You're Every Breath I Take
"Not back with us then?"
"Nope, they've started weaning him so, maybe tomorrow?"
"He'll be fine, me Nan always says the devil looks after his own"
"You're all heart you, aren't you?"
"You noticed"
Charles could feel hands touching him and moving him gently and he could hear voices and someone laughing a short quiet laugh from a very long way away almost as if people were talking about him from the bottom of some weirdly echoing swimming pool somewhere. He was sure he recognised one of the voices although he didn't know where from or who it was, he just knew he'd heard the voice before somewhere just like he knew they were talking about him but couldn't work out what they were saying. He wished more than anything that they would just stop, would shut up because it was making him feel very peculiar and disorientated. No matter how hard he tried he couldn't open his eyes even though he knew he was awake, but his eyes obviously didn't believe him and his whole body was incredibly heavy as though both his arms and his legs weighed a ton so it was impossible for him to move.
He had no idea where he was or how long he'd been there but he did know he was ill because he'd been having horribly vivid dreams, the sort of dreams you get when you've got the flu or something, so that he'd heard Rebecca's voice which in itself was impossible. Rebecca was long gone from his life, in fact their divorce had been final before he'd come on this tour and what the hell would Rebecca be doing here anyway? The same went for his mother, why would she be on some FOB in Afghan? But he could have sworn that he'd heard her voice as well.
There had been times when he'd had this white hot pain, pain that meant that he couldn't even breathe properly, pain that was far, far worse than anything he could ever remember having before, bouts of agony in his stomach and his leg, until someone said something from a long way away, and then someone else did something, he didn't know what or care who, because then there was this glorious dark oblivion where the pain gave way and the dreams disappeared.
-OG-
"Hullo Charles, no, don't try to move just keep nice and still and you'll be fine in a moment"
The very heavily accented man's voice was the first thing he heard when someone put a hand on his shoulder to stop him from obeying his first instinct which was to sit up. It was broad daylight when he finally managed to force his eyelids open enough to see anything at all and he wanted to look around and to move his head from side to side so that he could see where he was, but he was flat on his back in bed in a small light, bright room surrounded by faces he didn't recognise peering down at him and there were machines beeping with coloured numbers and moving lines on screens and tubes and wires and clips on just about every bit of him as far as he could tell, even tubes up his nose which were stuck to his face with something. Bastion? Was this Bastion? Was he in hospital at Bastion? Why? What the fuck had happened? There were a million questions he needed answers to but he hadn't got the energy to start asking as his eyelids began to droop closed again, he was just totally exhausted.
"Hello darling"
When he woke again his mother was sitting next to his bed holding his hand so that he was pretty sure he wasn't in hospital at Bastion after all. No matter how ill he was or how long he'd been there, there was no way the army would have arranged for his mother to come out from home to be with him.
"Hello, what are you doing here Mum? And where the fuck is here anyway?"
His mouth was very dry and his voice sounded incredibly croaky and strange even to him, so much so that he wasn't sure if she'd understood what he'd said as he saw her eyes well up with tears and she patted his hand.
"Don't swear, darling, you know I don't like it"
Her admonishment was curiously comforting because it was a taste of the normality which was missing at that moment. Apparently here was the MDHU at Frimley Park Hospital because as far as his mother had been told, he'd been leading a mission somewhere in Afghan and it had gone very badly wrong so that he'd been shot then re-patriated fourteen day ago, but he couldn't remember any of it, none of it at all, a great big chunk of his memory was missing which was a frightening sensation in itself. He'd been kept sedated to stop him thrashing about because things had been a bit tricky with his stomach wound, they'd been pretty pessimistic about his long-term prospects apparently. She kept on reassuring him that he'd been the only casualty, that no-one else had been injured, well, apart from one of the men getting a very minor flesh wound from a ricochet bullet, and that he had to stop worrying about anything else and concentrate on getting better himself.
He hadn't been dreaming when he'd thought he could hear Rebecca, she was apparently still on his records as NOK because he hadn't got around to changing it, he'd been putting it off because it made everything feel so bloody final, but it meant that she'd been the first person to be notified that he was in trouble and on his way home. Apparently she'd spent hours sitting by his bedside while it was touch and go, so much so that his mother was wondering if there was a chance that they might get back together.
