267Against Clyde's every wish, he has to stay in the intensive care unit over Christmas day. On the twenty-seventh, he's due back in theatre to have the external fixator removed and have intramedullary nailing of his femoral shaft. What a fun and delightful prospect. Even so, the plan is for him to be moved to the orthopaedic recovery ward after the surgery and of course, Clyde can't wait. Strong as an ox, he likes to say, despite having to have had half of his body's blood volume replaced a week ago and being unable to move from below the waist.
"Perhaps it's for the best," I tell him, this way he can't feel any pain from his leg.
He looks at me sourly when I mention this to him on Christmas Eve. "Oh yes," he says, his voice laced with sarcasm. "Because that in exchange for never being able to walk again is such a good trade."
"Oh, hush," I say, leaning in to kiss his forehead as he protests. "It's such early days, we don't know anything yet."
Clyde's eyes drop to the knitted blanket that I brought him from his flat. He picks at a loose thread, sighing. "Days are passing and I'm not getting any sensation back. The reality is I may never do so.. And I can't help but feel that you deserve so much better than that."
To say he's been feeling insecure since he's woken up is an understatement. I know he's scared, but I'm so relieved that he's even alive that he could have no legs whatsoever for all I care. His glasses broke beyond repair in the accident, so his old pair are sitting crookedly on his nose. I try and straighten them, then wrap my hands gently around his neck, now that that part of his brace has been removed, and lean in to kiss him properly. "Don't be a self-pitying knob," I say, managing to pry a small chuckle from him. "You know that I love you no matter what."
"That's why you refused my proposal," he murmurs, trying to sound bitter but failing as he can't help but smile. It was the second day of his consciousness, when he was becoming more lucid. He'd looked at me very seriously and told me that he'd marry me if that's what I wanted.
I give him a gentle cuff round the back of his ear. "I don't want you to feel you have to just because of the baby. I don't need that security - I know you're going to be around to be a great father. If the time comes when you want to marry me because that's simply what you want, maybe then I'll say yes."
"I've always known you're going to be the death of me," he teases and it's my turn to laugh.
I stand up off the side of his bed and stretch. The aches from the crash are finally beginning to leave my body. "I better be off to yours soon then," I say. "If I want to get any Christmas presents that is."
"You can't peak," he firmly tells me. "You've just got to locate all the bags on my list and then bring me paper to wrap them up."
"I won't," I promise him. "The surprise is always the best bit."
"You're lucky I'm so prepared having already bought them and not leaving it until the night before. Otherwise there'd be no gifts for you... Or Sarah, and I don't think she'd ever forgive me for that."
I pick my handbag up off the cot that has been my bed for the past few nights. "She's just glad you're alive.. Even though you can't take her ice skating."
Clyde grimaces so hard that the muscles in his neck jump. "In a somewhat morbid way, I'm somewhat glad. I'm terrible at skating. I'd probably have ended up damaging my back even more that it is now."
"Well, don't tell her that. She was so scared just after your surgery. I had to tell her you were going to be fine and be taking her skating as soon as you're better."
"If I'm ever better," he corrects me and I flip him off as I leave. His laughter follows me up the corridor and I finally manage to swallow the lump in my throat. MRI scans have shown swelling around his fractured L2 vertebrae, but no tears to the actual spinal cord. Still, it's too early to know if there is any permanent damage and the easiest way for him to deal with it seems to be passing it off as little more than a sadistic joke. I play along with whatever he wants; I just want him to heal and then come home where I can finally crawl into bed with him and hug him properly without worrying about hurting him even more. It's so strange for him to be the fragile one for once.
Clyde's apartment has taken on the strange mustiness of my own even after just a few days of being inhibited. It's a frightfully brisk but dry day and I open the sliding French doors looking out onto his balcony, hoping to clear the stale air. Venturing into the kitchen I find the source - a pile of unwashed dishes in the sink. Clyde would be mortified if he remembered he hadn't washed them and just left them fester. I decide to be nice and stack them in the dishwasher, turning it to the setting for 'hardened grime'. One could only hope that that'll do it.
