Author's Note:
This is a short chapter, but a much longer one is on it's way shortly. Thanks for the reviews, follows and favorites!
Malcolm was running late in getting ready for his guests. Julius had already arrived, and Jamie and Ollie were en route from the PFI building. With the new IV port in his left arm and the bruising and stiffness in his right arm, showering and dressing took longer than expected.
The home nurse arrived at eight in the morning to address his injury and insert the new port. Sam watched as she checked his vitals, clearly still concerned about the blood he'd lost. The home nurse confirmed that his blood pressure was fine and he showed no signs of shock, but Sam still seemed skeptical.
Malcolm felt badly about scaring her and wanted to do everything he could to show her that he was on the mend and could take care of himself. Between the low oxygen incident on Sunday afternoon and then the accident with the IV port, he had a lot of evidence to the contrary to overcome.
After the home nurse left they had just enough time for a quick breakfast before his call with Jamie and Dan. When he disconnected the call he found Sam poised beside him with the nebuliser and medication for his breathing treatment. Clearly she was still on red alert. Neither of them had much sleep, and that just made things worse.
Since Sunday, Sam insisted that he only go without oxygen when they were together. While Malcolm understood her concern, at some point she would have to trust that he was okay and following all the medical instructions.
Which was partially why he'd opted to wear the cannula for this meeting. While he could already go more than two hours off the oxygen without a low saturation alarm, Sam would not be in the meeting with them, and Malc knew she'd feel better if she knew he was wearing it.
Malcolm also thought it was likely he would get agitated during the meeting, and he'd already noticed a trend with low oxygen levels when he got upset. While he hated to show up to a meeting like this looking vulnerable, wearing the cannula would be immeasurably better than having a low saturation alarm during the meeting.
After his breathing treatment Malcolm managed to wedge in a call to Doctor Ravi to ask for a referral to a counsellor. The good doctor called him back within the hour with the names of both a counsellor and an internist. He immediately regretted telling Sam he would go see a counsellor. Just after awakening from the nightmare to find himself covered in blood and Sam frightened half to death, it seemed like a necessary step. The last thing he wanted was to keep scaring Sam.
His greatest fear was that seeing a counsellor would actually make things worse. For all these years he'd been able to function just fine. He rarely had the nightmare, and until recently he didn't see any evidence that the events of his childhood were impacting his life or the people around him. But he knew Sam felt a distance. She'd long ago stopped trying to find ways to get him to talk about his growing up years. And now the memories were bubbling up from the depths in spite of his best efforts to suppress them. Malcolm felt like he was drowning.
And then there were instances where Malcolm was engaged in a conflict or heated debate in the course of work and found himself saying or doing things that reminded him of his father and it fucking freaked him out. So maybe there were some impacts. Including his lungs. They still had yet to see what the long-term prognosis was on those. His denial was sliding away like an avalanche of snow to reveal the cliff face of his woundedness and he fucking loathed it.
All the same, Malcolm would rather not call the counsellor and instead just do what he needed to do to make the current swirl go away. Surely it would. This meeting might nip it in bud. If it turned out he was wrong, while he was a public figure, it wasn't like the public knew or cared overly much about the likes of him. He was a backroom boy.
Seeing a counsellor also came with the risk of discovery. If the press got wind that he was in therapy it could well lead back to the very attention he was trying to avoid and would doubtless raise concerns about his role in the Labour Party. His stomach tightened with anxiety at the possibility.
But he knew he would call for Sam's sake, regardless of the consequences.
He heard a car roll up. Ollie and Jamie had arrived. Malcolm took one more look in the mirror. Am I up for this? His reflection didn't have an answer.