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I've been staring at her for several minutes now, frozen by indecision. She's draped across her bed like someone who was placed there by a carrier with very tired arms. The ache in my biceps verifies the truth of this observation. Her breathing is as slow and steady as ever. The only difference between now and the day she collapsed are the series of livid bruises left over from the hospital that line the veins of her wrists and inner elbow. The marks I'd left on her shoulders the night before she fainted, the ones that earned me several disapproving stares from the nurses, have faded away. Day twelve, and no longer any tangible proof we have been together at all. For some reason it makes me dislike her doctors even more.
“Reid,” one of them said to me this morning. “You should consider taking her home and saying your goodbyes.”
“I'll take her home, but I'm not giving up on her,” I replied, not bothering to look up at him.
“Have you considered contacting the Chaplain? Do they...” he faltered, looking for a better way to phrase it. “Are there certain religious services she would want?”
“I don't know, actually. Ask Desmond.”
“Er. Officer Doyle is refusing to speak to us concerning the necessary preparations. We were hoping—”
“And we're hoping you'll get the point and be patient. She's coming back.”
The doctor sighed in exasperation and stormed out of the room. He'd been scanning her head daily and showing us that there has been absolutely no change in the nothing that is her brain function, but Desmond and I have been resolute. The other empaths have hope, and until they've lost it, we've vowed to keep fighting the doctors. A few minutes later, the nurse came in to help me unhook her and prepare for her return to Hanakawa.
“We'll be by tonight to hook her back up,” he'd said disapprovingly. “Why don't you let us arrange to have her moved?”
I shook my head. “No, I've been told I need to move her myself if this is going to work.”
“Suit yourself. That's a long walk.”
“I know. I'm the one who brought her in.”
The last machine unhooked, the nurse stormed out as well. I made a mental note not to get sick my last year here. If I did, I'm sure they'd get even with me for how Desmond and I have tormented them. Part of me feels bad about it, but most of me feels like they're not trying nearly hard enough.
My eyes refocus on her lips and I realize my mind has wandered. I've gotten her this far. Why can't I do the rest?
Her braid is beginning to look somewhat frayed. I'm sure her hair badly needs to be brushed. I've placed her with her legs hanging awkwardly off the edge of the bed. For anyone else it would be uncomfortable, but she has a tendency to rest in far stranger positions, so I feel very little guilt. If what Nanda said is right, she can't feel a thing anyway. I sigh and fall over on the bed next to her, staring up at her ceiling. The dorm is too quiet.
It was this time yesterday when Nanda messaged me. Desmond warned me it would, but I'm still surprised it took a full day to get the doctors to agree to let us try this. Nothing they were doing was working, so I thought they'd jump at a new idea to wake her up.
“I have spoken with Desmond, and I think I know a way to help her.” Nanda's voice was almost unintelligably soft over my wristband.
“So get back here and do it!”
He shook his head. “It is for you.”
“What?”
He went on to explain that he thought she was trapped with Seamus, and since Seamus wasn't allowed to wake up, Asha would need to be pulled away by force. “The problem is what brings her back must have a stronger bond than she has with him.”
“Nanda, that has to be you.”
He shook his head. “No, not anymore. I think it is you.”
And that's why I'm just lying here. Part of me is afraid to fail. If she doesn't wake up, either I didn't try hard enough, or she doesn't care enough about me. But if she does wake up, what does that mean? Does she likes me more than I like her? Or do I like her more than I am willing to admit?
Sometimes I hate myself. Asha is going to die. Even though I yell at the doctors every time they try to broach the subject, it's clear. If she weren't being fed intraveinously, she'd have gone already. But I've been given a chance to save her, and I'm too much of a coward to do it because I can't stop analyzing the potential repercussions. It's sickening. If our positions were reversed, she'd have done this in a heartbeat. Either I read too much into things, or she still hasn't learned how to. Odd, considering how much time she's spent with me.
