Tenderness

The Boy has beautiful eyes. That's a fact. Deep, wolfish grey, with flickers of green, like mine, framed by long eyelashes. He has a beautiful face too. Small nose, round lips showing small even teeth and gorgeous cheekbones. There is an ambiguous tinge of femininity in his look and there is something androgynously enticing about it, because he is playful, charming and wily. Just like me.

But today his face isn't right. It's ashen and shrunken, his eyelashes fall in soft fringes on his cheeks.

The hubub of A&E around us, nurses shouting out names, tannoy announcements and the drunken man stubbornly arguing with a vending machine only vaguely register in my mind. My focus is fully on him.

He's sitting down, I am crouched between his knees, holding my hands over his, smoothing them down,  trying to ease them into mine, straightening his fingers gently one by one on the fabric of his jeans.

'Can you hold your hands down darling? It will calm your breath', I ask, injecting as much calm as I possibly can into my voice.

He catches a sharp breath. The pain is back.

'Breathe into it darling. Just breathe into it. It will pass...'

He stretches his hands on his knees, but he hunches forward trying to stop the pain. I know that he hunching will exacerbate it so I get up, stand right between his knees and let him rest his head on my stomach to keep him straight.

I take his head into my hands and I stroke his soft hair gently, methodically running my fingers through the silky strands, trying to absorb his pain into me because every time he twitches and moves, it's like a tiny shard of glass sticking deeper into my heart.

He lifts his head and looks at me. His eyes are hazy, the translucent grey irises glowing with vulnerability.

'Shhhhhh', I say and let his head fall into me again.

I want to take him home. I want him in my bed, pain-free, resting at last. I imagine him there, sleeping peacefully in the light of my bedside lamp.

Tenderness. Doesn't come to me easily. Yet with him, I am awake, aware and full of love.