OUT

Chapter 51

Friday, April 10th 2015

'Guys, he's up!' gasped Millie, turning to Sissy and Ciarán who were both slumped in chairs at the end of his bed fast asleep. Ciarán jumped up suddenly, and Sissy slowly stirred awake.

'Oh Jack, darling,' said Sissy. He was lying in a hospital bed. Sissy had sat on the end of it at his feet, and Millie and Ciarán stood beside her. The trio glanced down at him sadly. Millie's eyes were red, like she had been crying. 'What were you thinking?' Sissy said, her voice choking in her throat, 'what were you thinking?

Jack couldn't speak. The realisation of what had happened hit him like a train, and he began to cry. The second he had felt his legs shaking beneath him as he fell to the floor, he knew it was a mistake. He had watched his life flash before him, and realised what he had almost lost.

'I don't know,' he said, through tears, and then he fully broke down, 'I don't know.' The three of them pulled him into an embrace, and he felt their warmth around him as he cried, and cried, and cried. His body convulsed as his panting became erratic and visceral. He felt as though he was having a panic attack. 'I don't know,' he said again, 'I don't know. I don't know-'

'Hush, Jack,' said Sissy, pulling him tighter, 'hush.'

Time seemed to both speed up and slow down simultaneously. There was no clock on the wall, and he didn't have his phone, so he had no idea how much time had passed, but the crying had exhausted him so much that he almost felt light-headed.

'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry,' he said eventually, after what must have been thirty minutes of crying, 'I just...my family...I...'

'We're your family, Jack,' said Millie.

Sissy nodded, 'the beautiful thing about the gay community is we get to have a second family, our chosen family.'

He tried to right himself in the bed and felt a twinge in his left arm. There was a big gash on it that had been stitched up. He vaguely remembered falling in broken glass and smashing his face - which too was throbbing.

'Mark is here,' said Millie, glancing down at her phone.

'You two go off and find him and get us some snacks maybe? I'll stay here with the patient,' Sissy instructed, and the pair left them alone.

'Jack, what were you thinking? You can trust me, there's nothing I haven't heard before.'

'I have HIV.'

The words left his mouth before he could reconsider. There was something very comforting about Sissy. He did believe her. There probably was very little that shocked her.

'Oh honey,' she said, stroking his hand with her thumb. They sat in silence for a few moments as he stared at a spot on the floor. 'There's a lot I want to talk to you about, but that's for another time. I've HIV too, and I got it back when it was practically a death sentence. I lost so many friends to it. But it's not like that anymore, Jack. Things are so different now. I won't tell anyone, but trust me, everything is going to be fine. I'll handle it.'

'My family is going to disown me. Being gay is one thing, but to have this disease...'

'We're your family now. And I promise you, we will never desert you.'

She pulled him into her chest again for a tight hug as tears brimmed in his eyes.

'Jack!' said a panicked voice as Mark entered the hospital room and flung himself onto his bed, wrapping him into a hug and not letting go.

'I'm sorry, Mark.'

'Don't be sorry, Jack, I'm sorry,' he said, kissing him on the forehead and wrapping his arms even tighter around him - he too was crying.

'We'll give you two a minute,' said Sissy, and took the other two out of the room.

Ciarán left three bottles of water, a can of Coke Zero, and three KitKats on the table, and then Sissy shut the door behind the three of them. For a few minutes, neither he nor Mark spoke. They just said in silence, wrapped in a hug, and they wept.

'I love you, Jack. I love you so much, and if you ever do anything like that again, I'll fucking kill you,' he said through teary eyes.

'I won't.'

'You're like a brother to me. You are a brother to me. To think I could've lost you...I...I don't know how I could've coped. You're my best friend. I told you you could talk to me about anything. Ever. No matter where in the world you are. No matter what time of the day it is. Promise me you'll never try anything like that again.'

'I won't.'

'Promise me. Promise me!' he was shouting through his tears now.

'I promise.'

Mark lay beside him in the hospital bed and spooned him, pinning Jack to the bed with his arm not unlike how he and Paul had slept in bed together - although there was nothing sexual about it. It was purely platonic, human to human connection. He wrapped his arms around Mark's, and allowed the bed to swallow him whole.