Saving from Monkeys (13 page)

Horror stories of people who had fallen asleep never to wake up again started to fill my head and I felt my stomach sink at how I'd joked about internal bleeding. Yes he was irritating, but I didn't want Elliot to die! Not in my bed, at any rate, and not before I'd got to the bottom of us sleeping together.

I suddenly remembered that the pill bottle he'd brought out had had a pharmacy label on the side. Maybe that would provide some clues as to what he'd done to himself.

Sliding off Abi's bed, I crept over
to Elliot’s side and then hovered uncertainly above him. If I rummaged in his pockets would he wake up? I was sure I'd never live it down if he woke to find me with my hand awkwardly close to his crotch. Then again, him dying kind of took the cake awkward-wise.

Elliot twisted round in his sleep as I stood there; hitching his t-shirt up slightly and I had to hold back a little whimper. An ugly dark bruise spread across his exposed skin, looking 100 times more painful than his crack about my small room.

My mind made up, I pushed my hand as swiftly as I could into his pocket and retrieved the bottle. After all my angst, it was easy and there, on the label, was a doctor's name and phone number.

"Well
, Smelliot," I said quietly as I went to dig out my mobile, "let's see what's what."

----------

He slept the sleep of the medicated injured, that weird mix of heavily unconscious and borderline awake. A couple of times he heard Rox talking and he was sure at one stage he'd felt her take his shoes off, but it was all blurry and unreal.

Finally, though, with an awakening not dissimilar to battling his way from the deepest ocean floor to the surface, he peeled open his eyes.
God it was bright!

It took him several goes to finally stand the light, but when he did manage it, the first thing he saw was Rox looking over at him from the other bed. He was used to her 'I'm about to say something crazy' look and he knew all too well her 'you are nought but something gross I've stepped in' look, but her expression this time was foreign to him.

"It lives," she deadpanned when she saw that he was awake and he coughed against the furriness in his mouth to croak,

"Yeah, barely," in reply.

"Well it's a start," she rested her chin on her drawn up knees, seeming kind of self-conscious. Then she blurted out, "You must be busting for the loo."

And now she mentioned it...

Momentarily forgetting that moving was a bad idea, he sat up quickly and then hissed as his whole chest seemed to set itself on fire.
Damn
that hurt!

"Easy," Rox was suddenly beside him, looking at him with such genuine concern he felt momentaril
y giddy...although that could’ve been the extreme pain he was in.

He waved her away, trying for a 'thanks, but no thanks' smile to accompany his dismissal, but probably just grimacing at her. Whatever his expression, she didn't back off too far, hovering nearby as he forced himself up, grabbing his painkillers (that had somehow ended up on the bedside table) as he went. He had to sidle in sideways to squish into the teeny tiny bathroom, but the effort was worth it as his head started to clear with his bladder.

Looking at his watch, he saw that it was a bit after 9 am. Considering he remembered getting back to uni not long after 2 pm, he deduced he'd somewhat overshot the short rest he'd intended to have. Well damn, no wonder Rox had been looking worried.

He knocked down a couple more of the painkillers, all warnings about taking them on an empty stomach null and void when compared to the feeling of being knifed every time he breathed.

Staggering back out into the main room, he leant against the wall for a moment to get his balance and clocked the colour coordinated timetable pinned next to his hand. It looked like Rox was missing Economics 306 to play Florence Nightingale; he couldn't have said why this knowledge made him feel so odd.

"Shouldn't you be in class?" He asked as he made his way back to her bed, trying not to groan in relief as he lay down again. As God was his witness, he was never going to allow himself to be slingshot again.

Rox pushed back some of her hair and he noticed that it wasn't as messy as the last time he'd seen it. In fact, she was now sensibly dressed in a neat pair of jeans and a top that, to his admittedly uninitiated eyes, looked stiff from ironing. Shame, he missed rumpled Rox.

"I know that textbook better than the lecturer," she said haughtily, "I think I can miss one lecture."

He was too out of it to play the games they usually played so he just came out with what he was thinking. "You're worried about me."

"No!" She denied quickly, before pursing her lips and admitting, "...
OK yes, maybe I'm a little bit worried, but not about
you
. I'm worried you'll haemorrhage all over my newly washed sheets or something. Not that you
will
haemorrhage," she hurriedly added, perhaps thinking it was something he was anxious about, "I checked."

