All Our Hidden Gifts by Caroline O’donoghue (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

Pat is coming down from Dublin and that Cillian is trying to get the time off work. I nod and yawn dramatically. I’m dying for them to leave. I need to call Fiona. I need to see Roe. And Lily. How is she? How did she make it home?

The nurse comes in to check on me, and I ask her politely what room my boyfriend is in.

“Your boyfriend?”

“I’m sorry,” I laugh, putting on a big performance of girlishness. “I mean Rory O’Callaghan. We came in together. The knife accident?”

Accident.

“He’s on the ward,” she replies. “Ward E, bed 3.”

“Thank you.”

I wait until everyone’s asleep and sneak out, slipping on the dressing gown that Mum brought from home. I wander the dense, endless wards, my gut quaking at the thought of seeing him.

When I find his ward, it’s after midnight. There are several other men on it, and it feels strange to associate him with them. Already, he feels like a different category. When I find him, I let out a small yelp of excitement. There he is. Still, if you can believe it, with his mascara on.

He’s dozing, his Adam’s apple bobbing softly as he snores. Roe snores.

I drag a chair over and sit next to him. His hand is lying across his pyjama-clad chest, and I place mine on top of it. He opens his eyes slowly, carefully, like you might cautiously unfold a broken umbrella.

“Hello,” I whisper.

“Hi,” he replies. His face is white, all that ruddy colour drained out of it. I can see the blue of his veins shimmering under his skin. “That was really stupid, that thing you did.”

“I know,” I hush back. “It worked, didn’t it?”

“In a way,” he reasons, his voice croaky. “I suppose it did.”

“Are you OK?”

“Not really.”

“How bad is it? One to ten?”

“If one was that punch-up at the Cypress, then this is … eleven hundred and four.”

“Oh, Roe. Roe, I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. Except, no wait, it totally is.”

“It is my fault!” I say, trying not to yell. “All of it! Top to bottom, the whole thing!”

“Sssssh. People are trying to sleep around here.”

“Lily is back.”

“I know. She kind of stole my thunder,” he says, grinning.

“How come … how come we both got to…?”

“Live?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been thinking about this. Are you cold?”

“Yes.”

He moves his body over and flips back the hospital blankets. I scooch in next to him and lay my head across his chest. I think one of the men in the bed opposite is staring at us, but I don’t care. We’ve cheated death. I don’t give a crap what anyone thinks.

“Have you ever heard the story of Abraham?”

“Wow, are you Jewish and Protestant now?”

“Shut up,” he says, picking up a length of my hair. “Abraham was a Bible guy, and he had a son called Isaac.”

“Bible guy?”

“And God told Abraham to sacrifice his son. To kill him, basically.”

“Scant,” I say in disgust.

“I know. But when Abraham was about to do it, to kill his son, God sent a ram to sacrifice instead. He said, It’s grand, you don’t have to kill your son.”

“Why?”

“Because the fact that Abraham was willing to do it was enough. The pure intention to sacrifice was enough. I think … that’s what happened with us. I think it was enough that we were willing to … to…”

“To die?” I say.

“Yes,” he answers quietly. “Do you want to know something funny?”

“Go on.”

He puts his hand into the shirt pocket of his pyjamas and pulls out a flat black stone.

“When I drove the knife in, it hit against something.”

I marvel at the jet necklace I had given him, just minutes before we left my house. “It’s jet,” I whisper. “It’s a protection charm my dad gave me.”

“When it hit against it … it was like the blade didn’t like it. I could hear the knife talking to me, if that makes sense. It was like, Ew, gross, let’s get out of here.”

“The knife said all that?”

“The knife said all that.”

Silence. The low beep of a machine at the other side of the room sounds.

“Do you think,” I ask softly. “Do you think that maybe … I sacrificed myself for Lily, and you sacrificed yourself for me, but I had already sacrificed my protection for you, and so…”

“This is advanced sacrifice mathematics.”

“Do you think we cancelled it all out, though?”

“It’s as good a theory as any. Whatever happened, no one’s ever going to believe us.”

“No,” I say, nestling into him closer. “So it’s good we have each other.”

“And that you’re a powerful sensitive.”

“Harriet was a powerful sensitive,” I say, my voice hushed. “But I guess she didn’t have the friends to protect her.”

We are silent for a long while then. He traces my stitches with his fingertips, winces at the big patch of gauze, and finally settles on burying his face in the crook of my neck.

“I don’t want to die,” I say, finally. “I never did. I like life.”

“Me too,” he says.

“Seems a bit obvious, doesn’t it?”

“Not always,” he says, a half-smile on his face. “You should go before a nurse finds you in here.”

“OK,” I say, getting out of bed.

“Hey, not so fast.”

So I stay for a few more minutes, and I kiss him, and he shows me the bandages on his stomach. He lifts the corner of the white bandage tenderly, and I suck my teeth. Thick black blood has dried around a deep wound just above his naval. If he had gone just one centimetre to the left, the doctor said, he would have had to wear a bag for the rest of his life.

“To which I said –” he coughs – “Gucci or Prada?”

“No! You didn’t!”

“I swear, I did.”

“With your mum in the room?”

He nods, clutching his stomach and trying not to split his stitches laughing. “Honestly, Maeve, there’s nothing like a brush with death to make you realize that your parents’ opinion of you doesn’t matter.”

“Hear, hear,” I smile. “Have you talked to Lily yet?”

“No. My parents will barely tell me a