Their haunted faces felt oddly familiar, and Rhys found the little girl almost immediately. She met his gaze, but there was no recognition there, and his heart sank, though he wasn’t entirely sure why. He’d held her for mere moments before he’d passed her over. Why would she remember him? “What’s going to happen to them?”
The nurse, who was handing out juice cartons, shrugged, but the arrival of a social worker cut her off.
“We found an interpreter at a local charity,” the social worker said. “He’s on his way, but he wants us to move them out of here and into a private room. Do you have anywhere big enough?”
“I doubt it,” the nurse snapped.
She drifted away to find out for certain. Common sense told Rhys to go back to the staff room where Marc could find him, but he lingered anyway, glancing between the silent children and the brisk social worker, absorbing a dynamic that inexplicably made his skin crawl.
It was a while before he realised the social worker was wearing Marks and Spencer chinos. Beige. Wrinkled. And held up by a belt just thick enough to break skin. “Bend over, boy. It’s time I knocked some sense into you . . .”
Rhys inhaled sharply. His father’s voice faded as suddenly as it had appeared, but disquiet bloomed in his gut all the same. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, his flight suit suddenly unbearably tight. Sweat prickled the nape of his neck. Fuck this—
“There’s a room upstairs,” the nurse announced, stepping around Rhys. “It’s got nothing in it, but we’re rustling up some furniture. Maybe a TV.”
The social worker and a couple of nurses mobilised to begin moving the children out of A&E. Rhys kept back as they directed the operation with hand signals, but the little girl he’d encountered at the incident site didn’t move.
Rhys pushed past the seemingly inept social worker and picked her up. “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you.”
The girl showed no indication that she’d understood, but she didn’t protest either. Rhys took it as a win and joined the line of exiting children. They passed the staff room to get wherever they were going. Marc spotted Rhys and came to the door.
“That’s where you’ve got to. I’ve been looking for you.”
“Do you need me?”
Marc shook his head, eying the little girl. “Nope. Where are you taking this little lady?”
“Upstairs somewhere. There’s an interpreter coming from a local children’s charity to help social services sort them out.”
“Shame I don’t speak much Levantine Arabic or I could’ve chipped in.”
“Levantine Arabic?”
“The families in the block that caught fire were from Homs,” Marc said. “Most of my Arabic is Iraqi.”
He said something to the girl that Rhys didn’t understand. She said something back and hid her face in Rhys’s neck.
Rhys frowned. “What was that?”
“She basically told me to piss off.” Marc smiled wryly. “And she isn’t the first girl to do that, but . . . anyway. I was looking for you to tell you the chopper won’t be fixed till morning. I’m going to jump on a train home, but there’s another doc coming on shift here tomorrow who’ll fly back into London with you.”
“Am I kipping here?”
It wasn’t unheard of for Rhys to spend the night in a random hospital, but Marc shook his head. “They’ve booked you and Pater into the Travelodge across the road. Grab what you need from the helicopter and check in whenever you’re ready. Be safe, man.”
Rhys knocked Marc’s fist and continued on his way, hurrying to catch up with the rest of the children. The trudge upstairs seemed to go on and on, but eventually, the front of the line began to file into an open door. Rhys shifted the child on his hip. “Nearly there now.”
The little girl ignored him, but he hadn’t expected a response, so it took him a beat to realise that she was staring over his shoulder at something behind him. Rhys turned and goosebumps rose on his skin, tingling on his forearms. He blinked. Refocused. But the reaction made no sense until Jevon rode past him on a fucking unicycle.
Four
Jevon sat on the floor, his most colourful building blocks spread out in front of him. Most of the children in the room were too old for the game, but experience taught him that distraction therapy worked best in young minds when the leap wasn’t too great. Colours. Pictures. Songs. Even the unfamiliar seemed familiar when it was offered so simply.
The children closest—the youngest—were starting to respond. Light sparked in eyes that had been glazed with trauma when Jevon had arrived.
“Come on,” Jevon said softly in Arabic. “I’m trying to build a den. Will you help me?”
