All My Favourite Colours

I dance into the house. Literally dance. I find Mikey eating toast in the kitchen and pull him into a waltz. He grins at me and doesn’t even ask just goes with the dancing.
We dance upstairs and I dance into my room and kick Mikey out. I don’t really have words for him right now.

Bob is really hung over the next day and we spend most of the day just chatting. He apologises for making things awkward and that he wouldn’t have come over if Bert hadn’t wanted to know if I’m still single. I tell him that I’m not and he congratulates me. It’s not that frank and I are decidedly a thing now it’s just that I don’t want anyone else.
I can’t go to see Frank tonight. I promised Pete and Mikey I’d go over to Pete’s and meet Brendon, the boy who’d come to work with him. As nice as Brendon is and as fun as Pete always is I really wish I was with Frank. I said I’d draw him next time we were together.
Pete kept trying to pull me into conversations but I’m just not in the mood today. I just sit by his apartment window and stare out across the park. Pete could have seen me and Frank last night if he was looking out the window. I feel so wistful staring out the window and thinking romantic thoughts but that’s all ruined when Pete produces a bottle of vodka and suggests a drinking game. I pretend to have trouble leaving my spot to go and drink cheap alcohol but it’s rare that I don’t want vodka.
We end up staying the night at Pete’s. When my body clock wakes me up for work I have a monstrous headache and Mikey sleeping practically on top of me.
I stumble into Pete’s kitchen and make coffee. I pat my pockets but I have no fags. Great.
Pete and Brendon stumble in when I’m on my second cup of coffee. The headaches extreme in all of us. All I really remember is that the drinking game got so intense that we ended up using three bottles of vodka. That’s practically one each because Mikey couldn’t have much.
Pete puts more coffee on and hands everyone some pain killers. I have no motivation for work so I end up calling Bob and telling him I’m really sick. He gives me the day off and I drive Mikey and myself home.
Being home during a week day is weird so I decide to treat it more like a week night and head straight for the bed. Mikey follows suit despite drinking much less than me Pete and Brendon. He very responsibly stopped drinking because, “If I don’t stop I’ll get more fucking cancer in my bladder or something.”

After sleeping most of the afternoon off I decide to visit Frank. Still heavily hung over I drink more coffee before driving off.
I walk into the cancer unit of the hospital and I see nurses and doctors running. Trying to stay out of everyone’s way edge along the wall until I get to Frank’s room.
Something felt very wrong. Frank was gone and so was his “breathing box”. Maybe he’s just out for one of his walks I think, no, hope. I step into the hall and collide immediately with a nurse.
“Toro! Hey man, where is Frank?” I ask picking him up.
“Surgery Gerard, I’ve got to run!” He calls back at me. Oh no I think over and over. Fuck cancer. I follow signs and eventually wind up in the waiting room of the intensive care unit. I just sit there. I have no idea what they’re doing with him. I have no idea what I’m doing here and I have no idea if I’m in the right place.
An hour passes and more people rush to and from the set of white double doors. I decide to text Mikey,
Frnk’s in surgery. Seems really serious bc people are running about. I’m worried. Not coming home till I know he’s ok
His reply comes immediately
Hey Gee I’m sure he’ll b ok. I’ll cook something here and make sure you come home xxxxxxxxxxxx
I wait another two hours before some doctors come out rubbing their hands and wiping their brows. A few minutes later some nurses leave, including Ray.
I wave him over and ask him what’s happening. He sits down beside me and my first thought is that it’s bad news.
“Uh he had difficulty breathing in the middle of the night apparently, I was at home. So they checked his oxygen and that seemed to be fine but Frank was finding it harder to breathe so they rushed him in for scans and it turns out his lungs were full of mucus and the cancer we’d cut out had grown back double. So we pumped all the mucus out and cut half the cancer out.” Ray says all this staring at me waiting for me to figure it out. I’m only sort of following but I urge him on anyway. “We couldn’t take out all the cancer because his lungs are too weak. So we have him in on life support. He’s out cold but alive. We have to be ready for anything in the next twenty four hours. He’s stable but still critical you know?”
I sigh in relief. He’s okay now. “Can I go in and see him?” I ask hopefully.
Ray scratches his jaw and agrees but he has to be with me. We walk in and stand awkwardly by his bed, surrounded in machines beeping and flashing. I take a picture I’d sketched of him and slip it into his night dress.
When we’re back out in the corridor Ray turns to me, “you probably shouldn’t have done that but whatever. He won’t be awake for a while and he won’t be up to visitors till tomorrow evening. Do you want us to call you or something?”
“Yea that’d be great,” I sigh gazing at the big white doors. Poor Frankie…
“Oh and can Mikey come in tomorrow for his next radiotherapy session?” Ray asks gesturing us toward the main hall.
I nod. Ray excuses himself to go do something medical and I walk through the halls on my own. Hospitals are a lot like mazes. Halls everywhere randomly connecting. You walk a corridor long enough you’ll end up somewhere you didn’t know exists or didn’t think could possibly be connected to where you were. Sometimes you end up floors up without having taken any stairs or elevators. Hospitals are just confusing as fuck. By the time I make it out into the car park the sun is setting over the interstate.

It takes my entire lunch break to race back to the house, pick Mikey up, drop him to the hospital and get back. I break the speed limit the whole way practically shove Mikey out of the car while moving and am still late for work.
The latter half of my week day includes lots of helping customers find stuff. People have begun Christmas shopping already so it was usually middle aged women looking for “a cd by that screaming band that begins with s” or “a t shirt with someone from Steel Panther’s face on it”. Dealing with these customers is exhausting. Especially the ones who are convinced they know something (no ma’am the band is 30 seconds to mars not 30 second stars) or when they ask me about the instruments and things when Bob is hiding somewhere in the back office.
I leave for the hospital before the shop is even locked up. I meet Ray pushing Mikey in the hall on the way to his room. He looks completely out of it but Ray is just cheerful and tells me all about the improvements in Mikey’s treatment and how he seems strong enough to undergo more radiotherapy in a sequence though it means losing his hair. Maybe he’ll get a wig like those guys in steel panther have. Or maybe he’ll refuse to undergo more treatment for vanity. I doubt that though.
I don’t really know how Mikey would look at all like Mikey without his hair.
In the room Frank is staring out the window at the setting sun, my sketch on his locker. I help Ray lift Mikey into the bed and then go to sit with Frank. He looks fragile, helpless, and small. Even though he is physically small he has a presence that makes him seem much taller. Now he’s just small. “Hey Frankie.”
“Hey Gee,” he coughs, “what’s up man?”
“Nothing really Christmas shoppers in the shop are a pain in the ass. I came to see you yesterday.”
“Yea I know. I got the picture. It’s really fucking beautiful. Sorry I’m so fucking sick the whole time Gee…”
“Frankie we both know it’s not your fault, you don’t have to apologise to me. How are you now?”
“High as fuck. Morphine to numb the pain but its wearing off now,” he scratches the back of his neck, wincing, “I think they now have a vague idea of what’s wrong with me but it’s pretty late in my… stage? I don’t know what the term is only that I’ve had cancer for a long ass time.”
We sit then for a while in silence. My poor Frankie.
After a while I begin to tell Frank the tale of the Christmas shopping moms. He laughs and practically chokes but colour is returning to his cheeks which is good I think.
Mikey is out for the entire time I’m there. Ray comes to tell me I have 5 minutes left.
“Thanks for visiting Gee. No seriously thank you, I’m glad I’d met you,” Frank says as I reach the door.
“The feeling is mutual man, see ya”
“See ya.”

Notes