The Way You Are

By Matthew Lang

After being attacked for standing up for equality, Travis “Rook” Rookford falls into a coma. At his bedside sits fellow student Leon Capper, there to keep his new hero company. Instead he finds a boyfriend in nurse Warrick Kwok.

When Rook wakes with amnesia, he thinks Leon is his boyfriend—which surprises everyone, given Rook's prior dating pattern. With everything that's going on, Leon has a hard time telling Rook the truth—and Warrick's possessiveness grates on him enough that he isn't sure he wants to. Between the stresses of studies, Rook's upcoming court appearance, and the pitfalls of new love, Leon has to work out how to set Rook straight. Maybe after that he can finally tackle his Christmas shopping.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
• Release date: Jan 2, 2013
• ISBN: 9781623802721

Matthew Lang

Matthew Lang writes behind a desk, in the park, on the tram and sometimes backstage at amateur theatre productions. He has been known to sing and dance in public, analyse the plots of movies and TV shows, and is a confessed Masterchef addict. Over the years he has dabbled in marketing, advertising, event management and the sale of light fittings, but his first love is and has always been that of the written word and is rarely too far from a good book. He likes his men hot and spunky, his mysteries fantastical, his fantasies real and his vampires to combust when exposed to sunlight. Other than that he’s pretty normal. One day we may even take him out of the straight jacket.

Book preview

The Way You Are

THE ward was an unflinching shade of hospital green, the washed out, chalky color that Leon had only ever seen in movies. Hospitals, in his admittedly limited experience, were supposed to be a crumbly yellow or a stark, modern white, and this one was both, at least on the outside. Walking in from the glare of the spring sun, he wondered if the paint scheme was an attempt to bring the color of the park outside into the hospital, but the dullness of stereotypical surgical-gown green was so different from the vibrant green of grass and leaves that he quickly decided against it. Stereotypical. Leon suppressed a shudder at the word. It came loaded with meanings and preconceptions, some good, but mostly not. This was, after all, a stereotypical regional city.

Two hours from Sydney by train, Newcastle stretched along the southern bank of the Hunter River, following its curves all the way to the Tasman Sea, where Leon, like most of the residents, took to the glorious sandy beaches and surf spots that were nearly as famous as the city’s coal exports and subtropical weather. Here, shops were just starting to stay open after five and on Sundays, Chinese takeout bore no relation to China other than the occasional limp bean sprout and premade hoisin sauce, and everyone who didn’t work in the hospital or the coal industry eventually left to find a job and a better life somewhere else.

Those who stayed behind either owned the place or were absolute derros{1}. Leon was honest enough to admit that judgment was probably unfair, especially given Krissy’s parents’ successful B and B in the eastern end of town, but after going out that first Saturday night to the Great Northern Hotel and hearing the drunken jeers of bogans{2} driving around the deserted streets in battered utes{3} of muck brown or faded blue, he too now repeated the mantra that had been passed down from student to new student over the years at the university: When you go out at night, don’t make eye contact with the locals{4}.

The University of Newcastle, of course, was a haven for those fleeing even smaller-minded country towns, those who found the whole notion of city living just that little bit terrifying, or those who couldn’t afford—or didn’t get into—the big city campuses of Sydney or Melbourne. Leon had found university life freeing, a mass of thoughtful people willing to live and let live, or even celebrate diversity. It was at university he first felt comfortable enough to come out, at university where he first kissed a guy, and at university where he met Krissy, the first person who accepted him for exactly who he was. Or Kristina, if she was meeting a boy on a serious date.

Then the rumors had begun circulating.

He’s where?

Hospital.

What happened?

Last I heard, seven broken bones, internal injuries, and a coma.

I thought he was going to give blood?

Well, that sounds like a big night out gone wrong.

Oh my God, are youse talking about Kim Kardashian? Have youse seen the photos?

What? We’re talking about Rook.

Rook was invited to Kim Kardashian’s party? Oh my God, that is like, so—

No, Rook was gay bashed.

Rook’s gay?

No way! I dated that bastard! You’re saying he drove stick the entire time?

Wait—is he like, famous or something?

No he’s a physio student hoping to transfer into med.

And he’s straight.

And, some days later, when the stories had swirled around campus long enough to be published in Opus, the student newspaper, and everyone else had moved on to debating Schrödinger’s bunnies{5}, Leon finally became aware of what had happened.

And that was what brought him to room 14B in the puke-green wing of the John Hunter Hospital, named after not one but three John Hunters, one of whom had nothing to do with medicine whatsoever, but had been instrumental in breaking news of the newly discovered platypus back in the United Kingdom in 1798—a feat achieved by sending back a sketch of a live animal and the dead pelt of the first one to be encountered by humans{6}.

The room wasn’t what Leon had been expecting. For starters, it was mostly bare, with two ward beds empty and the third containing the limp figure of an aging matron, a thin, white cotton sheet doing little to conceal her bulk.

Leon focused his gaze on the furthest corner of the room, where a yellow privacy curtain had been drawn back, allowing sunlight from the nearby window to play over the unmoving figure in the fourth hospital bed. The bed was large to Leon’s eyes, and the patient it contained looked a bit like a child in comparison, even though Leon knew Rook to be at least six inches taller than himself. The bedsheets were tucked around the recumbent figure, still neat and crisp, as if they had just been fitted around his body. Obviously, coma patients didn’t move much. An unused tray table and a soft chair—upholstered in the poo brown that had been ever so popular in the 1950s or some other decade before Leon’s time—sat off slightly to one side, a bunch of wilted flowers on the bedside table, and a small stack of get well cards the only personal touches in the otherwise institutional space.

Leon would have expected a scrunched tissue or indented cushion or something—anything—to indicate the presence of parents, but apparently they lived far out in the middle of Woop Woop{7}. The last few days hadn’t been kind to Rook—or as he was known on his patient chart, Travis Rookford. The left side of his face was still swollen and bruised, the skin lacerated with a myriad of cuts that, according to newspaper sources, had been inflicted by a smashed bottle. One source{8} said Rook was lucky to not have lost an eye. His right leg was elevated and in a heavy