Subject: This week’s requests
Hi Axel .
We are getting overwhelmed with requests to contact you, and I think you need to come in and have a chat with us asap, to figure out how we are going to deal with this surge in interest in you as a person. Please see below some of the things we need to discuss.
-You have had 683 applications to join your ‘Parents-to-be’ seminar next week. There are 25 places on your course. We cannot cope if these people turn up. We need to discuss having security on the door, and an approved list of local genuine pregnant residents assigned to your courses from now on.
-The admin team have received over 500 requests for appointments and transfer of care to you. We are sending out a standard letter of reply now, thanking them for their interest in our hospital.
-Several papers and magazines are asking for interviews. ‘HotGossip’ are being particularly insistent. Sorry, but their reporter is very demanding.
-I have blocked the lady from Good Morning Norway, but I still get her emails. They are still desperate. Their words, not mine.
Finally, you have a box of gifts and letters that have been left for you that is taking up space downstairs in reception. The staff have been very patient and accommodating with dealing with your ‘fans’. Can you please pop down and collect it at some point? (And buy the reception staff some chocolate, they deserve it.)
I have time to meet with you on Tuesday Evening before your shift, say 5.30? It’s urgent that we start dealing with some of these issues.
Best,
Hedda
Vigeland Sculpture park, Oslo
Monday evening
They walk hand in hand home, with Marthe asleep on Jens’ back, and Mikki running ahead, skipping down the path singing some alphabet song he has learned at school. Over and over again until Axel says he is quite sure he will be humming it while delivering babies through the night.
Jens keeps just looking over at Axel, just catching his eye. Smiles and giggles at the blush that keeps creeping over Axel’s cheeks with every squeeze of Jens’ hand. The warmth that spreads through Jens’ veins when Axel looks at him, just the way his eyes widen, dark and black with hardly any colour visible in his irises, until Jens’ stomach jolts and his smile is so wide that he just has to look away.
It’s a heady feeling, knowing how loved he is. That Axel is doing all this for him, for Jens. Who he still remembers is a bit of an arsehole plonker with a temper and four uncontrollable children, who lives in a shithole and is barely managing to keep his job afloat. Because the Jens he knows that he is under this love hazed surface, the real Jens, doesn’t deserve to be this happy. This content. This loved. The real Jens is terrified that everything is going to crash down around him, leaving him broken and destroyed and his children damaged for ever. He can see it all. He can feel the despair brewing in the back of his mind. If he lost this, if this went bad, he doesn’t think he could go on. The real Jens behind the smile wants to grab Axel and lock him in the flat and never let him leave again. With the children. All safe and warm and curled up in the safety of arms, imprisoned in his heart.
Jens is writing ridiculous poetry in his head again, words that he wouldn’t hesitate to fail his students for if they actually had the guts to print them on paper. Jens should not be allowed anywhere near pen and paper right now, because the words he would put down, would be a pathetic jumbled mess of feelings, which would land him right up there with the deranged poets of history.
Instead, he squeezes Axel’s hand and wipes away the tear that is forming in the corner of his eye as Axel chases after Mikki and swings him around on the grass. Mikki, who is howling with laughter and squealing when Axel lifts him up on his shoulders. Mikki, who won’t stop talking and keeps calling Axel ‘Pappa Axel’, just like Marthe.
And Axel holds his hand. Strokes Jens’ skin with the pad of his thumb. Leans over and lets his lips softly meet Jens’. Axel kisses him right there on the path. With people milling past and the evening sun shining through the trees in the park and Jens’ heart beating so hard that his ribs ache.
Jens should not be allowed to be this happy. He doesn’t deserve it. He is a remarkably crap human being in every sense of the word. He shouts too much, he skips his lectures, he treats his students like shit. He barely knows how to parent, and he doesn’t have a clue how he is going to make Axel love him as much as he loves Axel. He doesn’t have the faintest grasp on how to make Axel happy, how to make him stay, how to make him his forever and ever.
It was so easy with Sofie, the way they just lived. They had just co-existed in a comfortable routine of family life and laughter. He had loved Sofie so much, and it had been good. But with Axel, this time around, Jens wants it all. He wants it to be real. He wants the fucking fairy-tale where he skips off into the sunset with the love of his life. Where he loves like his life depends on it.
Jens is not a religious person, he gave up on God in all his forms a long time ago. Yet he prays. He prays to anyone who will listen to his pathetic requests and pleas. He prays so hard that his knuckles around Axel’s hand turn pale and Axel’s hand grips him back. Like he can read his mind and knows exactly what Jens is thinking.
No, Jens definitely doesn’t deserve Axel. Yet Jens smiles into the sun and holds Axel’s hand even tighter.
From: [email protected]
Re: This week’s requests
See you Tuesday evening. I am slightly terrified now, I didn’t realise there was so much craziness going on. I am sorry about all the extra work the PNN blog is creating.
Hedda, the privacy and protection of my family is my main concern and I have zero interest in being the public face of the hospital or such. Just so you know. I will decline all interviews that are not of a professional matter. Happy to speak to the Midwifery journal, and The Norwegian Medical weekly, but that is about it.
Rgds Axel
From: [email protected]
Re: Your Axel
Jens,
Carla just showed me an Axel Kleve Facebook group she is part of. Your Axel is quite the celeb! I haven’t told her that I have asked the two of you over for dinner, or that you are this secret boyfriend of his. She is going to freak out. I may just become the husband of the year after this!? Let me check my schedule and let you know an evening that works for us.
www.facebook.com/groups/AXELKLEVESYUMMYMUMMIES
Sondre
From: [email protected]