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David opened the door shortly after Dylan’s third jab at the doorbell, which was just as well. Dylan reckoned he’d disturb quite a few of David’s neighbours if he had to begin hammering on the door instead, and three was a satisfying number in any case, far more palatable than four.
It came as no surprise that David did not look pleased to see him. “Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Two a.m.,” Dylan said, “and you only have yourself to blame. You make a snap decision to resign and I have to find out from Charlie Fairhead?”
David’s brow furrowed. “Charlie? Last I saw him, he was walking out with the rest of us.”
“Well, evidently he came back.” Dylan assumed a frown of his own. “That’s beside the point, David. You must have known I wouldn’t have let you quit and swan off into the sunset undisturbed.”
“Let me?” David laughed, though he did not sound particularly amused. “I wasn’t aware I had to run my personal matters past you.”
“That isn’t what I,” Dylan began, only to trail off, finding cause for distraction. “What on Earth are you wearing?”
David looked down at the navy, silk ensemble for which he’d traded in his blue uniform. “My—pyjamas?”
“You were asleep?”
“Yes.” David narrowed his eyes. “Soundly, until some delinquent began ringing my doorbell at two in the morning.”
Dylan twisted his mouth. He couldn’t explain why it bothered him that David would hand in his notice at the end of a night shift, then immediately go home to bed. It was a perfectly logical sequence of events. But therein, perhaps, lay the problem. It suggested finality: that David had not lost sleep over his choice, and would subsequently not be reversing it.
It seemed Dylan had delayed in responding for a second too long. David filled the silence instead, prefaced with a sigh, his tone gentler than it had been a moment ago.
“Would you like to come in for a drink?” Before Dylan could complete sharply raising his brows, David held up his hands and clarified, “I think I have tea—decaffeinated.”
“Decaffeinated,” Dylan echoed in a mutter. “How very American.”
David said nothing, but held the door wider for Dylan to enter through it, one corner of his mouth drawn agreeably upwards.
Inside the kitchen, Dylan leant back against the counter while David busied himself with two mugs and the kettle, at first sluggish as he filtered into the waking world. Observing made Dylan feel slightly sheepish for having woken him, understanding intimately how precious a good night’s sleep was in their line of work. Then he remembered that David had unceremoniously exited that line of work just a handful of hours ago, and his sympathy waned just a tad.
He tipped back his head and spoke. “Aren’t you going to say something?”
David glanced over. “That should be my line, Doctor Keogh. Why are you performing house calls at antisocial hours?”
“You make a life-altering decision on the night we lose a colleague together.” Dylan paused to swallow down the sense of dread that had been solidifying in his throat all evening. He could scarcely recall a time when Robyn had not served as a lighthouse on the ward; he was acutely aware that he and David both had been in the room when that light went out. “Did you think I wouldn’t want to follow up on your state of mind?”
David’s shoulders drew closer to his ears. He did not look Dylan’s way as he asked, “What exactly are you suggesting?”
“Well—it can’t surprise you that—I wanted to ensure you hadn’t made this call because you’re…”
“What?” David turned, finally, his face a startling portrait of outrage. Maybe it was only startling because of the source, a man who usually greeted even Dylan’s darkest moods with inexplicable composure. “Out of my mind? Are you here to assess me for sectioning again, Dylan? Because that seems to be your solution for everything.”
Dylan worried at his lower lip while meeting David’s eye at an angle, embarrassed at having given that impression at all. He had no-one but himself to blame, with their personal history entered into evidence.
“I was going to say grieving.”
The anger faded from David’s eyes first, though the rest of him soon followed. He nodded, seemingly to himself, and turned back to preparing their drinks.
“I’m sorry. I understand why you think this has something to do with Robyn, but it wasn’t that.” He appeared to reconsider. “It wasn’t just that.”
“Ollie, then,” Dylan posited, with some hesitation. Not just because he feared angering David again.
He could admit that an element of squeamish self-preservation made him avoid the topic. A mention of Ollie at the wrong moment evoked a depth of agony in David that Dylan could not possibly begin to soothe. It made him feel utterly useless more often than not. Planning every detail of the boy’s funeral had been an easier task than discussing him ever was.
When David stilled, hand hovering just above the counter, Dylan steeled for the worst. It was a relief that David merely shook his head, completing his acquisition of the kettle.
“No. I’m just—I’m just tired. Of everything, with everything.” He apportioned water into the waiting mugs. “I think I should have left months ago, if anything.”
“I wish you’d told me,” Dylan said. “You could have come to me. You still can. You know that, don’t you?”
Dylan could see David flash a bitter smile in profile. “You’ve had enough on your plate without taking on my scraps.”
“We all have,” Dylan said, tersely, feeling irritated by the answer but again at a loss about why. Either he was irked by David’s attempt to coddle him—or irked by himself, for failing to notice a friend on the cusp of burning out, for apparently seeming so fragile or unapproachable that David had walked out without telling him rather than trying to talk it through. “But it’s a team effort. Isn’t it? You of all people should know that you—I wish you had just come to me first.”
