keeps trying to speak, but he can’t manage more than one or two words I can understand.
Emily’s back to sleeping with me at night - and it had been this that had brought a lump to Luke’s throat, because he’d recalled an afternoon when he’d returned from the shop an hour earlier than planned. Nick and Emily had been down on the beach, unaware of his presence, and he’d watched from the balcony outside his room as Emily had shrieked and giggled when her father had chased her – and the cloud that had been lifted that afternoon was now wrapped round them like a blanket.
And no matter how much Luke might want to help them – as the unwelcome little voice kept reminding him – it wasn’t his business, but listening to the voice was becoming harder to do with every day that passed.
*************
Desert Palms – May 12th – 5.00 p.m
“Hi, G,” Nick said, leaning over the bed; brown eyes focused on him and he felt his stomach lurch, exactly the way it had done the first time he’d ever seen Greg at the lab. “How are you?” and when the confused expression in his lover’s eyes changed to one of alarm Nick felt something clutch painfully at his heart.
“No, you’re okay,” he said softly, placing a hand on the bedcovers and feeling Greg’s fingers clench tightly around it. “It’s Nick, you’re safe,” because the doctor had talked to him about the “constant need to re-orientate Mr. Sanders” - for Christ’s sake, Nick had wanted to tell the man, can’t you just say we’ll need to keep telling him the same thing over and over?, but he had managed to bite his tongue. “Look, I’ll show you the calendar,” and he stretched his free hand out towards the bedside table.
“See?” Nick said, holding the calendar in front of Greg; eleven days had been neatly crossed out, and the picture this month showed Emily as an infant - dressed in a tiger striped sleeper with a hat bearing a pair of pointed ears, nestled in the crook of Greg’s right arm. “It’s Thursday,” and he saw Greg’s eyes rivet themselves on the picture.
“Em.”
“She’s at Angie’s,” Nick said. “Remember? I have to go to work this evening, but I wanted to come and see you first,” and he set the calendar down before reaching into the Albertson’s carrier bag he had brought with him. “Look what I brought you,” he went on, managing to smile as he retrieved a small carton of ice cream – Haagen Dazs chocolate chocolate chip, which was one of the few things Greg would eat willingly. Initially, he’d refused to eat anything at all, but when the doctor had raised the spectre of the feeding tube being re-inserted into his stomach he had complied; and although he’d been unable to speak at all at this stage, the mutinous expression on his face when he’d seen the plastic cup of Jello the nurse had brought in had been enough for Nick to know that the stubbornness that had attracted him to Greg was still there.
“Shall I help you sit up so you can have some?” and when there was a mm in response Nick reached towards the button that was pressed to elevate the top half of the bed.
And sitting next to the bed, helping Greg to hold the spoon in his almost-useless right hand so that he could scoop ice cream into his mouth – all Nick could think of was an afternoon when they’d been supposed to be asleep following a shift and Emily was still at school, when Greg had brought a pint of ice cream back to the bedroom and they’d wound up feeding it to each other with their fingers. The ensuing lovemaking had lasted long enough for them to have to scramble madly for their clothes and pray they wouldn’t hit any red lights during the drive to collect their daughter – and the first thing Emily had said after racing to hug them both was, “How come you have ice cream in your hair, Greg?”
He knew what the specialists had told him – that recovery was a gradual process, that Greg might try to do things and find that his body wouldn’t co-operate – but the reality of seeing the expression in those brown eyes, only being able to guess at the frustration and anguish behind them, hurt even more than what had come in the months preceding this day. But Nick swallowed this pain, the way he’d swallowed everything else over the past six and a half months; as he sat next to the bed he kept up a soothing flow of chatter – about what Emily had done at school, about the impending visit of Greg’s parents – and all the while he was aware of Greg’s eyes devouring each word.
“Just remember one thing,” one of the nurses – a middle-aged woman with greying hair, who Nick had often seen buying coffee from the wagon outside the hospital – had said a week previously, when she’d come into the room just as Nick had been telling Greg for what felt like the hundredth time in a row that it was Tuesday morning. “All this is going to drive you nuts, but he’s still the guy you love,” and this thought was foremost in Nick’s mind as he set the empty carton down and gently plucked the spoon from Greg’s hand.
