All the characters and events in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people, either living or dead, is entirely unintentional.
The story is copyrighted and may not be reproduced in any way without the express permission of the author who can be contacted at:
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PJ
D'n'M Part 4
From Chapter 17:
As he cycled home images of M lying unconscious and vulnerable battled for space in Dan's head with just what he was going to say when asked to explain his behaviour and actions, not just skipping school that morning but all day on Sunday and even the way he was with his mum when he arrived home on Saturday night. Part of the problem, a big part, was that he could barely explain it to himself so what chance did he have to make anyone else understand? He knew that M would understand, but M was well and truly out of it. Fuck!
Chapter 18:
"I really can't explain it Dad. I'm sorry, that's just how it is. To be honest I don't totally understand it myself." Dan could see that his dad was unimpressed by his inability to provide a convincing explanation for his behaviour of the past couple of days. "Like I said, things didn't go altogether great on Saturday night, that's why I stayed holed up in my room most of yesterday. I needed some alone time."
"That part I can understand. We've all had disastrous dates D, it comes as part of the package. Two things I still don't get, though, is why you couldn't talk to me or your mum about it and why you skipped school this morning to see your counsellor without telling us first." The expression on Roger's face told the story of his frustration with Dan. This conversation had been going round in circles for nearly half an hour and he was still no nearer understanding the what and why of his younger son's out-of-character behaviour than he had been when they'd started.
Dan was even further down the frustration road and approaching the intersection with annoyance. "I bet you didn't go crying to gran and grandpa when it happened to you. I didn't need a `bad-date-parental-inquisition', not then and not now."
"But you were happy to go off and talk to someone else about it." There was a mixture of hurt and accusation in Roger's voice and Dan had run out of ways of not answering his questions. If only his mum would come home, she'd get it and get Roger off his case. He was way past annoyance now and half way round anger corner.
"If it's her fee you're worried about I'll pay it. I've got some of my allowance saved up and birthday money in my account." As soon as he said it he knew he'd gone too far, the injured expression on his dad's face left him in no doubt of that.
"You know it's got nothing to do with the money. There's no amount we wouldn't spend to help you." Dan did know it, but that knowledge wasn't going to help him explain to his dad something he didn't properly understand himself.
"Yeah, I know dad and I'm sorry." Suddenly he felt completely wiped out. The impact of the last few hours hit him like a bus. He could barely keep his eyes open. "Can we talk some more later? I really need to crash out."
When he looked closely Roger could see the exhaustion in Dan's eyes. It made him realise that the boy was just that, a boy, and that he'd come to the end of his resources.
"Okay, you go and get some sleep. I'll speak to your mum when she gets home. I know she was expecting a really full-on day today so, at the moment, she knows nothing of what's been happening. I'll fill her in, then we can talk some more."
Dan just about managed to summon up the energy to nod to his dad before forcing his feet to drag themselves (and the rest of him) up the stairs to his room. His bed had never looked so welcome as he toed off his Vans and dropped onto it like a stone, closing his eyes almost before his head hit the pillow. Sleep, however, did not come. Instead, images from the day whirled round inside his head like a 360 degree IMAX screen with one picture, in particular, coming round over and over again -- Milo, lying on the hospital bed, wired up, battered and bandaged, so alone, so vulnerable. And then came the guilt, guilt for prioritising his date with Christy over being at the swimming match to support M, guilt for sending that untruthful text to avoid talking to M, guilt for not having retrieved the dog-tags given to him by M, guilt for not being there to stop the truck driving into M, guilt for having to be told by someone else what had happened to M and guilt for not matching up to what was expected of being one half of D'n'M.
Eventually the picture reel inside his head slowed and stopped and Dan limped into a halting and unrestful sleep. He was woken by two light taps on his bedroom door, immediately followed by his mum's voice asking if she could come in. Yes, of course she could, though the thoughts inside his head weren't quite as welcoming as the words he spoke.
Helen came over and sat on the side of the bed. She gently pushed the hair out of his eyes and looked directly into them. After several seconds of close scrutiny which were starting to make Dan feel uncomfortable she seemed happy with the answer to some unvoiced internal question.
"Your dad says you've had quite day."
He nodded.
"On top of not the best of weekends."
He nodded again, this time with the hint of a wry smile. His mum always was a mistress of the understatement.
"Well I've got some good news for you."
After the day he'd had he found that hard to believe.
"I've just phoned the hospital."
Dan instantly sat up. "How is M?"
"I spoke to a very nice nurse, Hatchet I think she said her name was."
Dan shook his head in disbelief.
"She said she couldn't tell me anything because I'm not family."
That, at least, sounded right.
"But she passed me over to Gerry who was waiting for the doctor to finish checking M over."
"And?" Dan was getting seriously impatient. "How is he?"
"So Gerry filled me in on everything that has happened since yesterday and ..."
"For fuck's sake mum, HOW IS M?" He knew he'd way overstepped the mark and there would be a price to pay for such an outburst but he'd happily serve any punishment (though not grounding, there was no way he'd be stopped from seeing M) just to know that M was doing ok.
