Max nodded tightly. Flo was at his feet. He’d be fine.
Hector left, and Max was alone, but not for long. Carla and Anna joined him a few minutes later. They bustled around him, chattering about this and that. He ignored them until Carla flopped into the seat beside him.
Max dropped his head to her shoulder. “Where did your mum go?”
“To Jed’s room. I think she’s going to spring clean it before he gets back. How are you holding up? Did you talk to Jed last night?”
“A bit. He didn’t say much, though.”
Carla hummed. “Yeah, Dan said he was pretty out of it. Hopefully, he’ll be a bit better today.”
Max let the silence hang for a while, until he asked the question that had been niggling at him since Carla had answered Dan’s call the day before. “Did you know he was sick?”
“Yes.” Carla eyed him with a steady gaze. “He didn’t tell me, and he never really talks about it, but I read it in his file before he first came to see me. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but you know I couldn’t, don’t you? I still shouldn’t talk about it with you, but if it’s any consolation, I don’t think he deliberately hid it from you.”
“I get that. At least I think I do.” Max had been pissed the night before, but his anger had stemmed more from helplessness than a sense of betrayal. “It just doesn’t seem fair. He’s been through so much already.”
“He’ll get better, Max, but it’s going to take some time.”
Max got up, shrugging off her comfort, and drifted back to the window. “I know. I just hate that he has to deal with this.”
Carla let him be after that, and though time seemed to drag along at a maddeningly slow pace, it felt like he’d just blinked when Hector walked back through the door.
“He’s sleeping,” Hector said before anyone could speak. “I think I bored him with all the tales of my childhood. He’s heard most of them before, after all.”
Max found a faint smile from the dark depths of his mind and plastered it on his face. “Is he okay?”
“The doctor seems to think so. He said people can react differently to some types of sedation. Sometimes it has the opposite effect?”
Max looked to Carla for guidance. She nodded. “It’s called a paradoxical reaction. The sort of thing I’d expect more from you than from Jed.”
Max shot her a halfhearted glare. “Very funny. What happened? Did they have to use a different drug or something?”
“Yes.” Hector moved to Carla and pulled her close. “He was fine after that, mostly, at least. I think it is very difficult for a man like Jed to let others have such… power over him. He has always been that way. Ask Anna about when he had mono as a teenager. We had to all but lock him in Dan’s room before he would let her take care of him.”
Carla laughed, but for Max, the harmless tale from the past cut too close to the truth. He handed Carla Flo’s leash and left the room without another word.
He slipped into Jed’s room, half expecting to find Anna cleaning the windows or something equally ridiculous, but Jed was alone. The door closed behind Max with a quiet click. He waited a moment, mindful of waking Jed, but there was no response.
Max crossed the room and leaned over the bedrail. Jed lay on his good side, curled at a slightly odd angle, and even in sleep he looked utterly wiped out. Max traced the shadows under his eyes, noting the tiny cut on his bottom lip. Had that been there before? He couldn’t be sure.
He appraised the rest of Jed and found he looked pretty much the same. The IVs remained, though one seemed to have moved from the crease of his arm to the back of his hand. Only the oxygen tubes were missing. A closer scout of the room found them on the floor. Max considered retrieving them, but decided against it. Jed must have dispensed with them himself, and he wasn’t about to argue with that.
The door opened. A nurse appeared with a covered plastic tray. She flashed Max a quick wink and left it on the bedside table. He frowned at the tray for a moment before he remembered.
That’s right. Jed can eat now.
Curiosity got the better of him. He rounded the foot of the bed and lifted the lid from the tray.
He shouldn’t have bothered. The pitiful, rubberized excuse for food was even worse than he remembered it. Rage swept through him. Mac and cheese from a box, and a pot of lurid, red Jell-O. How was Jed supposed to get better eating that… how the hell wasanyonesupposed to get better eating crap like….
Screw it.
In one fluid movement, Max scooped the tray up and dumped it in the nearby trash can. He’d bring Jed every scrap of food he needed from home. Jed wasn’t eating that shit. No fucking way.
“Max?”
Max spun at the sound of Jed’s tired voice calling for him. “Hey, you. How are you feeling?”