Bad Case of Loving You

Ah, now the whole tidiness thing made sense. We’d been combat-mothered.

“I’m Matthew,” I said. “How’s Heidi going? I didn’t get a chance to see her today.”

Angie had hair the same dark blonde colour as Heidi’s, or at least the same colour as Heidi’s would be if she washed it.

A broad smile spread across her face. “Matthew!” she said.

“You must be the lovely medical student who lives here, who saved Heidi.” She was across the room and hugging me in an instant.

I hugged her back briefly. “It was Andrew who did it, not me,” I said.

She let go of me and smiled knowledgeably. “He’s your boyfriend, right?”

“Um, I guess so.”

She took hold of my elbow and led me into the kitchen. “I made a casserole and a nice pudding. Come and have something to eat, you must be starving.”

There was food, real food, with meat in it, and water-soluble vitamins and fibre and stuff. I hadn’t eaten so well since I’d last been at home at Christmas. Angie sat across the table from me, poured extra cream on my crumble, and said,

“Tell me about your boyfriend.”

I felt myself colouring. After the way he’d kissed me in the car park, I wasn’t sure I could talk coherently about him, but I was willing to try.

Chapter Twenty Two

Henry stared at my office.

“Um, Dad,” he said. “If my bedroom looked like this, Mom would kill me.” He wrinkled his nose. “It smells funny in here.”

I pushed enough of the runaway paperwork aside to get the door open fully, then forced the window open. It did smell funny, and I knew exactly why. “Yep. And if I don’t clear this up, someone will come along and kill me, too.” I pushed the power button on my work PC and it lurched into life, then took the rubbish bin out to the janitor’s room to empty it.

“Give me a moment to log you in, then you can cruise around online. Just, please, try not to set off the net nanny,” I said when I came back.

“’K, Dad,” Henry said, and he stepped over the mess and clambered into my office chair. “Can I print stuff out?” he asked.

“Sure.” I leaned over him to type in my password. Once he was in and typing in a url, I turned my attention to the paperbomb that had gone off in my office.

Henry was safely occupied, going through every site that might have cheats for his favourite game, and I began to sort and stack the papers. There were coffee stains on some, from yesterday, but nothing important seemed to have been ruined. I really needed to sort this whole disaster out, because if I was fired on Monday, someone would have to deal with this, and I couldn’t just drop this on whoever replaced me.

It took a long time, long enough that Henry made two raids on the snack machine in the main hall, but eventually I had seven neat piles of papers on the floor, twelve coffee cups on the desk, and I’d completely filled the recycling bin that I’d dragged to my office door.

I filed the seven piles, ignoring the issue of cleaning out my filing system, washed the coffee cups up myself rather than leaving them for a janitor, and emptied my office rubbish bin again.

It was done; they could fire me now.

Henry looked up when I came back into the office carrying the rubbish bin and said, “You’re a slob, aren’t you, Dad?”

I sat down on my plastic chair. “So I’ve been told, though I’ve seen much worse,” I said, thinking of Matthew’s house.

“You finished? Want to follow me around on a quick round? I’ll stop any of the nurses from hugging you, I promise.”

“Sure, Dad, but you have to tell me what all the machines do, even the gross ones.”

Heidi was sitting up in bed when I found her room, and a woman who could only be her mother was brushing her hair.

They both looked up as Henry and I walked in. Heidi beamed at me and said, “Mum, this is Andrew.”

I smiled at Heidi and then turned to her mother. “Hi, I’m Dr. Andrew Maynard, and this is my son, Henry. I just dropped in to see how Heidi was going.”

Heidi held up her splinted arm, showing an impressive set of sutures, and Henry said, “Wow, can I see them?”

Heidi held out her arm proudly. “Thirty-six stitches on the outside, sixty-five on the inside.” Henry’s eyes grew wide and he leaned over to peer at the sutures. Next to chest tubes, he liked sutures best, and while I kept him well supplied with chest tubes, having shown him two already today, sutures were not something I had much to do with.

Heidi’s mom said, “I’m Angie. Thank you so much for what you did for Heidi. I met your nice boyfriend last night, made him a real dinner.”

Oh, fuck.

Henry almost fell off Heidi’s bed in his astonishment, so I hauled him back onto his feet. “Must rush, I’m needed on the ward. Glad Heidi’s better.” Henry towed me out into the corridor.

“Boyfriend!” he said. “You’ve got a boyfriend? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Ahh, good question,” I said. “Sorry, kiddo, I was planning on telling you. We only just got together.”

Henry looked disapproving. “You’re supposed to tell me these things, you know. Go on, I want details.”

“Not here,” I said, mindful of the nurses hovering around, including F’s bedwarmer, Lena.