Page 37 of Maybe
‘There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don’t know how’.
Storming across the break room, I flicked the radio to silent.
“I didn’t even know that thing had an off switch,” Alaric drawled.
“Sorry, but I fucking hate Oasis.”
The hot water boiler was broken again, so I filled up an ancient kettle someone must have brought in from home. A scrawled sticker on the lid saidI still work, but the light in me has gone. Could be my new Hinge profile. Scowling, I tipped a mountain of instant coffee into a chipped Sports Direct mug the size of a bucket.
I’d thought Ezrawasa bloody oasis. Turns out the closer I got, he was nothing but a mirage. Actually, no. Mirage was too good for him. More like a real-life game of fuck-marry-kill, and he was all three options.
He’d crossed a line with that kiss. An invisible one requiring no explanation, no spelling out. Sure, it happened to be the most blistering kiss of my life. For one scorching, velvet instant, myworld flipped. Like a match striking against stone, nothing else had existed except for that urgent, aching need to kiss Ezra back. My Ezra, with his beautiful hugs and his beautiful songs and his beautiful bloody mouth. My messed-up circle in a world full of squares, my big brother who’d learned to fly and flown away.
Exhilaration and guilt warred in the pit of my belly. Kissing him was wrong, but my God, how my dyslexic heart wanted to do it again. But what then? Even if I somehow managed to overlook the whole brother thing, I’d fuck everything up between us anyhow. One night with me and my average… everything, Ezra would knock us on the head, and then I’d risk losing him as a brother. And if that happened, I’d be even more of a mess. Not to mention the inevitable repercussions. If ever there was a recipe guaranteed to make familial relationships awkward, shagging your brother, even if he wasn’t a blood relative, was probably edging towards the top of the pile.
But, that kiss…
I shook myself. Butno. Ezra was a book I had to close, and, in my mind, I had, sort of. But only because a decade ago he’d fucked off, not because I’d moved on. So what if we didn’t share DNA? I’d grown up with him. My twin siblings viewed him as their older brother. In polite company, even my parents referred to him as our older brother. We’d both fucking called the same person Dad!
And now he was telling me I had permission not only to keep the book open but to turn the bloody page?
“Sorry about the exam,” Alaric offered.
“Thanks.” Fair enough. How was he to know an even bigger shitshow was on the loose?
A sickly strawberry haze hung in the air from Alaric, surreptitiously vaping. It was the middle of the day, and few other members of staff milled around. Luke lounged in one corner, dead-eyed, and aimlessly scrolling through his phone.Seeing he’d reached the end of his sick pay and had bills and a student loan to service, he was onphased return to work, which basically meant he’d been assigned outpatients’ clinic this morning, to ease back into the swing of things, then rostered for a set of weekend nights. Naturally, his swipe card for every single door and every computer no longer worked, and the carpark barrier didn’t recognise his number plate. Luke's lack of surprise indicated how badly our sick organisation treated its staff.
“It’s okay.” I shrugged, as if failing everyone’s expectations didn’t fucking matter. “Predictable, to be honest. What with my dad and the memorial and everything.”
“Next time, maybe,” Alaric offered. “They set the pass rate really low this sitting, the bastards.” He took another huge toke, and a spiral of saccharine steam wafted around us. “If it’s any consolation, I’ve got my annual review tomorrow with the Head of School. Even though I passed, I’m still in for a bollocking.”
“Yeah?” My gaze shifted back to Luke, examining some strands of his own hair, rolling them between his finger and thumb. I was no psychiatrist, but even I could see the guy wasn’t well enough to be at work.
“Yeah.” Puckering his lips, Alaric released a perfect smoke ring. “When I went on that exam course, I missed the hospital’s mandatory fire safety session. Now they’re threatening to extend my training for three months or until a place on another session becomes available.” He snorted with disgust. “As if knowing which colour extinguisher to use when the toaster catches fire will aid me in the surgical management of adenocarcinoma of the bladder.”
Yep, a classic example of the Orwellian farce otherwise known as generic NHS mandatory training. You could take out the wrong kidney and have barely healed red scars marring both wrists, but as long as you knew which colour bin bag went intowhich bin and which antiseptic to use on floors but not on the toilet seats, you were good to go.
For the millionth time, I withdrew my phone and checked it. Nothing from Ezra. Anyhow, I was more preoccupied with the current tremor of my fingers. My mind instantly jumped to the most devastating neurological diagnoses possible.
“You should drink less of that.” Alaric pointed to my mug. “That’s why your hands are shaking. Go and get laid instead. A much better form of self-medication.”
Rich, coming from a man puffing out more poisons than Chernobyl. “And you should do less of that before you set the fire alarm off,” I retorted. “It’s already shattered my eardrums once this morning. I was seeing a patient in cubicle four, right next to the box.”
“He blamed that one on the toaster in here,” Luke piped up, not lifting his head from his hairball.
“Yep, and that toaster will get sprayed with every fucking fire extinguisher in the hospital. On a daily basis. I shall make it my life’s work until I leave.”
“I’ve got toes but I’m not a toaster,” I hummed. Totally random unless you knew Ezra’s silly song. A wave of irritation tightened in my chest. All over again, the intensity of that kiss hit me like a slap. I swallowed, guilt making me suddenly nauseous. “Sorry,” I mumbled. “Don’t know where that came from.”
Alaric’s eyebrows rose a fraction, though he said nothing. Luke, on the other hand, began laughing like a hyena and for much longer than my sudden and weird burst into tunefulness warranted.
None of my friends were okay, I realised, looking around. Not suspicious, lonely, Gerald, with his bitten down nails. Not Luke, a slow-motion car crash, nor jittery Alaric. Nor me, with my fucked-up grief and burying my head in the sand regarding my flaky mother, and my inexorable slide into a career turningme into my father. Was anyone in my immediate circle not swinging from the end of their rope?
Me and the kid get by.I remembered the pride in Ezra’s voice when I phoned him after he sent me the sports day photo. The joy in it, offering me an invitation to join in, dancing across the airwaves as he chuckled over his boy and his bloody Viking helmet. The hundreds of other snaps of Jonty on his phone, the kid’s teeth like a piano with all the black keys pulled out. Smiling, smiling, smiling, the both of them. In every single one.
Learn to fly. Fly away. Somehow, the bugger had. Ezra had metamorphosised into that sketchy eagle stamped on his hip and bloody gone and done it. And in doing so, Ezra Fitz-Henry, my black sheep of a big brother, became the most solid person I knew.
“I could have got laid on Saturday,” I blurted. “But I turned him down.”
