Chas never said the word heart.
Losing something unsaid is simpler than losing something you loved enough to name.
A year ago, during a swimming competition, his was on its last legs. It gave out just as C’s dive broke the water. He was plucked from the pool by his coach, father, and two other swimmers, limp and barely conscious.
A cardiovascular disease, they said. Caught early enough to salvage C’s body but caught too late to salvage what’s left of his swollen heart.
C tells the story differently. He says all he remembers of that day is floating. The stifled thrashing of competitors and faded cheers of the crowds above. The blurry blue and every muscle in his body gone lame. He says that thing between his lungs was pounding without rhythm like a crying set of drums. He says, even as he felt it fighting for its life, that it was peaceful. He says down there, underwater, he didn’t have to listen to anyone or anything.
It was just him and his heart.
Everything else became a faint notion lost to the surface.
When you’re underwater there’s nothing to think about except your own body. There are voices, but you can’t make out what they’re saying. There is a barrier, crystal clear, between you and the people you used to know. And they are people you used to know. The moment someone realizes you’re going to die, they will not treat you the same way as if you were going to live. Bouquets are no longer gardens, and those who tend to them don’t know what it’s like to drown.
Of course, there are exceptions.
“Why the hell were you on a step ladder?” Eric asks, dabbing the cut on my forearm with hydrogen peroxide.
“That clock is broken.” I point to the space above the doorway. Just below, a corpse of a step ladder lies on its side, a soldier fallen in battle. Granted, I should’ve probably had someone hold it for me, but I’m short-staffed in the non-physically impaired friends department. “I was stealing it.”
Eric pulls my arm further over the counter to get a better look.
“Why?”
“For my Hamlet.”
“I’m not even going to ask what that means. And haven’t you little pests stolen enough? Your rooms might as well be storage facilities for broken crap.”
“It’s the only way to kill our enemies,” I remind him.
He flicks my forehead. “Save it. That dramatic shit doesn’t work with me.”
“I’m not dramatic.”
“You’re all dramatic. Especially you.”
“Me?”
Eric rolls a bandage around my wound.
“You’re paraphrasing Shakespeare.”
“Neo paraphrases Shakespeare.”
“To insult people.”
“Isn’t that dramatic?”
“That’s my point. Now get.” He slaps the uninjured side of my arm, rubbing a disinfectant wipe over his hands. “And make sure Sony doesn’t go chasing cats. She rests, or I take that flea bugger to the pound.”
“Please don’t take Hee.”
“What?”
“You said you’d take Hee.”
“Who’s Hee?”
“The flea bugger.”
“Go away, Sam.”
“Alright.”
Eric turns his back, putting a stethoscope around his neck and gesturing to another nurse so they can get back to work.
I flex the muscles in my forearm. It doesn’t hurt. Pain and I have a reasonable agreement. Pain is jealous. As long as I don’t feel anything else, it’s content staying at bay.
That means I don’t get punished for objectively stupid actions. Hopping on a step ladder to rob a useless clock from a wall would be one of them. I look down at the step ladder, then the clock. Would Eric’s fury and a possible head wound be worth the smile on Hikari’s face when I present her with tangibly killed time right before our great escape?
“Sam?” Someone pops out, too tall not to block my way.
“C?”
C passed out a few nights ago. He got discharged and had dinner with his family. A few minutes after they were seated, C’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed from his chair. He woke up a few seconds later, but the event was enough to startle his doctors and us.
C’s eyes flick to my bandages while mine flick to the black and purple splotch spreading from his cheek to his brow.
“What happened to your face?”
“My brother hit me,” he says. “What happened to your arm?”
“I don’t have arms. Why’d your brother hit you?”
“Eh. You know.”
“I don’t know.”
“Ever since I got back, the doctors have been making me do all these tests, and my parents won’t stop arguing with me about the–” He taps his chest twice. “–situation, so having heard it all before, I put my earbuds in. My brother, who I was ignoring, got frustrated, and frustration is excellent for punching, so–”
“Oh.”