“Time for me to go, G,” he said, taking a Kleenex from the box on the table and wiping Greg’s mouth. “They’ll have my ass if I’m late.”
“Em.”
“I’ll bring her tomorrow after school,” Nick replied. “And we’ll bring some of your CDs in too, how about that?”
“Yeah,” Greg managed to say, flexing the fingers of his left hand – and, seeing this, Nick reached to grasp that hand between both of his own. “N -” His eyes darkened in frustration as his mouth worked silently – and although it broke Nick’s heart to do it, he sat in silence and held Greg’s hand while he waited for the word to emerge. “Nick -”
“Right here,” Nick said, his voice faltering, and he leaned forward to kiss the corner of Greg’s mouth. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love you, and I’ll see you tomorrow,” and he let his forehead rest against Greg’s for a moment or two before carefully disengaging his hands; and then, because he knew that the longer he stayed like this the harder it would be to leave, he straightened up and left the room without looking back.
************
May 20th, 8.25 p.m
“Would you like a drink, Martin?” Nick asked. “I have a few beers in the fridge.”
“Beer would be good, thank you.”
“Julie? Tea for you?”
“Thank you, Nick,” was the response, and Nick rose from his seat on the couch with a sense of foreboding lodged in his gut. The conversation that had flowed with its habitual ease during supper had flagged since Emily had finally been persuaded to go to bed – the deal cemented by her grandmother’s promise to read a chapter of Mormor og de åtte ungene i skogen - and for the last quarter of an hour the three of them had been reduced to stilted comments on the weather and how work was going.
Something’s up, he told himself as he set about boiling water and getting two beers from the fridge. He set these on a tray, along with a cup and saucer and the honey he knew Julie liked in her tea – and once he had thrown two teabags into the teapot and poured boiling water on top of them, he carried the tray back into the living room.
“Listen, whatever’s on your mind, I think we should talk about it,” Nick said once the drinks had been dispensed, and when he saw Greg’s parents exchange glances his heart sank. “You’ve hardly said a word since Emily went to sleep, so I know something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong, Nick,” Julie said, setting her cup and saucer down on the coffee table. “We just – well, we were wondering whether you’ve managed to get anywhere with the insurance company about rehab facilities yet.”
“Oh, don’t start me,” Nick said, almost managing to smile. “The places they will pay the full cost of I wouldn’t put my dog in, and the good ones…”
“What do you think about this?” Greg’s father asked. “Julie heard about it from some friends of ours - their daughter-in-law works there,” and a slim folder appeared in his hand as if by magic before he held it out to Nick. “They have apartments for the patients, they’d send someone here to evaluate Greg -”
“Hold on,” Nick said, and his chest was squeezed so tight that for a second or two he found it hard to breathe. “Hold on a second,” and as he looked at the glossy cover of the folder everything on it seemed to blur except for two words.
Encino, CA.
**********
10.45 p.m
He lay in bed, and although he’d just worked a week of nights Nick was unable to sleep – because what had happened earlier that evening would not leave his mind, and try as he might he couldn’t close his eyes and forget it.
He’d sat on the couch, trying to tell himself that he wasn’t hearing what he thought he was hearing; but he’d soon realised that he was, and disbelief had rapidly turned to anger.
They want to take him away.
They knew he was doing the best he could, that’s what they’d told Nick as his beer sat forgotten on the coffee table in front of him – but they knew how hard it must be, what with Emily and work and all, and why didn’t he just think about this? That was all they wanted him to do, think about it. Martin had shares in his business that he could sell, so funding care wasn’t going to be a problem; and Julie was home all the time, she could be with Greg as much as he needed her…
“What about us?” Nick had said, pitching the words at a low hiss because his daughter was sleeping just down the hall and didn’t need to wake up and hear this. “When would we be with Greg? Every other week or so, when I have more than one day off in a row and we can drive four hours each way? Or do you want to take Emily as well?” he’d continued. “Don’t you think I’m doing a good enough job with her either?” This had been when Greg’s mother had begun to cry, and although this had made Nick feel like a complete asshole he’d kept going – because all he could think of was the way that brochure had just jumped into Martin’s hand, and it seemed that Greg’s parents had been doing a hell of a lot more than just thinking about this.
