Chapter Seven
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night
'Fear not said he for mighty dread had seized their troubled minds'
Whoever it was; they were sleeping soundly. The room was dark and cold; Nikki climbed onto the foot of the bed and slipped her feet under the covers to keep warm.
She'd sat here like this before; once upon a time.
She sat and watched as the room grew lighter, she looked at the neatly folded pile of clothes by the bed, the arms folded protectively across the man's chest and covers, the faint scar running down his forehead.
It had to be Harry.
But at the same time she hardly recognised him. His skin was ashen, with deep rings around his eyes. His hair shorn and grey, his collar bones and ribs stood out prominently. Harry had never been fat but this was unhealthy looking.
"I've not been well," she suddenly remembered him saying the night before in answer to her jibe about him being a ghost or looking like a corpse.
She looked back at his hair and face, and felt herself shiver despite the warmth of the duvet.
"Oh Harry, what's happened to you?" she gasped, realisation crashing through her hungover brain.
"Nikki? Is that you?"
She nodded but realised in the dark, he'd probably not seen her.
"It's me," she said quietly but even she could hear the catch in her voice and she dashed away the tears on her cheeks. "You're real then," she added.
"I'm real," he replied as he slowly propped himself up on the headrest to face her.
"Why didn't you tell me?" She stammered realising as she did so that all the bitterness and anger that she had stored up for such a moment as this had all evaporated under the stark light of the reality of life and death.
"Tell you what?" he asked still coming to after his heavy sleep.
"Your hair!" she pointed unable to formulate any more words. Unable to name the cause she well knew for fear of it adding to its merciless grip on her friend.
"Well yours is a lot shorter," he retorted.
"It was easier to manage," she said dismissively. Avoiding the explanation about hangovers and hairdryers and noise and…
"I was going to tell you," he admitted, running his hand over his head. "But it all happened so quickly, one day I was going for a routine check-up to keep my HMO happy and my health insurance up to date and the next I'm a patient. I was going to call but the timing wasn't great, and then the chemo really knocked me out, I couldn't do anything…"
Nikki digested Harry's short speech silently. Adding all the parts that he hadn't said. "The timing wasn't great," and suddenly it all made complete sense; the disappearance of the semi-regular emails just when she had needed him most, his absence from Leo's funeral, his withdrawal from her life. How was he supposed to tell her he had cancer when Leo had just died? He'd known her for so long and he'd know exactly how badly she'd take his news. How helpless she would feel the other side of the ocean. How lost she would be at the prospect of losing both of them.
"Oh Harry," was all she could think of to say. She pulled her feet from under the duvet, moved to the head of the bed and wrapped her arms around her old friend's shoulders and wept.
While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks By Night: Nahum Tate
