LATER IT all sort of fused into a blur.
One day turned into two, which turned into three, which turned into….
Once the pain was gone, it was so much better. Wyatt wasn’t happy to be in the hospital. It wasn’t anything that had ever happened to him, and being away from home and hooked to an IV and the beeping machines and wake-ups in the middle of the night to get blood draws wasn’t exactly his idea of heaven. But less pain? That was a blessing that drowned out almost everything. And of course Kevin was there.
Of course?
He couldn’t believe how safe that made him feel.
It was all so strange….
With all the comings and goings of doctors and nurses, Wyatt managed to register some of what he heard and saw. It got confusing. Sometimes the morphine made him so foggy he would forget things that happened only moments before, and that could be disconcerting. Considering the alternative? That horrible, unbelievable pain? It seemed a small price to pay.
And it did make him feel silly sometimes, and that made it easy to be nice to the nurses, who were only doing their jobs. There was one who seemed like a giant. He referred to her as “Big Nurse,” after the nurse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and he thought she was going to be a problem. She was pretty mean at first, and he thought she didn’t approve of Kevin for one thing. But he made up his mind he’d win her over and flattered her outrageously.
“I love those earrings,” he said on the first afternoon after she hadn’t been very nice about a blood draw. In fact, she had kind of harpooned him, and he’d wanted to smack her. He’d already told her he hated needles, and he was practically in tears for having to get what felt like the 175th one already.
Her brows came together, and she reached up absentmindedly and seemed almost surprised to find them there.
“Are those blue topaz or sapphires?”
The corner of her mouth flickered. “Why…. Why, they’re topaz.”
Wyatt nodded happily and pressed the little button on the control in his hand to administer some morphine. He had to wait between doses and had just noticed on the clock that it had been enough time—not that he was clock-watching or anything.
“They really bring out your eyes.”
She blushed then, the old battle-ax, and the corner of her mouth rose slightly despite herself. “Really?”
“Oh yeah.” He turned to Kevin. “Don’t you think?”
“I was just thinking that,” Kevin replied.
Then she really was blushing. “I have some sapphire earrings that my mother gave me, but I’m afraid to wear them. Afraid of losing them.”
“I find it hard to believe that you’re afraid of anything,” Wyatt told her very seriously. “And besides, how can you enjoy them tucked away in a drawer?” He tried to focus on her name tag, but the morphine had something to say about that. “Janet?”
“Janis,” she said. “Pope. I’m the head RN on this floor.”
“I love that name,” he said. “Janis.” And then tried to sing a little bit of “Piece of My Heart.”
“That’s who my mother named me after,” she said. “She saw her at Woodstock.”
“You’re not old enough for your mom to have been at Woodstock, are you?”
Now Big Nurse, aka Janis Pope, head RN of the seventh floor, was smiling. “You’re just pulling my leg now, Mr. Dolan—”
“Wyatt,” he corrected.
She brushed at her hair with both hands. “I was born in 1970,” she said. “The year after Woodstock, which was in 1969.”
“Well, you’re living right, then. I wouldn’t have put you a day over forty. Thirty-eight even, right Kevin?” He snapped his attention back to the man who made his heart go pitter-pat and tried not to laugh at Kevin’s deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression.
“Easy,” he managed with much aplomb.
“You really do have beautiful eyes,” Wyatt assured her. “But I hope you don’t mind me saying this, they’re second to my boyfriend’s here.” And he motioned to Kevin.
She bit her lower lip, looked back and forth between them, and then said, “No, of course not.” Then shading even redder, she all but dashed from the room.
“You are incorrigible,” Kevin said, laughing.
Wyatt shrugged and remembered the pain. He pressed his morphine dispenser, but nothing happened. He had to wait. He guessed that was a good thing. He’d always been terrified of the idea he might become a drug addict. “She does have pretty eyes,” he said. “And the earrings are nice. I’d wear them.”
“I’m sure you would,” Kevin said and winked.
“We could wear matching ones,” Wyatt ventured and then held his breath.
“Maybe,” Kevin replied and Wyatt let his breath out. “Although they’re a little flashy for me, don’t you think?”
