Hikari is vomiting. I rub her back as the acid burns her throat and her body pulses with coughs. Her head hangs in the aftermath.
“I’m sorry,” I say, making sure she rinses her mouth with water and swallows her medicine no matter how painful.
“Don’t apologize,” Hikari rasps. I walk her to bed and she tries to smirk at me. “You’re more nurse than lover now.”
“That mischief never leaves you, does it?” I tease.
She lifts her arms, allowing me to take her shirt off. She’s lost weight. Her ribs cast skeletal shadows. I throw the dirty shirt into her hamper and pick one from her pile of clean clothes. She shakes her head, so I pick up another. She nods for my third choice, a black long sleeve that’ll conceal still unhealed marks and bears the proper color of today.
Helping her put it on, I also smooth down her pant legs and put on her shoes. She can do it herself, as she’s told me many times, but the perpetual swelling in her legs makes it difficult to stand or walk for long periods of time.
I can list the symptoms all day like a rendition of Hikari’s chart. The fact is taking care of her is a part of my day. Before that night in the old cardiology wing, I enjoyed passivities. I enjoyed listening, watching, being beside her. After that night, I enjoyed being with her. Physically, mentally, emotionally, to a level that transcends nearness. This is a part of it. Like eating or sleeping, it is a necessity I appreciate.
“What is that?” Hikari asks, pointing to her side table. On it rests a potted plant with red bulbs blooming from the leaves that I stole from the gardens. I lay it in her hand, let her take it in through drowsy eyes.
“To add to your collection.”
Hikari smiles. A weak, but trying smile.
“I’d kiss you if I wasn’t gross right now,” she whispers. I put my hands on her knees and peck her lips, taking the succulent from her and sitting it next to all the others on the windowsill.
“Is it time?” she asks, looking at her shoes. I kneel before her and tie them, catching the sorrow in her gaze.
“I’ll ask Eric if we can go tomorrow.”
“No.” She shakes her head, standing up. “No, let’s do it.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she says, and so I lead her out of the room.
—
Sony passed away six days ago.
The first three nights, Hikari cried. It was the violent sort, the kind where loss thrashed in steady waves of sobbing through her body. Then, it died into silence and her tears fell without a voice behind them.
The last three have been dry, but there are moments Hikari falters. Because you don’t lose someone once. You lose them hearing a song that reminds you of their smile. Passing an old landmark. Laughing at a joke they would’ve laughed at. You lose them infinitely.
I hold Hikari’s hand as we pass C’s room. Through the wall, you can hear his parents speaking in French. Their anger at C for stealing his dad’s truck and running off didn’t survive long once they heard about Sony. What did is their concern. It bleeds through the language.
“Cœur, t’es pas censé te promener, allonge-toi, je t’en supplie,” his mother says.
He’s near the top of the transplant list now. He isn’t meant to be standing up, much less over-exerting himself. But the moment he sees the time on the clock, C tears out his IVs and gets out of bed.
He grabs his jacket and starts putting it on as his mother grabs him by the shoulders, begging him to sit.
“Je vais chercher Neo. Tu peux être au téléphone avec lui. Je comprends que tu sois en deuil, mais tu dois rester ici maintenant–”
“She’s my friend, maman. You can come with me or you can stay, but I’m going.”
C’s father watches from the chair in the corner of the room, hands on his face. He doesn’t rush to stop his son or help his wife. I think he and she are at different stages of acceptance. C’s mother still has faith in medicine, in the possibility of the transplant. C’s father sees his son withering to a weaker version of who he used to be with each passing day.
“Coeur!” his mother yells.
“Chérie, laisse-le,” his father says. He stands, grabbing both their coats. “Coeur, you can go, but let us come with you.”
“Merci, papa,” C says. He opens the door to Hikari and me.
“You ready?” he asks.
“Yeah.”
He nods, a bit disconnected.
“Where’s Neo?”
