The Fall Ch. 07

She answered it just before it went to voicemail. 'Good morning, Lydia Atkinson speaking.'

There was silence. Then a laugh.

'I forgot how professional you sound when you're speaking to a client,' Dylan said.

'Oh shit, it's you,' she replied. 'Sorry. It was about to go to messagebank, so I picked up without looking at caller ID.'

'Is now a bad time?'

She took draw on her cigarette and exhaled. 'No, no, now's as good a time as any. I'm just having a shit morning. A client's being a pain in the arse, my cat has fleas and the real estate is trying to get me to move out as soon as I can. This stupid little bitch is, like, oh, barely out of preschool and you can just tell she still lives with her parents.'

There was more silence, only it lasted longer this time. What was she supposed to say to him? Why had he rung? Did he want to tell her not to bother coming back again?

'Sorry,' she apologised. 'I guess you just wanted to tell me to fuck off. I was going to respond to your text, but, I don't know, I don't know what to say.'

'Me neither.'

'Does it hurt? Are you in pain?'

'No, no, it doesn't hurt really,' he said. 'The bones have healed, and the swelling has gone down. It's just... hard in a whole other way. Everything has changed.'

'Do you want me to come in again?'

'It's up to you. I don't know what you'd get out of it, though. I'm not like I used to be.'

'You sound like you used to.'

He paused. 'Well, if you want to come in, come in,' he conceded. 'I just want you to be happy. I don't want to disappoint you.'

'When do visiting hours start?

'Twelve.'

She glanced at her phone. It was nearly eleven. She'd finish up everything urgent and head in.

'Do you want me to bring you flowers, or would you rather feel my boobs?' she asked.

'What a question,' he snorted. 'Gerberas, please.'

She laughed. 'I'll hold you to that.'

'I don't doubt it.'

Lydia went inside and checked her emails. Her client couldn't decide between cover option three or four. They'd try and let her know by the end of the day. She rolled her eyes, vacuumed her carpet - a job she'd been intending to get around to for days - and tried to decide what to wear to the hospital.

She decided on jeans, a black top which displayed her cleavage in all it's glory, and a pair of black boots. She brushed her hair, applied make-up, and drove to the hospital, detouring by Hungry Jacks on the way. The lack of onion rings out in the country had nearly killed her. She'd even tried making them herself, but had failed miserably. At the hospital gift store she bought a bunch of gerberas.

Dylan was off doing physiotherapy, or so his roommate told her, when she arrived. She dumped her brown paper bag of goodness and the flowers on his nightstand, took a seat, and started browsing the net.

He came back into the room in a wheelchair and it occurred to her that this was real. Last night he'd been lying in bed, and she hadn't really noticed the disability he now had. Today it was impossible to avoid. Some nurses came and helped him back into bed. She looked away. It was too hard to deal with.

One of the nurses asked if he wanted privacy, and he told them they did. The curtains were drawn shut, leaving the two of them hidden from view.

'Do you want to go?' he asked quietly.

She shook her head. 'No.'

'You bought me flowers.'

Lydia nodded. 'I still love you.'

'I'm sorry. It was stupid. Even as I was climbing up the ladder all I could think was 'Dylan, you're a fucking idiot, you're going to break your goddamn neck'.'

'Kyle said he knocked you off.'

Dylan shrugged. 'It wasn't his fault. He didn't mean for it to happen.' He patted the bed. 'Sit here with me.'

She got up and carefully perched on the edge of the bed. She was terrified of hurting him. He was already so damaged.

He stroked her hair and told her she looked better than he remembered. She patted his stomach and said he was getting skinny. The next thing she knew he was kissing her, or she was kissing him, or rather, they were just kissing each other.

Shortly after, they were both lying in his bed, their hands exploring each other's bodies. He was so much thinner than he had been, and he could only move his upper half, but he was still the man she remembered. She still wanted him, and judging by the way he was massaging her breasts through her shirt, he wanted her.

'Can you still have sex?' she whispered.

He shook his head. 'I don't think so. I still want it, though. That's the most fucked up part. I still really, really want it.'

She giggled and kissed his neck. 'Maybe they can give you Viagra.'

He groaned. 'They have this person here who talks to you about sex and relationships. I stopped going.'

'Why?'

'Do you really need to ask?'

'But don't you think it would be nice to have sex again?'

His face turned dark. 'Lydia...'

'What?' She sat up. 'It's been over six weeks since I got laid, Dylan. I'm kind of missing it.'

The dark expression turned to one of amusement. He shook his head, snorted with laughter, and pulled her into a cuddle.

'You're seriously crazy,' he told her.

'I thought we'd established that.'