“I was thinking they were a little small,” Wyatt said with a slight toss of his head.
Kevin’s smile was beautiful. “I think, for you, they might be.”
What are you doing here? Wyatt wondered then. Why are you here with me?
“We’d have to find matching stones,” Kevin replied and wow. Really? Matching stones? “But different sizes, okay?”
“What are you doing here?” he asked aloud. And, “Why are you here with me?”
Kevin got up from his plastic chair—it looked hideously uncomfortable—and came to Wyatt’s bed—which was pretty damned uncomfortable—and sat on its edge. “Did you want me to leave?” he asked quietly.
“No!” Wyatt said. Gods, no. I don’t know what I would do if you left. In fact, one time he’d woken from one of his naps and the nurse who’d been on call thought he’d left. He’d almost panicked, when Kevin came in with two little cups of soft serve.
“You’ll be thrilled, it’s peanut butter!”
“How did you know I loved peanut butter?”
“Oh, Wyatt! Why do you ask such silly things?”
“No, I don’t want you to leave. I….” And then he did panic and couldn’t say, “I love you,” because he was afraid it was all a pain-induced dream.
So then Kevin said it instead. “I’m here because I love you, Wyatt. I’ve loved you forever. I just finally realized it the last few days. I don’t know how I didn’t know.”
“I love you,” Wyatt said, glad of the drugs so that he said what he was feeling, and if it was stupid for him to have fallen in love in one weekend, why then he could blame them, couldn’t he? “I do. And I don’t know how I didn’t fall in love with you the day you drove in the gate for your first Faerie festival—”
“You don’t remember that day, Wyatt.”
“—or the night you wouldn’t take me to bed when I wanted you so much.”
“Did you, Baby Bear? Want me? Or were you just—”
“I wanted you a lot…, Daddy Bear.” His heart skipped when he called Kevin that, and he heard Kevin’s breath catch, which made him hope that he liked it too. “And maybe for some of the ‘wrong’ reasons, whatever those are. Maybe because Howard made it okay for me to want. But I want you right now, and I wish we could. Right here. Right now.”
Kevin kissed him then, long and hard, and Wyatt’s head swam, and it was better than morphine.
Then, because he was feeling extraordinarily and uncharacteristically shy, as soon as Kevin sat back up he said, “And besides, it pays to be nice to nurses. They are underpaid and overworked and patients treat them like shit. You just have to make sure you never lie to them. Say what you mean because they will know if you lied, or they will find out, and then you’re fucked and not like I was fucked by you the other night.”
Now it was Kevin who was blushing, and Wyatt liked making Kevin blush.
THERE WERE no masses in the CAT scan, so if the pain was because of a stone, he’d passed it already—although Wyatt couldn’t imagine when. He hadn’t peed in a toilet in at least twenty-four hours. They wouldn’t let him, so he had to piss in this odd bottle-like thing with a handle that they called a urinal—which was not a urinal at all. They were measuring his pee flow, and it had taken everything out of him not to ask what kind of watersports they were into. He hadn’t. And if he had passed some kind of stone, wouldn’t he know? Wasn’t it supposed to be one of the most painful things a man could experience? Wyatt knew he was dreading it like a sentence in prison—because he knew what that would be like for a little fag like him, and it wouldn’t be at all like the hot gay porn movies from Raging Stallion or Titan or Steam Engine.
So with Kevin asking the questions he’d been too afraid (or too confused) to ask, he discovered that the clear CAT scan meant that he didn’t have cancer, which he’d worried about until his boss, Katherine, got there and ordered him to get “that worry” right out of his mind.
“Remember,” she said. “Don’t think about how you don’t want to be here—”
(and how was he supposed to do that?)
“—because the Universe only hears ‘hospital’ and gives you more of what you’re thinking about. Think about being healthy. Think about already being well. Think of yourself bathed in golden healing light.”
Which wasn’t easy, but her words had impressed Kevin, and he’d held Wyatt’s hand and said soothing things and petted his forehead or hand or arm when the pain got bad—in other words, whenever the morphine wore off and he couldn’t yet get any more.
“Your boss,” Kevin said. “She believes what I believe.”
