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Long gone were the days when Jamie Tartt woke up with his brain feeling like it was replaced by cotton swabs, not that those days hadn’t been few and far between. Still, partying until the wee hours and waking up disoriented and sluggish was not something that had happened in a very long time for Jamie. So why did his head feel like someone filled it with rubber cement?
It took Jamie a moment before he realised he was even in his bedroom in London and not some hotel at an away match or something similar. He shifted in the bed, and his body quickly reminded him of the events of the last however many days or at least the aftermath of the event his concussion was preventing him from remembering. He had lost track of time. Day blended into night; the only constant was his father, confusion and pain. Not necessarily in that order, but maybe exactly in that order.
The empty glass that previously held his protein shake sat on his bedside table, and Jamie struggled to find the strength to sit up fully. He was so tired, even his bones were weary, but no matter how much sleep he got, he couldn’t manage to stay awake for more than short periods of time. Awake was a generous term for how he felt at the moment, his entire body sluggish and slow. The concussion must be jumbling everything.
Time.
Consciousness.
Memories.
They all fell through his hands like grains of sands when he tried to hold onto them.
Eventually leveraging himself to sit, Jamie sat with his head in his hands, willing the room to stop spinning. Even slow movements were sending twin spikes of pain from his head and his side, he stopped to try and move his ankle, but it barely responded as if it was stuck in quicksand. He knew he should do the exercises the physios had taught him after the Man City match but he couldn’t remember what they were.
“Look who’s awake,” James said, walking into Jamie’s room and startling him, a tray in his hands.
His father looked, well, Jamie wasn’t sure how he looked, he couldn’t process the recent images of his father against his history, against his childhood. Did James look more dishevelled since he left rehab? Since he had been staying with Jamie these past, however many days or weeks it’s been? Maybe he hadn’t shaved in a few days? But did that mean anything?
“Time to take your next painkiller, Jamie,” Dad said, putting the tray down and helping Jamie into what he deemed a better sitting position with too rough hands accompanied with too quick movements. His ankle jerked onto a pillow, touches that should be gentle and caring, warnings under his father’s calloused hands.
“Don’t want it,” Jamie mumbled. “I feel all fuzzy-like, did I take it earlier?”
“No, think I’d remember if you took it earlier, don’t you think?”
I don’t know, Jamie wanted to say. He didn’t know much at the moment, why would that be any different. His head hurt. Trying to piece together the last few days or hours, really made his head hurt.
“Don’t trust your Dad to fucking count, do ya? Think I can’t handle simple maths?” James sneered.
“No–that’s not–sorry.”
“I’ll forgive you with that concussion there.”
Jamie put the pill in his mouth and chased it with the water, swallowing before taking another sip like a dutiful patient he needed to prove to his father he was.
“Now. Eat, son.”
“What was in that smoothie this morning?” Jamie asked, the words expelling from his mouth before his brain thought better of it.
“Everything you told me to put in it, remember?”
Well, no, that’s why he was asking, but he wasn’t about to point that out to his father, concussion or not, that much he knew. Concussion or not, there were lessons hard-wired into Jamie that he wouldn’t soon forget.
“You can make it yourself next time if you’re so fucking worried about it.”
James knew Jamie wouldn’t do that, knew he couldn’t do that in his state: bum ankle, bruised ribs, concussed brain, making even the trip to the toilet more arduous than playing a fully ninety.
The next time Jamie woke, he wouldn’t remember if he had eaten or what he had done, wouldn’t remember the conversation with his father, only the sinking suspicion that something was very wrong, a familiar feeling in his father’s presence. But he was sober, things were okay, he was taking care of Jamie. He was being a dad for once. Jamie should be happy, he shouldn’t feel the low-level of fear vibrating through him constantly.
He should be grateful.
The days continued, the nights followed, and Jamie remained lost in the fog, his brain desperately clawing for any type of hold only to have it slip through his fingers.
Or his father to knock it out of his hands.
Maybe the next time his father brought him a smoothie, he would pour it down the drain—just in case.