'You're throwing your life away.'

She rolled her eyes. 'Please. As if I need your help to do that. Didn't you hear that I bought a house? You'll be pleased to know it's in Acacia Ridge. It also has a wheelchair ramp. If that isn't fate, I don't know what is.'

'I'm not living with you until I have a job.'

'So you're going to live with your parents? Out in bumfuck nowhere? Can't you smell those onion rings? You really want to give up living near HJ's because you aren't working?'

He kissed her. 'Yes. How about we eat those onion rings? I have the distinct feeling that if I keep lying here with you you're going to try and rape me.'

She grinned and got out of bed. She opened the brown paper bag and divvied up the lunches. The ice in their drinks had melted, watering down already watered down diet Coke's, but they ate and drank hungrily all the same.

'So why did you buy a house?' he asked.

Lydia told him the story. He stared at her like she had rocks in her head.

'Oh well,' she said. 'Maybe finance will fall through, or the building inspection will show it's a piece of shit. Then I'll be five grand down and will have to keep looking.'

'You're certifiably insane.'

'Probably. I had to do something, though. I needed somewhere to live, and I figured moving house would give me an excuse to pack away the cot...' She trailed off. 'Before Cyril died, he said to me that I needed to accept that the baby's gone. It took me a week or two to accept it, but I got there in the end. He's dead. What's done is done. I looked around and thought 'well, I have no partner, and I lost Walter, but I've been given a second chance'.

Cyril gave me that money for a reason. I figured I'd buy a place, spend a year making sure I was sober for good, and then go looking for a sperm donor. I always wanted to have a baby, so I thought I may as well just do it on my own.'

'That's pretty ballsy,' he remarked.

'Yep.' She pushed her food away. She'd had enough to eat. 'I might put the last bit of it on hold for a while. If you want to try again... we can see how it goes.'

'I might not be able to have kids anymore.'

'We could probably do IVF. You know, in a few years.'

He regarded her carefully. 'Would you be happy with that?'

'Sure. You?'

'Yeah, sure. So long as I find a job, and everything goes well between us.'

She reached for her drink and took a sip. 'You know, I think you'd have more trouble finding a job out bush than you would in the city. Why don't you stay with me for a while when you get out?'

'I don't want to bum off you.'

'You're not. You helped me out massively with Cyril. Consider it returning the favour.' She paused. 'It'll probably be easier for you to do rehab, too.'

He fell silent. She was speaking the truth and they both knew it.

'At least let me give you money for food and electricity,' he said.

'If you must. You don't need to, though. You'd be surprised how much money I spent on drinking.'

He asked her what she'd been spending, and she admitted the figure. It was terrible. She'd spent pretty much the same amount she'd spent on her rent as she had on booze.

'Wow,' he said.

'Yeah. So, you know, if you want...'

He smiled faintly. 'I love you, Lyddy. I've missed you so much.'

She took that as a 'yes'.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The finance came through, and the building and pest showed up only a handful of minor, easily fixable issues. Settlement was a week away and the hospital was impressed with Dylan's recovery. They asked him if he wanted to spend a weekend at home, to mentally recharge, before coming back for more treatment.

The weekend the hospital wanted to send him home was the weekend after she was due to move into her house. She knew the house would probably still be a mess by then, but she wanted to throw caution to the wind and take him home anyway. She missed him. There was only so much interaction they could have while he had a roommate, visitors who showed up without warning, and a slew of nursing staff who kept dropping by.

Dylan's parents were unhappy. They wanted him to come back to their house. They thought both she and her son were being silly and rash, and they wasted no time pointing this out. When Dylan said he wanted to go downstairs to get a coffee, Lydia took this as her opportunity to escape Elise's continual remarks that her son belonged at home.

'I'll get it,' she told Dylan. 'You stay here.'

To her intense annoyance, Elise followed her. Memories of Anna O'Sullivan following her outside at the wake sprung to mind, and she told herself to be patient this time.

'I really don't see why he needs to go to your house,' Elise remarked.

'Because he's going to be living with me,' Lydia pointed out.

Elise rolled her eyes. The gesture was pure Dylan. Lydia had seen the exact same expression on her lover's face a dozen times before, and rather than being offended, she was amazed at the similarity.

'Right,' Elise said. 'Until you realise he's crippled and it's not such a lark anymore, and you want him gone. He needs to come home.'

'I cared for my Uncle while he was dying.'

'That's different. That was short term. You've known my son for a matter of months. You have no ability whatsoever to make a call on what you're going to be doing long term. You might break up in a month's time. Then what?'

They reached the ground floor.

'You want to split us up, don't you?' Lydia stated.