“I guess she does,” Wyatt said. “But she’s a witch, you know. And I’ve been thinking a lot about what you’ve been saying. When I kind of float away? And I’ve been thinking that your ‘ask, believe, receive’ was really exactly like spell work. That’s what I do, isn’t it? I draw my Circle and call on my gods, and use my herbs and crystals and wand and blade, and isn’t all I’m really doing asking and believing and waiting to receive?”
“Yes,” Kevin said, his beautiful hazel-and-amber eyes flashing. “That’s exactly what I think. It’s why I’m just as comfortable in a Catholic High Mass as a Queer Gods Ritual at Festival.”
Wyatt found out that everything going on had been wonderful and confusing and mystifying—how the heck had all this happened, so much and so fast?—and he wasn’t sure how he would have done it without Kevin.
A man who said he loved him.
Could it be?
Could it be true?
Wyatt woke up over and over again to find Kevin there. He could hardly believe it.
When he woke up in his room that first time to find all his friends there, Wyatt had been amazed. Not just the FAB-ulous Four but their mates. And Kevin, thank Anubis.
Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you….
He introduced them all but found that had already been done while he’d been off in La La Land. And there were lots of curious looks and a mouthed, “Good going, dude!” from Jockster (which made him blush and laugh and… shit, that made him hurt!).
It had all been like some corny but wonderful scene from a movie like The Broken Hearts Club, where Benji wakes up in the hospital after his overdose to find all his buddies there. Except Wyatt didn’t get scolded or asked why he’d done such a stupid thing because he hadn’t—thank the Goddess!—done anything wrong. Or Peggy Sue Got Married or even the end of The Wizard of Oz—and wouldn’t that be nice? If all this turned out to be a dream?
But that didn’t seem to be the case—alas!
Wait! No! Not a dream. He didn’t want Kevin to be only a dream.
Oh, it had been good to see them and know that they loved him and that Howard…. Was. Fucking. Wrong! People did care about him, and not just those “stupid fags” Howard said he liked to get drunk with. Their spouses liked him too. And his boss. And according to Kevin, just about everyone at Men’s Festival.
They asked what had happened and hugged him and asked him for jokes and told him a couple he could use later and wrote down lists and entertained him until he couldn’t keep his eyes open.
And Kevin stayed.
Kevin sat with him and helped him sort through things. Remember things. Decisions to make. There was stuff he kept… losing. Stuff he lost between pain and then pain’s end through the morphine.
Kevin explained that the hospital people hadn’t found any blood in his urine in the emergency room, and all that had something to do with him either passing or not passing a stone (he wasn’t clear on that), nor had they found any evidence of pancreatitis, which was the area in his body where he seemed to be feeling the most pain. The CAT scan definitely didn’t show any stones, although he guessed from what he could remember through the fog of morphine that he might have passed it partially already.
“Does that mean the little fucker is sitting in my bladder,” Wyatt asked Kevin, “and I have the pain of pissing that out to look forward to?”
“If you do, baby, I’ll hold your hand. Hell,” and Kevin turned bright pink, “I’ll hold your dick for you, Baby Bear.”
Baby Bear.
He was hearing Kevin use that name more and more.
Wyatt blushed, and he didn’t even know why—because the dick holding didn’t bother him one bit, even if he was peeing at the time. Because, well, it would mean that big wonderful man was behind him and holding him up and not letting him fall.
He sighed.
“No comment?” Kevin asked. “I can’t believe you let that one go.”
“Later,” Wyatt mumbled and faded into morphine land—with a bit of He said he loved me! traveling down into that faraway place with him.
Thank the goddess he had drugs!
Then, later….
It seemed the doctors found some blood in his urine after all. Was this from another urinalysis? That report said “plus 2,” whatever that meant.
They were now sure something internal was going on—oh, really? Really? He could have fucking told them that and he never went to medical school!—and it had nothing to do with his back. They were wondering about prostatitis now. Prostatitis? Wasn’t that something old men got? Kevin told him the doctors said that while he was a bit young for prostate problems, it happened.
But how would that account for all his stomach pain?
He felt as if he were forgetting something. That there was something he should be asking about, but if so, he couldn’t remember what it was.
