Page 80 of All Right No
She smiled as if to say she doubted it. Rock stars didn’t work, not in the way that other people did. They lounged about taking drugs and washing them down with alcohol, and if they weren’t doing that, they were promiscuously fornicating.
“The doctor’s asked for some blood work.” He watched her tick boxes on the form for various substrates and disease markers including the ones for hepatitis and HIV, then brooded over her assumptions as she stabbed him and drew vial after vial of his red stuff, before sticking a bit of cotton over the puncture with a strip of tape. “I’ll get these sent down to the lab, and then I’ll be back to clean that cut up.” He’d almost forgotten the huge bit of gauze taped to the side of his head. Moments later, while she was peeling the wound pad away and swabbing at him with water and more cotton wool, he dearly wished he was unconscious again.
“It’s deep.”
Next thing he knew, they’d been joined by one of the doctors. “It’s going to require stitching, but we’re going to have to shave the area around it first. Might be best to use some glue too, once you’ve got those edges pulled together.”
Great! Just bleedin’ fantastic. “Whatever you need.” So Rock Giant had been right after all. He’d be so smug once he realised.
“Hey, no need for that face. It’s only a bit at the side we’re taking off. You can probably make it work as a sort of undercut.”
The doctor’s words didn’t assure him.
“Do you do those in here?” he enquired.
“Uh? No. Want me to numb the area first?”
“I’ll cope.” He bit down hard as the nurse relieved him of a broad strip of hair. Hey, it wasn’t anything vital. It’d grow back, and at least they hadn’t shaved the lot and cracked open his skull. He was not shedding tears over the strands falling onto the floor. What would be the point in that? It was the aftershock of the trauma making him dewy eyed.
In fact, the hair loss wasn’t nearly as bad as the sensation of the thread pulling through his skin. That was… He shuddered. Yeah, how to set someone’s teeth on edge. Horrid, horrid, nasty. Please let it end. Fifteen minutes after he was all patched up and had been wheeled along the corridor to a different curtained bed space, his skin was still crawling.
“Do I have to stay over?” he asked, when someone arrived to tut over his blood pressure again.
“You gave your head a good old crack, and your obs are a bit off. Also, you reported nausea. Probably best if we monitor you for a few hours.”
That sounded like he was staying.
“Can someone at least tell my girlfriend what’s going on?” Better yet, he hoped they’d let him see her.
Sadly, it wasn’t to be. He was wheeled off to another room, and Ginny and the guys sent away.
***
“I don’t understand why they wouldn’t let us see him,” Ginny muttered for the umpteenth time since they’d left the hospital. She sat wedged between Spook and Rock Giant in the back of Dani’s old estate car, while Xane rode shotgun.
“It’s after midnight. They couldn’t have us all crashing about, disturbing people trying to sleep now, could they?” Spook wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “He’s in good hands, Ginny. They’ll look after him, and they’re only keeping him in for observations. This isn’t like last time. He’ll be home again tomorrow.”
Home, where exactly was that? Did Ash own such a place? She and Dani still had the flat, but no one had set foot inside it for months. Sooner or later they were going to have to make a decision about whether to let their rental agreement lapse.
On the other side of her, Rock Giant bowed his head in order to rest against her shoulder. Only, he was so tall, and she so petite he had to bend his neck at such an awkward angle he ended up snuggling the headrest instead.
“I don’t understand how he could pass a health check a couple of weeks ago and then be ill again so soon. I don’t understand what it means. Is his brain injury still not fixed yet? Does this mean he won’t be able to tour with you guys after all?”
“Crap. It could,” Rock Giant mumbled. He sounded as miserable about that prospect as she anticipated Ash being. They all knew what was at stake. They’d been living with the horrid possibility of Ash not being able to tour since the summer. They’d battled the odds and overcome that nightmare. No wonder all their faces were so long. Her own heart was bleeding with horror for them, and she was only a bystander, not part of the actual band.
Her thoughts returned directly to Ash. He must be feeling so lost, angry and hurt. It wasn’t right that they’d been forced to leave him alone. Now was when he absolutely needed company and his friends around him so that he knew they’d stand by him no matter the verdict.
“Some jobsworth is bound to make a fuss about this and get the insurers riled up, even if they give Ash the all clear tomorrow,” Spook said.
“You don’t know that.” Xane twisted himself so that he could peer into the back of the vehicle. “I don’t think there’s any sense in us speculating about what may or may not happen until we know why he passed out. I mean, it could be nothing more than him having stood up too fast. It happens all the time. Your brain doesn’t have enough time to process the signals, and so your heart doesn’t know to compensate for the difference in pressure, so the blood pools in your legs, and over you go.”
It sounded logical, except for the fact that Ash had managed to wrap himself in a duvet and walk from their room to the lounge before he toppled over. He’d hit his head with such a horrid thud too. She was more than half convinced they’d mixed his X-rays up with someone else’s. It seemed incredible he hadn’t fractured his skull. Then again, maybe she’d arrive to see him tomorrow and find him shaved bald and woozy from anaesthetic.
“On the same grounds, it’d be silly to rule out the possibility of it being something worse—a side-effect of the damage Iain inflicted.”
They all chewed over that uncomfortable possibility in silence. Not for the first time, Ginny imagined embedding a large axe in Iain’s skull. The man truly was an arsehole.
“What I can’t really believe—” Rock Giant said, intruding on her imaginings. “—is that he killed the tinnies.”