"Checked?" He repeated, struggling, as always, to figure out what she was talking about

"With your doctor from the hospital."

"The hospital in
Papua New Guinea
?"

"Yes," she said patiently. "Why? Did you go to another hospital?"

"No, I..." He had enough trouble keeping up with her when he wasn't drugged, in pain and barely conscious; in his current state he didn't have a hope. "You called my doctor in Papua New Guinea?" He tried again. "Why?"

"I wanted to
know what was wrong with you,” she announced this as if it was the most normal thing in the world. "Good news, you're only incredibly badly bruised. It's a miracle according to Dr Tagobe."

Because he felt like something vital had just gone mushy at hearing she'd given enough of a
damn to track down an overseas doctor for him, he ramped up the grumpiness as he replied, "
Only
incredibly bruised? Sounds like that doctor should just stick to malaria."

"Malaria?"
Rox said blankly.

"Yeah, big problem in PNG," he said unthinkingly, before remembering himself and adding, "...apparently."

"Oh," she looked at him oddly, "that sucks. I hate mosquitoes."

He let out
a 'hmph' of laughter. "Me too."

"Did you take more of those pills?" She asked suddenly, her eyes alighting on the pill bottle still clutched in his hand. "Because they're really strong and you haven't eaten in hours, idiot."

"Mmm, strong is good," he murmured, feeling his eyes start to close again. They were quick too.

He heard her groan and mutter something that definitely included the word 'moron' and probably 'monkey', but then she was next to him and leaning down to help him shift back onto the pillows.

"Look at you being all nice," he practically slurred, sounding a bit like Nan now he thought of it. "It's kind of off-putting."

"Yeah, well, don't read too much into it," she snorted. "You're just my restriction."

He didn't even have the energy to verbalise his confusion at this reply, but his expression must have given it away, because she rolled her eyes and explained, "You're the constraint I cannot change myself, and thus have to take as given." She dragged a blanket over him and the last thing he heard was her murmuring, "Sweet dreams, don't overdose."

Chapter 8
– The Penis not Forgotten and the Smell of Green

The problem with exes is that, for forever and always, you knew what their penis looked like.

This was the prevailing thought in my mind that evening as I sat in the pub across the table from Jason. He had been my first crush, sex and relationship at uni and briefly, ever so briefly, I'd thought we might be on our way somewhere awesome.

Then one day, as we sat working together on the problems we'd been set from our accounting tute, he’d started flicking his nails. It was entirely possible he'd done this before and, in my romantically dazed state, I hadn't noticed, but from then on, it was
all
I noticed. That and the way he pretentiously rolled his r's and held doors open for me with a little smirk that said 'look at me being all chivalrous and manly'. Basically, every one of his little quirks became, in my mind, akin to fingernails down a chalkboard. So...yeah...we hadn't lasted long after that.

No-one had been heartbroken, there were no tears and only a week or so of gloom, and now we regularly went out in the same group of friends and smiled and chatted just fine.

All this, however, did not take away from that one, inescapable fact. I knew what Jason's penis looked like, and it was driving me crazy.

This
, I thought furiously to myself, is why we're supposed to have massive, dramatic break-ups and never speak to our exes again. It's to save us from having to hold polite conversation with someone whose dangly bits you intimately know.

"You alright, Rox?"
Annette, one of my awesome new buddies, who understood just how life affirming Keynesian economics is, nudged my arm and smiled at me.

I so wanted to blurt out that I was going out of my mind trying to
not
picture Jason's penis, but I somehow managed to hold my tongue.

This was the blessing of this group of friends, the self-restraint that so often seemed to desert me, appeared in droves. I was actually able to have quite calm, fun little debates with these people and rarely did I ge
t the 'Elliot' look in return; the look that said, 'I have no idea what you're talking about, crazy'. The only downside to this normalcy was that I was often exhausted after spending too much time with them. When this happened, I ran on home to Abi and buried her under the avalanche of weird thoughts I'd withheld.

That was what I really wanted to do now, but I couldn't. Tonight Abi was cooking for Jonah in our room (a culinary experience he was unlikely to forget in a hurry as my roommate's speciality was microwave dinners) and I'd promised to stay out nice and late.
I hadn't minded making this promise at the time, but now, with Jason's penis rapidly taking over all cognitive thought, I was beginning to regret it.

