Chapter 74

I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone

Exhausted, Patrick slumped onto the couch. Waiting for Eric to come home, he had showered and dressed and the exertion from those two activities had left him spent. His stamina was seeping away from him.

Reaching into the pocket of his jeans, he pulled out the colour picture he had downloaded. Once he had decided to get a tattoo there was but one choice for him. He couldn't have Robin physically with him but this would at least allow him to have something that represented her and all that she meant to him.

It had been a difficult night. His mind, sluggish and tired during the day, raced at night. He had been plagued by visions and nightmares since he started the chemo. Clinically he knew it to be a normal side effect of the drugs but emotionally it was draining him. Last night he had dreamed of his mother. She was singing to him as she used to do when he was a little boy and he felt comforted by it. But somewhere mid-song, the dream changed. His mother's face started to crumple and she melted before him, screaming in agony. Having been jolted awake by the terrifying image, he had shuffled to the bathroom and washed his face.

Unwilling to go back to sleep right away, he had surfed the internet for more than an hour, searching for the perfect symbol for his tattoo. Once he had found it, he was ready to return to bed. It had not taken long for him to fall back asleep. His dreams shifted to Robin. They were back in Scotland, dancing in the middle of the crowd amid swirling kilts and skirts. Her head was tossed back in joyous laughter as her body shimmied to the music. The crowd was moving quickly and she stepped out of reach from him. He had extended his hand to her, trying to take hold of her. As he moved towards her, his progress had been stopped by a pair of arms going around him. He had turned his head, thinking it was Robin but all he saw was darkness and the hands that at first had felt familiar, sent a chill through him. One of the hands had dug into his chest, burrowing towards his heart. Once it had reached its target it closed around it and squeezed as hard as it could. He had sat up, gasping for air and gripping his chest.

He had not slept since.

Hearing Eric's key in the lock, he folded up his design and shoved it back in his pocket.

"Hey" he called to him.

"How are you feeling?" Eric asked as he crossed the threshold. Though relieved to see his friend dressed and out of his bedroom, he was not pleased to see the intensity of his hand tremor increasing.
Patrick shrugged. "Like I have a giant tumour in my brain" he joked weakly.

Closing the door behind him, Eric crossed the room and perched himself on the edge of the coffee table in front of his friend.

"Are you sure you want to do this today?"

"Yeah," he replied, "I am."

Cocking his head to the side, he studied his friend carefully. "Did you sleep at all?"

Patrick smiled mirthlessly. "Here and there but not much. I…I have nightmares."

"It's the chemo."

"I know" he nodded. "But knowing what is causing it doesn't seem to stop it from happening."

"I know" he replied softly.

There was so much about what Patrick was going through that reflected his own experiences six years ago. He had thought that he was well adjusted and philosophical about his battle with cancer but seeing what Patrick was going through now dredged up some terrible memories for him and on some level it felt as though he was reliving his own personal nightmare.

"Smitty, can I ask you something?"

"Shoot"

"How did you not give up?"

Eric covered his mouth with his hand and inhaled sharply. Though Patrick had been by his side through all of it, they had never really talked about it – not in detail anyways.

"Who says I didn't?"

Patrick's eyes widened in surprise. "But you…"

"Pantsy, there were moments when it hurt so bad, when I so fucking scared of having to have one more surgery or one more round of treatment that I would lie on my bed and ask God to end it. I prayed for death at one point."

His eyes filled with tears. "What happened?"

"Most of the time you happened. You would show up with an XBOX or a deck of cards or the swimsuit issue of Sports Illustrated" he smirked, "and silently remind me that there was lots I didn't want to miss out on. Or my sister would show up with her kids and they would hug and kiss me and it would make me feel alive – even if it was just for a few hours. And then I just got pissed. I got furious about being in pain, about having to endure another minute of all of it and decided I was going to come through the other side."

"I had no idea" he whispered.

Eric leaned forward and looked intently at his friend. "Patrick, there isn't anyone who battles a life threatening illness who doesn't want to quit at some point. That goes for you, me, your mom, your dad and probably even Robin."

Patrick's head jerked up in surprise and he stared silently at his friend. "There's a club, the 'Staring death in the face' club and you don't get to be a member until it happens to you. But once you're a member you get to have other people help you through it – you just have to let them."

His not so subtle encouragement to reach out to Robin and his father did not go unnoticed but he was too tired to respond.

"It feels….it feels like it's coming for me" he said softly.

"It is" Eric confirmed. "But I'm coming for it. And what I need you to do is to hold the line – stop giving up ground to it."

"I'll try"

"Okay," he nodded, knowing he could not push his friend much further. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah" he said with a small smile, "let's go get me some ink."

xxxxxx

Eric had a firm grip of Patrick's arm as they stepped off the elevator. The excursion to the tattoo parlour had been an exhausting one for him and he was having difficulty walking under his own steam.

