BEFORE
I haven’t seen Sam since the night Henry died. Well, I have seen him. He reads in his bed most of the day, finishing books as quickly as he picks them up. He doesn’t sleep often. When he does, I look at him just a little longer as I pass his room, wishing I could crawl into the bed and apologize.
I feel half gone without him, like I’m missing a part of myself.
Without Sam, I follow Nurse Ella. She calls me her shadow. We care for patients together. Or at least she does. I mostly watch. Babies and infants, people that have yet to become people, are what bring me joy. Nurse Ella says I stare at the little creatures too much. I tell her that once you are her age living is unpleasant and I must enjoy the pleasure of looking at babies while I still can. Rightfully so, she smacks the back of my head.
“Is Sam doing alright?” I ask. She scribbles on a sheet of paper. I have no interest in what. Paperwork in hospitals requires whole forests for production. Paperwork is like violence. Overly abundant and often useless.
“He’s been a ripe old pain in the arse,” Nurse Ella says. “You two haven’t been causing much trouble now that I think about it. What happened?”
“I upset him,” I tell her.
“Whatever for?”
“I didn’t mean to upset him.”
Nurse Ella grunts, displeased. “Sam is becoming a man. You should learn while you’re young, men are an emotional lot. God knows who let them be in charge of things. Is this why you’ve been sulking like a hound?”
“Hound?” I ask, unfamiliar with the term.
“Stupid child,” Nurse Ella throws her papers down and wipes off her apron. “Come along.”
“Where are we going?”
Nurse Ella never answers my questions.
She merely leads and I follow.
Sam’s room is dark. He has a single lamp in the far corner, his blinds drawn. The potted plants on his windowsill that have grown into vines and shrubbery for the past decade wither away in the blue overglow.
Nurse Ella marches in without so much as a knock or a greeting. Sam looks up from the lesson work propped on his knees, brows knitted.
“Nurse Ella?”
“Get up,” she says, rounding his bed and snapping her fingers.
“What?”
“Up,” she says again, taking the work from his hands and tossing it aside.
Sam frowns. “No.”
“I’m sorry, did I preface that command with it please your knighthood?”
“Hag.”
“Up. Now!” She claps her hands. “And you! In here. Sit.”
Once Sam and I are both at the edge of his cot, Nurse Ella plants her hands on her hips, scanning us like prisoners deserving of a baton.
“In my entire career, I have never encountered such pains. Since you were at my knee, you’ve been wreaking havoc together. By god, the headaches I’ve suffered taming you beasts of children.” Nurse Ella makes a masterpiece of her scoldings. She is theatrical, inhaling strength as she pauses.
“That being said, when you are apart, you are even worse. You.” She waves her arm at me. “Becoming a mopey babe clinging to my skirt at all hours. And you.” She flicks Sam’s forehead, I assume, in an attempt to rid him of the wrinkles he’s forming from that scowl. “Losing your temper every hour of the day because you got your feelings hurt. Did I raise you to be so pathetic? I am not a patient woman. I have better things to attend to than your squabbling. So make up! And do so promptly.”
Walking out, Nurse Ella continues muttering about our various crimes against her sanity. The door shuts behind her, and a draft cuts through the room with heavy, ugly silence.
Sam and I don’t look at each other. In fact, we don’t look at anything until he speaks.
“You told on me?”
“No,” I say. “I think she was smart enough to piece it together.”
Sam pushes off the bed and wanders to the window. He doesn’t open the blinds. Instead, he cradles browning leaves, listening to the crackling like a fire. His sleeve falls as he does, revealing the patches on his skin. Shades of pink rise from his skin like plateaus, raw and scabbed over.
They’ve spread.
“Sam, your skin.” I hurry across the room and try to touch him, but he tugs away. Not on reflex. Willfully.
My fingers curl, arms falling back to my side. “You’re still angry at me.”
“Really?” Sam scoffs. “What tipped you off?”
“I don’t understand.”
“No, of course, you don’t. I’m surprised you understand how to tie your shoes.”
“You’re being cruel.”
“And you’re stupid.”
“I’m not stupid,” I say, my voice tight.
“Really? Do you even understand why I’m angry with you?”
“You’re angry because I don’t want to leave.”
“No.” Sam takes my face in his hands, the way he does when he wants to embrace me. Only now, he doesn’t want to kiss. He doesn’t laugh or press our foreheads together. He holds me so that I’m all he sees.
“I’m mad because you’re the only thing I live for,” he whispers. “And you can’t even tell me who you are. You can’t even say you love me.”
He lets me go gently, the way you’d release a fish back into the sea. Without regard for where it ends up, so long as it is alive and not in the boat.
His footing is unsteady as he returns to his bed. He’s thinner than I remember too, a sicker shade graying his face. He gathers his lesson work and settles back atop the covers as if this discussion is anywhere near finished.