"I'm fine," I managed to reassure Annette, "just a bit tired, I think."

The words made me sound normal, but in my head I was making up this little ditty:

Jason's penis it was mine
,
Jason's penis it was fine.
Jason's penis one of a kind,
Jason's penis GET OUT OF MY MIND!

I'd reached crisis point. I had to get out.

I made my apologies to the group, gratified with the cries along the lines of 'it's still early, stay', but knowing there was no way in hell that was going to happen.

I burst out into the cool evening and took great gulps of 'Jason's penis' free air. It was a relief to be free of
that
tyranny, but as I wandered down the pavement away from the pub, I wondered what I was supposed to do next. I was essentially homeless. It was only 10.30 and I knew that that wouldn't count as 'nice' or 'late' from Abi's perspective.

I felt fidgety and antsy. I wanted to vent about the Jason situation, but Abi was busy and there was really only one other person that had felt the full force of the non-censored me recently...That wasn't an option, though, right...?

I hadn't seen Elliot for a couple of days, not since Jonah had remembered he had a slightly dented friend hanging around somewhere and come to collect him. By then Elliot had spent two nights in my bed and I'd kind of not minded him being around. This was perhaps due to the fact he spent most of his time unconscious, which I found did wonders for his personality.

Asleep he may have been, but I hadn't liked the idea of him being all hurt and by himself, and I'd blown off
most of my classes to keep an eye on him. That I was prepared to do this, regardless of the shrewd looks it earned me from Abi, was perhaps testament to how genuinely worried I was about him. And, trust me, this reaction intrigued me a hell of a lot more than it did her.

When Jonah had whisked him away I'd told myself I was happy to see the back of Elliot, but I knew that that wasn't entirely true. I'd actually started to enjoy being thrown into the caring role, and the sleepy smiles Elliot had sent me in his brief awake periods had been kind of...nice.
It felt like a shameful admission, a smack in the face to my past self, so I'd tried to push him out of my mind in the past couple of days...with very little success.

And the moral to this story, I told myself crossly as I stood there on the street outside the uni bar, is 'be careful what you wish for'. I'd rather have more Jason's penis songs stuck in my head than wrestle again with thoughts of Elliot that were veering alarmingly away from the negative.

Enough
!

I had too many years of practice blaming Elliot for all the wrongs in my life to be stumped now. I was cold and I was homeless, somehow this must be his fault.

Sure enough, with just a little bit of focus
, I came up with an angle in no time. Jonah was
Elliot's
friend after all, and Jonah was the reason I couldn't just go home. Regardless of the lateness of the hour, or the likelihood that Elliot was out somewhere working his way into some girl's knickers, I told myself it was
his
responsibility to provide me asylum.

Storming over to Elliot's kept me toasty warm, but once I was standing outside his door I was cold again.
Cold, and freaking out.

Could I really just turn up like this? After all the grief I'd given him when he came my way, was I really being the one to deliberately put myself into his path? Not even his path, his
home
, the place where we'd done the stuff necessitating three condoms.

So what are you going to do
? I asked myself sternly.
Stay out in the corridor all night? Go back out and lurk around outside the uni bar thinking about Jason's penis
?

This scenario was so awful, I found my hand shooting out and rapping smartly on the smooth painted surface of Elliot's door, almost of its own volition.
Well that was it. I’d knocked, I was only going to do it once. If Elliot didn't answer I would go find a cardboard box in an alley somewhere to spend the night. In many ways that would probably be preferable to-

"Rox?"

Yikes, and there he was. I'd been so busy convincing myself that Elliot wouldn't open the door, I hadn't clocked the fact that, actually, he already had.

His hair was rumpled, his feet were bare and he looked all clean and fresh, like he'd been not long out of the shower. Yikes again.

"Hi," I said, my voice coming out as a funny little squeak. Oh God, he knew now, he knew I'd sought out
his
company.

"Hi," he repeated, looking thoroughly blindsided by my presence outside his door. A bare second passed, though, before the tiniest hint of a smile seemed to develop around the corners of his mouth.

"This is all
your
fault!" I exclaimed, almost stamping my foot in annoyance with myself. I was belatedly realising that coming to his place had laid me open almost as bare as when I'd woken up after our one night stand, and I hated it. "You should have trained Jonah better!"

He looked at me blankly for a moment, and then leant a shoulder against the doorframe, muttering,
"And here we go again…"

And just like that, all the wind was taken out of my sails.