Neo’s parents haven’t contacted him since our escape. When Sony died, he was escorted back to his room and hasn’t emerged since. Hikari and I have tried to visit him, but he never answers the door. C hasn’t had the chance to so much as leave his room till now.
He doesn’t waste time knocking. He barges into Neo’s room without forewarning.
“Neo?” he calls. “We have to go now, I–”
Neo’s bed is empty. Instead, there is a boy crawling on the ground, looking under the bed, around it, searching every crevice in the room with a frantic look in his eye.
C stalls. “What are you doing?”
Neo doesn’t bother with formalities. He doesn’t even acknowledge us.
“Hee,” Neo says, moving his bedsheets around.
“What?”
“The cat,” he repeats.
I notice now, his hair is uncombed and it doesn’t look like he’s changed clothes in a long time. The sweatshirt he wore the night of Sony’s episode is in the corner of his room, folded, but unwashed, blood staining the seams.
“She was just here,” Neo mutters to himself, searching the same spaces over and over again as if Hee will appear in one of them if he looks enough times. “I need to find her.”
“Neo, we’ll find her later,” C says. “We have to go now.”
But C isn’t the only one who’s disconnected. Upon C’s words, Neo finally looks up.
“I’m not allowed to leave,” he says.
C frowns. “What? Why not?”
“I haven’t eaten.”
Neo’s head droops, not in shame, but in preoccupation. C notices then, the pills and food tray that have gone untouched on the side table and he isn’t tender as he usually is.
“Then eat,” he bites.
Neo stares at C, a glaze over his eyes, subconsciously forming a loop around his wrist. He becomes a statue, untouchable. He looks like if you touch him, he will combust, the tightly wound knots of his muscles will snap, and he will come undone.
“I need to find Hee,” he whispers. Then, he goes back to searching the same places yet again.
“Neo,” C says. “This is important.”
“It won’t make a difference. I can’t leave. We went too far this time, and I can’t go. There’s nothing I can do–Hee, where are you? Come out.”
“Neo–”
“I have to find her!” Neo’s voice cracks. He spins around to face us, his breaths short and fast, the marble of his statue cracking. A glossy layer of tears pools at his waterline.
“Neo.” Hikari.
C and I both turn to see her standing at the door, picking a wobbly cat up in her arms.
“Neo, she’s right here. Look,” she says.
Neo comes to a frenzied stop.
“Hee,” he whispers, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. Hikari hands him the cat. Neo huffs with relief, his brows arching as his lip trembles.
“I’m sorry for being mean,” he says, swaddling her. “I’m sorry. Don’t run away again.”
Hee meows at him.
Neo sniffles, checking her chipped ear, the stump where her fourth leg should be. His feet give out from under him, as if they’ve been carrying a weight so heavy they can no longer bear him.
“Neo–” C tries to keep him upright, but Hikari is the one who catches him, like a doorframe he can lean on as he descends to the floor.
“It doesn’t feel real,” he says, his voice muffled in Hee’s fur. “It feels like a joke. It feels like another one of her jokes.” He inhales as if drowning. “She left me her cat. A lawyer came and put papers on the desk. She left me her clothes too. She left me her stupid cat and her clothes and her sneakers she knew she was going to die and I was mean to her and it doesn’t feel real.”
“It’s alright,” Hikari whispers, hugging him.
“I just keep pretending she’s off somewhere stealing from a toy store or racing a homeless person or something. And then, this and–” He motions with one arm to where an unopened suitcase and dirty white sneakers fill the dank corner. “Her kids asked me when she’s coming back. Because she hasn’t finished reading them their story and they looked up at me, and they asked when is Miss Sony coming back.” He looks at Hikari, guilt manifesting into tears and rolling down his cheeks.
“She didn’t finish the story,” he repeats, tucking his face into Hikari’s shoulder. “She never got to know the ending.”
“It’s okay,” Hikari says again. She rubs his back up and down. “It’s okay. She’s with her mom. She has her mom now, she’s not alone.”