“I didn’t do this to him,” he’d said, tears smarting behind his eyes, but damn it he was not going to cry now. “Those kids did it, none of this is my fault, and you’re not splitting my family up,” and before either of Greg’s parents could say anything Nick had asked them to leave. He’d sat frozen on the couch, watching them collect their coats, and once the apartment door had closed he’d fastened the chain and the deadbolt before turning off the light and walking down the hallway – and now he lay in bed, staring into the darkness, and when his cell rang in the pocket of his jeans a few yards away he ignored it the way he’d ignored the phone ringing in the kitchen as he’d turned the light off half an hour previously.
The bedroom door creaked open, sending a thin sliver of light into the room, and Nick pushed himself up on one elbow as a small figure approached the bed.
“What is it, sweetheart? Couldn’t you sleep?” and Emily shook her head. “Come on up here, then,” and Nick lay back down as his daughter climbed up onto the empty side of the bed. She curled up against his side as he put an arm round her, and within minutes she was asleep – but Nick continued to stare up at the ceiling, and it was a long time before he allowed his eyes to close.
To be continued
Author -
black_dahlia63Characters – Nick Stokes, Greg Sanders, various OC’s
Spoilers - Fannysmackin’
Rating – PG
Warning – Serious angst, but hey…people kind of expect that from me by now, right?
Disclaimer – not mine, don’t sue.
Thankyouz to
elmyraemilie and bflyw for creative input and moral support.AN: The story covers the time span of a year, and will update by one month each chapter.
Previous instalments here.
May 7th, 6.15 p.m – Ponce Inlet, Florida
“Do you need the flight numbers again?”
“No, I got all that in your email,” Luke said as he sat in a lounger on the balcony with his feet propped on the railing. “It’s stuck on my fridge - are you faxing me back the consent form?”
“You have to stop putting my kids on your show, you know,” the voice at the other end of the phone responded, and there was a gurgle of laughter that brought a smile to Luke’s face. “Do you have any idea how many calls we were getting from girls wanting to talk to Max the last time they were up there?”
“Wasn’t it about fifty?” Luke responded. “That’s what he told me.”
“It was more like fifteen,” his sister replied, and there was a distant “Mo-om!” at the other end of the line. “Max, go finish packing, okay?” and after a short silence she spoke again. “Seriously, Luke -”
“I won’t go over the top,” he said. “You know that, Faith, I’ll look after them like they were my own.”
“I know you will,” was the answer, delivered in a slightly softer tone. “You need some of your own, though – I mean it.”
“What do you want me to do? Fly out to Malawi and buy them?” but despite the jovial tone in which the words were delivered, there was a tightness in Luke’s chest, because he and his sister had had this conversation more times than he could remember. “That’s fine for some people, but -”
“Why couldn’t you adopt? Plenty of people do, people with a lot less money than you,” Faith told him. “I see how you are with my two, you’re so good with them -”
“I get to give them back, though,” he replied, shaking another Marlboro from the pack and pausing to light it. “I’d need someone with me if I had my own, because I’ve seen -” and he swallowed hard. “You can’t raise a kid on your own, sis.”
“Get someone with you, then,” was the uncompromising answer. “You know what I think about that, all those – pickups of yours -”
“Yeah, and I get to give them back too,” he told her. “Face it, I’m over forty now - I’m not going to change, am I?” and before he could continue speaking there was a shrill beeping at the other end of the line, which was quickly followed by a cry of, “Mom! Ben burnt a Pop Tart in the toaster!”
“Go on,” Luke told his sister. “Go sort those no-good boys of yours out.”
“Smartass,” was the affectionate response. “I’ll call you tomorrow once they’re on the plane – love you, baby brother.”
