*

Suddenly, Daniël smells differently, like he has just taken a shower with an unfamiliar brand

of shampoo. Steve blinks in unconcerned surprise.

“Good afternoon, sleepyhead. The doctor will be here in a minute. Shall we wait for him

together? It’s only one, this time. There’s almost always a bunch of them. You don’t like that, lots of

people you don’t know around. I wouldn’t like it either.” He kisses Steve’s cheek. “If only it were just

you and me.”

He sees a lot, his Daniël ...

*

A quartet of doctors (more than one? Has he slept again?) talking in a language that sounds

like English, but isn’t quite the same thing. They talk about him in big words that seem to excite them.

They are important people and they know it. Some are more important than others. They talk the least,

like they recognise their words carry so much weight that using too many of them would disturb a

fragile balance. They talk to him, too, but he’s not under the illusion they actually expect a reaction

from him. Still, it’s fairly easy to understand at least part of what they’re saying. The words, that is,

and their meaning as to be found in any dictionary, but why they’re telling him about ventilation and

brain scans and healing and not healing fractures and drips with pain medication is something he’s not

quite sure about.

He knows he only has to allow the memories to fill him and every word the doctors and nurses

say will be clear. But he’s terrified the monster with the many faces and the many voices will return to

tear the flesh from his bones, to break his bones, to taunt him. To take Daniël’s name in its foul

muzzle and defile it. So he doesn’t remember.

*

“Good morning Mr Gavan.” She’s a good woman, he knows. Her voice is filled with the kind

of compassion that can’t be bought by any kind of salary. She’s the bringer of all things good and

merciful.

Could she please leave him and Daniël alone?

“I have very good news for you. Doctor Nisha will remove the tube so you can breathe on your

own. Just follow her instructions and it will be over in seconds.”

A petite woman, the doctor, Steve assumes, talks with Daniël. He sounds a bit excited, but in a

positive way. Like something good is going to happen. That’s all he needs to know.

“Give yourself a few moments to get used to the sensations. Don’t fight it.” Her small hands

seem to fiddle with something that apparently needs fiddling with.

Daniël’s touching him.

“You’re ready?” the doctor asks. Out of politeness, he’s sure.

He nods. Also out of politeness.

“Welcome back, Mr Gavan.”

The hard part is over as soon as he realises there is a hard part. To be honest, very honest, he

feels like shit. The tube, at least the one down his throat, is gone, but it still feels like something nasty

is halfway stuck and no amount of coughing is able to get it either up or down. But there’s also the

radiant happiness on Daniël’s face, like when they managed between them to prevent Manchester

United from scoring the winning goal in the very last minute of the match and they walked away from

Old Trafford with a point, and a feeling that can’t be expressed in any of the languages they speak

with some fluency.

He’s breathing on his own. Despite the huge chunks missing from his memory, the magnitude

of simply letting his lungs do their job feels like a milestone. He sees it in Daniël’s huge smile, feels it

in the way he touches his face, hears it in the way he says, “Oh Steve.”

It makes him more aware of the other things that make his body feel it’s no longer his own.

There’s a big needle in his forearm, but it doesn’t bother him all that much. He hates the tube in his

penis, for obvious reasons, but he accepts it. Not much to be done about that at the moment. There’s

more, but what’s the use of trying to check his whole body for things that weren’t there before.

Before what?

Not being able to touch Daniël, even if it’s only moving a finger over the back of his lover’s

hand, is unbearable. He doesn’t care about the pain it will cost or how exhausted it will make him, but

he will lift his hand and place it, gently, against the most beautiful face he has ever known, and Daniël

will rest a moment against Steve’s hand and no words will be needed.

He still wants to talk, though. Daniël may be clever at interpreting his nods and smiles and

stares, but there are questions he needs to ask and those he needs to answer. He wants Daniël to

experience the joy of hearing his name coming from the mouth of his lover. Isn’t that the reason he

came back from somewhere better than where he is now in the first place?

His list of things to achieve is growing. There are already two things he wants to accomplish:

touching Daniël’s face and saying his name. Strange how he was never aware how complicated

talking, saying even one single word, one name, actually is.

The sound he produces is at least halfway human, but that’s about the only positive thing he’s

able to make of it. It reminds him of...he doesn’t want to be reminded. So he falls silent again. It

doesn’t prevent Daniël from having that big, happy smile on his face, from bending over and kissing

their special patch on Steve’s arm. Even though there’s a lot more now that can be touched and kissed,

those few centimetres of skin are still favoured.

“One day, you will lie in my arms again and you will say my name. You have taught me that

I’m much more patient than I ever thought. I guess you have taught me how to stop looking at the

clock.”

It’s then that Steve notices Daniël isn’t wearing his watch.

Chapter 8

He makes sounds. He forms them, again and again, with great dedication and dogged

perseverance. It is a conscious act, an act of will, not the by-product of unimaginable distress. He

wants to make those sounds, even if they are still not real words. At least he has the choice. Perhaps

the doctors have some plan in mind about when and how his rehabilitation is going to happen. But he

refuses to wait. He has waited long enough. And if practising vocalisation is the only thing he has any

influence on at the moment, then that’s exactly what he’s going to do. Daniël, too, has been patient

long enough. Even without his watch to look at every few minutes, time still eats up his youth. He

discovers certain sounds make syllables, then very short words, then short words. Whenever he’s

alone and awake, he practises. His jaw feels heavy, his face not like before...before that thing he

remembers not to remember. Then suddenly, when he wakes up and finds his lover not with him, he

says Daniël’s name. He says it again and again, just to be sure. He keeps repeating it until the sound

fades away into the sounds of the room he’s in.

It’s not often he’s alone. There’s almost always Daniël. He has no way of being sure about it,

but he has the impression the amount of time he’s awake and aware of his surroundings is slowly

increasing. And so the time he can actually spend with his beloved gets longer by the day. Sometimes

Daniël just sits next to the bed, quietly looking at Steve. Not saying a word. Someone has brought him

his laptop from his apartment and almost every day, he’s reading and writing. Steve sees him smile

and frown and read some more, write some more.

“Does it bother you when I’m typing?” Daniël asks.

It doesn’t. Daniël believes him, not asking again to be really sure that Steve isn’t just being

polite. They’re not ready yet for politeness.

Far too often, there are nurses and doctors. They try not to hurt him, and he believes them, but