“Hey.” Eric. He walks in wearing his own clothes, a wrinkled shirt, an old jacket, and sleeplessness in his eyes. He pats down matted hair and clears his throat. We draw to the box sitting in his arms.
He looks at Neo. “I called your mom.” A short word of approval. Locking and unlocking his jaw, he motions to the hall. “Let’s go.”
—
The drive is silent. An uncomfortable opposite. Beyond my window, the ocean gleams the same as it did the first time I saw it. Gulls fly their paths, the wind trekking the waves.
For how monumental death can be, the sea doesn’t stop to notice. Too many of her sailors met their end swallowed by her tide.
But Sony adored the sea. I like to believe that the sea is angry for her. Why else would she crash against the cliff sides and crawl with foamy fingers to land if not to search for the passion that’s been stolen from the world?
Eric parks the car, C’s parents right behind. The walk to the beach is akin to the drive.
Our bare feet mingle with the sand. The salt spray and tart taste give us a glimpse into the near past. Further down the stretch of land, I can make out shapes of people dipping into the ocean, running across the bank, and sitting in the dunes.
Eric carries Sony’s ashes to the threshold between land and sea. He doesn’t bother adjusting his clothes. The water soaks through his pants above his knees.
C’s parents wait on shore. With Neo and Hikari’s help on either side, C walks into the water. It’s cold, icy stones and shells in the silt.
Eric asks us if we’d like to say a few words. We do, each of us saying a little something to the empty expanse. Logically, we know Sony can’t hear us, but this isn’t really for Sony at all.
Eric caresses the surface of the box. He presses his forehead to it and closes his eyes. A moment passes and I remember those days Sony fell asleep hooked up to a ventilator. I remember how he used to cry and choke it all down so she wouldn’t wake. I remember the whispers I could never make out that he spoke every night after tucking her in. It’s only now, as I hear it up close, that I realize they weren’t renditions of goodnights or little reminders to stay alive or anything so confined to a nurse-patient relationship.
They were a father’s I love yous.
Eric opens the box.
“Goodnight, Sony,” he whispers. “I hope you find your everything.”
Her ashes spring free in the shape of wings. Wind carries the sheer gray cloud into the sky, dusted rain settling on the waves that give it passage to other worlds.
I take ahold of Eric’s hand as he lets the box sink into the water. He wipes his face and looks out as far as the horizon stretches, watching Sony take the shape of water.
When the cold begins numbing his limbs, Eric retires to the beach. He sits in the sand, Neo and C retiring with him.
Hikari lingers a little longer in the shallows. I stay with her, helping her return the seashells in her pockets to their home. The only one she keeps is the black stone I gave her. She traces the white band with her finger.
“Is it always like this?” she asks. “It just happens, and we get no say in it?”
Laughter sounds in the far distance. Hikari catches the silhouettes of those strangers playing on the shore. They run into the water, shrieking from the temperature. One hugs the other, splashing and spinning. Their laughter fades in its travel, like a song playing too far away, a story too far to read.
“I didn’t even know her very long,” Hikari says, tucking the stone back into her pocket. “It feels like I started to love her and never got to finish.”
Love isn’t a thing that’s ever finished, I want to tell her. It’s not a chronological feat. Her love for Sony is based in gentle affections, loud adventures, and the little pieces of friendship people tend to overlook. It does not end simply because we had to say goodbye.
Hikari sighs. When she does, she feels lighter somehow, not quite as full as before.
Grief can be destructive, a parasite that needs expulsion, water rising till you become an overflowing dam, but like most terrible, necessary things, it can be shared. Time is kind with grief. It takes it from you, piece by piece, till the sorrow is a song you remember the beat of but no longer hear.
I take Hikari by the wrist, coaxing it from her pocket. The stone is still in her palm. I snake my hand down her arm and intertwine our fingers so that the gem can be cradled rather than clutched.