Again David turned, this time to hold out a mug for Dylan to take, and it was even more irksome that he now looked so placid. There was no indication he felt any of the same internal conflict he’d inflicted on Dylan.
“To be perfectly honest with you, I didn’t think it would upset you this much.”
Bemused, Dylan accepted the decaffeinated tea by reflex. “I’m not upset.”
David lifted a hand and traced a circle in the air at Dylan’s eye level. “Have you told that to your face?”
“I’m not upset,” Dylan said again, mindful of how much he was undermining his position by insisting upon it. He wondered why he was even bothering to deny the obvious, and revised. “Or maybe I am. I’m… annoyed, I think, actually.”
When David pointed at himself, Dylan shook his head.
“Not with you. I’m annoyed that I didn’t realise you had one foot out the door.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. You’re not my keeper.”
“Aren’t I?” Dylan scoffed, and had he been even slightly less worn out, the affronted face David pulled might’ve wrung a dry laugh out of him. “I mean, it goes both ways. You always seem to be there at my lowest ebb. I suppose I feel a—I don’t know, a sense of obligation to do the same for you.”
Slowly, forebodingly, David’s composure broke with an ambiguous smile.
Dylan felt it was appropriate to glower in return. “What?”
“I value our friendship too, Dylan.”
“Well, of course.” Dylan briefly cast his gaze to the ceiling. “But it’s—I don’t know. It’s more than that. Isn’t it?” He was put in mind of the asinine leadership seminars he’d been strong-armed into attending by Marcus Fidel, and the hollow vocabulary they’d encouraged him to adopt. None of their suggested terms applied. “You’re not just another valued friend and colleague.”
“I understand,” David said, sounding thoughtful. “Once you engage in a spot of human trafficking with someone, you’re uniquely bonded for life.”
“That’s not,” Dylan began, only to decide he had neither the time nor inclination to dignify that with a response. He wearily dragged his free hand down one side of his face. “I’m saying you can always rely on me to be in your corner.”
David briefly looked baffled. “I know. And the feeling is mutual, believe me.”
“Right. But you can see why I’m frustrated, can’t you?” Dylan gestured vaguely in David’s direction. “It should have been clear that you’re not an imposition. You should’ve come to me before it got this bad.”
“So you could do what, exactly?” David did a poor job of hiding a grimace over his lip of his mug as he drew his first sip of tea. “Overhaul the NHS? Find a spare million quid to hire more nurses?”
“Of course not, but I’m sure I could’ve done something.” Dylan peered into his own cup, but the heat rolling off it discouraged him from imbibing too. It would need a minute more to cool for his liking. “I still can. I can help you to fix this.”
“There’s nothing to fix, Dylan. I’m not coming back.”
“No.” Dylan heard his tone ring out sharper than intended. “No, that’s not acceptable to me.”
It was David’s turn to scoff. He pushed off from the countertop and began drifting towards the lounge, and Dylan scrabbled to follow.
“I’m afraid you don’t really have a say in the matter.”
“What are you going to do? Where are you going to go?” Dylan made a beeline for the coffee table so that he could set his mug there. He gestured to the room around them with arms outstretched, like a call to action, or perhaps a call for divine intervention. “Will you even stay in this city?”
“I’ll confess I haven’t thought quite that far ahead.”
The way David lowered himself onto the sofa was almost leisurely, as though this was a social visit and not an exercise in crisis management. But they didn’t do social visits, did they? Theirs was a pattern of one gravitating to the other when something was tremendously wrong, and at least the hospital had been a reliable source of pretences for that arrangement. A resignation threw a rather inconvenient spanner in the works.
Dylan’s arms lowered, one crooked by his hip. He tried to sound less aggrieved than he felt.
“Then what were you thinking, David? Because I’m sorry, but I’ll need some kind of glimpse into your head if I’m going to believe this wasn’t just a knee-jerk reaction to an admittedly awful day.”
“It’s not just today, is it? It’s every day, and it’s exhausting.” As if to illustrate the point, David slumped back into his seat, eyes briefly falling shut. “I think—what I need more than anything is a break. Then I’ll start contemplating my next career move.”
“You can take a break from the ED without quitting entirely.”
“All right,” David said, opening one eye before he opened the other. “You go first.”
Dylan blinked. “Pardon?”
“Take a break. I’ll reconsider my stance if you promise me, hand on heart, that you’ll go in tomorrow and demand your right to time off.”
With a sharp inhale, Dylan drew himself upright, mouth settling into a thin line. He keenly met David’s gaze, and felt them reach a perfect understanding without the need for words. There would be no hope of taking leave from the ward for the foreseeable; Dylan wouldn’t dare try anyway.
“Well, then.” David shrugged. “There’s your answer.”