I then turn my attention to his bedroom. It's great - he's had to tell me all of his hiding spots. In the left hand draw of the storage under his bed, at the back on the right of his wardrobe, even the third draw down on his tallboy. I locate six bags of gifts, mostly all for Sarah as Clyde loves spoiling her. He has instructed me to find a box containing cuff links for his father in his bedside cabinet. I rifle through paperwork, medication packets, an absolutely ancient pack of condoms - I inwardly cringe - until I find a couple of black boxes right at the bottom. I flip open the first one to find a tiny gold engagement ring and a matching wedding band. For a moment I panic, remembering Karen telling me all those weeks ago about Clyde proposing and then his distress about the location of the ring. He wasn't being that serious about marrying me, was he? I might be having his child and love him with all my heart, but the idea of actually being his wife still scares the bejeezus out of me.
It's some seconds later that I realise that they're not meant for me; they belonged to someone else entirely. The set had seemed oddly familiar and now I remember seeing them on Violet's hand in the photo taken just after their wedding. I feel as I'm intruding in on something absurdly private and hurriedly close the box stuffing it back down to the bottom of the drawer. This is exactly why you should never go rooting around a partner's private things, I realise.
The second box contains the requested cuff links, to my relief, and then I'm left with my final challenge of getting my own gifts from the cupboard of doom in the sitting room. It makes sense that he'd hide mine in there seeing as I avoid it at all costs. I vow to myself not to look inside any bags, and set about trying to pull down several bags from the top shelf without any 'accidental' peaks. I can't help myself at the last one, however. It's squishy and the bright green fleece fabric is difficult not to see though the pale white plastic carrier. This one isn't for me, I decide as I pull it out, Clyde doesn't have quite that bad taste.
Or so I thought.
He grins at me innocently an hour later when I re-enter his hospital room, holding the offending garment out in front of me. "What on earth is this?"
"What do you mean? I think it's fairly obvious what it is. I saw it in a shop a couple of weeks ago and just knew it was perfect."
I scowl at him, throwing the tiny all in one at his head. Screw being nice to him. "I'm fairly sure our baby is going to be ginger, inheriting your genes-"
"I am not ginger," he indignantly denies, as he always does.
I ignore him, continuing. "So I am not putting him through the ordeal of dressing him up as a lime green dinosaur!"
"I don't understand what's wrong with it! It's lovely and warm and think about how cute he would look."
I often wonder if Clyde was a soppy woman in another life and this only adds to my conviction. "And what if we have a girl? Then what?"
"Then she's going absolutely love dinosaurs as well."
"You're unbelievable," I tell him as he grins at me once more. He's been lapping up the fuss bestowed on him by the intensive care nurses and is sadly already grown used to getting his own way.
He reaches out to me, the best he can, and places a hand on my stomach as he's taken to doing. It gives me a little blossom of happiness in my chest whenever he does it. "Now, now," he says, patting my arm with he free hand. "No need to get in a tizzy about it. If you really feel that strongly, then if we're having a girl, she doesn't have to wear it. We'll just keep it for the next one who could be a boy. Or even the one after that - odds should make it happen at some point."
"Baby number three?" I snort. "You should be so lucky. You won't be saying that after fourteen sleepless nights in a row with this one."
His eyes stay perfectly clear and bright - I hate it when he winds me up like this, I can never really tell if he's joking or not. "Oh, I want at least six. Sleepless nights aren't going to change my mind."
"Fuck off," I say, pushing his condensingly stroking hand off my arm. My figure is going to be bad enough after one, let alone six. I'm not going to be dealing with saggy bits where they should never be saggy, no matter how much he begs. "This is rich coming from the man who didn't even want one a couple of months ago."
"Oh, I changed my mind," he airily says, before his face sobers into a sorrowful look. "This is, of course, all depending on whether my spinal nerve is damaged. I might never be able to make love to you again, let alone make baby number six."
