Howard still can't remember everything. There's whole days and the odd week that he can't remember anything from, like when he supposedly went to Italy and accidently started a fight with someone in an ice cream parlour. There's photo's to prove it, pinned up around the bed – not the fight, obviously – but the trip itself. On one of them he's stood with Vince, silhouetted against the pink-orange of the sunset and they're kissing. But he can't remember it. The realisation that you can have gaping holes in your mind yet feel such deep rooted love for someone makes him ache in a way he cannot describe.
He still knows details too, in an odd, mechanical fashion. House addresses, phone numbers, birthdays, and what night to put the bins out. Everything else though, is patchy and wounded, strung together by random flashes of crystal-clear mundane activities. His life is nothing more than a jumbled mess.
He walks out of the hospital as soon as the coast is clear. Visiting hours, if the smeared black and white signs are to be believed, ended four hours ago. As he paces towards the exit on sleep-wasted legs there is a sick spasm of pain that makes him look beneath his crumpled shirt. A small scar, barely healed, zigzags across his ribcage. A worried looking student nurse shuffles over to him, seeing his confusion, and tucks a strand of bleached hair behind her ear. She looks impish, for all her beauty.
Vince'd like her. Howard thinks awkwardly.
"Excuse me, are you alright sir?" She says in a hushed whisper, so as not to disturb the sickly child balanced on her skinny hip.
"Huh? Oh, I'm fine! Just tired - I'm on my way home." Home. Something stirs in his stomach, not dissimilar to butterflies. The apprehension is driven away by the excitement of being able to go back to how it all was before the crash, which he remembers very little of. "Can you tell me where the pick up point is, for the taxis?"
"Of course sir. Go out the main doors, and turn to the left. There's a pay phone too." The nurse smiles sympathetically and wanders off into another corridor.
Outside, the winter air burns Howard's lungs, after over a month of having his oxygen piped in for him. The taxi booth is deserted, and the payphone has no receiver, the cord hanging down forlornly. He climbs in the first car that turns up, and doesn't look out the window until he sees a familiar flat looming up, and an even more familiar barely-there light coming from the bathroom.
Okay, okay. Its probably awful and horrid and blah. And I know its a cliff hanger, but I promise, if I get any reviews, I will update TONIGHT.
Tara
xx
