BACKSTORY: Noel Lennox WHO: Noel Lennox, when he was still John Noel Goodeve WHAT: Noel wakes up from surgery and wants his Mum WHEN: Age 12 WHERE: Great Ormond Street Hospital WARNINGS: sad
She would say the words to make this all okay.
Temporarily.
He knew it sure as he knew anything, which was everything. He could see it happening in his head, his mother, eyes ringed in liner and mascara, her hair in an artful plait, draped in the sort of Highland wools that were supposed to connote both comfort and wealth. She'd cup his cheek and the words out of her mouth would be heaven. Soothing. Warm. Motherly.
It would all be a lie. But he would like to feel it all the same. Anything had to be better than this.
For something that was no longer there, it sure ached in his head like they were. Phantom limb pain was something he'd heard of, but he never thought it would apply to eyes. Would they apply to anything? Not skin cells or hair, but blood? Fingers? Kidneys? Would he ache with their loss too?
He could see it too, happening in his head, plastic tubing and needles and a teeter-totter that the bag of blood would lie in, collecting, mixing, shuttling side unto side. Words teasing his mind into complacency, her words. You're so special. You're so special, Jinny. And he'd tell her not to call him that and she would say 'Jack' instead to placate him.
That would be the world now, happening in his head, always in his head. The whole universe would be there if he just reached out for it.
That was how she explained it. That it would help the family and he wouldn't miss them. He'd believed it. She had done her number on him and he didn't fight it. He should have fought it.
There wasn't anger in him. It was regret. It filled up his heart with tears that he couldn't... could he even cry anymore? Was that a thing he could do?
He took a deep breath and it skittered in his chest, shook. Oh, he thought as the immediate future ran through his mind. He could.