No. I owe it to her to try. Fuck the consequences. I reach down and untie the drawstring on her hospital pants, yanking them down awkwardly and depositing them on the bedside. The gown comes off much more easily—I don't even need to untie it at the neck. True to form, she's not wearing any underwear, which means she had none on at the camp. Despite the almost intimidating thickness of her braid, the rest of her body is almost hairless. I gather her up in my arms and head for the bathroom, forcing back a sudden desire to scream and shatter things when my skin tells me how deceptively warm and alive she feels in my arms.
“When she first got here,” Nanda told me yesterday, doing everything he could not to look me in the eyes, “Desmond told her how to use a shower as a last resort to focus. Every time things went badly in public, she would come back and shower, and it worked.”
“So you want me to shower with her?”
“Partly, yes. Shower, open up to her. Think of what makes her who she is. She may need a reminder.”
“Shouldn't I be thinking this at Seamus?”
He shook his head. “They are both still listening to Asha, she is just with him instead.”
I paused. “Nanda, that's the least sense you've ever made.”
He scowled into the screen. “This language lacks the words I need.”
“I'll trust you on this anyway.” And so he told me what I needed to do, beginning with walking her back to Hanakawa. Despite this, I feel more than slightly silly standing in the bathroom with her naked in my arms.
I think she's lost weight. She felt surprisingly easy to carrry during the walk, considering, and now as I struggle to get the shower going and my own clothing off without setting her down it's clear she's lighter than before. I'm able to hold her up with one arm while I remove my pants and shirt, though not without fumbling. I'm far less coordinated than either Nanda or Asha, and this moment makes it painfully apparent. If she were conscious, she'd be giggling at me.
There. The bathroom is slightly chilly. The muscles in my lower back are tensing against the temperature and her nipples have gone hard from exposure to the air around us. Though we've been sleeping together both literally and figuratively since the fight in my quarters, the sight of her bare breasts now makes me feel horribly awkward. It's because she hasn't consented to this, I know. I'd asked Nanda if I could just leave our clothes on, but he told me if something changed the routine of the way the shower felt it may not work.
“Won't I count?” I asked sullenly, and Nanda rolled his eyes at me.
“For her, you will be a good change.”
I move us both into the water and close my eyes as it washes over us both. Once she is angled so the jet is spraying against her back I settle myself in for what may be a long shower. It still bothers me that water use here isn't timed. I keep expecting to see a counter telling me I've only got ten minutes, but then again, the Kiranese haven't rendered most of their water useless. I could be in here for half an hour, or even an hour if I wanted to. Too bad spending that long would make me feel frantic—Elene once told me the skin on my fingers and toes would wrinkle if I spent a while immersed in water. She would know.
I push loose, wet hair out of the way and gaze down at her face. No change. I've been incessantly thinking of the three physical traits that make her who she is all morning. Nanda told me to start there. When I open up to her, I am met with an emptiness that makes me sick to my stomach. Even after Keven's seeding she'd still been there, more or less. But now I'm getting no feedback at all. I force myself to stay connected to her all the same and start thinking. Start focusing. When I close my eyes I conjure up the first feature I think of when she comes to mind. The water from the shower washes all my other thoughts away, and I am forced to admit, yet again, the Desmond knows what he is doing.
The scar. Three jagged, puckered, parallel lines that almost miss her neck completely, cutting diagonally across her collarbone toward her shouder. The bottom one is the thickest, the top the smallest. Every time I notice this I envision her falling away from me as if I were the cat, jerking back at the shoulder, face flooded with terror. The skin is smooth and glossy under my fingers. The first time I got a chance to feel it we were sitting under the trees. She'd just told me the story and offered to let me run my fingers over the scar. And though I'd been lusting to get my hands and my tongue on that spot since the day we'd met, the instant my fingers slid over the slightly ridged flesh of her scar all I could think of was how lucky she was to have such a good focus built-in. In a way, the scar is the reason we became close, because if I hadn't noticed it the first day I wouldn't have cared about her enough to exasperate Caroline. Wouldn't have obsessed. Wouldn't be holding her wet, naked body against mine now. I open my eyes and look down at her. With her richly colored skin against mine I seem pale and freakishly tall.