"I don't know, I don't think … well" He paused "I don't know, Mum, can't think about that right now, was Sam here as well? I don't remember hearing him"
"No, it's not a suitable place for a little boy"
"No, suppose not, I'd love to see him though"
"Of course, now you're back with us, just give it a couple of days till you're more yourself, we don't want to worry him, do we?" She patted his hand again trying to be as reassuring as she could, she still thought he looked terrible, but everyone kept telling her that he was on the mend so she was trying very hard to believe them. Her unrelenting paralysing fear had meant that she hadn't eaten or slept properly since that first phone call from Rebecca.
He didn't know whether this sudden desire to consider re-kindling his old life with Rebecca was real or not or whether it was because the thought of going back to 'normal' was so comforting that it made it seem an attractive option, if option it was, but at that moment he was far too tired to think it through, he needed to sleep.
-OG-
"Hello, awake I see, you okay?"
When he woke again he found his mother had vanished and that the lights were all on, so it was obviously night and there was some girl in scrubs checking his tubes and drains then writing on the chart which was sitting on a table where he couldn't get at it even if he could sit up properly, which he couldn't.
"Are you thirsty, would you like some lemonade?"
"I'd love some" His voice was still the same croaky rasp it had been when he'd been talking to his mother or trying to.
"Just little sips, or you'll throw up and if you bust them stitches I'll be in real trouble"
"Okay" It was the voice that he'd thought he'd recognised the evening before when he couldn't quite wake up. She slid her arm under his head and held it so that he could take sips from a straw bent into a beaker and even those tiny sips tasted like some kind of nectar "Thank you, do I know you, have we met before somewhere?"
"Nah, not really, hello Captain James, I'm Molly and I'm a student, I'm one of the people that's been looking after you when you was out of it" she smiled and hesitated "You probably recognise me from then even if it felt like you was dreaming at the time" She paused "That'd be the morphine, bloody magic if you've got a pain, but it does make you feel, you know, a bit weird sometimes, a bit out of it and you was having quite a lot of it" She laughed then relented slightly at the frown on his face as he struggled with his memory "And, well, actually we might of met once before, a long time ago"
Molly had recognised him the minute he'd been admitted, with looks like his he was hard to forget and it had taken her a very long time to put the memory of that particular evening out of her head, especially as she'd ended up wishing she was dead because she'd spent the night puking for England and had had the worst hangover in the world next day. She'd decided not to say anything to anyone about maybe recognising him, after all it wasn't as though she knew him and there was a good chance he wouldn't know her from Adam. He belonged to the past, to a part of her life that she'd done her best to forget and she had no wish now to re-live the humiliation.
"Remind me"
"Nah, not important, now can I get you anything before I go, are you comfortable?"
She smiled to show she wasn't being shitty or trying to get away from him or anything, although in reality that was exactly what she was trying to do, she didn't want to talk to him in case his memory kicked in, but it was her smile that triggered the recognition. Okay she looked very different with all that long hair tied neatly back in a plait thing on the back of her head and she was wearing green scrubs, the shapeless things that all the medical staff wore, and she was stone cold sober, but surely it was the same girl unless there was someone else around with an identical smile and eyes that had haunted him for weeks, the girl with the Bambi eyes …. he was bloody sure it was her.
"I've got a feeling that I owe you an apology for something, but I …." There was a long pause as he struggled to remember "I thought you worked in a supermarket"
Shit, he'd obviously got a good memory and that's what she'd been afraid of, that he would remember her "Did you? Oh bugger, I mean bother, that's me busted then, innit? Well … I moonlight as a nurse sometimes" She caught sight of his face and wondered if he'd taken her seriously, her sense of humour was always getting her into hot water and he didn't know her "Nah, look don't worry about it, I did moonlight in a supermarket for a bit when I needed a lot of money" She smiled, not wanting to explain any further than that but hoping he wouldn't think she'd meant she needed it for drugs or something "Now, are you comfortable, do you need anything?"