“Look Sam,” she breathes. With our joined hands, she points at the evening turning to night. The sky kisses our angry sea with gold and red tints, breaking through the clouds to caress the ripples.
“The sea’s on fire.”
—
Before we leave the beach, C has a panic attack.
He cries, the sunset’s light casting shadows on his face. He covers it with a hand, the other holding Neo. It’s the sort of crying that trembles through his jaw. The kind of crying that tightens in his chest and he chooses to fight rather than allow escape.
“Here, sit down,” Neo says. He guides C to the grassy area by the parking lot. C stumbles when he walks, his legs shaking. He falls onto his seat bones, nearly taking Neo down with him.
“Stay here,” Neo says. “I’ll get your mom.”
“No, don’t go,” C begs. He grabs Neo by his pants and wraps his arms around his legs, tucking his face to Neo’s stomach, eyes shut tight.
Neo lets him, cupping his shoulders.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t do it,” C says. “I can’t go back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t want to give it up, Neo.” C’s words become humid, his forehead wrinkling with every breath. He shakes his head, choking on the air, the voice of a child running from a nightmare in his throat. “I want to keep my heart.”
That word is practically a curse spoken from C’s mouth. Neo’s hands stroking C’s head and back, trying to comfort him, still at the sound of it.
“Coeur,” he says.
“I want to keep it.” C grasps Neo tighter. “I don’t want another.”
Neo tries to pull C off of him to no avail.
“Coeur, stop.”
“I’m not doing it.” C shakes his head, suffocating himself in Neo’s hoodie. “I won’t go through with it. I can’t.”
“Coeur,” Neo struggles, pushing and squirming. “You’re not thinking straight–”
“I can’t Neo.”
“Coeu–”
“I can’t–”
“Coeur, you’ll die! Are you listening to me? You’ll die.” Neo shoves C back by the shoulders, holding him there. “Your heart can’t keep up with your body anymore and you can’t just pretend that nothing is wrong, waiting for it to stop beating.”
“No, no–this heart is what makes me me,” C says, pointing at his chest. He meets Neo’s gaze, affection and fear mingling in the mix. “My heart beats with thunder and lightning and I know it’s weak, but it’s the one I gave you.”
Neo clenches his fists with C’s jacket and shakes his head.
“You don’t get to do this.”
“I’m scared, Neo.”
“I know you’re scared! I’m scared too, but you’re not allowed to give up!”
“What if this fear means something? What if the transplant doesn’t work?” C’s trembling travels down his body. He puts his hands over Neo’s, staring into his eyes as if he never quite got a chance to look at him long enough before now.
“I want to be with you,” he says. “You’re all I’ve ever wanted. What if I don’t get the chance?”
Neo, like the stone he is, isn’t shaken by such words. He would’ve said in the past, that choosing between what-ifs is not a luxury for people like them. He would say that the world is fundamentally unfair and chances are illusions of choices time takes for itself.
But Neo is not imprisoned by the past. He is the strongest out of all of us, but he is also the most willing to be weak. He doesn’t put up a fight, not for himself. The only people he will fight for are the ones with him now.
Neo wipes C’s tears with his thumbs and cups his face. “Then I’ll spread your ashes in the sea and walk into the waves.”
C blinks, his hands falling on Neo’s.
“You really are a writer,” he whispers. “You’ll read to me tonight?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll stay with me after I fall asleep?”
As he tidies up Neo’s collar and wipes his shirt of any sand, Neo hugs C around the neck and presses his nose into his hair.
“Si Dieu me laisse, on sera ensemble pour toujours,” he says, and though it is broken and perhaps not said completely right, C hugs him.
“Your accent is terrible.”
They laugh together and when C finds the strength, he walks back to the car holding Neo’s hand.
We go home all in the same car’s backseat, uncomfortable with wet pants and sandy shoes, huddled under a single blanket, letting the wind kiss us goodbye through the windows as the bomb on C’s wrist goes tick, tick, tick–