I quietly will her eyes to open, but they do not. Then again, I didn't think it would be that easy. I pull the end of her braid up and begin to undo her hair. This proves to be a more difficult task than I'd expected, since both she and her hair are slippery and wet. One arm is devoted to holding her up, and the other is handling the braid. I eventually get it loose without dropping her on the floor of the shower, though the effort leaves my arm muscles shrieking in pain. The water slowly fans it down her back and over her shoulders, and I find myself amazed, yet again, at how different she looks with it down. The Asha I know the best always has the braid. I close my eyes again and imagine it the way I remember it.
I think the first time I really noticed her hair was during our first walk together, before I stupidly let her faint in the cafeteria. She pulled ahead of me, looking at something I couldn't see, and I realized how perfectly her braid bisected her back. I ended up stopped cold on the path, watching her hips sway gently back and forth on either side of it. When she stopped and looked at me over her shoulder, the braid slid to the side and drew her waist to my attention. I'd already fantasized about hauling her around by that braid, a thought which makes my stomach turn now, but that was the first day I really noticed that Asha, though broken, was incredibly sexy. It was an upsetting revelation. I didn't want to be attracted to someone who spent half the time I was around her filthy and staring off into space. I didn't want someone like my sister in my life again.
And then I'd found out she wasn't like my sister after all. My sister's eyes were always dim. She took everything that came at her without flinching and never fought back, even though it was slowly destroying her. It didn't take me long to realize Asha had more than enough fight in her. When she looked at me, really looked at me, her eyes were captivatingly emotive. They gave her a determination and a force that the rest of her appearance and posture was lacking, and when she looked at me I could never get over it. Most people met her eyes and only saw how blue they were, but after our initial meeting I rarely gave their color a second glance. It was how angry she could make them that got to me. For a while, I would provoke her simply so I could see it again. Her eyes were the first eyes in a long time that could elicit guilt from me. My sister's could, but only because their emptiness made me feel like I failed as a brother. Asha's eyes, her angry eyes, always make me feel like I have failed as a person.
I wrap both my arms around Asha's shoulders and hug her to me tightly, burying my face in her sodden hair. Something in my throat has caught at that parallel, and I realize just how terrified I am that I'm going to lose her. It seems like we've spent most of the time we've known one another screaming at each other, a fact which hasn't escaped the notice of our classmates, but for some strange reason that's exactly what we needed. Asha wanted someone who wouldn't treat her like glass tablewear, and I needed someone who would stand up to me. Looking back on the years since I came to Kiran, I find it unbelievable that she is the only person who has had the guts to call me an idiot to my face.
My throat catches again, my shoulders jerk, and I start crying into her hair. Her head falls backward heavily, and I catch it in my hand and pull her closer to my chest.
What am I going to do if she dies?
My brain freezes, and all I can do is sob. I'm crying so hard it hurts—muscles in my chest are spasming, my lungs aren't working right, I'm seeing spots. My teeth are clenched and bared so every time I exhale I hiss unevenly against her, but I can't stop. The last words my father said to me before I stormed out of the house five years ago are running through my head relentlessly.
“Going to die alone, boy, if you keep this up.” His face was almost as twisted as mine feels now.
“At least you'll go first,” I snapped back.
“I'm not,” I gasp into her hair, unaware at first that I am speaking aloud. “I'm not ready for you to go, Asha. I don't—I, I don't want you to die!”
Nothing happens. It was stupid of me to think this would magically bring her back to me, but my mouth won't stop moving. I keep stuttering words around the tears. “I know—I'm bad for you, but you—if you die, I'll just keep on being a bastard to everyone.” The doctors' insistent scanning of her brain function comes to mind. Every morning, right in front of me in the room. Trying to make me see that she's gone. But I don't want her to be gone because—
“Damnit, Asha, at least let me fucking say goodbye!” I want to shake her, but I don't.
Minutes pass, but she remains as limp as ever in my arms. My hands start to feel tingly, and when I look at them I realize they've wrinkled. Elene says on her planet that's a sign one has been in the water for too long. My wristband says it's been almost an hour, and Asha feels no different in my arms.
After Nanda told me what to do, I asked “when should I stop trying?”
“You would know better than I, but. My father, when he would talk about this happening—his grandfather was a Type Three—he said it either happened, or it did not. Spending all day in there will not save her if two hours did not.”
