“I thought you said it would only sting a little?” I asked.
He grinned. “Yeah, well, I lied, but would you have sat still if I said ‘this is going to hurt sooo bad, now just sit there please? I think not. Now sit still and shut up!”
When he’d finished swabbing it, he picked up a thing that looked like the satanic offspring of a nail-gun and a desk stapler and grinned at me. I shrank back.
“What is that thing?” I asked, and he grinned even wider.
“It’s a surgical stapler, Nick, and it does what it says; it staples. Now look over there and keep still!”
“Is it going to hurt?” I asked, and his answering grin was evil, I thought; he was definitely enjoying himself just a little too much!
“Yes, it is going to hurt, I think I can almost guarantee that! I can give you a local, but to be honest, this is will be over in a minute; if I give you a local it’s going to feel like your eye wants to fall out of its socket for the next two hours; it won’t, it’ll just feel like it. It’s your choice, quick and painful, or long, drawn-out and weird, which is it going to be? Or I can hand-suture, without a local, in which case it’s going to feel like someone’s gnawing your eyebrow off. Decision time, Nick!”
I had to grin. “I’ll have the quick and painful, when you put it like that, how can I refuse?”
He put three titanium staples in and painted the wound again, dried it off, and sprayed a clear dressing over it.
“All done, the staples will have to stay in at least a week, come see me and I’ll remove them for you if they’re ready to come out.”
Ashley hugged me, all her anger of earlier forgotten, diluted, I suspect, by a large amount of guilt, but I wasn’t going there; I’d come too close to losing her to chance screwing it up again.
“I’m sorry about earlier, I didn’t mean to freak you out, honest!” I whispered in her ear, and the answering nibble of my earlobe was what I was waiting for, her way of telling me it was over. Judy, however, seemed to have something on her mind.
“Ashley, may I speak with you, alone, now!” she gritted, and Ashley let go of me, looking sheepishly at Judy as she trailed after her into the dining room. Mum gently ran her fingers over the swollen lump over my eye.
“Every time I see you, you look more banged-up and injured. This has to stop, Nicky!” she smiled, and I leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
“Whatever you say, Mum!” I grinned, and tweaked her nose lightly, making her gasp as the memory of my doing that so long ago suddenly rose up for both of us. Lately, more and more memories were surfacing, images of Mum when she was much younger, with longer hair, and blurry memories of a man, who I assumed must have been James. Something occurred to me, and I thought I’d ask her while we were alone.
“Mum, I remember doing this,” and my hands formed into a series of shapes and gestures. “Why do I remember that, what does it mean?”
Mum smiled sadly.
“James had a hearing-impaired older sister, Ashley, he was teaching you to hand-sign for her, what you were doing there was ‘Hello Ashley’. She died when my Ashley was two. You had quite a vocabulary, James used to talk to you like that, before Brian…”
We were interrupted by raised voices coming from the dining room, Judy’s, for the most part.
“…. and so you just drove off and left him there? He’s only been here a few days, what was he supposed to do, follow a trail of breadcrumbs? Wait for Goldilocks? Hope the seven fucking dwarves found him? Of course he went wandering; it was night, and he was alone in the dark, and he was lost. He could have died out there, but you never thought of that, you got in a snit and you just fucked-off! I thought you loved him!”
A lower voice, Ashley’s, said something indistinct, and Judy’s cut her off.
“Whatever his lunatic father did, it wasn’t Nicky; didn’t you see his back? Don’t you remember what brought him here? And with all that, you still just fucking abandoned him in the forest, with no idea where he was and no way of getting home! Who knows what the fuck is roaming around in those woods, supposing he’d startled a bear with cubs? How long would he have survived? Did you even think of that? You might as well have just backed-over him a few times and finished him off; it would have been fucking kinder!!”
I thought I’d better step in there; this looked like it was getting out of hand, but mum put a hand on my harm.
“Wait, Nicky…” as more muttered comments came through the door.
There came the sound of a slap, and mum nodded at me.
“OK Nicky, now you can go break it up!”
As I reached for the double doors into the dining room, they opened, and Ashley came out, her head down and one hand on her face, followed by Judy, red-faced, tears on her cheeks, but her eyes still alight with anger. I took Ashley in my arms and gently tilted her chin up; on her left cheek, was a clear hand-print. Judy looked at me, and I held out my hand to her, and she hugged me too, burrowing her head into me.