A small boy inched forward, still out of reach, but further from the shadows than he’d been before. “What kind of den?”
“A safe one,” Jevon said.
“Will it protect you from the bombs?”
“There are no bombs here, but yes, it probably would.” Jevon laid another block on the brightly coloured wall he was constructing. The hospital officials had clearly thought him mad when he’d arrived with a sack of giant Lego, but as more children crept forward, Jevon stuck the officials an invisible middle finger.
“They’re in A&E,” the social worker had said when she’d contacted him. “Sitting on the floor.”
Jevon had suppressed a growl. “Is that the best you can do? They’ve lost everything twice over and you can’t find them a beanbag and somewhere quiet to sit?”
By the time Jevon had reached the hospital, a room had been found, but he got the feeling that he wasn’t the kind of interpreter they’d expected. As he continued to work with the children, he sensed unease behind him. Murmurs. Shuffling paperwork. The clip of footsteps coming and going. At some point he’d have to appease them and extract the necessary information from the Syrian children, but not yet. They weren’t ready to tell him, and despite a lifetime of this kind of work, Jevon and the goosebumps on the back of his neck weren’t quite ready to hear it.
Jevon filled out the penultimate form and passed it to the waiting hospital official. In the hours he’d been on the floor with the Syrian children, more and more corduroy suits had appeared, clutching clipboards and stacks of paperwork. There were dozens of them now, all eying the makeshift shelter Jevon and the children had fashioned from Technicolour building blocks. The structure was small, but just big enough to hide a child as they helped Jevon fill out their forms.
Child by child took a piece of Jevon’s heart as they gave up their names and drifted away with the waiting social workers. Many of them had been orphans before they’d fled to Britain. Now they’d lost whoever they’d had left—grandparents, cousins, brothers, and sisters. What would become of them now?
Jevon sighed and turned to the last child—a tiny girl with grubby hands and huge eyes. She’d grafted diligently on the building work but hadn’t looked Jevon’s way even once. Elsewhere, he’d perhaps have the time to leave her be, to wait for her to come to him, but it wasn’t going to pan out like that today.
A pretty pink cloth was poking out of Jevon’s play sack. He nudged it towards the girl with his foot. “Can you bring me that?”
He spoke in English, and finally, she cast him a glance. “Why?”
“Because I think we need a roof on this place.”
“Why?”
“To keep us dry? It rains a lot here, doesn’t it?”
The girl shrugged, and for a long, painful moment, Jevon feared she would go back to staring, unseeing, at the blank walls, but then something seemed to give. She got up and fished the cloth from the backpack. The flowered fabric wound around her wrist and her lips twitched in what—in another life—might’ve been a smile.
She brought the cloth to Jevon. “Here you go.”
“Thank you.” He began to drape it over the building blocks. The girl helped, correcting the hash Jevon deliberately made of it, and, little by little, revealed the scraps of information he needed to
send her on her way.
With the shelter and the form complete, he scooped her from the ground and carried her to the doorway.
She came willingly enough. Jevon passed her to a social worker, but the girl kicked out and wriggled out of the waiting woman’s grip. Her tiny feet hit the floor and she ran with an imaginary wind behind her, reaching the end of the corridor before Jevon could react, throwing herself at a tall, dark-haired man dressed in bright orange. She climbed up him and onto his back, winding her arms around his neck.
The man seemed as surprised as everyone else, and it took Jevon far too long to realise that it was the bloke who’d been haunting his dreams.
It was Rhys.
“Jesus Christ.” Rhys leaned on the damp brick wall and closed his eyes. What the fuck is this day? He’d have struggled to invent a more bizarre chain of events, and as it was, he was struggling anyway. Jevon’s sudden reappearance in circus form had nothing on the trauma of giving that little girl—Haya—up to social services, and Rhys was about done for the rest of the year. He wanted to go home, drown his sorrows, or find a club to get his dick wet—to screw away the carnage in his mind—but all he had was a scummy hotel room, the clothes he stood in, and a fuckton of unanswered questions about Jevon, the child whisperer.
