The Guardian by Diana Knightley

Sixty - Hayley

Iwas asked if I wanted to see him. It was a quiet request and gave my heart a tug to hear it. I followed the nurse to his room, a bed, in the dimness of a hospital. He was sleeping, a tube from a bag into his arm. I went and sat beside the bed.

“Hey you big lug, what the heck are you doing?” I sat down.

“This here is not what you’re supposed to do. You are supposed to love me forever, and it has not been forever yet, and so I won’t let you leave me. You aren’t allowed. And you have to listen to me because, as you know, I’m the boss. I do not like this. At all.”

I sighed. He didn’t move.

“Here’s the thing, if you leave me, I will be all alone. I know it doesn’t seem like it, I have Katie and Mags and their children, of course, but if you leave me with them I will just be Aunt Hayley and I’m not that good at it. I’m better at it when I’m with you. We are the aunt and uncle, we are a team. So what I’m saying is you are not allowed to do this. You have to get better.”

I looked over at the machines hooked up to him. “And not just broken alive, you need to be the same alive, because our world has been shit for a long time. I just want you and me to have some normal life together, with the nephews and our nieces and our friends, and maybe Beaty will have kids... I don’t know. What I’m saying, Fraoch, is we have to get you up and out of here, you’re too important to me.”

It was late, and I was exhausted. I watched him sleep for a little while, but then my eyes were heavy so I dropped my head down on his bed and fell asleep. Then I got a neck crick and woke up because of it. I leaned back in the chair and slept the uncomfortable yet exhausted sleep of people who are very worried at hospital bedsides.