I didn’t hit the pub that afternoon. I had no money, and had no inclination to charm strangers until they bought me beer. It wasn’t that all I could think of was Andrew, because that wasn’t true. I was managing to think about metabolic pathways, complement cascades, classical disease presentations, and neurological anatomy quite well, but when I took my five minutes per hour break my head was full of him.
Angie brought me a plate of sandwiches at one stage, and the household remained blissfully quiet. I liked this; it made it much easier to study. Perhaps it was time to move out, borrow some more money. It was only a few months until I started earning and getting through my finals would be easier if I lived somewhere quiet.
I lay back on the mattress, Kelley open on my chest. I couldn’t help it; I couldn’t stop myself from imagining living with Andrew, in his comfortable house, in his comfortable bed. I’d never lived with anyone before, I’d never wanted to, but it would be wonderful to sleep next to Andrew every night.
Reality dumped a bucket of cold water over my fantasies.
Andrew had a son whom he obviously adored; I couldn’t just move in on him, no matter how annoying my housemates were.
I was practicing my physical assessment techniques on Angie when Andrew arrived. She was proving to be far more obliging than any of my housemates had been, letting me run through the procedure over and over again, trying to get my time under thirty minutes.
Andrew was leaning against the doorframe, and he waited while I went through the process of checking Angie’s pedal pulses to finish up her circulatory system.
He knelt down beside me and took my index cards out of my hands and tossed them over his shoulder. “Start again,”
he said. “This time, instead of doing it in anatomical systems, start at the top and work down.”
“But…” I said, and he smiled at me and I couldn’t help but smile back at him.
I did what he said, checking Angie’s eyes, retinas, ear and teeth. Palpebral conjunctivas were pink. I did the neuro stuff, looking at nystagmus, pupil dilation and tracking, then moved down. Larynx wasn’t deviated, no lymph glands in her neck were palpable. Chest next: palpate, chest expansion was symmetrical, percuss, auscultate. Then her heart: aortic valve, pulmonic valve, Erb’s point, tricuspid, and mitral.
No Murphy’s punch for the kidneys. I remembered Andrew warning us he’d fail any medical student who used so barbaric a method of assessment. If we couldn’t pick a kidney infection by general assessment, apparently we shouldn’t be practicing medicine.
Lymph nodes under her arms. Angie lay down on the couch and I checked for her aorta pulse, listened for gut sounds, percussed, locating liver margins. No masses in her stomach.
Hands: pulses, sensation, strength, reflexes.
Lower limbs: pulses, reflexes, strength, sensation.
Andrew was smiling encouragingly at me when I looked up as I helped Angie to her feet. Balance, proprioception, gait.
I was done in twenty-nine minutes.
Angie seemed as excited as I was, bouncing up and down and hugging me, then she disappeared into the kitchen and I wrapped my arms around Andrew’s neck and kissed him quickly. “Have you eaten?” he asked me quietly.
“We’ve had dinner cooked for us,” I said.
Angie carried a cardboard box into the lounge room.
“Curry,” she said. “I’ve cooked rice, too, so you’ll just need to reheat it. And there’s a nice pudding in there, too.”
Andrew looked flabbergasted, and I could understand the feeling. I handed him the box and left him thanking Angie for her cooking while I ran up the stairs to grab my backpack, laptop and textbooks.
Chapter Twenty Four
The smell of curry filled the car, and it was a smell I would forever associate with England. Until I’d found ‘Dulang Thai’
the only takeaway food I’d been able to stomach had been Indian. I couldn’t believe that any one would actually eat a deep fried Mars bar. Henry had force-fed me Red Dwarf at about the same time, and Dave Lister was right; curry and lager were meant for each other. Mind you, the curries were distinctly English, too, swimming in grease, served with too much dhal, and sultanas, of all things.
“Are you starving?” I asked Matthew. “Do you need to go ahead and eat the curry now, hopefully without spilling it over my car?”
Matthew laughed. “I’m not starving. I was brought a plate of roast beef and mustard sandwiches at four this afternoon.”
He leaned forward in the car and fiddled with the radio, presumably trying to tune it to something other than Radio 3, just like Henry. “Did you have a good weekend?” he asked, sitting back up, having found Radio 1.
“Yeah,” I said. “I sorted my office out yesterday, and Henry ate all my gummi bears. Went to the movies last night, and Henry and I spent this afternoon wandering around the city some more. We start out, head somewhere that sounds exciting, and see what happens. We spent today in Whitechapel, looking at the Jack the Ripper sites. What about you?”
“Study,” Matthew said. “House was blissfully quiet because Angie kept grumping about the noise, so everyone went elsewhere to party.”
We stopped at some traffic lights, and I spread my hand over Matthew’s thigh. It had been a long time since I’d felt like this.
Matthew was quiet while we ate dinner on the couch and he looked tired. I put my empty plate down on the coffee table and took his out of his hands. “If you just want to go to sleep, that’s okay,” I said.
He slid across the couch into my arms. “Not that tired,” he said. When I kissed him, he tasted of masala and rice and lager. “I do need a shower first, though.”
In the shower, I carefully washed both of his nipple piercings, sliding the bars through the flesh, twisting them gently, cleaning the bars and balls, then sucking the metal and flesh into my mouth.
I was in that space again, the place where everything slid away inside my head. Matthew’s eyes were half- closed when I kissed him again. His breathing was slow and deep; he was there, too. F took drugs, my ex and her muso friends got there through live performance, and I could possibly, if I tried, remember enough functional neuro anatomy to describe it, but not while it was happening.
I knelt down, and the tiles were hard under my knees. I slid the bar though Matthew’s cock backward and forward, rotating it, cleaning around the beads with a wash cloth, and his cock throbbed in my hand. I washed him carefully, the water pouring down my shoulders, running in rivulets down Matthew’s thighs.
He sighed, audible over the sound of the shower, and he leaned back and spread his legs wider. I washed his balls and his ass, then he guided his cock into my mouth. I nearly came at that moment, just from the taste of his skin.
The beads were hard in my mouth, and Matthew didn’t push in any further. I curled my tongue around the bottom bead and rolled it around.
The room was suddenly silent when Matthew turned the shower taps off and I opened my eyes now the water was no longer streaming down my face. He was looking down at me, awe in his eyes. I couldn’t take any more of him into my mouth; the beads were even more in the way than when he had a condom on, banging against my palate, clinking against my teeth as I twisted my head, looking for a better angle. My fingers curled around the base of his cock, steadying it, and Matthew spread his hands across the tiles, fingers splayed.
His ribcage was rising and falling visibly, his breath echoing. I began to suck, sliding the bar up and down with my tongue, and when I peered up at Matthew again, he had his eyes closed and his mouth open. I stroked slowly with my hand, coaxing him on, and I could taste him. He was leaking now, bitter and strong, breathing hard, moaning under his breath…
I was unbearably hard, and it was a blessed relief to touch my own cock with my other hand, not to stroke,
