He awoke to the sounds and smells of a hospital—the steady beep of a heart monitor, echoing voices over the P.A., the distant mutter of doctors, nurses, and patients, and the tinny sound of a game show rerun on the too-small TV that hung over his bed.

His room was not a private one, and so only a curtain on a standing frame separated him from the coughing coming from his neighbour’s quarter of the room.

The smell of disinfectant did little to drown out the strong smell of days’ old sweat coming from the person sitting next to his bed.

“What do you feel like watchin’, mate?” Murray drawled. “You’ve got Wheel of Fortune, The Chaser, or some documentary about bees. Crackin' selection.”

Just once, I’d like to wake up in my own fucking bed.

Disorientation was becoming a familiar feeling for him, and while he knew his last memory had come on an island adrift in a sea of boundless darkness, he quickly came to recognise the fact he was in the local hospital.

“Muzza?”

Damien wanted to sit up, but the various tubes and wires ensnaring him made that difficult. He made do with a half-hearted wave at his old friend.

Murray had changed since high school. He’d been a tall, gawky thing then, and while he was no less tall or gawky, a healthy yellow-brown beard went some way towards compensating for his non-existent chin. The acne that had dogged him through high school was gone, replaced instead with a melted cheese motley that was mostly obscured by the beard. There was a bit more fat around the waist and a bit more grey at his temples, but he otherwise looked much as he had on their last day of high school.

He certainly smelled the same. It was like the man was allergic to deodorant.

“The one and only,” Murray replied, tearing his attention away from the TV to regard his old friend with slate-blue eyes. “You look like death taking a shit.”

“Feel like it,” Damien muttered. “What the hell happened?”

As if you didn’t know.

“Some farmer found you in his back paddock with a fuckin’ arrow in you”, Muzza explained, clearly amused by the description. “You taken up extreme LARPing, you mad cunt?”

His voice was, and always had been, gravelly. His laughter was a rasping, hissing thing. It would have been vaguely menacing on anybody else, but it was hard to be intimidated by a 6’3” beanpole with sharp elbows, a bobbing Adam’s apple, and the hand-eye coordination of a drunk. He was, as Damien’s mother had described him, an “unfortunate looking young man.”

Damien waited out his old friend’s laugh. It took longer than it should have, and only then did he answer the question.

“I have no idea, mate,” he lied. “Last thing I remember was being out front of Sam’s shop when it burned down.”

Murray’s mood shifted. “Ah, man, that was a shitshow. You hate to see it.”

Damien nodded his agreement.

“You on the piss or something?”

He shook his head.

“I’d just finished work. Had a bit of a fender bender on the way over. Maybe I was concussed?”

Murray nodded, stroking his beard in sagely thought.

“Probably. Still, what mad bastard shot you with an arrow? The coppers were up here earlier wanting to talk to you, but you was out like a light. Been that way since they brought you in yesty mornin’.”

Damien glanced out the window, where the grey of another Loch Lomond twilight was settling in over the town. Beyond the hospital grounds, the flat expanse of the soccer fields bled into the grandstand-hemmed rugby league ground and, beyond that, the first of many farms that separated one pissant town from another. It was an entirely uninspiring view, but it did confirm he had been unconscious for a day and a half.

“What are you doing here?” he blurted out, not thinking how it might sound. Murray recoiled in mock horror; he was not the kind of guy to take things to heart.

“Fuck me,” he laughed. “You’re an ungrateful bastard. Someone’s gotta hold your hand and wipe your arse, mate. You don’t exactly have a big circle of friends here these days. Me and Sam have been taking turns.”

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This time he did manage to sit upright, although it hurt like a bastard.

“Sam’s been here?”

“Jeez, mate. You know how to make a guy feel like shit. Yeah, Sam was here earlier. He did the night shift last night, too.”

“Sorry,” Damien apologised, grimacing as a wave of pain and nausea rolled over him. “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful. Just didn’t think Sam would check in on me. I knew you would, you ugly prick. You’re loyal as a fucking labrador.”

“I can lick my own arsehole, too,” Murray agreed. “But I don’t die when I eat chocolate.”

“Score one for you,” Damien laughed. “Man’s best friend.”

It felt oddly natural to shoot the shit with Murray as if they hadn’t been strangers for the better part of their post-high school lives.

Why was I avoiding him again?

It felt good to laugh, and better still to do it with somebody he had shared many laughs with in the past.

Once the laughter had died down, things lapsed into a companionable silence, broken only by the occasional cheer from the TV.