A very cute doctor named Clay concluded that he had, in fact, passed a stone.
“The worst part is passing a stone through the kidney, but if you’re lucky and it’s small and not jagged, it can pass through the penis and not even be felt.” But then he described the worst parts of it all as being a man’s introduction to how it feels to have a baby.
Wyatt had no idea if he was right or not, or if the doctor—a man, after all—could even know if he was right. But Wyatt did know one thing. He certainly wouldn’t have more than one child if it was true! How women had two or three or six he would never know.
Kevin explained that the CAT scan showed an enlarged prostate, but nothing cancerous.
The relief was beyond words.
Dr. Clay did do a prostate examination, though, and Wyatt was amazed he didn’t even think of flirting with the guy. Dr. Clay was more than cute; he was hot. He reminded Wyatt of Spencer-fucking-Morrison, and he told the man that too.
“I’ve been told that,” Dr. Clay said and then told Wyatt he was going to stick his finger up his ass. He didn’t say it in those words, of course, but that’s what Wyatt heard, and he wasn’t happy about it. Not in these circumstances at least. He was too busy wondering if Dr. Clay could tell that he’d been fucked recently. If he could tell, he didn’t say a word. It all seemed so funny, but gods, it had just been so embarrassing.
Then he placed orders for another urinalysis and more blood work.
Gods!
Again and again Wyatt could only be thankful that Kevin was with him.
He quickly lost track of time and what happened when. Days fused all together. They did a test that he was glad he could only partially remember. They hooked him up to some machine that used a radioactive dye so they could do a nuclear medicine photo-op. But they had a lot of problems getting a picture of his gallbladder. They even used several extra tricks to do it, but had no luck. Wasn’t his gallbladder what Saffron told him to ask about? And he remembered that was what had been bugging him. What he’d forgotten. No. No, he hadn’t forgotten. He was sure he had tried to tell them, but no one really noticed. She had been so insistent that it was his gallbladder, and if they knew that, it would “save a shit-ton of time and tests.” At least that very test seemed to point out that it wasn’t his gallbladder, thank all the gods that ever were, because that meant he wasn’t going to have to have surgery! Surgery would mean a scar, and he did not want a scar!
One day—after some distasteful news about a procedure he was going to have to endure later that afternoon—Scott and Cedar showed up (how was everybody getting off of work?), and they brought a few things Wyatt had really wanted. Two small statues for the side of his bed. The first was of Asclepius, a bearded man—a god—in a rather revealing toga-like garment, holding a snake-entwined staff. The second was about half its size and was a stone rabbit—Tu Er Shen—the Chinese god of homosexuality. Two very good gods to have watching over him in the hospital.
Oh. And candles. Green. Forest green. Utnapishtim would be happy, although Wyatt wasn’t sure they would let him light them in the hospital. He could always sneak it here and there. Wasn’t Kevin good for keeping watch?
Wyatt was sure that he was.
“And socks,” said Cedar and pulled out three pair from a deep jacket pocket.
“Oh, thank you!” Wyatt flexed his feet under the mismatched socks. He’d been so embarrassed every time someone saw his socks.
“And”—from Cedar’s other pocket came—“underwear! I was going to bring those hot jocks of yours I found in the bottom drawer.”
“And I reminded him,” Scott said, “that the point was you didn’t want anyone to see your ass.”
“Although you’ve got a nice ass,” Cedar remarked.
“Hey,” cried Kevin, while Cedar laughed and Wyatt blushed.
Cedar slapped Scott’s ass. “Relax, Hodor… ah, Kevin. I’ve got all the sweet butt I can handle right here.”
“Cedar!” Scott spun around and glared at him.
“Thank you, Scott.” Somehow just seeing them there gave Wyatt a lot of comfort. “You too, Cedar.”
Scott shook his head. “I’ll do anything for you.”
“I mean it,” Wyatt said.
“Yeah, I know you do.” Scott bent and kissed Wyatt’s cheek, surprising the hell out of him. “I was worried I got the wrong one. You’ve got a bunch of statues of guys in togas. But he was the only one with snakes.”