“David.” Dylan again admonished himself for a lack of self-control over how he sounded—this time because he heard himself speak at a pitch he’d almost describe as pained. “Please. I know I’ve been… wrapped up in my own business lately. I let you down and I’m sorry. But—just tell me you’ll think about it, all right? You might feel differently in the morning, once you’ve slept on it.”
David frowned, and for an interlude he was pensively quiet. When he finally spoke it was just above a murmur.
“This isn’t your fault. You didn’t think it was, did you?”
Dylan looked away, gaze coming to rest on his deposited mug. He lifted it and gingerly sniffed the contents, feeling David watching him as one might a zoo animal interacting with new enrichments. Tentatively, he took a sip. He could not recall if he’d tried tea without the caffeine before, but it didn’t taste so different.
“What do you think?”
“Not bad. A little bitter.” Dylan rolled back his shoulders. “I suppose it could say the same about me.”
“That makes two of us.” David sounded amused, but the mirth slowly faded from his comportment. “You really didn’t have anything to do with me tendering my resignation, Dylan.”
That was reassuring, if only slightly. He apparently hadn’t squandered enough of his unquantifiable social currency with David that he’d driven him away.
It put Dylan at ease enough that he elected to be honest. “I lost one friend tonight. I am not especially thrilled about losing another.”
“The circumstances are very different, aren’t they?” David peered sombrely into his cup. “I’m lucky—extremely so. We’ll have every opportunity to keep in touch because I’ll get to continue a life outside the ward.”
“It’s not the same,” Dylan said, cognisant of his own petulance. “You might have the privilege of existing outside the hospital from now on, but lately it feels like I only leave there to sleep.”
“I know the feeling. And you’re due back in—” David’s gaze flickered over Dylan’s shoulder to what he assumed was a clock, “—ten hours, aren’t you?”
“Quite,” Dylan murmured, checking his watch. “I should be going.” He looked up with the sternest grimace he could muster from his depleting energy reserves. “This isn’t over.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” David stood with alarming speed. “You look like you’re about to keel over. I’m not letting you drive another hour to the marina in this condition.”
Dylan snorted. “I don’t particularly want to crash on your couch, David.”
“Who said I expected you to?” David nodded over his shoulder. “I’ll sleep down here. You take my bed.”
“No.” Dylan had spluttered his declination almost before David had finished. “Really—I’m fine to drive.”
David gave him a pointed look. It took Dylan a moment to decipher what it meant, but he could put his lethargic reaction time down to exhaustion. There had been one heinous traffic accident today, said David’s unimpressed expression; it would be a cruelty for Dylan to let him fret over the possibility of another one.
Dylan sighed. He held up a palm in surrender.
“Right, fine, okay. But really—the sofa is—”
“—not for guests.” Suddenly David was at his back, shooing him, as though Dylan was a troublesome patient refusing to get back into bed. “I just changed the sheets yesterday, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Not quite. His resistance stemmed from a cause no more sophisticated than awkwardness: the same reluctance he felt at the prospect of sleeping in any bed that wasn’t his own. The only thing preventing him from putting up more of a fight was the fact he was bone-tired—no, tired through every atom, through his soul if there was such a thing. Today had been an eternity.
“Right,” he said again, allowing David to direct him, still clutching uselessly at the once-supped tea. “Okay.”
By the time they made it upstairs, Dylan felt borderline-vertiginous. He could not pretend he’d never experienced the feeling in David’s presence before. At times David’s attention was an onslaught, practically dizzying, welcoming and kind in relentless waves. It could be too much; it could be exactly what Dylan needed. Tonight it was the latter.
“I have spare pyjamas in the—” David began, which prompted Dylan to arch a brow as steeply as he could. “Or not.”
“Thank you, anyway.”
“Do you prefer your eggs boiled or scrambled?”
“What,” Dylan stated flatly, catching up a second later. “You don’t have to serve me breakfast, David. You’ve not become an innkeeper in the hours following your resignation.”
“I just thought—as I’ll be making some anyway.” The gleam in David’s eye promised nothing good. “You know what? I’ll surprise you.”
“Although,” Dylan said, gingerly. “I wouldn’t say no to a spare toothbrush, if you have one.”
David did. It felt like the first bit of good news he’d received all day.
In the marrow of the dark, once Dylan was alone and reposed upon the mattress so heavily that he felt he might blend with it, he began running through the usual breathing exercises he employed when trying to drop off in an unfamiliar setting. He found he needn’t have bothered. David’s bed was almost comfortable enough to make up for its displeasing lack of motion, the absence of the marina's near-imperceptible sway that would lull him on the houseboat.
It seemed David had told the truth about the sheets being fresh; they carried the synthetic fragrance of washing powder, but beneath it was a scent he recognised as belonging to the bed’s usual occupant. Not a cologne, or something unpleasantly organic. It was a scent reminiscent only of David. For all his usual misgivings about rooms and beds that weren’t his own, Dylan found himself surprisingly unperturbed by its presence.
Perhaps it was closer to comforting, even, than simply neutral—like an anchor, present without being immediate, that which kept him moored as he drifted off to sleep.