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Gertrude’s hands are soft when they cup Gerard’s face, and he doesn’t know why he assumed otherwise (well, he does, but even then, it’s quite obvious that Gertrude Robinson is not actually made out of solid steel, or ice, or something of that like).
It’s terrible, too, what it does to him: a warmth so desperate bubbling up inside of him that it feels like it’s going to burst free from his body, that it feels like it’s going to shatter all of his bones with its impact, that it’s going to forcibly rush out of him like bile until he’s but a splatter of blood on the floor, and he’s always known he’d die for it one day, but not like this, god, not like this.
In the end, he does what he’s always done: giving in; so he leans forward into Gertrude’s touch (not sideways, because there’s both her hands touching him and leaning either way would bring him further away from one of them), and it’s the only comfort she offers—his eyes are closed, but he knows how she’s looking at him, too, just like she is always looking at him, and there is no warmth in this woman’s body, none, so why are her hands warm?—so it’s him who ends up saying: “It’ll be okay, I’ll be okay.”