“You got the right one,” Wyatt said. “He’s the god of medicine and healing.”
“Ah!” Scott shook his head. “Good one to have around, then.”
The new Scott never ceased to amaze Wyatt. He really had changed. It was a wonder what a week out at “witchy-woo-woo” camp and meeting a hot motherfucking jockstrap-wearing guy could do to a man. He glanced at Cedar, who had an arm slung casually and perhaps a little territorially around Scott’s shoulder. He winked as if he’d read Wyatt’s mind.
“I thought so,” Wyatt said.
“Whatever makes you feel good, my man,” Cedar said. “Whatever makes you feel good.” And then he used his eyes to motion toward Kevin.
Wyatt blushed.
They talked for an hour or so and watched a couple of episodes of Adam-12 (what a surprise that show was on repeats), and it was about then that they came for Wyatt to go do the “awful thing” he was decidedly not looking forward to.
“Can I go with?” Kevin asked.
“I am sorry, Mr…?”
“Owens-Dolan,” Kevin said. “I’m his husband.”
That startled Wyatt and then made him feel warm, and maybe a little braver.
“Well, I’m sorry, Mr. Owens-Dolan, that’s not possible,” said the very adorable Indian man. Was there a requirement that the men who worked in this hospital all look good? Wyatt wondered. Or was the administrator of the hospital just a dirty old fruit? “You can wait for him in recovery, but it would be mighty boring. This will take a couple of hours, and we will be bringing him back here as long as there’s no trouble, and I can’t imagine there will be. We do these every day.”
“Kevin, Cedar and I thought we could take you to Camp,” Scott offered. “Then we can get your cars.”
“Oh, wow!” Wyatt said. Saffron had called to let them know that she and Gryphon had dug them out.
“One of us can get Wyatt’s Mini Coop back to his place, and you can get your truck. You could have it with you and then you wouldn’t be trapped here.”
“I don’t know,” Kevin said, shaking his head. “I don’t like the idea of being away in case anything….”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Scott told Kevin and then used his eyeballs to bounce a few ixnay-ixnays in Wyatt’s direction.
“I saw that,” Wyatt said as a cute African American hospital person—Wyatt wasn’t sure what he was: Nurse? Resident? Medical assistant? What?—helped him into a wheelchair, the back of his hospital gown flopping open as usual. Thank Arachne he had underwear!
Then it hit him.
“I really think you should come with us, Hodor,” Cedar was saying. “Hell! What if it snows again? Let’s get the cars where they’re safe.”
They were taking him down for that test—oh gods!
“I would just like to be right here in case.”
He didn’t want to do this. And they were going to knock him out!
“I understand,” Scott said. “But we have this afternoon off, Hodor. This is your best opportunity.”
“It’s Kevin,” Wyatt cried. They were wheeling him toward the door, rolling his IV behind him.
“Shit!” Kevin cursed and then, “Oh, shit! Wyatt, do you want me to go down with you?”
Wyatt held out his hand to the guy pushing him. Then he turned to Kevin. “I want you to tell me it’s going to be all right. I want to know it’s going to be so all right that you can leave here with all the confidence in the world and take care of our cars. And make sure you get all our stuff from the cabin. I want my iPod. I want my books. I want Scott and Cedar to take my bearskin home so it’s safe. I want you to kiss me!”
Then Kevin was on his knees and kissing him. And when he finally broke that kiss, he sat back on his haunches and assured Wyatt of everything he’d said.
“You’re going to be all right, Baby Bear. And I will go take care of the cars. And we’ll get all your stuff, and I will bring you your iPod, and Scott and Cedar will take your bearskin home. And I love you. I love you so much.” He claimed Wyatt’s mouth—Wyatt felt the claiming—and it took his breath away, and he suddenly knew that this was going to be all right in the end.
That Kevin would be waiting for him.
“And it’s Dolan-Owens,” he called over his shoulder as he was taken from the room.
“Wow,” said the cute black guy pushing his wheelchair quickly down the hall. “You are one lucky dude. If I had a man like that kiss me, I’d cream my panties.”
Wyatt laughed.
And for a few minutes, at least, he felt a little better.