'No, I don't, as a matter of fact.'

'So why don't you trust me?'

'It's not personal, Lydia,' Elise pointed out. 'He's my child. You're somebody else's child. How do your parents feel about this? What have they said to you about supporting your paraplegic boyfriend who you met, what, six months ago?'

Lydia didn't respond. Elise was right on the money when it came to her parents. They were furious. They'd told her, out and loud, that she was being foolish, stupid, short-sighted.

'See?' Elise said knowingly. 'It's not that I don't like you. I don't doubt your intentions are pure. I just don't want this to end badly. I need to protect him. We all need to do what's right for him.'

'You live three hours away. That's a huge amount of travel. What happens if something goes wrong?' Lydia reached into her bag for her cigarettes. 'Please. Trust me. I'm not going to get sick of him.'

Elise followed her out of the hospital grounds to the area where she was allowed to smoke. Their debate continued. It was an oddly polite discussion, as if both women had realised that that making the other an enemy would be a mistake. They referred back to their own arguments repeatedly, ignored the possibility that the other person might be correct, and continued their circular conversation as they stopped to buy coffee and made their way back to the ward.

Dylan stared at them incredulously as they returned. He listened to them arguing, found his tablet and headphones, and started watching something online. He was ignoring them.

Elise gestured for him to take the headphones out.

'What's wrong?' she asked her son.

Dylan rolled his eyes. 'Coffee. I wanted to get a coffee.'

Lydia realised they hadn't bought him one. Elise had purchased one for herself, and Lydia had doen the same. Guiltily, Lydia offered Dylan her half-drunk coffee. 'Sorry.'

His mother did the same.

Dylan declined both offers and said he was going to try and go downstairs by himself. Which, as a matter of fact, was exactly what he'd wanted to do. He was adept at getting around in a wheelchair. He was very confident could buy a cup of coffee without needing someone to hold his hand, something he'd managed to do on countless occasions when neither was around.

They went down to the ground floor again and he proved himself capable of ordering coffee from a wheelchair. The three of them sat at a table in silence. Dylan was still annoyed, and Lydia asked if he was still grumpy about the coffee.

He shook his head. 'No, it's more than that. I got a call from my solicitor this morning. Michelle and Jessica can't get enough finance to buy me out. They want to buy the property with the house on it and put the other parcel of land, the one with the shed on it, for sale. I need to organise to sell the cattle, the equipment and the land.'

'Oh for goodness sake,' his mother muttered. 'After all this time. She was so adamant she wanted it. You think she would've had the brains to sit down and work out whether or not she could afford it.'

Dylan angrily stirred his coffee, creating a miniature whirlpool. 'I'm seriously over this fucking shit. We split nearly a year and a half ago.' He glanced up at Elise. 'Mum, I've also spoken to the rehab team while you and Lydia went and got yourself coffees. I can't go back to your house. It's too far away.'

Elise sighed heavily. 'Of course,' she muttered.

Lydia was relieved. She didn't want to have to travel out to the back of Dalby to visit Dylan. She didn't want to have to creep around his parents, trying to steal access to him. They were both adults. She wanted to live an adult life with him.

'Isn't the mortgage in your name?' Lydia asked, changing the subject back to the property split. 'The mortgage on the land?'

'Yeah, it is,' Dylan agreed. 'Everything's in my name. That's why it's going to create a shit storm. I'm going to have to figure out how to sell everything without being there in person.'

'Why don't you just keep it and rent it out?' Lydia suggested.

'Too much effort to find a tenant,' Dylan argued. 'And there's no house, just the shed.'

'Just thinking aloud here,' Elise offered. 'What if your father and I took care of all of this for you? We can work with your solicitor and Chelle and sort something out. You can focus on rehab, and Lydia can focus on moving into her new home.'

Dylan went to reply but hesitated. He was obviously tempted to agree. Lydia knew she did. Dylan needed someone to take over negotiations with his ex-wife. He was still too easily annoyed by her, too quick to anger, and Michelle was immature enough to both bait him and then get upset when he bit.

'I think it's a good idea,' Lydia said. 'And your parents can always stay at my house on the weekends that you're home and keep you up to date with how things are going.'

Elise was startled by the offer. 'Are you serious?' she asked Lydia.

'Sure,' Lydia said. 'As long as you and your husband both shut the door when you use the bathroom. Cyril didn't. I'm not sure I can share a house with people who shit with an open door again.'

Elise was mortified. 'I can assure you we shut the door,' she said.

Dylan mouthed 'thank-you' to Lydia. Lydia merely shrugged. She was too old to fight with in-laws.

'We can do this,' Elise said, more to herself than anyone else. 'We can do this.'