The day before she was going to be discharged from hospital, Jiannis sat down next to Harmony’s bed and said, “Give me your phone.”
“What?”
“You’re coming home tomorrow, but you can’t live looking like . . . well . . . ” A gesture, taking in her sallow skin, the bruising beneath her eyes, flesh turned to putty by the ravages of medicine.
Harmony felt her fingers tighten round the phone in her hands, while across the ward a nurse checked the prescription updating to a woman in the bed opposite, whose family had not visited, and who hadn’t woken up. “I . . . Why do you want my phone?”
“We need to choose your updates very carefully. Selective. None of this free-for-all; we need to make sure you make only the best, carefully curated choices.”
He wasn’t even looking at her as he spoke, but flicking through his phone, checking photos of women, updates they’d experienced, how it had affected their bodies, holding up his screen occasionally to compare the image of a model to Harmony’s sprawled out, gown-clad body in bed, as if checking a portrait against a suspected fake.
“I’m . . . I don’t think I’m ready for this yet,” she blurted.
“Don’t be ridiculous – give me your phone.”
Her fingers tightened. “No.”
“Harmony.” A slow chide of irritation, the wiser man dismissing a child’s complaint, and it reminded her of something. What was that feeling?
(“Don’t you have upgrades?”)
“Clearly you’ve made bad choices in the past; that’s why you’re here. We need to be better, make better choices. I’ve done a lot of thinking about this and I really think . . . ” He reached out to grab her phone, and she snatched it away.
“Don’t touch my fucking phone!”
Her voice rang out across the ward, loud enough for the nurse to glance up from her tablet, face twitching in disapproval and surprise. Jiannis rocked back, eyes flickering around the room to see if anyone else had noticed this shameful outburst. “Babe, you’re being . . . ”
“Don’t touch it,” she snarled. “Don’t fucking touch it!”
A moment of astonishment. No one has talked to him like this for years. He doesn’t know what to do about it. He hasn’t had to deal with such . . .
But it’s a hospital ward. Generally speaking, abusing patients is considered Not Cool, and will be bad for his kudos. “All right,” he hissed, soft and slow beneath his breath. Then again: “All right. You’re clearly not yet in your right state of mind. That’s fine. I’ll pick you up tomorrow and then we’ll talk about this properly when you get home, yes? Yes.” Standing up in a single movement, shoving his phone into his pocket. “Yes,” he concluded, argument settled, problem solved. “That’s what we’ll do. Fine.”
Without a word, he marched away, and Harmony changed the password on her phone the moment he was out of the room.