A hysterical bark of laughter escaped Rhys. I’m fucking tripping, I swear.
“Rhys?”
Yup, definitely tripping. Because the voice calling Rhys’s name was the one he’d heard in his sleep every night for the last three months—a voice that didn’t belong in the drizzly evening outside a Bedford hospital.
“Rhys.”
Rhys opened his eyes and Jevon was standing in front of him, his bow tie undone, a unicycle at his feet, and a sack of blocks slung over his shoulder. “You’re not real,” Rhys whispered.
“Aren’t I?” Jevon stepped closer. “What makes you think that?”
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I might ask you the same thing.”
Silence. A thousand replies danced chaotically through Rhys’s mind, but nothing coherent formed on his tongue. How could it, when out of everything he’d seen today, Jevon’s smiling face had kicked him hardest in the gut? “I don’t understand.”
“Understand what?”
“Why it hurts so much to see you here.”
It wasn’t what he’d meant to say, but it came from his heart.
Understanding flickered in Jevon’s warm eyes. “I wanted to cry when I saw you holding Haya. All this time, I’d pictured you so happy and free; it fucked me up to know that you’d seen the same horrible side of the world that I have.”
Something clicked and Rhys saw logic in the far-fetched explanation. Handing Haya over had cut him to the bone, but harder still had been to watch Jevon disappear with her, his kindness in every whispered word Rhys couldn’t decipher. He’s seen what I’ve seen.
Whatever that meant.
Right now, it meant everything.
“So you’re a paramedic?” Jevon ventured when Rhys didn’t respond. “It kind of fits now.”
“How?”
“Because you’re patient and gentle in situations other people might find ridiculous.”
The instant heat that had sparked between them in the bar all those months ago flickered in Rhys’s belly. Jevon’s clothes, the rain, and the grimy hospital car park faded away, and Rhys saw him as he most liked to remember him—naked and on his back, eyes wide and curious, as Rhys fucked his mouth. Rawness tempered by innocence.
But there was no innocence in Jevon’s eyes now, and perhaps that was the disquiet fizzing in Rhys’s veins. His recollection of Jevon wasn’t real, and the man who’d never been with another fella had lived far more than Rhys had imagined.
“Anyway.” Jevon started to turn away. “It was nice to see you again.”
Rhys’s arm shot out like a coiled spring. He grabbed Jevon’s wrist. “Wait. Um—I mean—do you want to get a drink or something?”
“You don’t have somewhere to be? A helicopter to get on or something?”
Rhys shook his head. “Nope. Chopper’s grounded. I’m stuck at the Travelodge for the night.”
Jevon glanced over his shoulder, his expression giving nothing away, but he turned back with a smile. “Fuck that. Come home with me.”
Five
It wasn’t as simple as taking Jevon’s outstretched hand and leaving the hospital. Rhys had to collect his emergency overnight pack from the helicopter and tell Pater, the pilot, exactly where he was going.
Which turned out to be not very far at all. Jevon was renting a small house a couple of streets away from the hospital—the perfect distance, apparently, for unicycling home.
Still half convinced he was walking in a dream, Rhys traipsed beside him, trying not to get caught admiring Jevon’s lithe, agile frame or notice the stares they picked up along the way. “Do you, uh, cycle this way often?”
Jevon chuckled. “No. Believe it or not, I don’t spend much time roaming Bedford dressed like this.”
“Why are you here? In Bedford, I mean. I thought you were from London.”
“I am.” Jevon expertly manoeuvred the unicycle up a kerb. “But I don’t have a place there at the moment, and I wanted to save some money before I go away again.”
“Away?”
“Yes. For work. I don’t spend much time in this country.”
Flickers of past conversations echoed in Rhys’s head. “So, you’re an Arabic speaking clown.”
It wasn’t a question, but Jevon snorted anyway. “I do some clown work, but not in the scary, painted-face sense. I’m actually a play specialist. I work for the Free to Fly Project.”
