Handle With Care (2 page)

But those days were over. The strongest substance likely to pass my lips now was a cup of tea, and even those were carefully rationed.

I stuttered a goodbye and tried not to stare at Ollie’s arse as he walked back to the van, gravel crunching under his feet.

I didn’t succeed.

He swung around as he climbed into the cab, and I swear that he must have caught me ogling him because his grin went impish. He gave me a little wave, casual-like, and I tried to return it in the same spirit. Bet my face gave me away though. When I got back inside and finally looked in the mirror, I’d gone beetred. I also discovered my hair was doing its best impersonation of a mullet, with the top slicked down with grease and the back fanning out to almost brush my shoulders.

Bugger. I really needed to do something about that.

“Sooo…” A hand landed on my shoulder with some force. “What’s going on here, then? Flirting with the delivery guy? Is there something you should be telling me about, Benji?”

The flush on my cheeks gave me away. Damn! I was so busted.

“I wasn’t flirting,” I said.

Zoe raised her eyebrows. “Yeah, well, you might not have been, but he certainly was.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. And it wouldn’t have hurt you to reciprocate a bit. He’s cute.”

I couldn’t help the grin that took over my face. “Tell me about it.”

Zoe’s smile widened. “I knew it! You’re into him. Mind you, he’s a bit young, isn’t he? Can’t be older than twenty, I reckon. If that.” She pulled a serious face, and I felt like reminding her she was only twenty-one herself, but I bit it back. I’d learnt long ago how much stock she set in seeming mature.

And anyway, I didn’t want to discuss Ollie with Zoe. I was the one meant to be interfering in her love life and vetting potential boyfriends—not the other way around. She just seemed to be more interested in her career than in a relationship right now.

“What did you bring me to eat?” I asked her in a transparent attempt to change the subject. Fortunately, food is the one subject guaranteed to distract my pastry-chef sister.

“Come and see.” Zoe led the way to the kitchen, and I plodded after her, envying her bouncy gait and boundless energy.

Zoe’s twelve years younger than me, and it still came as a surprise sometimes to see her as a grown woman. I carried this picture of her in my heart as a confused and frightened six-year-old, asking her big brother why Mummy and Daddy weren’t going to wake up ever again. I had done my best to be a substitute parent for her after the car crash that killed them both, refusing to let her go to a foster home despite the doubts social services had about an eighteen-year-old diabetic acting as her legal guardian.

12

It was strange having to accept the fact that these days our roles had swapped and she was the one looking after me. It didn’t help that she was still so petite. Next to my bulky frame, she looked like another species, but relatives always commented on the fact that we shared Mum’s deep blue eyes and thick, dark hair.

I needed to lift my mood. Zoe didn’t deserve to be reminded of all that again.

I watched her unload her cool-bag into the freezer. “Did you bring me any more of your yummy pasta bakes?”

“Cupboard love, that’s all it is with you, isn’t it?” Zoe squeezed my arm and smiled.

It turned out there were three tubs of the pasta bake, along with various other homemade treats. It definitely pays to have a sister who’s a chef when you’re on a severely restricted diet. The sodium content in most ready meals meant there was hardly anything I could eat in the supermarket.

“You’re a star, little sis.” I pulled her to me and kissed the top of her head.

“Yeah, I know. And one of these days, I’m going to teach you how to cook so I don’t have to keep doing this for you.”

“Nonsense. You love showing off your skills.”

“I love knowing you’re eating something tasty.” Zoe gave me a long look, and I remembered how, at the age of ten, she taught herself the rudiments of baking just so that there were some decent desserts I could eat. “I don’t love cleaning for you, though. You sure you can’t afford to hire someone?”

I groaned. Not this conversation again. I felt guilty enough about everything Zoe did for me, but I just didn’t have the energy for many chores. “It’s not that. I offered to pay you, didn’t I? I just don’t like the idea of a stranger coming around every day and nosing through my stuff. It’s bad enough when it’s family.” I punched her arm, and she gave me a cheeky grin before pretending to be mortally wounded.

“You wouldn’t have to get them in every day, Benji. Just once a week should do it.”

