Page 136 of Playing to Win

Mr. MacDuff stood abruptly. Andrew looked up to see him hurrying across the waiting area to meet the surgeon. As the men spoke, too far away to hear, Emma reached out, taking her grandmother’s hand on one side and Andrew’s on the other. He gripped it so hard he thought he’d crush her bones, but she just squeezed back in response.

Finally Colin’s father turned from the surgeon with a grim nod and came back to them.

“Colin’s out of surgery,” he said, “but not out of the woods. His blood wasn’t clotting well enough for them to do the—the—” He waved a shaky hand at his own side. “To put him back together. Reconstruction, that is.”

“Now what, then?” Colin’s gran asked.

“He’s to stay in ICU for twenty-four, maybe forty-eight hours, until he’s stable enough for them to operate again.”

“Can we see him?” Emma asked her dad.

“Aye, soon. But maybe only for a few minutes, and he’ll be—well, he’ll look a state, hooked up to all those machines. It can be scary for weans.”

“I’m not a wean.” She swiped at the tears dribbling down her cheeks. “And I’m not scared.”

“That’s a relief,” Andrew told her. “Because I’m terrified, and I’ll need a brave partner.” He wasn’t talking rubbish either, trying to buck up her spirits. The thought of seeing Colin on the edge of life scared him witless.

The only thing he feared more was never seeing Colin again at all.

= = =

Just after two a.m., Andrew finally sat at Colin’s side, in a chair squeezed between the bed and the array of beeping, sighing machines that kept his boyfriend alive.

“It’s me, love.” He reached out and slid his fingers over Colin’s, his breath hitching into a sob. “Sorry, I just need a moment. I didn’t know if I’d ever touch you again.” He drew in a deep, antiseptic-smelling breath, then let it out. “There. All emotions safely tucked away. Nothing to see. Which is good, because you can’t…see.” He swallowed hard. “They say you’re heavily sedated, but that you might still be able to hear me. Which is also good, because talking to oneself is an eccentricity not currently in vogue.”

Colin just lay there, of course, breathing with the help of the ventilator tube in his mouth.

“I’m sorry it took so long for me to get in here. That’s your fault, what with your capricious core temperature and breathing rate.” Andrew’s own lungs seized up at the memory of Colin’s respiratory arrest an hour ago. “It’s for the best, this delay, so I didn’t have to visit you in those dreadful hospital clothes. John went to my flat and fetched a decent shirt and trousers for me. They don’t go together—Fergus has all the fashion sense in that relationship—but his heart was in the right place.”

Andrew ran his gaze over Colin’s body. They’d removed the warming pad from his chest, as his temperature had finally stabilized. Now the white sheet made him seem so pristine. But Andrew knew that beneath it, Colin’s wound was still partly open, his innards too swollen with fluid to allow full closure yet.

“All the Warriors were here tonight. The waiting area was one big gay vigil. I took pictures, of course, but for your eyes only, not the public’s. Not every moment in life needs social-media documentation.”

He slid his fingers back to touch their tips to Colin’s, remembering how once, lying in bed, they’d compared the lengths of each of their fingers, with a final scoreline of 5 - 5. Now he had to fight the urge to clutch Colin’s hand and beg him not to die.

“Oh! John also fetched my earphones.” Andrew pulled his phone from his shirt pocket. “He’s a star, isn’t he? He offered to stay here all night with me, but then—” Andrew cleared his throat. “But then my parents and brother arrived, so they’ve got that sorted.” His throat thickened at the memory of his family’s tears as they’d held him. “George looked as though he’d have actually missed me if I’d died. Needless to say, I’ve been dis-disowned.” He paused, his chest aching with his next words. “Elizabeth didn’t come, of course. Things are very…difficult for her at the moment.”

Andrew straightened up and wiped his eyes. “Enough about my family.” He opened his music app and cued Colin’s current favorite tune, “Every Other Freckle” by alt-j. “We loved this song from the first time we heard it. You said it made you ‘pure dead horny.’” He put one of the earphones in his own left ear and tested the volume. “Not sure how you could tell the difference between that and your usual state.”

Andrew inserted the other earphone into Colin’s right ear, then started the track. To keep the wire between them slack, he scooted closer, folding his hands atop the bed railing and resting his chin upon them.

Gazing at Colin, Andrew mouthed each dreamy, obsessive lyric along with the singer, then hummed the intricate, overlapping interludes.

When the track ended, he played it again. “Remember how you didn’t get the song’sFlashdancereference, so we watched the film? And you said, ‘I’ve finally found my heteroception’? And I told you Jennifer Beals would be fifty years old now, and you said you didn’t care?” He reached out to touch a lock of Colin’s ink-black hair. “I think that was when I fell in love with you. Because I imagined a day in the distant future, in the highly unlikely but theoretically possible event I am no longer beautiful—and it felt like on that day, you would still be by my side.”

Toward the end of the song’s third play Andrew stopped humming, stopped talking, stopped lip-synching, for he now realized the lyrics were written almost entirely in future tense. It was a list of things the singer was “gonna” do to his beloved. Even the imperative chorus, the command to “Devour me,” was a hope and a plan.

“You will do everything one day,” Andrew whispered to Colin’s pale, still form. “I promise.”

= = =

Andrew was blethering again.

Over the last…Colin didn’t know how long (hours? days? weeks?), he’d heard many voices, some real, some imagined. His uncle James’s voice clearly fell into the latter category, talking about a soldier he’d served with who’d lost an entire torso to an IED, yet somehow survived. His mother’s voice, promising that if Colin lived she’d never miss another birthday—well, he wasn’t sure which category that belonged to.

But one voice he knew was real, because it spoke utter nonsense.

Andrewhadmentioned a few important bits, like the Warriors winning Saturday’s match after nearly canceling it on Colin’s account. Or like Andrew’s family showing up to support and dis-disown him, his brother going so far as to stay by Andrew’s side while Colin underwent another…however many surgeries he’d had. Or like Andrew’s plan to oversee Colin’s full home recovery at his own flat, which was cleaner and quieter than Colin’s and had “an extra bedroom for any family members who’d care to stay a maximum of two consecutive nights.”

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