C’s teeth show in delight as if the bruise is something to be flaunted.
“You have no idea how nice it was to finally see him do that, Sam,” he says, like a spectator rather than a victim. “My brother and I used to roughhouse when we were little. He’d pick on me, make bad jokes, prank me. After last year, he changed. He became polite and pleasant; I hated it.” C chuckles. “Guess he finally snapped, though. He got a nice swing too, good momentum, see?”
He leans down a bit to show off the bruise.
I sigh.
C doesn’t like when we talk about our diseases, let alone his. To him, the illness is of conditional existence. It’s only real when his muscles strain at the last stair step or when its name is ushered from someone’s lips.
“What did your parents say?” I ask. What I really ask, subtly, is, are you okay?
C shrugs. “It’s not important. I want to see everyone. Headquarters?”
Headquarters. Neo’s room.
“You literally could not be more wrong!” C and I open the door to a less than quiet scene.
Three sit in the bed, Neo on his pillow, sans back brace, Sony with her back to the door, avec oxygen tank, and Hikari across from her, gaze jerking back and forth between them.
“There’s no such thing as more or less wrong,” Sony says. “Either I’m wrong, or I’m right.”
“You’re wrong,” Neo says vehemently.
“I’m right. I could not be more right.”
“There’s not enough oxygen in your brain for you to be right!”
“There’s not enough food in your body to feed your brain, ego, you cannot be one hundred percent sure that I’m right or wrong.”
“It’s ergo, you idiot!”
“Baby, don’t start another argument. If I keep winning, you’re just gonna boost my ergo.”
“What are you two fighting about?” C asks, peering over the board game laden with stray pieces.
“It started with monopoly,” Hikari says. “Now they’ve declared war.”
“I’m still right about monopoly,” Sony says, flipping her hair.
“You landed on my property and didn’t pay. That’s the whole point of the game!”
“Okay, but you’re in jail. Was I supposed to give money to a criminal, baby? That’s just not right.”
Neo leans forward, another comeback on the tip of his tongue. It never leaves his mouth. His breath hitches, his teeth grit together, his eyes shut tight, body paralyzed in an instant.
“Neo? You okay?” Hikari touches both his shoulders, steadying him.
His back seizes up, throat laboring as he fists the bedsheets. “I–I need to stand.”
Neo and pain have a far different arrangement. C doesn’t stand still when it takes pleasure in lighting his nerves on fire. He runs his palm across Neo’s back and carefully pivots him out of bed, Sony moving aside to make room.
“Hold on to me,” C says. Neo’s fists curled around the fabric of his shirt, beads of sweat catching on his hairline.
“What happened to your eye?” Neo asks, hissing.
“Hush,” C scolds. “Just breathe.”
He drags his touch down Neo’s arm, confused when he flinches. He pulls back the sleeve, Neo protesting with a hum. C pulls it back anyway. A bruise taints Neo, too, drawn from the crook of his elbow, spiraling up his bicep in the shape of a hand.
C goes taut, staring at the cloud of beady purple and black. Neo’s father visited last night. He puts it together quick enough for a vein to show on his forehead.
“Don’t say anything.” Neo pulls his wrist away. “And don’t be angry.”
“I’m not angry,” he bites, his nails forming crescent shapes in Neo’s sweatshirt.
Neo eases back into comfort as the minutes pass, listening to C’s heart thrum against his ear. “Tell that to the thunder between your ribs.”
Nights till the escape: 5
Eric has a watch. It has a red leather band, old-fashioned like he is. He still has a flip phone and refuses to own anything else digital.
His watch stopped working the night he cried at Sony’s bedside. Eric keeps flicking the glass, but the arrow won’t tick on. He gets a new one, but he keeps the old one too. When I ask him why he says he can’t bear to toss old things away. I ask him if I could steal it. He takes it out of his pocket and considers it for a moment.
