Started With a Tube

Started With a Tube - Chapter 18

Started With a Tube - Chapter 18

"Let's go for a walk," he suggests and I send him a mock-bored look.

"Good one, Alec," I say sarcastically. "If you said a crawl then maybe I'd be more up for it."

"You know what I mean," he grins, his perfect teeth glinting. "I'll walk, you sit and I'll push."

"Better," I reply and so he wheels me out of the kid's room and into the hallway. There are doctors and nurses walking around with papers and cups of coffee, rushing into rooms and into offices.

"How's physio going?" he asks as we make our way to the swinging double doors.

"It's alright," I shrug. "I mean, it's helping a little but the progress is so slow."

"Yeah, I get what you mean."

"How are the lungs holding up?"

"They're grand," he says although I hear him cover up a small cough. He looks rough though, his skin pasty, covered with a sheen of sweat. I don't mention it though, you don't tend to mention the fact that someone's dying.

"When are they keeping you till?" I ask.

"Indefinitely," is his reply.

"Ouch, that sucks," I sympathize.

"Not for you, Kitty Cat, you know why?"

"Why?" I grin.

"Because it means you get to spend so much more time with me."

"Oh joys," I joke.

"Don't even act like you don't love my company," he says and I have to give him that. I do enjoy his company, a whole lot in fact. It just sucks that we met in a hospital. A bit of a bittersweet arrangement, but there you go. You can't have everything.

The weather outside is cold, as it's January, a frost of white covering the ground. "Did it snow?"

"Yeah, a little while ago," he says. "I think it must have been when you were, y'know."

"Unconscious," I finish for him. They kept me in a sort-of-coma for a while so that my body could recover from the trauma. "I can't believe I missed the snow though, that kind of sucks. We were going to go sledging when it fell, but never got a chance."

"Who were?" Alec asks and I remain quiet.

"What?"

"You said 'we were going to go sledging'," he says. "Who's we?"

"Me and... me and, um, I don't know," I say, searching my brain for who I was talking about. "I don't remember."

"It's okay," he says. "Don't worry that little head of yours, Cat, it's totally fine if you can't remember things." His voice always changes when my memory is brought up. I don't know why, but I'm assuming it's just because it's not exactly a nice thing to talk about. Amnesia isn't fun.

"Anyway, what's been going on with you since I last saw you?" I ask as we make our way into the gardens of the hospital. It's pretty cold, so I wrap my blanket around myself a little tighter. When we reach a bench, we stop. Alec positions me beside the seat at an angle so that when he sits down, we can still talk.

"Right, so what have I been doing since I last saw you?" Alec says, pretending to think. "When was that again? Last night?"

"Shut up," I laugh, slapping him on the arm. "You know what I mean."

"Right, so this morning I had toast and water for breakfast, but the nurse didn't put enough butter on it so I had the dilemma of asking for either more butter or more water, because the nurse was really stingy," he says, all with a grin.