“Back atcha,” Luke said, and once he’d ended the call he swung his feet down to the floor; stubbing out his cigarette, he rose from the lounger and headed back indoors.
There was a wall in the living room that was almost full of framed newspaper clippings, magazine articles and photos. Some of the photos were black-and-white, slightly fading shots of family members who had died before Luke had gotten the chance to know them; there were pictures of his parents, pictures of two of his sisters and their children, scattered randomly among snapshots of Luke with the Hog Heaven team and with the various celebrities he’d encountered while filming Road Trip. He’d never been the type to fill albums with photos, but he liked this wall; he could look at it and track his entire life, from a grainy photo of a small boy to the man that boy had become.
Standing in front of the wall now, he shoved his hands in his pockets and studied the display for some time. Eventually, his eyes were drawn to a photo he had added five weeks previously; it had been one of a series he’d burned to a CD and given to Nick and Emily to take home with them, and for some reason he’d printed a copy of this picture and framed it.
It had been taken on the day when he’d brought Emily to the shop with him; she was sitting on an upturned packing crate, half her hair free of its ponytail, leaning forward with an intent expression on her face as she looked at something – and, from the heavily-tattooed forearm that appeared in one corner of the picture, Sol had been showing her whatever the something was.
Looking at this photo now, Luke thought about the phone call he’d received just over a month ago; he’d been stressed and tired after a week where he couldn’t remember sitting down for more than five minutes at a stretch, and when his cell had rung for what seemed like the thousandth time he’d barked, “What?” without looking at the number. A split second later, though, he’d seen Nick on the display, and an apologetic Southern accented voice had said sorry if it’s a bad time, but she wouldn’t get ready for bed until I let her call everyone and tell them - and then the little girl’s shrill voice had half-deafened him.
“Luke! Luke! Greg held my hand!”
There had been no more calls since then, but emails had gone back and forth between them on a regular basis – and the messages from Vegas had done nothing to bear out Luke’s hope that Nick’s little family would come out of this unscathed.
He looked at us today – really knew we were there.
Hardly any movement on his right side.
He keeps trying to speak, but he can’t manage more than one or two words I can understand.
Emily’s back to sleeping with me at night - and it had been this that had brought a lump to Luke’s throat, because he’d recalled an afternoon when he’d returned from the shop an hour earlier than planned. Nick and Emily had been down on the beach, unaware of his presence, and he’d watched from the balcony outside his room as Emily had shrieked and giggled when her father had chased her – and the cloud that had been lifted that afternoon was now wrapped round them like a blanket.
And no matter how much Luke might want to help them – as the unwelcome little voice kept reminding him – it wasn’t his business, but listening to the voice was becoming harder to do with every day that passed.
*************
Desert Palms – May 12th – 5.00 p.m
“Hi, G,” Nick said, leaning over the bed; brown eyes focused on him and he felt his stomach lurch, exactly the way it had done the first time he’d ever seen Greg at the lab. “How are you?” and when the confused expression in his lover’s eyes changed to one of alarm Nick felt something clutch painfully at his heart.
“No, you’re okay,” he said softly, placing a hand on the bedcovers and feeling Greg’s fingers clench tightly around it. “It’s Nick, you’re safe,” because the doctor had talked to him about the “constant need to re-orientate Mr. Sanders” - for Christ’s sake, Nick had wanted to tell the man, can’t you just say we’ll need to keep telling him the same thing over and over?, but he had managed to bite his tongue. “Look, I’ll show you the calendar,” and he stretched his free hand out towards the bedside table.
“See?” Nick said, holding the calendar in front of Greg; eleven days had been neatly crossed out, and the picture this month showed Emily as an infant - dressed in a tiger striped sleeper with a hat bearing a pair of pointed ears, nestled in the crook of Greg’s right arm. “It’s Thursday,” and he saw Greg’s eyes rivet themselves on the picture.
“Em.”