When our eyes meet, he doesn’t look for a reason because we’ve known each other long enough for him to know that I don’t lie.
Hikari and I have been exploring. The hospital, the skies, each other. Nurses are so used to us running past that they don’t even yell at us anymore. We’ve become background noise gone unquestioned.
We read Hamlet together, singing and dancing as she likes.
We steal moments by people-watching. She has horrible people-watching skills. Her impatience is dreadful, like a reader who can’t wait to get to the good part. It’s always worth it, though–her little reactions when a couple reunites in an embrace or a parent kisses their child just released.
Today, she draws while I read in the library, but we become restless fast. She hides from me, smirking when I catch glimpses of her between the aisles. She entices me, makes me give in to the chase.
“What’s this?” she whispers once I corner her against an armchair.
“A gift.” Redbanded leather and motionless arrows. I lay the watch in her hand, careful not to let my fingers graze her palm. Hikari blinks at it in the easy light, a wave of silence humming between us. “I would’ve gotten you a fake skull, but I would’ve felt replaced.”
“It’s perfect,” she says, clutching the watch against her heart. A bashful line tints her cheeks, as she stares up at me through her lashes. “You want to know something?”
“Mhm.”
“This is my favorite gift I’ve ever gotten.” She bites her lip, thumb gliding over the crystal. Then, she points at my lips with the watch still in her hand. “Second to that smile.”
Endeared, I point back at the smirk worn on her lips, wondering how I ever thought she could become background noise when she’s so obviously a chorus.
“I stole it from you.”
Nights till the escape: 4
C is a philosopher without a mouth. He thinks. Constantly. But he never shares a single thought.
He and I wend down the halls to his echo appointment. Earlier, he said his chest felt funny, kept on scraping his sternum, gliding his tongue over sore gums.
“It sounds like effects in space movies,” Neo says as he, Sony, Hikari, and I sit along the wall inside an exam room. C lies on his side, arm over his head, skin soaked with ultrasound gel as Eric swipes the transducer over his chest.
“If you’re lucky, some space movie director will buy the tapes,” Sony says, eyes glued to the screen. “You get enough echoes done for all nine Star Wars movies and the stand-alones.”
“I didn’t peg you for a nerd Sony,” C smirks.
“So what if I am?”
“You getting humble on me?”
“Humble!? Eric, shove that thing down his throat at once.”
Eric clicks a few keys on the computer. “I assume I would get a better image, but let’s not risk it.”
C rolls his eyes, appreciating the distraction as he looks up at the ultrasound for himself. It’s humbling to witness your own organs. It’s chilling to witness their demise. Neo stares at C’s reaction over the top of his notebook, then back at their story, writing, writing, writing.
“How long does it take to get pictures of his heart? Isn’t only half of it in there anyway?”
“Sony,” we all scold.
“Hey. I’ve got half my lungs, he’s got half his heart. Together, we’d make a fully functional human. I call that a win.”
An hour later, C’s parents intercept us in the waiting area. They take him back to his room and ask for privacy. I sit outside, rereading Hamlet’s lines till Neo joins me.
It’s odd glancing up from the ground and seeing legs rather than wheels now. Bundled in Hikari’s sweater and Sony’s sweatpants, he settles next to me without a word.
C doesn’t make an appearance till midnight. When he does, he wipes his cheeks with his sleeve and crouches to our level.
“You didn’t have to wait for me,” he whispers.
Neo fell asleep against my side, papers lazing on his lap. His eyes flutter open to the sound of C’s voice. He takes a waking inhale, shaking himself upright.
“C’mon.” C moves the hair from his eyes. “You need to go to bed–”
“What were your ultrasound results?” Neo murmurs with gravel in his throat. “What did your parents say?”
“It’s not important,” C says. His knuckles press against his chest. The petechial spots climbing up his collar catch the light. C is a large vessel, and his engine is tired. His heart is too weak to carry him through any more of his life.