Damien didn’t recognise the game show being played on the grainy screen, but he did recognise the tavern model sitting at the foot of his bed. Except it wasn’t just a tavern model now; it was a model of a tavern and a blacksmith, both of which were set in a large, black base.

“Where’d that come from?”

“Huh?” Murray had turned his attention back to the TV, but he followed Damien’s gaze easily enough. “Oh, the model? Some fancy fella dropped it off this mornin’. Said you’d left it at his place.”

“What did he look like?”

“Good lookin’ fella. Didn’t know you were a poof.”

He said it so matter-of-factly as if it weren’t a slur. Damien grimaced.

“Jesus, Muzza. You can’t say that.”

“Shit! Sorry, brother. Didn’t realise it was a secret. Me lips are sealed.” He mimed zipping his mouth shut and tossing away the key.

“I’m not gay, you fucking idiot. I’m saying you can’t say shit like that. You trying to get cancelled?”

Murray made a show of looking around; an over-the-top pantomime. “You gonna cancel me? Nobody else here.”

“Still, mate. You can’t just go around saying shit like that. It’s not cool.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want to be not cool. Fine, I’ll fix it. I didn’t know you were gay.”

“I’m not gay,” he corrected again. “I don’t know what the guy was talking about. I haven’t been to his place.”

“But you do know him?”

Damien sighed. “He came into work the day of the fire. Said he knew Sam.”

“Why’s he giving you models?” Murray pressed.

“He’s not. The models are mine.”

“Ah, yeah. That’s right. He said you left them at his. Okay, new question: why are you collecting models of fuckin’ Hand of Fate shit? I thought you dropped that when you dropped us.”

Ouch. That one hurt. He had hoped Murray had forgiven and forgotten, but he clearly still nursed a grudge. Damien didn’t blame him.

“It’s a long story, mate.”

Murray folded his arms and put his feet up on the end of Damien’s bed. His heavy workboots left muddy streaks on the blue bedsheets. “I’ve got time. Sam’s not stopping by until after the footy.”

“Sam watches the footy?” He couldn’t picture his nerdy friend from high school watching a sport he’d often described as “a bunch of roided up arseholes wrestling in short shorts.” Had Sam watched him play and developed a love for the game in the process?

“Sam? Fuck no. Still fuckin’ hates the shit. He runs a game of Hand of Fate at his shop on Fridays. It just ends around the same time as the footy. Anyway, he’s running it at the old community centre while they figure out what happened at the shop.”

“You guys don’t need to watch over me.” Damien cut in. “Not that I don’t appreciate it, but I reckon I’m in good hands with the doctors.”

Murray shrugged. “Got nothin’ better to do.”

“What about the wife and kids?”

“They’ll keep.”

They again lapsed into silence, although this one was far less companionable than the last. By the time Murray spoke again, the sun had set, and the game show had given way to the news. Neither of them seemed particularly interested in the goings on in the world.

“So, what’s the deal with the models? You havin’ a mid-life crisis?”

“I’m only twenty-five, mate!”

“Fine. Quarter-life crisis, or whatever. What’s the deal? I thought you dropped that shit.”

“I did.” Damien began, trying to calculate how much to tell his old friend. The whole truth would end up with him taking a one-way trip to the loony bin, but he couldn’t just fob his friend off. A modicum of honesty was the last he could do.

He had settled on a brief summary he felt comfortable sharing when somebody spoke up from the other side of the curtains.

“Knock knock. You decent?” He recognised Mitch’s voice immediately. He’d last seen him at the fire, and, as far as local cops went, he was probably the least likely to make a big deal of things.

“Hold on a sec,” Murray said, hurriedly tugging down his pants and climbing up onto the bed so he was straddling Damien. His Iron Man boxer shorts were thirty centimetres from Damien’s face, and he began to make slow, gyrating motions while moaning erotically.

“Come iiiiiinnnn,” he sang in a girlish timbre.

Mitch threw back the curtain and, witnessing the scene, immediately burst into laughter. Damien, for his part, had his head turned as far away from Murray’s low-hanging fruit as possible, his eyes shut and snorting in laughter in spite of himself.

“Bloody hell, Muzza,” the young policeman laughed. “You’re a loose unit. Put some bloody pants on, I’m here on business.”

“I’m close,” Murray shouted. “I’m clooooooooooose!”

He mimicked his climax, no doubt annoying those unfortunate enough to be sharing the room. Then, jumping down from the bed and hauling his pants up, he nonchalantly sat down and said, “Got a smoke? I’m positively post-coital.”