He didn't know why but he found it easier to accept help from his best friend than he did from anyone else. The fears that drove him to leave Robin and his father behind somehow didn't apply to Eric and he was grateful for that. Despite all of his bravado about being an independent person and not needing anyone else, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that he could not do this alone.

As Eric pushed open the door, Patrick froze in place. Standing in the middle of the loft with hints of bruising still evident along his cheek and jaw was his father.
Eric gave Noah a small smile as he helped Patrick into the apartment. Noah had called him yesterday wanting his advice on coming for a visit and Eric had strongly encouraged him to do so. He had left Noah's name and a spare key with doorman along with specific instructions that should Doctor Drake arrive while they were out, he was to be shown to the apartment.

Sensing a set up, Patrick shrugged off Eric's arm and shot him a contemptuous look before glaring at his father.

"What are you doing here?" he asked sharply.

"I came to see you" Noah said unapologetically.

Eric closed the door behind him and quietly headed up the stairs to his bedroom. While he didn't think it was going to be an easy visit he believed very strongly it was a necessary one and wanted to get out of the line of fire.

Patrick shuffled to the couch and flopped down. "I don't want you here." Ashamed and humiliated by what he had done to his father, he was having difficulty looking him in the eye.

"Tough"

"Go away" he sighed.

Crossing the floor, Noah sat down beside him on the couch. "Not a chance. You are my son and if you think I'm leaving you to face this by yourself then you are delusional."

"I don't want your help" he told him flatly, staring straight ahead.

"Well whether you want it or not, you need it and I'm giving it to you."

Slowly turning his head, Patrick glared at his father. "If your help includes further rewriting history or unburdening yourself with more truth telling, I'm not interested and I don't need it."

Noah sighed heavily before speaking. It had been no small matter for him to tell his son about what the end had been like for his wife and now having done so, he wondered why he had waited so long to do it. It was one thing to protect him while Mattie was alive but to allow it to continue so long after her death had been unfair – to Patrick, to him and most of all to the memory of his wife. Over the course of the last week he had wondered how differently Patrick would have taken the news had he told him before he was so critically ill.

"With all due respect, you don't have the first clue what you need."

"I need you to leave me alone!"

"Why? So you can give up and die?" he challenged quietly. "Let's be honest Patrick, you aren't trying to protect Robin from watching you suffer, you're trying to protect her from watching you quit. After all, who wants to be with a quitter?"

It was a harsh stance to take with his son and it was one that caused him no small amount of pain but he needed to shock his son into fighting for his own life. He saw him slipping away, slowly sinking into the abyss and he wanted him to fight. He needed him to fight.

"Fuck off" Patrick snarled. "You don't know the first thing about it."

"I don't? I've known you your entire life sport and you have never walked away from anything, why start now?"

Patrick smirked. "My entire life? Aren't you forgetting that little vacation you took? You know, where you quit because it got too hard?"

"You're a better man than I am son – or so you kept telling people. Do you really want the record to show that when the going got tough you were no better than me? Don't you think Robin deserves better?"

The second mention of her name filled his eyes with tears. "Shut up"

Feeling he had been as harsh as he could be, Noah opted for a different track. "She misses you and she is struggling without you."

Leaning forward, resting his elbows on his knees, he cradled his head in his hands. The thought of Robin struggling was like a knife through his heart but he still believed he had made the right choice. "It's better that I'm not there."

"Better for whom?" he asked gently. "Not for Robin and certainly not for you."

"Stop it" he pleaded, not sure how much more he could take. He was on the verge of crumbling.

"No" Noah said softly. "You are my son and I love you." He carefully draped his arm around his shoulder. "I love you Patrick" he repeated. "Nothing you can do can change that."

Carefully he pulled his son towards him, placing his head on his shoulder. He dropped a small kiss on the top of his head. "I love you Patrick."

For a brief moment Patrick gave into his father's embrace and the comfort that it held. He wanted to believe that everything could be okay because he told him so.

But the moment passed and his head started to throb, his hand cramped and a wave of nausea washed over him. In an instant he was brought crashing back to his reality. Moving slowly, he pulled away from his father and stood up. Looking at him, he inhaled sharply.

"I am…I am so very sorry that I hit you" His voice shook as he spoke. "I was wrong to do so and hope that you can forgive me. I love you too Dad but please….please don't come back here."

Turning on his heel, he walked to his bedroom as quickly as he could, closing and locking the door behind him.

Alone in his room, with tremulous hands, he undid his shirt and carefully removed the bandage covering his tattoo. Standing in front of the mirror he stared at it and slowly traced his fingertips over it.

Just above his heart was the image of a claddagh. The crown gleamed with a brilliant gold colour, the hands a light silver and the heart was a deep red.

In the middle of the heart lay a single initial - R.