“I–” C roughs his hand over his face, “–I need a transplant.”
Empathy wounds Neo’s face. He cups C’s jaw, wiping a tear.
“Coeur–”
“Let’s just go,” C says. “Let’s go right now. Tonight. Just the five of us.”
“I can barely walk,” Neo says.
C grasps his hands. “I’ll carry you.”
Neo tilts forward till their noses touch.
“Just wait. A few more days. That’s all.” Under the layer of his voice, C’s shoulders slack. The tension he carries washes away with Neo’s touch. “Then we’ll go get our Heaven.”
Nights till the escape: 3
Hikari and I go to the roof tonight.
We laugh over chocolate pastries because she talked the bakery owner down the street into giving them away. Crumbs soil our clothes, but the taste dances on our tongues.
Hikari asks me why I like Wuthering Heights so much. I tell her it is truthful, that I can see myself in it somehow.
I ask why she likes Hamlet. She laughs and tells me she doesn’t.
We read our play’s lines together. Hikari interrupts herself in the middle of monologs, edging closer when she does. Her teasing engulfs me and we make a game out of testing just how willing our distance is to make way.
“Do you believe in God, Sam?” she asks, putting the book down.
The smudged corner of her glasses reflects the stories dimly lit in apartment windows. She reads them like she reads our play, her arms folded over the stone ledge.
“I don’t know,” I say, overwhelmed by her scent, how sweet it is, her skin, how it’s only a succulent’s distance from my own. “Do you?”
Her lips twitch, wonder aplenty.
“I believe in artists.”
“Artists?”
“Some paint the sky and the sea. Others sculpt mountains. The delicate sow flowers and stitch the bark along trees. The last sketch people and the lives they live.” Her eyes meet mine. “Your artist isn’t done yet,” she whispers with a smile. Crooked smile. “He’s indecisive.”
“You sound angry at him.”
“How dare he not give you arms?”
“Do you believe in heaven?” I ask.
“I don’t think so. Heaven is a perfect place. Perfection isn’t real. A perfect place in death sounds a lot like something to bait you into behaving. Or into dying. Behaving and dying are poor endings for thieves.”
“Neo’s dad says that he wants his son to go to heaven,” I say. “He says that’s why he does what he does and says what he says.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I think Neo believes him.”
“Is that why he doesn’t take his medicine?” Hikari asks. “Is that why he doesn’t eat?”
Neo took to Hikari the day he met her. He said she was a genuine kind of girl. He never put a guard up around her. That means it’s not difficult for her to notice things: the pills he tucks behind his gums and the bathroom trips he takes to spit them out–the sweaters, no matter how thick, that can’t hide the sinking skin beneath his cheeks or the wobbly nature of his legs.
“You know how Neo writes?” I ask. Hikari nods. “He wrote once that ‘clothes are a strange and clever hiding place. Bruises, scars, odd complexions, insecurities–we hide them all if we choose to, the essential parts of us kept only for the gazes of mirrors and lovers.’”
“That’s nice,” she says, toying with the band on her wrist. “Even if it’s sad.”
“Everything Neo writes makes me happy. Even if it’s sad.”
“Because he’s your friend.”
“Because he’s at peace when he’s writing.”
“He’s at peace when he’s with you.” Those words alone go deeper. Hikari smiles. A smile that always finds a way of tilting the glass till it looks half full.
“We can make our own heaven,” she says. Her fingers glide over the slightly protruding rawness on her neck and the scars on her arms. She touches them like paint, as if it could rub off on her, were she not careful. “You know Sam, loneliness spares me none of its kindness, so… Thank you for giving me yours.”
Nights till the escape: 2
I help C up the stairs. He pants with an open mouth till we reach the roof. Hikari sits against the stone wall, a little black ball of fur in her arms. Sony’s cat climbs onto C’s stomach, purring as she scratches her head against the stubble on his chin.