“So why do you come round every day?”

“Why do you think, numbskull?” She returned the punch with interest.

“Because you’re my brother, and for some crazy reason, I care about you. Since you won’t take me up on the kidney offer, this is the best I can do, isn’t it?”

I closed my eyes on her. It was way too much. I couldn’t take a kidney from her. She shouldn’t have to physically suffer because of my broken body.

“I think I should wait for a deceased donor,” I said as firmly as I could. “It would be better to get a new pancreas at the same time, and you definitely need yours.” God, it was like shopping for a two-for-one deal on body parts. Organs-R-Us. I tried not to dwell on the morbidity. On the fact that I was waiting ghoulishly for someone else to die that I might live again.

“I just want to see you get better,” she said, her arm snaking around my waist.

“Yeah, I know. Me too.” I sighed and rested my chin on her head. I didn’t deserve her and I knew it, but I was doing my best to try and be worthy of all that love. I looked down at her and the sensation of my unruly hair flopping down over my forehead reminded me of my resolution to do something about it.

“Hey, Zo, would you mind giving me a quick haircut before you leave? I’ve still got the clippers.”

“What? And ruin that glorious mullet?” Zoe grinned mischievously. “I thought you’d never ask.”

14

Three hours after Zoe had left, I hooked up the catheter tube in my belly to an empty bag and started to drain out all the waste dialysis fluid. I’d infused a dialysate bag not long before she’d turned up, so I had to wait for it to diffuse before opening the parcel. It might sound silly, but I had problems getting it up with all the dialysate fluid inside me. I’d look down and see my bloated abdomen and that bloody tube sticking out of me, and any trace of arousal just evaporated. I’d just start thinking about how the fluid was sloshing around inside my peritoneal cavity, getting more and more toxic as it leached all the waste products out of my blood.

In some ways, I’d have preferred to stay on the haemodialysis, which was only three hospital visits a week, but what with the diabetes, it didn’t work so well for me. I felt terrible most of the time and kept having crashes. Peritoneal dialysis was better at keeping my blood sugar level, even if it could be a hassle having to infuse and drain four bags a day.

As the fluid drained out, taking all those toxins with it, I ripped open the cardboard wrapper and pulled out the latest acquisition to my library. I was getting quite a collection. Like I said, I had to get the variety somehow, didn’t I?

This one promised plenty of XXX action in the jungle, with a bunch of crew-cut, war-painted hunks. The jungle looked suspiciously like a Beverly Hills landscaped garden, but I wasn’t about to split hairs over the accuracy of a porn set. Let’s face it, no one really cared about the background, right? It was like those old
Star Trek
sets—you ignored the polystyrene boulders and painted sky to concentrate on watching Kirk pace around like a caged tiger. Well, I always had, anyway. The man even managed to make those awful uniforms look sexy.

A bit like a certain delivery courier I could think of.

That odd little sucking sensation I got when the bag was full pulled me back into the present. After I’d unplugged and chucked the sealed bag in the medical waste bin, I took another look at the DVD case. Nope, it just didn’t appeal to me at that moment. Seeing those porn stars impersonating soldiers, all I could think about was my new military-style haircut. I ran a hand over my shorn head.

Would Ollie even notice it? And if he did, what would he think?

I decided to fill myself up with the next bag and commit to another four hours of looking like a beach ball. I had a conference call due in a couple of hours, but so long as I put on a decent shirt and angled the webcam right, no one could tell I looked any different from how I used to. Except the hair, of course.

My boss would probably like that, though.

Turned out he did.

“Afternoon, Ben. You’re looking well.”

I plastered on a smile. James would never be able to tell how forced it was over the screen. “Feeling great, James. How’s the family?”

The family were perfect, as ever. I smiled and nodded and tried to look interested, though, because his kids were cute. The youngest daughter reminded me of Zoe when she was little.

James Littlejohn led a kind of charmed life, it seemed. He’d used his trust fund to set up a financial services software company straight out of business school, and despite not having much computer savvy, he’d surrounded himself with those who had the necessary skills. What’s more, he’d managed to keep most of them on with his generous contracts. I certainly wasn’t about to argue 16

with my deal, as despite having a serious health condition, I was able to work from home with only a very small slice off my old salary.