"Well, as you asked so nicely, I can tell you that M has been awake again, that all his vital signs are normal and overall everything seems stable."
A tsunami of relief crashed over and through Dan and he threw his arms around his mum and started to sob, his body shuddering with the release of the worry and the tension and the fear.
"Hey, hey, it's okay. M's going to be okay." Helen rubbed a comforting hand up and down Dan's back.
As the sobs subsided Dan began to speak. "Oh mum, I was so worried. He looked so bashed up and he didn't wake up all the time I was there. And there were machines and a drip and ... and ... I was sure he was worse than anyone would tell me and it scared me. It really scared me. What would I do without him?"
Helen gently but firmly pulled back from Dan and held him at arm's length by the shoulders. "That's not something you need to worry about, not now and not for a very long time. It's true that M's going to be in the hospital for a few days, but once he's moved to a different ward you'll be able to visit him after school. And talking of school, your dad tells me you've not been there today."
Dan's head dropped. He couldn't look at his mum.
"And that you had an impromptu meeting with Dr. Margelles. Like to tell me what that was all about?"
So Dan more or less repeated what he'd told his dad, adding only that the events of Saturday night had stirred up unpleasant issues from the past and that he felt the counsellor was the best person, in fact the only person, who he could talk to about them. That seemed to satisfy Helen and she was half way to standing when she had a change of mind. Sitting back down she pulled Dan into a tight hug then kissed him, once on the forehead and again on the end of his nose, something she had habitually done to both her boys when they were younger and in some sort of trouble. It was the signal that all was forgiven (though not necessarily forgotten). The memory brought a smile to Dan's face.
"By the time you've had a shower dinner will be ready." She paused with one hand on the door handle, "Oh, and D, when you come down, leave the expletives behind." With that she left the room. Dan sighed with audible relief.
When Dan arrived at the hospital after school on Tuesday his heart sank when he saw Nurse Hatchet (so nearly Ratchet) guarding the nurses' station, typing away on a computer keyboard. She looked up.
"Ah, the `cousin', well I have to tell you that Milo isn't here." It gave her quite some pleasure to see the distressed look that appeared on his face. "He's been moved."
"Where to? Not ..." Dan was irrationally convinced that Milo's condition had worsened and he'd been moved to a high-dependency bed or worse, ICU.
"He's gone downstairs to H2. He no longer needed the close monitoring we provide here." With that the nurse dragon shifted her attention away from Dan and back to the computer keyboard she'd been working at before. He had clearly been dismissed. But Dan, suddenly feeling positively elated on hearing the news about M, was determined to have the last word.
"Thank you so much, Nurse Ratchet," he said, emphasising the final word and turning on his heel to go. And, to give her her due, the nurse didn't respond to the jibe, didn't even raise her head to reply, though had he looked back as he left (which he didn't) he would have seen her gaze boring into his retreating back like a lethal sci-fi laser beam.
Level H turned out to be part of the children and young people's department. The walls were decorated with an eye-popping combination of popular cartoon characters and children's artwork and the noise of youthful chat and laughter filled the space. It could not have been more different from the morgue-like atmosphere upstairs. The nurses were much more friendly too, the one on duty at the nurses' station even smiling when Dan explained who he was hoping to see. The nurse in question, Ari according to the name tag pinned to his hospital shirt, confirmed that yes, Milo de Beer had been transferred to the department earlier that day and was now resting in H2, right down the hallway on the left. Dan was moving in the direction indicated almost before Nurse Ari had finished speaking.
When he arrived at the door Dan realised that his heart rate had significantly increased -- he could feel the blood being pumped round his body - and he knew that fact couldn't be put down to having run all the way from upstairs because he hadn't. It was, purely and simply, because he was excited to see M again. Monday evening at home and all day Tuesday at school had been some of the longest, most interminable hours of his entire life.
Inside H2 were two beds, side by side, with the one nearest the door currently unoccupied. In the other was Milo looking not much different from the last time Dan had seen him. There was still a monitor screen beeping quietly to itself in the corner and an intravenous drip feeding a clear liquid into the back of M's hand. The main difference was in M himself. Today he was a little more upright, propped up by pillows into a semi-sitting position. There was still a white cellular blanket covering the lower half of his body but now there was a bigger contrast between it and the colour of his skin which had a much more natural pinkish tinge to it than it had yesterday. The other main difference was the strapping round his chest presumably, thought Dan, to support and protect the broken ribs.
Dan crossed over to the bed, bent down and kissed M on the forehead and then on the end of his nose, wishing it could be that simple to put an end to all of M's trouble and discomfort. He turned round to move the single chair nearer the bed. He sat down and then looked up to see M's eyes looking straight back at him. The instant joy Dan felt bubble up inside him was like the first taste of a top class vintage champagne (not that he'd ever had a top class vintage champagne -- or any champagne come to that, but you know what I mean). In no time at all he was on his feet and half way towards throwing himself onto M's prostrate body when he heard him croak out the word `ribs!' Somehow Dan managed to deflect his own body in a successful attempt to change direction, reversing blindly towards the beeping monitor. By some miracle he managed to avoid a collision and found himself sprawled on the floor, partly under the bed. He then heard a puzzling noise.