C doesn’t talk much today. Blood pools beneath his eyes in purple, a pellucid shade on his lips. Hikari brings up blankets for us to cuddle under while we contemplate the gray skies and relish in a little music.
Neo and Sony come up later, stolen beer and candy in their arms. We lap at the foam and smell the fetid liquid. C shows bottle’s rim to Hee, earning a gag and a sneeze from the feline. We all chuckle, chewing on tart, sour, and sugary gas station sweets.
“We’re escaping so soon,” C says, his voice too rough to be his.
Neo cuddles him, nuzzled into his chest, legs tucked. He burrows under the blanket, face squished. Old albums stream from C’s phone while Sony slow dances with Hee.
“We still have to decide where we want to go,” Neo says.
“Everywhere,” Sony laughs. “Let’s go everywhere.”
“You have an every addiction, Sony,” Hikari says.
“I want to see everything before I die,” Sony whispers, leaning down and pressing her forehead to Hikari’s.
“You will.” Hikari tucks bright red strands behind Sony’s ear.
“Neo.” Sony releases the cat back to C’s care. She reaches for the little writer, only just peeking out. “Dance with me.”
Neo crawls further into the blanket. “I don’t dance.”
“You dance all the time.” Sony rips the blanket off and snatches Neo by the wrists. “Physical therapy time.”
“Just throw me off the roof.”
“Don’t tempt me, I have good aim.”
Neo’s lips curl. He hides them in Sony’s neck as the two prance around with no skill or pattern. Caught by their snickering and lack of rhythm, C rises to shaky ankles. He outwaits his blurry vision and poor hearing, taking Hee with him to join the dancers.
We used to think the roof was a radical rebellion. This is where there aren’t any mirrors. It’s chilly, and the ground is coarse. The sky is always gray, and the only color is us. This is our swimming pool, the deepest part where those who dwell above the surface cannot see.
C takes Sony into his arms, hugging her tight, swaying side to side. Neo scratches Hee’s head as he moves with the music.
The roof was never a place to steal but a place to elude time entirely. Here, I watch my friends dance and drink to their hearts’ content, whatever hearts they may have. I race up the stairs with Sony and listen to old songs with C and read Neo’s stories and forget for a long while.
Sony lays back down when the sky grows dark. Neo clings to one side of her, C to the other. She chuckles and calls them monkeys. They talk about the everywhere they’re going to see, the everything they’re going to steal. They fall asleep fast despite the nipping weather, a thin layer of clouds concealing the stars as soon after time strikes midnight and tomorrow turns to today.
I savor the moment.
Hikari shifts below her blanket, a little yellow hill. She groans when she stretches, but her movements are cautious of those around her. I can’t help the tug at my lips when she wakes. Her eyes are half-lidded, a bit of spittle on her chin.
“Sam?” she whispers, rubbing under her glasses. “You’re still awake. Are you cold?”
“No.” I lay down parallel to her. “Are you?”
Her face scrunches up. “A little.”
“Do you want me to walk you back inside?” I ask.
“Not yet.” Hikari yawns, closing her eyes. “I like when we’re all together like this.”
When she falls back asleep, I reach across the distance. I want to tuck the blanket higher on her shoulders, run my palm up and down her spine, hold her against me the way C does Neo. My hand halts once her heat is close enough to burn and my touch recoils.
But I don’t want it to.
My hand creeps closer to her again like it’s fighting a current.
“Hi–” When I try to say her name, my memories shake, graves screaming beneath the snow. “Hi-ka–”
Hikari, Hikari, Hikari.
She can’t hear me. She can’t feel the blanket I move over her wrist or my fingertips slipping over the material. Beneath the blanket, her joints lead to her wrist like a spider web, our watch taking shape like a tiny bridge. I close my touch around them.
I am not touching her. There is still a barrier. She is not real.
Hikari, I say, not enough courage to voice it out loud. I wish we met anywhere else in the world. I wish I were not me. I wish I could touch you and be with you and treat you as you deserve. I wish, more than anything, that I were brave enough to love you again.
