The walls were the colour of the arctic, the paper curtain turquoise and not fully closed, so beyond we saw people in mint coloured scrubs come and go. The bed was a plinth in the middle of the room, and under its cold blanket Leigh was like a doll somebody’d put down and forgotten. I drew up two chairs beside him and put my feet up in defiance of the nurse (she’d already caught me while hamming up his ECG). He held out a hand, palm up, and I threaded my fingers through his (his knuckles callused, fingers thick).
“We should get some sleep, babe,” he said, eyes on me to the side, having to press his cheek to the pillow just to look. “We won’t be out of here soon.”
When we settled down, I curled awkward across my chairs. For a blanket, his jacket on top of me leather and scuffed, heavy as a living thing. A woman down the corridor crying out: a rhythmic kind of moan, half words, almost like sex noises – it would rise unpredictably to a wail then shimmer down again, whimpery. When Leigh mentioned it, I said to try to imagine it as a lullaby.
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