I curl my lip at him, knowing exactly what game he's playing. "You damn well know it's likely not to be complete permanent paralysis. Spinal shock - that's what the neurologists think. Sensation will return when the swelling has gone down, it might just take up to a few weeks. Now get on and wrap your bloody presents."
I awake on Christmas morning with a crick in my neck and a dead arm from where it's reached up to hold Clyde's hand in his hospital bed. He didn't have an easy time getting to sleep; his ribs were giving him bother. Still, he slept better than I did - I can't even begin to dose off until he's virtually comatose. Though not quite, because I didn't really sleep at all when he was. Clyde is still in a deep slumber and so I begin to clear the room for the visit later. Our families are eating lunch together without us, what a cheek, and then coming in after for Clyde to give them their presents and vice versa. I wouldn't dream of leaving him alone on the day he usually loves most, but I'm still disheartened at the prospect of missing out on my father's sage and onion stuffing. The hospital's version of a Christmas lunch doesn't even begin to compare to a home one and I feel terrible for those poor workers ordered in to make it on a tiny budget.
I know Eli is working the Christmas shift and decide to go and see him. It's strange to be back on the oncology floor, despite that it's only been a week since the accident. I find Eli leaning over the nurses' station, with a grin on his face. One of the paediatric nurses is sitting on the other side of it, her face scarlet as he evidently teases her. She looks relieved at my arrival and scurries off, Eli watching her smirking.
"New toy?" I ask him as he kisses my cheek in greeting and wishes me a Merry Christmas.
"New nurse," he breezily replies. "Her name is Holly and she's twenty-five. Rather lovely girl."
He's neglecting to tell me something and so I raise an eyebrow at him. "Have you slept with her yet?"
Eli widens his eyes at my suggestion, as if it's the most ludicrous thing in the world. "No, we've just been out on a few dates. She says she isn't that kind of girl and to be honest, I'm willing to wait. I seem to get rather smitten with the ones that won't have sex with me, don't I?"
"It's your subconscious' way of telling you that she's a keeper, not a quick fling," I goad him. "Maybe she's the one."
"Maybe," he replies, surprising me no end. I consider putting my hand to his forehead to see if he has a temperature but I already know he's sick - lovesick. The simple thought of him being so makes me queasy, although that may be due to the fact that my pregnancy morning sickness hasn't passed yet. If Eli is thinking about settling down for good, then Clyde and I should be making our way down the aisle next week.. Albeit he'd have to do it on a gurney.
"Anyway," Eli says, breaking me out of my worrying train of thought. "How's the slave driver this morning? I was tempted to go and visit him but I was worried he'd send me on yet another mission."
It's true, Clyde has been using him as his personal scout to keep up on what's happening in the department. Eli should be glad to be his golden boy once more, but it seems the novelty has already worn off. "Tell him that DeMonfort is planning to paint over the mural in the play area," I advise him. "He'll flip his shit and when you tell him the truth, he'll be so mad that you teased him that he won't use you any more."
Eli nods, his lower lip jutting out as whenever he considers something a good idea. "That's not a bad plan, you know."
"He was still asleep when I left him. We can head back and you can wake him up with the news if you're lucky. My Christmas present to you."
He flashes me a grin as we walk towards the elevator. "Surely you don't want him to get stressed out? Aren't you meant to be caring?"
"Sure, but he's become so comfortable with being pampered already. He needs shaken down a notch or two."
"I'm counting my lucky stars that he ended up with you, not me," he laughs. "I could never be treated so cruelly. My ego bruises very easily and takes a long time to heal." I give him a gentle shove as the lift doors open and we enter.
Clyde is awake when we arrive at the ICU, not that he even bothers to notice us. The on-duty nurses are fussing around him, and he's beaming, eating 'breakfast' from an expensive box of chocolates one has obviously bought him. Spoilt brat.
He graces me with a kiss on the cheek, and when nobody is looking, a quick pinch on the bum. I snatch hold of his hand and he simply squeezes it, giving me a sly wink. So much for a lack of sex drive, despite Clyde Junior being well out of action. He really doesn't deserve to be in intensive care any more.