“And how’s your health?” James asked.

“Oh, can’t complain.”

“I don’t suppose we can ever tempt you back to the workplace? The engineer we’ve got in now isn’t a patch on you. My computer’s slowed right down.”

I gave a wry grin. “Much as I’d love to help you out, it’s not easy while I’m on this dialysis. Believe me, you wouldn’t want all my medical equipment littering the break room. I know how you felt when Tamara had her breast-milk pump in there.” The look on his face when he’d walked in on her had been priceless. Her expressing milk while I’d been on a break hadn’t bothered me, but then again, at the time I’d been in the middle of seeing Zoe through puberty and having to talk with her about periods and safe sex. I think my embarrassment about female matters had long since been overcome.

“No, no, of course. I was forgetting about that.” James looked flustered, and I took pity on him.

“When I get a transplant, I’ll be right back there, I promise.” I said
when
, not
if
, because James didn’t need to know the real situation with waiting lists, did he?

It was true, I would have loved to have gone back and resumed tinkering with the computers and not just the code, but I couldn’t cope with the idea right now. All those workplace temptations would be torture—everyone drinking coffee and talking about going out and getting drunk. I tried not to think about the state-of-the-art coffeemaker that was gathering dust in my kitchen, because it only made me want to scream with frustration.

“Right. Let’s see what we’ve got for you this week.” James shuffled his paper around on his desk. I gave the first genuine smile of our conversation. His reliance on pen and paper in the age of information technology was somehow charming. “We’ve just started an account with a company called Dane Gibson Associates who need a new integrated payroll system. It’s an important account, so I’ll need you to check over the work my minions here have been doing.”

I listened to James’s summary of the new account and tapped out a few relevant notes while simultaneously surfing to DGA’s main website to get more of an idea about what I’d be dealing with. They looked like an incredibly successful employment agency, dealing with professional temps and headhunting missions for companies across the South East. Dane himself gave a smarmy grin from their home page, and I felt an irrational surge of irritation at the man. He was way too good-looking, and he knew it. I wondered if the neatly trimmed goatee and stylish suit meant he was gay or merely metrosexual. Of course, I had to admit most straight men were better groomed than I was at that time, new haircut or not.

When James had finished his rundown, he gave me an awkward smile. “I know it’s a lot to ask of you, but you’d say if it was more than you could cope with, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course. I’ll be fine,” I said breezily, knowing full well I’d have more than a few late nights working on this account.

“Great. Well, I’ll email over the file and let you get on with things, then. Bye for now.”

“Bye, James.”

I kept the fixed grin in place until I’d switched off the webcam, then slumped back into the chair. Moments like these, I knew I was kidding myself when I said it was only the dialysis regime that kept me out of the workplace. If a twenty-minute conversation completely wiped me out, how on earth would I cope with a day in the office?

18

Still, no point in fretting about things that couldn’t be changed. I pinched the bridge of my nose, thought productive thoughts, and set about my latest assignment.

Of course, forty minutes into my supposed work binge, I found myself navigating to my favourite adult DVD site—the one I knew used Ollie’s company for deliveries. I tried searching for “parcel delivery guy”, came up with nothing and eventually struck on using “mailman” as the search term. I added a couple of the most promising-looking titles to my basket and selected the guaranteed next day delivery option. Then I felt a bit guilty and went browsing for X-Men comics. At least that way I’d have something I could talk about next time Ollie knocked on the door to deliver my porn. It’s not like I could tell him I had a recently discovered kink for parcel delivery guys, could I?

The next morning, I stood naked in front of my wardrobe, willing it to give me a break. Ollie would be here at some point in the next few hours, if the online parcel tracking information was correct, and I wanted to be wearing something at least marginally more stylish than I had last time. I glared at the row of suits I could no longer fit into before reassuring myself that Ollie probably wouldn’t be into that look anyway as he had that whole skate-punk thing going on.