“The what?”
“FFP—it’s an organisation that provides play therapy for children traumatised by conflict and war—singing, dancing, art and crafts. Just generally being silly, really. Kids need to be kids, man. No matter what we’ve done to destroy where they were born.”
“Wow. Do you work in Syria?”
“God, no. We wouldn’t survive that even if we could get in. I’ve just come back from a camp on the Greek/Macedonian border. Lots of displaced people have been stranded there since Europe started closing entry routes.”
“How on earth did you end up doing that?”
Jevon directed Rhys down a street lined with small terraced houses. “I did half a social work degree, then literally ran away to join the circus. An OXFAM guy came to a show one night with a big idea, and it went from there—from the trapeze to a war zone in less than a week. Oh hey . . . this is my place.”
He stopped outside a house with a red front door and leapt from the unicycle like a cat. Then he took Rhys’s hand again and tugged him up the path.
“You don’t have to pull me everywhere,” Rhys muttered dryly.
“I know. But you look a little lost. I don’t want you to fall through the cracks in the pavement.”
It made about as much sense as everything else in the last few hours. Rhys let it go and followed Jevon into the house. Inside was cosy and cluttered with circus paraphernalia. The bright colours drew Rhys in, and he wandered around the living room, fascinated, while Jevon went to the kitchen for beer.
Jevon returned with cans of Red Stripe and a bottle of Coruba. Rhys shuddered. “Don’t give me any of that rum. I’ve got to fly tomorrow and I have enough trouble not upchucking on the patients as it is.”
“You don’t like flying?”
“Not particularly.”
Jevon tilted his head sideways, his frown questioning.
Rhys shrugged. “There was a brief shortage of flight paramedics last year and I was offered the chance to be seconded from the NHS. Working on the road ambos . . . damn, we need the choppers in the air, you know? There’s too many kids dying in traffic jams.”
“There are too many children dying at all.”
“Do they die in the camps?”
“Sometimes.” Jevon’s lovely face clouded with s
adness. “People fleeing don’t always have access to medical care on route to the camps. I’ve seen folk show up with limbs hanging off a few times. But the disease is the worst. Camps like that aren’t exactly sanitary. There was a cholera outbreak a few months back.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. It was pretty awful. I’d done some clown doctor work at Great Ormond Street before I signed up for FFP, but it’s nothing like working in a DP camp.”
The acronyms meant little to Rhys for a moment. He popped the tab on his beer and muddled through it. Free to Fly Project. Displaced persons camp. “What the fuck is a clown doctor?”
Jevon laughed. “I’ll show you.”
It took a bit of rummaging, but several boxes—and beer cans—later, Jevon unearthed a wooden stethoscope and yet another day-glo bow tie. “See? No Ronald McDonald shit. Anyway, kids get pretty lonely and frightened when they’re in hospital, even if their parents stay with them. You’d be amazed what ten minutes with a fake doctor can do for that.”
Rhys was already feeling amazed. He’d obsessed over the Jevon he remembered for months, but he could easily fall in love with the Jevon in front of him now. Instinct drew him forwards, and he closed the distance between them in one step, invading Jevon’s personal space like he did it all the time. Like this was fucking normal. Like he’d kissed Jevon every day for the last three months instead of dreaming about it.
Their lips met. Rhys gasped, inexplicably shocked when it was him pushing Jevon against the wall, one hand on his chest, the other clutching the loose knot of dreads at the nape of his neck. Him wedging his legs between Jevon’s, kissing him like he’d never stop.
Jevon’s shaky intake of breath was sharp too. The wooden stethoscope fell to the floor, and he wound his arms around Rhys, pulling him impossibly closer. He’d flicked a speaker on when they’d come in the house, flooding the cosy space with a low, mellow reggae beat. Now, the rhythm pulsed between them, singing in Rhys’s blood until he didn’t know where he ended and Jevon began. He thought he’d remembered everything about Jevon, but fuck, he’d forgotten how good he smelled. His taste. How right their bodies felt crushed together. I want—
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