“We were so worried about you, Nicky, that place is a fucking death-trap at night!” she muttered into my chest, her voice muffled by my shirt.
I smiled; I hadn’t realised I’d made such an impression on her, but it was gratifying to know that I’d made a friend already. As she hugged me Ashley kept her face buried in my shoulder, and she was crying again, which I really didn’t want; it had all turned out OK, so no harm done (other than a world-class scar I was going to tell my kids I got when I fought a bear; hey, if you’re going to lie, make it a good ‘un…)
As the two girls hugged me, Ashley’s hand came up and hugged Judy as well, gently stroking her shaggy mop-cut hair as she included her in her hug, so I guessed that particular argument was over as well.
Just then David came out of the kitchen with a large tray.
“Anybody for a late supper? We have Monterey Jack, Ardennes Pate, wheat crackers, some English Stilton that you really should try, Jewish Rye bread and black olives; dig in or Judy’ll eat most of it!”
Mum tried to refuse, saying we’d already put him out enough, but David wouldn’t take no for an answer, once again taking the opportunity to spend some time with her; I nudged the girls and glanced over at our respective parents, noting again how good they looked together as they ate and talked, a natural couple if I’d ever seen one.
At last mum decided we really should leave, it was very late, and we’d had a real roller-coaster of a day, so time to rest. Judy and Ashley kissed and made up; the mark on Ashley’s face was already fading, and Judy apologised for slapping Ashley, but mum surprised us all.
“There’s no need to apologise, Judy, you saved me the trouble! Goodnight, dear!”
Ashley drove me home; my right eye was almost swollen shut now, so driving at night was a little hazardous with almost no depth perception.
When we got in I got a good look at myself. Boy was I an ugly sight; my hair was matted with dried blood, my shirt was stiff and crusted with dried blood, and my face and forehead were streaked with dried blood, while what looked like a bulging third eye was trying to erupt above my eye. Mum stood behind me and studied me.
“Get a shower, Nicky, just be careful of that dressing; much as it weird’s me out to say it, you should ask Ashley to help you, she’s a lot gentler than you are!”
I grinned at that and at mum’s expression, and she smiled back, so I relaxed. Ashley came out of our room in time to hear mum suggest I ask her, and of course she said yes. Mum looked coolly at her and walked away, leaving her looking guilty and sad.
“Don’t worry; she’ll be fine in the morning!”I grinned, and pulled her close for a quick fondle and grope. She smiled as she held herself against me, her nearness enough to trigger a particular male response, and her eyes widened as she grinned, nipping my ear.
“Are you ever not horny, Nicky?” she breathed in my ear, reaching down to tweak the end of my cock. “Wash first, you’re covered in blood, you look like Hannibal the Cannibal!”
I followed her into the bathroom and stripped off, Ashley pursing her lips at the myriad small cuts and bruises I’d collected during my walk in the forest. She had me squat down and lean back against the wall as she gently washed the dried blood out of my hair, the sight of the diluted blood running in streams down my body making me feel distinctly nauseous, then she washed the dried blood off my face, finally washing, and dabbing dry, all the little cuts, nicks and grazes.
She then moved to my back, carefully dabbed and dried me, and declared me fit to be seen in public again. She was of course naked in the shower with me, and I was sorely tempted to take a run at her again, maybe try for a reprise of our last shower escapade, but sanity prevailed when she slapped my hand away and reminded me that mum was still up and around, and she probably wouldn’t appreciate the two of us hooting like howler monkeys two doors away from her bedroom; she’d put us in the end-bedroom for a reason…
Ashley toweled me off and left me to do the bits I could reach while she wrapped a towel around herself and disappeared into our room, where I soon heard the sound of a dryer. Once I was as dry as I felt comfortable with, I made haste to join her. She was wearing a long t-shirt and panties, her standard sleeping attire; not for long, if I had anything to say about it! She stood up to hug me again, whispering apologies again, apologies I brushed away; I wasn’t interested in hearing her say sorry, only in having her hold me again as though this evening had never happened.
I held her close, needing her presence and contact with her after the trauma of the day, and Ashley responded happily to me, holding me close as my hands roamed over her back and around her waist. I leaned down to kiss her, and she kissed me back hungrily, her hands in turn gently gliding over me, carefully avoiding my back.