Nights till the escape: 1
Hikari wakes in the early hours of the morning. It’s still dark out, our escape not due for a few hours. She and I walk back inside and find a stretcher in an unoccupied hall, above it, solemn windows, black and reflective.
I tell her that sometimes stretchers are left scattered about and reorganized come morning. She caresses the straps and cushioned edges like she feels sorry for all lonesome carriers of grim cargo. Then, she tells me to sit and wait for her.
I do.
She returns, running with our copy of Hamlet.
“Let’s finish it,” she says.
“Now?” I ask.
“Now.”
___
“What happened? I don’t–” Confusion plagues me. I hold in my hands what people call a masterpiece, absolutely dumbfounded. “What is it even supposed to mean?”
I hold up the last few pages for Hikari to see. She sits cross-legged, fidgeting with the stretcher’s straps, amused by my reactions.
“It means a lot of things,” she says. “Mostly, I think it’s about an annoying narcissist who’s obsessed with death till it actually knocks on his door, but–”
“He- he lost everything in the end, and–and he did die.”
“That’s why it’s a tragedy.” No. I refuse. That is a horrid ending. “Sam, are you pouting?”
“I don’t like it,” I say, frowning, flipping through to make sure there isn’t another act we missed. I fail, shutting the book with fury. “And on top of it all, it’s violent.” At least Wuthering Heights had good qualities to compensate for that particular flaw.
“You don’t like violence either, I take it?”
“No. And why does Hamlet not like Yorick’s skull in the end?” I scowl at her like it’s her fault.
“Oh my god,” Hikari puts a hand to her mouth. “You’re offended.”
“Don’t laugh at me. This is serious. You don’t like me in the end, and you die because of a stupid vengeful plot that I told you from the begining wouldn’t work.”
“I’m sorry, next time, I’ll be a far less impulsive and self-obsessed character. How about Romeo?”
“Ophelia would’ve never treated my skull this way. Next book, I want a happy ending, and you have to like me.”
“Everyone likes you, Sam. A lot of people better than Hamlet.”
There it is again. She doesn’t think I catch her turning the other cheek to compliments. She doesn’t think I notice her interruptions, our moments cut in half by her lip chewing and pulling away. She doesn’t think I care that she’s in pain or that she cuts herself, and she doesn’t think she’s made me happier than I’ve been in a long time.
Suns can’t see their own light.
I put the book down and stand up off the stretcher. Facing her directly, I shove the distance aside and press my hands down on either side of her legs. I become her field of vision, all she can see.
“You’re not Hamlet,” I bite. “You’re my Hamlet.”
She looks me up and down and thinks I’m kidding.
“I mean it.” My voice echoes. “He’s not like you. He wouldn’t get up early just so Sony would have someone to wake up to. He wouldn’t make Neo laugh. He wouldn’t listen to C’s monologues about music. He wouldn’t believe in artists, draw endless universes or raise little plants. He’s not like you.”
Under my voice, Hikari’s face blanks. The shape of her hand beneath that blanket engrains itself into my wanting. I want to touch her again. For real this time. I want to draw to the surface of the water and breathe again if it means I can breathe her. Reality be damned.
“I never feel anything,” I whisper. “But every time I remember how little you think of yourself, I feel angry. I feel like banishing anyone and everyone who ever made you believe you deserve to be alone. Because that kind of pain, it– it can ruin people, it can make them lose faith in everything, just like Hamlet did, but you? You look at me more than anyone ever has, and no one ever looks twice at me. I’m a skull in a graveyard. I’m empty.”
Hikari’s breath shakes in her mouth as she leans forward. “You’re not empty, Sam.”
“I am.” That is an undeniable truth, not a stale one, “yet somehow you find a way to see something in me in a way no one ever has.”
“Sam.”
“Yes?”
I lean to meet her on the very edge of this verging distance we are but a moment away from obliterating. And then she asks, “Can I kiss you?”