She'd dealt with his catheter and tubes and had done his dressings and had done it all without any reaction at all, she'd just kept completely cool and calm and professional, detached somehow, but that didn't stop him feeling deeply uncomfortable. He ignored her question about whether or not he wanted anything, he would only be comfortable again when he was allowed to sit up properly, not just be propped up a bit, and was allowed to get up and use the loo and have a shower, when he could get rid of all the tubes and monitors and could eat a proper meal, none of which was going to happen in the next few minutes or hours.
After she left he started dredging his memory trying to recall details of that long ago evening in a nightclub, it was more than a year ago now. He remembered having difficulty sleeping afterwards which had left him edgy and dissatisfied with himself, he'd hated the emptiness of the house but what was worse was that he'd hated his gut feeling that he'd behaved as badly as any of the rest of them.
He would have loved to have gone and found her to tell her he was sorry for what he'd said and for the way he'd acted, that it was him not her, but he hadn't even known her name, which made it bloody difficult to say the least, he couldn't just walk into every supermarket he could find and ask if there was a girl working there who was small and pretty with long dark hair and eyes like Bambi. The only way would be to ask Paul Walker which wasn't going to happen, or to ask his mum to pump Paul's mother for information, and that wasn't going to happen either.
After a while he'd got involved with the horrible realities of getting a divorce, of dividing their lives and making arrangements for Sam so that the memories of the encounter in the nightclub had faded and didn't matter anymore. Eventually of course there was the blessed relief of another deployment to Afghan to take all his concentration, so that his attention was diverted away from the shit that was his home life.
-OG-
"Jesus, ouch, stop it, stop"
"What, what's the matter?" She stopped stripping off his limp and sweaty hospital gown, something which had made her grimace slightly at the crumpled and smelly state of it, and looked at him, concern written all over her face as she thought for a moment that she'd hurt him.
"Your hands are bloody freezing, they're like little blocks of ice"
"Oh for f… sorry, sorry, I'll warm them up, see? Okay?" She rubbed her hands together in front of him showing that she was doing her best to warm them up while biting her bottom lip in a vain attempt to control her urge to giggle "It's cold this morning"
"What are you going to do anyway?"
"I'm gonna give you a nice sponge down, your face and your hands 'n that, cos it'll make you feel so much better and then you'll be able to go back to sleep till breakfast, so just relax and close your eyes while I give you a bit of a wash and then we'll get you some clean stuff, 'n change your bed and get you all settled"
"No, thanks very much but I'm fine, honestly there's no need to bother, I'm fine as I am and I'm not that tired so I'll just listen to the radio or something, so thanks anyway"
He was suddenly convinced that her 'nice bit of a wash' was not going to stop at his face and hands as Molly stifled her urge to giggle at him, she knew exactly what was worrying him, the same thing that worried 99% of young male patients when they needed her to give them a bed bath, and it obviously hadn't occurred to him that she'd been washing him for the last couple of weeks when he'd been none the wiser.
"Come on, I need to do your back as well, you don't want to get pressure sores do you?"
"I'm not sure I know what they are but I'm bloody sure I don't want them"
"Course not, now can you roll over onto your side or do you want me to help you?"
"That is not my back"
"It is on this ward, that's what we call it here, your back"
"When do you think I'll be able to get up?" He knew she wouldn't be able to tell him but he was desperately trying to distract himself from the feel of her hands on his backside.
"I wouldn't try it just yet if I was you, you'll feel like you've necked a couple of bottles of Vodka" She was tempted to tell him what she was about to do next, it would, after all, be sweet revenge for the nightclub, but she couldn't, it wouldn't be fair because he couldn't just get up and leave "I can get your shaver if you want, so you can get rid of that scruffy beard if it's itchy" Molly was doing her best to distract him by talking about something totally unrelated to what she was actually doing "Or I can do it for you, although I'm better with a proper razor, you know, with water 'n that"
"I think I'll pass if you don't mind" She glanced at his face as he spoke, there was a hint of pink on his cheekbones and his eyes were tightly shut.
"Why? I've never cut off anyone's ear, well not up till now anyhow" She giggled "Had lots of practice on legs 'n that, not cutting them off, I don't mean that, but shaving them"
"Lovely, very comforting"
-OG-
