An hour later, I couldn’t help letting the sound of Griffin’s guitar and voice pull me out of my office. The stiffness in my back told me I’d been sitting too long. The admin stuff was what I liked least about being head of nursing. Less hands-on patient time and a lot more headaches.
I peered into the front lobby. As I arrived, Griffin set aside his guitar and swung around to face the piano. “Sure, I can do that one,” he said. The first notes of Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” danced out from under his fingertips. I stood there listening as he sang the familiar lyrics. When he came to Paul, who never had time for a wife, he raised his head and winked at me. I remembered one night we’d joked about how you could queer-code the whole bar in that song.
I’d expected to see Harvey and Owen listening front and center, but didn’t spot them at all, while even Prescott was there, propped up in his special chair.I hope nothing’s wrong.I headed for Harvey’s room and found the door wide open. When I peered around the doorframe, Harvey was in bed, his head barely raised, with Owen sitting on the mattress beside his knees.
“You two doing okay?” I asked.
“Not too bad,” Owen said. “Leg cramp day for Harvey and he does better flat on his back.”
“Sorry to be missing the music,” Harvey added. “But we can hear it okay, I guess. Both of us still got most of our hearing.”
“A minor miracle considering the ear-blasting concerts you used to go to,” Owen teased gently.
“It’s not a great concert unless you come out with your whole body vibrating.”
“We could push your bed out there,” I offered. The beds were all wheeled hospital equipment.
“Nah. Don’t really want to show up to a Griffin Marsh show like that. The chair’s bad enough.”
Owen said nothing but he took Harvey’s hand, stroking the back with his thumb.
Harvey offered a crooked grin. “Here we got the room to ourselves for an hour too, and me not in a mood to take advantage of it. Any word on the room front, Lee?”
I had to shake my head. “Management isn’t budging.” I eyed them. “Why don’t you get married? I can get a justice of the peace in to do it, or whatever celebrant you like.”
Owen eyed me. “You think that would help?”
“Hell, yeah. I’d go to bat for you in a hot minute if I could say ‘husbands.’ It’d still be tricky. We’d either have to move someone out of downstairs, although we have one resident who doesn’t really need it. Or we’d have to move Harvey up to your floor and run the sling lift up and down when we needed it for him. But either way. Newlyweds? I’d sneak that story to the media if they said no.”
Harvey gave a hoarse laugh. “Forty-eight years and newlywed.”
“A pity that won’t happen.” Owen raised Harvey’s hand to his lips and kissed his knuckles.
“No regrets,” Harvey said.
I suggested, “I think you can get a judge to certify a common law marriage, if you’re set against heteronormativity. Even that should be enough to force their hand.”
“It’s not the heteronormativity.” Harvey turned to Owen.
The two old men exchanged long looks, then Owen told me, “Shut the door, would you?”
I closed the door and leaned against Prescott’s bed across from them. “What’s up?”
“Can you keep a secret? Like, really secret? Two gay men to another?”
“Unless it endangers someone’s safety, sure.”
“Only ours.” Their eyes met again, then Owen said, “We can’t get married because it’s not legal.”
“Is one of you an undocumented immigrant?” I asked. With our staff, that issue had raised its head more than once regarding spouses and parents.
“Hah. No. US born and bred, both of us.” Owen took a breath. “You’re gay, so you’ll remember what the eighties were like. Or not remember. You probably weren’t even born yet.”
“1984,” I said. “But I didn’t know I was queer until well into the nineties.”
“The eighties were… it was surreal, almost. Gay men were dying and we had this thing bearing down on us, this plague. No one knew for sure how guys caught it, or how long you could have it and not know. Men were rejected by their families, bodies not even claimed. Men were yanked back to their childhood homes to die isolated while their families prayed over them that they’d repent their evil ways.”
Harvey said, “Guys we knew went into the hospital and it was like they vanished. No one was allowed to visit. We weren’tfamily. Bullshit.”