I wanted to battle on; tradition dictated that I snarl and snap at Elliot until I felt better, but I just couldn't do it this time. Truly and honestly, how was it
his
fault that my roommate had a boy round?

There was a long pause as he waited for me to go on my usual rant. When I broke the silence, however, it was to say quietly,
"Abi and Jonah are being gross in my room, I can't get Jason's penis out of my head, and I didn't really know where else to go."

It was the truth; just flat out honesty, no embellishing, no crazy…
OK, maybe a
little
bit of crazy.

One of Elliot's eyebrows quirked, but he stepped back and held the door open for me. As I passed him and entered his studio flat I could've sworn I heard him murmur, "Never a dull moment,", but I chose to let that one go.

"So…how're you healing up?" I looked round his place, trying not to remember the last time I'd been there. This was completely futile of course, but I reassured myself, at least this time I was wearing a bra. "Dr Tagobe said you'd be sore for a while yet, but not to worry unless you get any lumps or swelling."

I snapped my eyes away from where they'd been wandering dangerously close to Elliot's bed, and eyed him suspiciously. I'd suddenly realised that it would be an entirely Smelliot thing to do to turn into one giant hematoma and not mention it to anyone.

"What?" He asked, looking somewhat perturbed by the intense way I was now staring at him.

"Lift up your top," I ordered him and he raised his eyebrows again before he let out a criminally sexy chuckle and reached for the hem of his t-shirt.

"Of course, it all makes sense now, you came here to cop another look at my amazing bod."

I was about to say something snarky in reply to that, when he lifted up his shirt and all my attention instead focused on the expanse of bruised skin
displayed before me.

"Holy monkeys, Sinclair, you look like an opal!" I leant down and peered closer at his injuries in horrified wonderment.

Thankfully, even to my untrained eye, it looked like his bruises were healing alright; there were definitely no lumps to speak of…unless the faint lines of his muscles counted.

"Yeah, I counted 9 different colours this morning," he nodded. He continued to hold his top up for me, but flinched away as I raised a hand as if to touch a particularly sore looking bit. I couldn't help it, there was something about the way it looked so tender... Some latent Mother Teresa instinct kicked in and I wanted to press my hand against it and smooth it better somehow.

Still, I couldn't explain that to Elliot so, instead, I straightened with a smirk, remarking, "Who's chicken shit now?" It was perhaps not the wisest thing in the world to hark back to the conversation we'd had at Haze, but then wise was not something I'd ever been accused of being

Elliot
let his shirt drop and gave looking both manly and affronted a try. It didn't work.

"You were chicken shit because you were scared of the intense sexual feelings I could summon within you with just the faintest touch." My jaw dropped and I gaped at him, but he continued
, "I don't want you to touch me because of the intense
painful
feelings you could summon within me with just the faintest touch. That doesn't make me chicken shit, that just makes me not a masochist."

"And speaking of intensely painful feelings," he went on before I could jump in there and
refute the 'me being scared stuff' again, "thanks so much for telling your mum on me about the slingshot incident."

It’
d been great conversation filler, telling Mum all about Elliot's stupidity. It was just a shame that I hadn't been able to shake the sense that she thought I’d failed in my duties somehow; like it was my job to keep Elliot safe even from himself.

"Bad?" I asked and he flicked me a 'd
uh' look over his shoulder as he walked to his kitchen area.

"20 solid minutes of 'with all the advantages you've been given in life I can't believe you've done this'," he said wearily.

Yanking open the fridge, he pulled out a beer and a soft drink, waggling them in my direction. Trying not to think about how I hadn't managed a 20 minute conversation with my mother in over a year, I nodded towards the cola and he chucked it over.

"It's weird my mum still thinks that money could save you from your own idiocy," I remarked as I twisted the lid off the bottle. "You
’d think you'd have cured her of that years ago."

"You'd think," he agreed, grabbing himself a drink too and then coming back over to where I stood in the entrance way. "But your
mother has a remarkable ability to think I can learn from my mistakes."

"More fool her," I said, but I smiled to take the edge off. He'd not teased me about coming to him when I
’d had nowhere else to go, now was not the time to smack him down.

"Yeah, well,
" he shrugged, "Nan thought it was awesome." He headed for the couch and I followed him, rolling my eyes.