WHO: Kaden and Marcie WHEN: Christmas Day WHERE: Hospital WHAT: Christmas visits WARNINGS: Terminal illness
If there was a god of the wind he was out in force this morning, Kaden thought, huddled down in his bed. The closer he listened to the wind wailing round the house and hissing through the trees the more it sounded like a voice, calling to him in a language he could not understand but that raised goosebumps under his clothes nonetheless.
Tragos wasn’t in his bed. Kaden knew better than to feel disappointed that his brother might be around on Christmas morning, but knowing better didn’t stop him feeling it. It wasn’t like this was his first disappointing Christmas. It wasn’t like they did a whole big Christmas thing ever, though some years they’d had actual turkey. And if Tragos was around that made it more likely Cy would be too and Kaden had a hard time living in the same house as the pressure of Cy’s presence and Barak’s absence.
The wind was rattling the chain link fence like it wanted to come in, and Kaden pushed the curtain aside to make sure it wasn’t someone, actually, trying to get over their fence. Outside was empty of people, the sky a churning grey. Wind rippled hard over the half flooded street, sending leaves and bits of trash sailing across the water.
Hunger pulled him from the warmth of his bed eventually. Kaden pressed his ear against Cy’s door on his way past just to make sure, but it seemed dead silent in there as well, so they both hadn’t come home last night. Well… that could be worse. Having the house to himself could be okay. He could make it okay.
If he could get over the nagging suspicion that he was leavable, then yeah, today could totally be okay.
He made Christmas toast for breakfast, which was just toast smothered in the last of the peanut butter with marshmallows sandwiched between it, but not before shaping four of the slices of bread into a structure and sending a message to Marcie. He wanted to get a laugh out of her, wanted it as proof that someone wanted him around. While he waited for a reply he buried himself under the quilt he’d dragged off his bed. With the TV on in the lounge, volume up as high as he wanted, it was almost like company, and he helped himself to a beer from the fridge, although the coldness of it negated any underage-drinking joy he could have wrung out of it.
And then Marcie messaged back with the news there was something wrong with her.
That she was in the hospital, the same one as Barak.
That she wanted to see him.
It was like someone had dropped a bowling ball into the acid of his stomach, as he got dressed and hurried, hurried like there were dogs snapping at his heels. All the pent up nervous energy of his whole life made him run, run everywhere, and sitting in the back of the bus with his arms wrapped round his backpack was excruciating. What if they didn’t let him in? What if Barak found out he visited Marcie before he visited him? Did Tragos know? Should he get flowers? He did stop at the hospital gift shop, staggered that there was such a thing, but the price of them stopped him in his tracks. How could flowers cost that much?!
Keeping a watch on the girl behind the counter, Kaden palmed a cute ceramic reindeer from the edge of the display, glittery bow round its neck, and then made his way nervously to the elevators. No one followed him, but that wasn’t what he was nervous about.
Kaden wished he knew exactly where Barak was. All he knew was that he’d been moved out of the ICU when he came out of his coma, but he was still pretty messed up. Kaden would feel better, knowing where he was; as things stood, it felt like he was about to walk into Barak every time the elevator doors opened, every time he turned a corner in a corridor, and even when he knocked on Marcie’s private door he half expected it to open and he’d find Barak there, as well.