“You've no idea, do you.”
He shook his head. “But I do trust that you will.” And there he'd ended the message.
I stop the shower with my free arm and pull us both out onto the mat. The button to dry us off is a little far away, but I manage to hit it with my foot without knocking us both over. There's nothing left to do but get her dressed.
Then tell everyone we have to say goodbye.
I feel hollow. The entire place seems fake. Something in my mind has come loose like it did after my mother and sister died, and my brain simply isn't accepting facts anymore. I can think them, but they're not registering, not really. The real me would get her dressed and message Desmond, but all I can think about is how she wouldn't want anyone else to see her hair loose. I grab a brush and sit cross-legged on the floor with her in my lap and begin to work through the tangles. Dead hair comes out thickly, and soon her hair looks silky again. Healthy.
Reality hits again as I realize how deceptive her hair is, and my breath heaves awkwardly.
“Asha, please.” My eyes are shut. They are burning from all the tears and my cheeks feel strangely tight, but I'm still not done crying. I cry until the air has made us both cold again. I cry as I carefully rebraid her hair and tie it. After that I can't bear to open the bathroom door, so I sit there with her in my arms, back against the wall, staring at the ceiling. My watchband quietly sounds the hour.
“I think that is the first time you have ever said please to me,” she murmurs.
I bolt upright and stare down at her. She lifts her head and looks up at me as if this is all perfectly normal, and for a moment I can't decide whether to hug her to me or wrap my fingers around her throat and squeeze. “Asha?”
“I am sorry it took so long, but Seamus did not want to be alone.”
“You—you know what happened then?” My voice sounds shaky from crying.
She nods, every muscle in her body going tense. “I did not want to leave him there, after—Reid, Reid, I need to speak to Desmond!” Asha moves to stand, but her legs wobble, and she falls sideways.
“I'll message him, but Asha. You need food first.”
“Hnh,” she sulks, staring at her legs as if they have betrayed her. “Can I have tea?” She stares at the kitchen, then giggles. “Oh, no. Elene and Bastian are coming.”
“Asha, I'm not dressed—“
But the door flies open anyway, and a sobbing Elene careens through the air and slams into us both. Bastian, only slightly more together emotionally, still manages to quietly hand me a bath wrap while his girlfriend and best friend hug in my lap.
“Asha why in the fuck did you stay gone for so long—everyone was worried sick and the doctors were convinced you were going to die and Reid and Desmond have hardly been around because they were spending so much time with you and the feeds have been going crazy with gossip—if you ever do anything like that again I swear I will murder you Ash—“ She gasps for breath, and Bastian laughs despite himself.
“Darling, you'll be able to yell at her much more effectively if you just breathe first.”
She nods and starts crying into Asha's scar.
“Elene,” Asha says, sounding somewhat awed. Her hands slide gently into Elene's blonde, dirty hair. “I am sorry. This is the first time I have recognized where I was!”
Bastian shakes his head. “Idiot doctors wouldn't listen.”
“Nanda was right,” I mutter, tying the wrap around my waist as best I can with two girls piled in it.
Asha looks up at me with unsettlingly alert eyes. “Nanda?”
“Messaged Reid and told him how to save you,” Bastian says, sitting beside us on the floor.
“He did not come back?” Her voice is almost unintelligably soft. When none of us are brave enough to answer her aloud, she blinks back her tears and tries to stand again. This time, Elene helps her up.
“Will you get me to my room?” Elene throws an arm around her waist obligingly, and they move for the door.
“Reid, will you message Desmond?” Asha asks over her shoulder.
“Yes.”
“Get some clothes on her before he shows, Elene,” Bastian calls. They round the corner, Asha muttering something about needing her wristband back, and the two of us are left alone on the bathroom floor. I casually reach for my shirt.
“Just like that, it never happened.” Bastian shakes his head.
“Bastian, you've no idea.”
He sighs and stands up. “Wish I could move on that quickly.”
“So do I.”
He gives me an awkward smile and leaves to follow them. It's only when I try to message Desmond that I realize my hands are shaking.
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