“She’s at Angie’s,” Nick said. “Remember? I have to go to work this evening, but I wanted to come and see you first,” and he set the calendar down before reaching into the Albertson’s carrier bag he had brought with him. “Look what I brought you,” he went on, managing to smile as he retrieved a small carton of ice cream – Haagen Dazs chocolate chocolate chip, which was one of the few things Greg would eat willingly. Initially, he’d refused to eat anything at all, but when the doctor had raised the spectre of the feeding tube being re-inserted into his stomach he had complied; and although he’d been unable to speak at all at this stage, the mutinous expression on his face when he’d seen the plastic cup of Jello the nurse had brought in had been enough for Nick to know that the stubbornness that had attracted him to Greg was still there.
“Shall I help you sit up so you can have some?” and when there was a mm in response Nick reached towards the button that was pressed to elevate the top half of the bed.
And sitting next to the bed, helping Greg to hold the spoon in his almost-useless right hand so that he could scoop ice cream into his mouth – all Nick could think of was an afternoon when they’d been supposed to be asleep following a shift and Emily was still at school, when Greg had brought a pint of ice cream back to the bedroom and they’d wound up feeding it to each other with their fingers. The ensuing lovemaking had lasted long enough for them to have to scramble madly for their clothes and pray they wouldn’t hit any red lights during the drive to collect their daughter – and the first thing Emily had said after racing to hug them both was, “How come you have ice cream in your hair, Greg?”
He knew what the specialists had told him – that recovery was a gradual process, that Greg might try to do things and find that his body wouldn’t co-operate – but the reality of seeing the expression in those brown eyes, only being able to guess at the frustration and anguish behind them, hurt even more than what had come in the months preceding this day. But Nick swallowed this pain, the way he’d swallowed everything else over the past six and a half months; as he sat next to the bed he kept up a soothing flow of chatter – about what Emily had done at school, about the impending visit of Greg’s parents – and all the while he was aware of Greg’s eyes devouring each word.
“Just remember one thing,” one of the nurses – a middle-aged woman with greying hair, who Nick had often seen buying coffee from the wagon outside the hospital – had said a week previously, when she’d come into the room just as Nick had been telling Greg for what felt like the hundredth time in a row that it was Tuesday morning. “All this is going to drive you nuts, but he’s still the guy you love,” and this thought was foremost in Nick’s mind as he set the empty carton down and gently plucked the spoon from Greg’s hand.
“Time for me to go, G,” he said, taking a Kleenex from the box on the table and wiping Greg’s mouth. “They’ll have my ass if I’m late.”
“Em.”
“I’ll bring her tomorrow after school,” Nick replied. “And we’ll bring some of your CDs in too, how about that?”
“Yeah,” Greg managed to say, flexing the fingers of his left hand – and, seeing this, Nick reached to grasp that hand between both of his own. “N -” His eyes darkened in frustration as his mouth worked silently – and although it broke Nick’s heart to do it, he sat in silence and held Greg’s hand while he waited for the word to emerge. “Nick -”
“Right here,” Nick said, his voice faltering, and he leaned forward to kiss the corner of Greg’s mouth. “I love you,” he whispered. “I love you, and I’ll see you tomorrow,” and he let his forehead rest against Greg’s for a moment or two before carefully disengaging his hands; and then, because he knew that the longer he stayed like this the harder it would be to leave, he straightened up and left the room without looking back.
************
May 20th, 8.25 p.m
“Would you like a drink, Martin?” Nick asked. “I have a few beers in the fridge.”
“Beer would be good, thank you.”
“Julie? Tea for you?”
“Thank you, Nick,” was the response, and Nick rose from his seat on the couch with a sense of foreboding lodged in his gut. The conversation that had flowed with its habitual ease during supper had flagged since Emily had finally been persuaded to go to bed – the deal cemented by her grandmother’s promise to read a chapter of Mormor og de åtte ungene i skogen - and for the last quarter of an hour the three of them had been reduced to stilted comments on the weather and how work was going.
Something’s up, he told himself as he set about boiling water and getting two beers from the fridge. He set these on a tray, along with a cup and saucer and the honey he knew Julie liked in her tea – and once he had thrown two teabags into the teapot and poured boiling water on top of them, he carried the tray back into the living room.
