A man came up the aisle I was in looking at his phone. He wanted me but hadn’t spotted me yet. He stopped to type a message into his phone and put it away in his jacket pocket. Then he saw me, reached up and lifted me off the hook. He found the can farther down the shelf. He went to the counter and paid, and I was in a plastic bag with the can as he walked out of the shop.
When he took me out of the bag, he was sitting by his son’s bed and he put me on a table. A blue curtain surrounded them. It was quiet, the lights dim.
“How are you, Tom?” he said.
“I’m fine,” his son said. “So, how are we going to do this?”
“I’ll just go and get some towels and an extra pillow. I’ll find a nurse.” He stood up and pushed the curtains apart.
“Don’t get thrown out, Dad.”
“No chance. Visiting hours are a bloody nuisance.”
When he came back, he propped his son’s head up and pushed a pillow under his neck. “It’s about time, Tom. You look like you’ve been boozing for a month,” he said. He picked up the can next to me and squirted foam into his hand.
“I feel like I’ve been boozing for a month,” his son said.
“And your grandparents are visiting tomorrow,” he said as he spread the shaving foam on his son’s face with the flat of his hand.
“Yup, we don’t want to give them too much of a shock,” his son said. “No legs and a beard—I’m not sure they’d know where to look.”
“Quite.” He pushed the foam over the chin and up to the ears, then wiped his hands on a towel and picked me up. He dunked me into a plastic mug of hot water and rattled me against its sides. “Right, hold still, Tom.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
He held me over the face. It was bent backwards so the neck was exposed. And then I was against his skin and pulling across him, cutting through bristly hairs on his neck that caught in the white soap, collecting on my blades.
“How’s that?” he said. I was in the cup again and the hairs washed off me.
“Fine. Feels quite nice actually.”
He used me to clear tracks in the foam and cut the beard away, curving me carefully around the hollows and contours of his son’s jaw. He looked down at him and thought how much thinner he seemed—how sickly, disappearing in front of them. The yellow bag of drugs hung beside him, dripping through the needle in his arm. The man knew it was saving his son from infection and he needed to endure it. He would never be the same again and he was terrified about his future and wondered how long they’d need to care for him.
He gently moved his head to one side and then swept me down his cheek before rinsing me in the cup again. God, he was glad it hadn’t been worse. They were lucky to have him; he was himself, he could talk, he could see. Unlike some on the other wards. As awful as it was, he thought, they still had him.
“Are you sure I can’t get you anything more to eat?” he said.
“Thanks, Dad, I’m fine.”
“Hold still.” He flicked me down in short strokes along the top lip.
“Adam had a burger brought in today, but it didn’t make me want one. I think it’s the AmBisome.” His son looked at the bag of yellow drugs. “The doctors say it’s like Domestos.”
“No wonder it makes you feel so shit.” He pulled me down the other side of the face. “How high do you want these sideburns?”
“Not too high.” His jaw moved below me as he spoke. “The doctors say I’ve got to be on it for another week.”
“Stick with it, Tom.”
He dropped me into the cup and the foam and hairs floated off my blades. He took the towel and dabbed his face dry. “Clean as a whistle,” he said.
“Thanks. It feels good.” His son raised a hand from below the covers and felt his chin.
“I’d better get going. It’s gone ten,” he said. He shook me in the cup and left me with the can in a small cupboard by the bed.
“Night, Dad.”