I told him about my farmer, and he shouted with laughter. I said, “He was right, too. He was fine. The surgeon took the post out, sewed him up, and put him on a ward, but I’m guessing he’s agitating to go home already, telling the nurse he’s good as gold. Or ‘Box of birds.’ It took me so long to learn the Kiwi lingo, after Mount Zion. The first time a patient said that to me as a student nurse, I was so confused. Then there was ‘Box of fluffy ducks.’ I couldn’t think how birds came into it.”
“They don’t say that, then, at Mount Zion?” Gray asked.
“No. Slang is worldly.”
“So that’s it?” he asked. “Not going to tell me the naughty stories?”
“What, where the sex swing breaks, the poor lady leads with her face, because her wrists were unfortunately restrained, and the crash brings the flatmates? Like that?”
“Ouch,” Gray said. “Yeh, maybe not so much.”
“They can be funny sometimes,” I admitted, “though not to somebody outside Emergency, probably. The inserted items, for one. Candles are nothing special, but when the candle’s still in the glass holder … Or then there’s the one where they’ve eaten an extra-spicy meal on their date night, and there are some, ah, tender parts that probably shouldn’t have been exposed to hot chiles.”
“Not how it works, surely,” Gray said. “Unless you mean that the chiles burn on the way in and the way out, which would be an extremely improper story, if you’re talking about exposing that area to further friction. Which, having been through it, I can’t imagine the horror of. World traveler,” he added when I raised my eyebrows at him. “The All Blacks did a thing in Korea once. That was a night to remember, even without further friction. Ouch.”
“No,” I said, though I was laughing. “Extra points for honesty, though, I guess? No. What happened was that the interior of his mouth was burning. His tongue. And so forth. We didn’t know that could happen, that the heat could transfer like that. We found out, though.”
“Ah,” he said, and smiled. “She got a little more than she bargained for, did she?”
“You smile,” I said, “but it hurt. We’ll call that a lesson learned. And then there are all the ones where somebody gets his penis broken—which is and isn’t actually broken, by the way. No bones in there, as I’m sure you know, but you can rupture the fibrous tissue, which is why you hear a pop, or a cracking sound. Oh, and the time when the hookup found out, once she’d driven him to Emergency after that, well, sudden emergency, that he was her new boss at the job she was meant to start next day. That was sweet, though. I like to think that one was the start of a love story, sort of a meet-cute for the Tinder age. She was so worried and flustered and horrified, and he was stoical and protective despite all the pain, holding her hand and telling her it was OK. Excruciatingly painful injury, breaking your penis. Requires surgery to repair. Don’t do that.”
Gray had crossed his legs. I was pretty sure he didn’t realize he was doing it. I smiled at him and took another bite of my breakfast, then said, “One good thing—if something goes wrong despite all your vast experience, I probably know how to cope with the disaster. A bit like escaping from a submerged car, as I’ve been able to learn from everybody else’s mistakes. So there’s that. Or I could ring Matiu, if it’s beyond my capabilities. Keep it in the family, eh, and keep you out of the ED. You’ve got a famous face, it seems, and you know how those people gossip.”
“I’m letting you get away with this,” he said, “because it’s your comfort zone.”
“Ooh,” I said. “That was masterful.”
He sighed and said, “Daisy.”
“Yes?” I was feeling good, suddenly. Like a woman who did actually know how to flirt, even though discussing broken penises probably wouldn’t be on most lists.
He said, “I need to go to work.” He got up, then leaned over and kissed my mouth. “See you tonight. And we’ll court some more. I feel the need to regain the upper hand here.”
“Will there be touching this time?” I asked. “I feel ready to move on to touching. So you know.”
“Oh,” he said, “I imagine there’ll be some touching.”
39
Reshuffling the Deck
Daisy
When I got home, there was music playing in the yurt,