“Did you know the sun kisses you in the mornings?” I call. “It reaches across worlds, just to greet you. It has since you were a baby.” Sam pretends not to listen. He continues to scribble away as if he is writing anything but meaningless lines of gibberish.
I step closer. “Pink shrouds your face when the light lingers. There are other shades: the shades that emit heat when you’re laughing or when we kiss. Your hands are like that too. They’re gentle. I remember when you were little, and they cradled your plants.”
The closer I get, the more Sam’s face twitches, as if I am pricking him with a pin with every word I utter.
“You always made such silly noises when you couldn’t contain your excitement and you were so quick to pout when you didn’t get your way, you still are,” I say. “You eat like a baby. Pudding always ends up on some corner of your face. We used to eat our cups in the park, do you remember? You like that one shady corner beneath the willow tree. We talked about bringing Henry and Ella and playing his card games in the grass while he told us stories.”
I sit on the bed across from him. Anger slowly falls from Sam’s face, a mask of dust withering away into nothing, like a crackling leaf.
“I don’t know why you’re telling me all this.”
“You said this place is barren of story, Sam, but you’re wrong. It’s full of it,” I say. “It’s full of people trying to survive just like you. But most of them don’t, and I want to know why.”
Sam stares at me now, his childish curiosity seated beside a hunger to understand and a grudge he’s trying to keep.
“I want to know why the people who find refuge in this place have to suffer. I want to know why so many of their lives end unfinished. I want to learn how to fend off my enemies. I want to save everyone as is my purpose.” I tremble. My voice was only ever his, but my existence is my own. It is an enigma. Difficult to phrase. Even harder to say aloud.
Sam softens when he realizes what I’m trying to say.
“You’ve never questioned where I came from nor who I am nor why I’m here. No one ever does, because I’m a part of this place. Like the color of a wall or the heft of a door.” A ghost of sadness crawls over me. It is dry and worn, familiar and faded. The pain of being perpetually alone.
“I was so lonely when we met, Sam,” I nearly cry. “No matter who I came to know, they all left me one way or another, but you never did. My curse made a mistake the day that you were born. We were both alone, but it gave us one another. I’ve never lied to you and I won’t start today. I don’t know what love is, but I never would’ve tried to understand it if it weren’t for you.”
Sam throws his papers and pencil aside. They fall to the floor. He rises to his knees and collects me in his arms.
“Sweet Sam,” he whispers, crushing me to him.
“I love you,” I say. “I want you to heal and be safe and have the life you want. I want you to be happy. If that’s what love is, I’ve loved you longer than I can remember.”
“I want the same for you, you know that. I was just–I was so upset when you couldn’t say it back,” he says. He breathes me in, falling on top of me, propping his weight on his elbows. Then we are kissing. Apologetically. Hungrily. To steal back some passion that time tried to sneak away while we were apart.
“I’ll go with you,” I finally say. I push Sam back onto his haunches so that I am the one holding him upright. “Once you get better, we’ll go. Just you and I.”
“But–what you said–”
“I do belong here, but–” I stop to reconsider that the rules of my existence can be broken. I have never ventured too far outside these walls, but– “I’m still searching for those answers,” I tell him. “I want to search with you.”
“You mean that?”
“Yes.” I kiss him again. I kiss the corners of his mouth, his nose, his eyelids. Then I ask, treading a fine line, tiptoeing around my secret. A chest to be opened with a lock only I carry.
“Then… Do you want to know who I am?”
Sam smiles.
“I know who you are,” he says. “You’re a caring friend.” He kisses my lips. “You’re a meticulous nurse.” He kisses me again, sliding his hands under my shirt. “You’re a lousy card player.” His lips travel to my neck. “You’re a brave knight.” He grabs my waist. “You’re a loving dancer,” He pulls me down onto the bed. “And all your tomorrows are mine.”
—
Sam’s doctors identify his mysterious sickness a few days later. There is no way to know exactly how the disease was transmitted, but given Sam’s immunocompromised state, the prognosis isn’t promising.
Sam tells me it doesn’t matter. He tells me he’s survived everything since he was born. He tells me to hold on, that we’ll go on our adventure once he heals.
But as time passes, Sam’s condition doesn’t improve. I never leave his side, as such, even the littlest changes matter. If he walks straighter, if he spends a whole night without succumbing to coughs, if he can eat without nausea–they’re all minute existences of hope.
But hope is fragile. It isn’t infinite.
My butter baby dies in her third month of life. Sam chases me into the street, saves me from getting run over, holds me, shushes me, telling me it’ll be okay.
More people arrive at the hospital. More people I come to know and care for. More who wither into skeletons and ash. Every time, I return to Sam, whose skin becomes gray and whose strength wilts come fall. He holds me in the night. He shushes me, telling me it’ll be okay, telling me not to lose hope.
I wonder, in his arms, how something as intangible as hope is lost. It cannot be misplaced. It cannot be thrown aside. That means, it must be forgotten.
Forgetting is an essential part of grief.