"Ooh! Ooh! Ooh!" It sounded like a pigeon with a sore throat.
Dan scrambled onto his knees and was mortified to see a pained expression on M's face.
"Ooh! Don't make me laugh D, it hurts too much."
Dan was on his feet and apologising within nanoseconds.
"I'm so sorry M. I won't do I again, I promise." He was hopping from foot to foot like a little boy who's put off peeing for several minutes too long. It made M laugh again.
"Ooh, I told you not to make me laugh you great goon!" Although he was genuinely in pain he couldn't help but smile. If D was there, then things were bound to get better.
The next twenty minutes was spent in repeated apologies (Dan), hazy recollections of the hit-and-run (Milo) and unlimited and unspoken quantities of happiness (both). Eventually M's repeatedly drooping eyelids coincided with Nurse Ari's appearance in the room.
"I'm going to have to ask you to step outside for a few minutes. We're gonna be moving a patient into the next bed and that job's easier the fewer people there are in the room. Besides, he's been in a bad way and could do with some privacy while we settle him in. So if you wouldn't mind?" The nurse held the door open and, reluctant though he was to leave M now that he was awake and talking again, Dan understood the need for him to be elsewhere while the new room-mate was installed
"I'll go get myself a drink and be back in a while. Don't you go anywhere!"
"I'll do my best," replied M, clearly losing the battle to keep his eyes open.
It was a long walk to the canteen and back and when Dan returned to H2 M was, once more, asleep and the neighbouring bed was curtained off making it impossible to know who the new roomie was. Dan settled himself once more in the chair, took hold of M's hand and began to talk. To start with he talked about the nurse dragon upstairs and how Gerry had claimed him as M's cousin in order to force her to allow him to visit. He went on to explain how cross his dad, Roger, had been, mostly about him skipping school but also due to the unscheduled and unsanctioned meeting with Please Call Me. From there it was an entirely natural progression to telling M all about the counsellor's rather unspecific and baffling interpretation of everything he had told her during the appointment. He was, as he explained to the sleeping M, still trying to unravel the meaning of much of what she'd said.
"She told me she thinks the new Dan Reed is strong and resilient and I can definitely relate to that. I'm not the same kid that Roberts targeted back in the day. And you know M, Please Call Me must be really good at her job, she gets me to tell her things I'd rather die before telling any other adult, including my mum and dad. She asked me if I'd ever had any sexual experiences apart from with you and Tom so I told her what I'd seen Tye and Eddy doing in the locker-room when I went back to get the dog-tags you gave me. She said it was pretty normal to get excited in that sort of situation, and do you know what M, I was so hard when I saw Tye's dick going in and out of Eddy like that. She also said that now I see people differently and feel differently about them too. I think she's right about that, but isn't that bound to happen as you get older? I don't like the same TV shows and music as I used to when I was a little kid so why should it be any different with people?"
Milo, of course, was in no condition to answer that question or any other, so Dan just carried on musing aloud about what Please Call Me had said.
"She got me thinking about Beth too. You know, how I couldn't even think about being with her after I found out what she'd caused to happen to those two gay boys on the swimming team. I'm beginning to wonder if, maybe, I always knew she was way out of my league, that having a thing for her, a fantasy thing, was a way of avoiding trying to have a real relationship, that I was scared or something. That sound possible to you?"
At that moment, to Dan's surprise, Milo muttered something aloud but it wasn't anything that made any sense and Dan dismissed it as a combination of pain meds and an unsettled sleep. And anyway, he didn't have time to dwell on it because just then the door opened and Nurse Ari entered pushing a trolley with a metal bowl and jug, a towel, a wash cloth and a bottle of body wash. It didn't take the intellect of Sherlock Holmes to deduce what was about to happen. The nurse smiled at Dan before disappearing behind the curtain which hid the other bed and its occupant. Dan decided this wasn't a good time to carry on talking to M about his counsellor's analysis so he just sat quietly, got his phone out of his pocket and started looking to see what new TikToks had been posted.
Most of Dan's attention was focused on the latest uploading from Brent Rivera, but he was partly aware of a semi-whispered conversation being carried out on the other side of the curtain. Over the next five minutes or so his attention gradually drifted away from his phone and began to fix onto the sounds of water and murmured exchanges he could hear. Dan's imagination began to conjure up a series of raunchy images, pictures that acquired added focus when words like smooth' and turn over' and `relax' were heard amongst the murmuring. The combination of what he could hear and what he imagined began to have the inevitable effect on his dick, so much so that he had to reach down into his underwear in order to adjust himself to a more comfortable position. Inevitably, just at the moment of maximum and obvious readjustment, Nurse Ari suddenly reappeared. First he looked at Dan's face, then he glanced down to where Dan's hand was still very obviously busy with his junk. Then, with a smile and a wink he pulled back the curtain. Under any circumstances Dan would have been surprised by who he saw lying there, but given his situation at that exact point in time his surprise was combined with embarrassment.
It was Grey.
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