Dieter hates me, what’s new?

 

 

MICKY STIRRED when I left, but he didn’t wake. I folded my jumper, laid it on the bed next to him in case he got cold, and quickly crept out of the room.

Now I’m standing outside his building, wincing up at the frozen-over sky. It’s no longer snowing, but the cold air hurts my chest if I breathe it deep.

Rubbing the bare skin of my immobile arm to keep warm, I start the long walk to the hospital.

 

 

DIETER ISN’T in the room he was in the day before yesterday. I’m hoping this is a good thing, but still my chest tightens anxiously. Demi said he was poorly, but she didn’t say he might die. He didn’t look like he might die.

The last time I saw Dashiel, he didn’t look like he might die either, I remind myself. Death is shocking like that.

I wander around, up and down the sterile-smelling corridors, my steps becoming more and more aimless. Finally, I accept that if I want to find Dieter, I’m going to have to ask someone.

I end up in the reception for Gynecology. The nurse behind the counter asks me if I’ve come for an appointment. She looks like she’s being serious. She has a serious face, all pinched up. Her expression is a closed door.

When I tell her I’m looking for someone whose last name I don’t know, she shakes her head dismissively and says she can’t help me.

I don’t know what to do. I end up sitting in one of the smooth plastic seats in the waiting area for a while, trying to figure out what I can say to make someone at least try looking.

Finally I have an idea.

I find another department—X-ray. This receptionist glances up at me and smiles broadly. I like her immediately.

“Can I help you?” she asks.

“I’m trying to find my brother,” I say, tucking my hair behind my ears with my good hand and peering hopefully at the computer screen behind the desk.

I’m shaking with how nervous I am—not because what I’m saying isn’t true, but because I’m trying not to hide like I usually do. Letting the receptionist see my face, just looking at her without my veil of hair hiding my eyes feels risky, though these past few weeks I’m beginning to see that not everyone tries hard to avoid me if they see my scars. It’s as if with some people, if I act shy, they act shy, but if I try to act normal, then sometimes other people try to act normal too. Dashiel used to say this sort of thing to me all the time. He used to say those people who acted like they didn’t want to talk to me weren’t worth talking to anyway. I wish I could have believed him back then. I wish he weren’t gone.

“What’s his name, dear?”

“Dieter Blake,” I say, giving Dieter my own surname. “He fell in the Thames two days ago, and he was unconscious when he was brought in. I think he might have used a different surname when he came round as he’s worried about our dad finding him.”

It’s completely awful how easily I lie.

“Dieter?” she repeats, tapping away at the keyboard. I find myself counting the pointy clips pinning her white hair on top of her head. “I have a Dieter brought in two days ago who was taken up to Elm Ward this morning….” My chest expands in relief. “How old is your brother?”

“Twenty,” I say, guessing.

Well, my guess can’t be too far off, as she draws me a little map on a scrap of paper and points me in the right direction.

 

 

THE WARD is on the second floor. The door has an intercom that crackles, and a nurse buzzes me in before I even tell her my full name.

I wander through a series of rooms cordoned off by curtains and fake walls. I try not to look at any of the people lying in bed. Most of them look old. One woman shouts, “Help,” over and over in a really weak voice. I stop and wonder if I should go get a nurse to help her, but as I look around for someone in a uniform, an old lady with shaky cold fingers and skin like silk reaches for my hand.

“She’s been shouting that ever since they brought her in here. All day and all night, on and on and on. Drives most of us crazy, it does,” she says.

“Why doesn’t anyone help her, then?”

“She doesn’t know what she wants. Her mind’s gone.”

“She’s asking for help.”

“She’s just unhappy to be here. When the nurses ask her what’s wrong, she carries on shouting. When any of us ask her, the same. You can’t help everyone, dear.”

I keep walking through the ward, my eyes scanning the beds. I don’t like seeing people like this. I’m relieved when I spot Dieter. His bed is in the middle of a small cordoned-off room. He’s not asleep. Most of the other patients have visitors, or a bedside cabinet piled with flowers or food or magazines. Dieter has nothing. His sharp eyes fix on me, his expression a little shocked.

I have no plan what to say to him, I only know I need to be here, to see him. I stop at the end of his bed and don’t sit down. He stares at me as if he’s not sure why I’m here either. For once I meet his gaze without hesitation, and that’s when I remember what he said to me before he fell. The words hit me like a punch in the gut.

I saw him that night. I lied.

It’s as if this has been on the edge of my memory, bothering me for days, and seeing Dieter again has hauled it to the surface. My legs feel suddenly weak.

“Why did you lie about Dashiel?” I ask, surprised my voice doesn’t sound as shaky as I feel. “Why did you lie to the police?”

Do you know who killed him? The question trembles through me, but I can’t get the words out.

“A simple hello would be nice,” he replies with a sort of hollow weariness that probably comes from lying in bed all day with no one to talk to, and perhaps from the realisation that he nearly died. “Then again, you’ve probably never had a normal conversation in your life.”

I squeeze my eyes to stop the sudden wave of anger raging through me—not anger at Dieter, but anger at myself. Dieter looks pitiful. Without his wig, I barely recognise him as the same person who taunted me. He always told everyone I was weak and pathetic, but it was all a cover.

“Are you thirsty?” I move around his bed to reach the untouched plastic jug of water on his bedside cabinet. I pour him a glass and hold it out to him.

He eyes me warily.

When he takes the glass, he barely has the strength to bring his arm up to his mouth, but he gulps the water down in one as though he hasn’t had a drink all day.

I’ve never felt so conflicted about someone. He’s hurting and I want to help him. Yet… he doesn’t even try to veil his disgust of me, and he lied to me about the one person who meant more than anything to me.

Dashiel deserved a fucking beautiful life. He was the first person I’d let close to me in as long as I can remember. He made my world a little bigger. Showed me it’s okay to be a bit weird. Showed me someone could love me exactly the way I am.

Maybe Dieter has never had someone show him that. Maybe that’s why he’s so mean. In my mind all I see is Dieter lashing out because he’s hurt, and somehow that vision has rendered me immune to his venom.

“Do you feel okay?” I ask.

“Think I preferred you when you were the weird-looking, silent kid who followed Dash around.”

“Whatever.” I shrug, kicking at the floor with the toe of my shoe. “You have to tell the police.” If Dieter doesn’t, then I will, though he’d probably then deny it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him frowning, his expression so sad it looks as though he’s in pain. But as I watch, his sadness morphs into something else—anger.

“I just saw him! Like for one fucking second. I didn’t mention it because it wasn’t important, and they’d have dragged me in and questioned me for nothing. I. Don’t. Know. Anything. Okay?”

“Every little bit of information is important.”

If it was so unimportant, why did he feel the need to tell me when he was hanging over the river, scared he might die?

“Fuck you.”

I raise an eyebrow and stare at the floor some more. “I don’t believe you.”

“That I want to fuck you?” He laughs. “Not in a million years.”

“No. I don’t believe it’s not important.” I look at him. “You feel guilty about something. It’ll get worse the tighter you hold it in.”

Feeling heavier than wet sand, I walk away. If I come again, maybe I’ll bring him some flowers.