“Listen, whatever’s on your mind, I think we should talk about it,” Nick said once the drinks had been dispensed, and when he saw Greg’s parents exchange glances his heart sank. “You’ve hardly said a word since Emily went to sleep, so I know something’s wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong, Nick,” Julie said, setting her cup and saucer down on the coffee table. “We just – well, we were wondering whether you’ve managed to get anywhere with the insurance company about rehab facilities yet.”
“Oh, don’t start me,” Nick said, almost managing to smile. “The places they will pay the full cost of I wouldn’t put my dog in, and the good ones…”
“What do you think about this?” Greg’s father asked. “Julie heard about it from some friends of ours - their daughter-in-law works there,” and a slim folder appeared in his hand as if by magic before he held it out to Nick. “They have apartments for the patients, they’d send someone here to evaluate Greg -”
“Hold on,” Nick said, and his chest was squeezed so tight that for a second or two he found it hard to breathe. “Hold on a second,” and as he looked at the glossy cover of the folder everything on it seemed to blur except for two words.
Encino, CA.
**********
10.45 p.m
He lay in bed, and although he’d just worked a week of nights Nick was unable to sleep – because what had happened earlier that evening would not leave his mind, and try as he might he couldn’t close his eyes and forget it.
He’d sat on the couch, trying to tell himself that he wasn’t hearing what he thought he was hearing; but he’d soon realised that he was, and disbelief had rapidly turned to anger.
They want to take him away.
They knew he was doing the best he could, that’s what they’d told Nick as his beer sat forgotten on the coffee table in front of him – but they knew how hard it must be, what with Emily and work and all, and why didn’t he just think about this? That was all they wanted him to do, think about it. Martin had shares in his business that he could sell, so funding care wasn’t going to be a problem; and Julie was home all the time, she could be with Greg as much as he needed her…
“What about us?” Nick had said, pitching the words at a low hiss because his daughter was sleeping just down the hall and didn’t need to wake up and hear this. “When would we be with Greg? Every other week or so, when I have more than one day off in a row and we can drive four hours each way? Or do you want to take Emily as well?” he’d continued. “Don’t you think I’m doing a good enough job with her either?” This had been when Greg’s mother had begun to cry, and although this had made Nick feel like a complete asshole he’d kept going – because all he could think of was the way that brochure had just jumped into Martin’s hand, and it seemed that Greg’s parents had been doing a hell of a lot more than just thinking about this.
“I didn’t do this to him,” he’d said, tears smarting behind his eyes, but damn it he was not going to cry now. “Those kids did it, none of this is my fault, and you’re not splitting my family up,” and before either of Greg’s parents could say anything Nick had asked them to leave. He’d sat frozen on the couch, watching them collect their coats, and once the apartment door had closed he’d fastened the chain and the deadbolt before turning off the light and walking down the hallway – and now he lay in bed, staring into the darkness, and when his cell rang in the pocket of his jeans a few yards away he ignored it the way he’d ignored the phone ringing in the kitchen as he’d turned the light off half an hour previously.
The bedroom door creaked open, sending a thin sliver of light into the room, and Nick pushed himself up on one elbow as a small figure approached the bed.
“What is it, sweetheart? Couldn’t you sleep?” and Emily shook her head. “Come on up here, then,” and Nick lay back down as his daughter climbed up onto the empty side of the bed. She curled up against his side as he put an arm round her, and within minutes she was asleep – but Nick continued to stare up at the ceiling, and it was a long time before he allowed his eyes to close.
To be continued
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Date: 2008-06-18 12:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 01:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-18 03:28 pm (UTC)I feel so sad for Greg, because you know he wants to talk his heart out about the wild coma dreams he had (I don't know if you can dream while in a coma...but whatever) and he can't speak very well. A non-talking Greg? I don't think so.
Great chapter, can't wait for more :)
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Date: 2008-06-18 03:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 07:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-19 07:58 pm (UTC)