Eli shuffles in, his hands in his trouser pockets, looking bashful for once in his life. Clyde greets him with a nod. "Have you any news for me?"
Jeez, he's like the bloody godfather.
"I thought I should warn you. DeMonfort is planning a redecoration of the play area. He wants a bland colour scheme - more professional, like."
Clyde simply smiles and nods. "Oh, that's good, it's due for a new look. He must have some colour panels, try and get them for me will you? I'm thinking about a pale blue."
Eli is ultimately lost for words. He frowns and wishes the room a 'Merry Christmas' before hurriedly leaving.
Clyde turns to me, raising an eyebrow. "He's been my employee for the past five years, I know when he's lying to me."
I smile and lean in to tuck his blanket more tightly around his waist. "Can you tell when I'm lying?"
"When it's a small one, not a major one luckily for you. I do know, however, that it was you who gave him the idea. It's my back that's broken, not my brain."
"I'm aware," I tell him. "You don't deserve to be intensive care any more, you're perfectly fine. You're just taking advantage of all the attention. Send them away by two, will you? I don't think Sarah will be best please to find them fusses all over you when it's her job to look after her big brother."
Much to my delight, my Dad brings me some stuffing in a tupperwear box and it's the best present anyone could possibly have gotten me. I sit the corner of the room devouring it with much enthusiasm as my mother fusses over Clyde and our fathers discuss the upcoming boxing day football match and other boring things. Sarah is delighted with Clyde's gifts, as is everyone else mind, probably because they're not given dinosaur baby onesies for their prospective ginger children.
It's late before they decide to leave and Clyde is thoroughly worn out. I joke about him being perfectly health, but the truth is that even the most menial of tasks wears him out and entertaining both of our families for an evening is no easy task. I draw his blinds as soon as they've disappeared around the corridors' corner and Clyde gently laughs. "I thought they'd never leave."
"We should really have gotten the matron to kick them out, but she thought she was doing us a favour by letting them stay." He yawns and gives me a lopsided smile as I carefully perch on the edge of the bed. He looks exhausted and I'm careful not to touch his still swollen and tender cheek bone as I lean in to kiss him properly for the first time all day.
"Oh, now that's been what I've been wanting all day."
I smile against his mouth and murmur "Oh, the stuffing was my best present easily."
He pulls away, looking indignant. "That's not allowed to be your best present. Mine is."
"Well, I do love the bed socks but they don't quite top it."
"That's not your present. What do you take me for? Your present is in the bag over there," he waves in the direction of the pull-out bed, covered in a mass of empty gift bags and wrapping paper. "The small white one on the end."
I excitably go over to it and pull out a small black box. I instantly know what it is, and my breath hitches in my throat. "Oh, Clyde.."
"Just open it," he evenly says and I do. It's a fucking smacker of a diamond and I'm too stunned to even speak as he continues. "I bought it before the accident. I don't want an answer, just for you to think about it, but know that I don't want to marry you because of the baby, I want to marry you because I love you more than life itself and I want to spend the rest of it with you."
I stand, unable to reply, torn more that I ever thought was possible. Half of me wants to fling my arms around and tell I want him forever and beyond, whilst the other half wants to run out of the room like a headless chicken.
As I take a step towards him, he raises a hand to stop me, smiling. "I told you, I don't want an answer right now. Can you go and get me a snickers from the vending machine though? I'm a bit hungry."
Nodding, I do as he asks, sliding the box into my jumper pocket as I leave. I know I should say yes - not just for me, but for the baby too. Clyde is going to be such a great father, I know, and he deserves everything I can give him in return. It's then that I realise why I'm not telling him yes just yet; I want him to know in return that I want to be his wife because I can't imagine life otherwise. Returning to his room, I find him already asleep, the soft skin of his cheeks slack against his jaw. He was never interested in the chocolate, he was just giving me a chance to leave and I'm thankful. I unwrap the bar myself, I've had awful cravings for peanuts lately, and sit down on the end of his bed.
His brow creases as he stirs, not bothering to open his eyes as he speaks. "Darling, can you get off? You're on one of my feet and it's rather painful."