The words came out of his mouth, but they were more like a mantra than information he was sharing. And in the silence afterward, she pictured him in all different parts of his life, all different eras, repeating those same combination of syllables, the meaning definitive for him and also a blur now, after so many repetitions.
He seemed lost in the world of his familiar.
And it was helpful, although she wouldn’t have wanted him to suffer.
“You know,” he said absently, “I hated her sometimes. She was the focal point around which we all spun, whether we wanted to or not. I had dreams of being Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, you know.”
She waited for him to continue. “And?”
“All those games I played. I waited to see one of them in the stands. Even for a quarter. Just five minutes of playtime, I didn’t give a shit. I was a starter, you know. I played every game.” He looked at her. “Mom was always at the hospital with her. Dad… did the best he could, but we still lost the house.” Gus lifted his forefinger to make his point. “Do you have any idea how selfish that was? I was all bitched out because I didn’t have an audience, and meanwhile my dad was getting four hours of sleep a night and losing ground, and my mom was having a big old fucking party watching her daughter scream her way through another bone marrow biopsy. Fun, fun.”
“You had things you needed.” Lydia looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap. “Things… you wished for. Things you missed.”
“She was in hell.”
“So were you.” Tears filled her eyes and she brushed them aside. “You weren’t being selfish. There was no room for you in your own life. That was the problem.”
He was quiet for a while and a couple more emails came in. Then he released a long, slow exhale.
“Here’s all I know for sure.” Gus held up his forefinger in that way he did. “Life’s meaning is nothing more than the intersection of Murphy’s Law with our random catalogue of dreams—while we hurtle through cold space on a rock and wait to die ourselves. So make the shit count where and when you can, Lydia. You’re going to have to live with what happens in the next month or two for longer than you’ll be going through it. Trust me, the aftermath is worse than the during. Make every second count now with him.”
“I’m trying to. Daniel’s on my mind every second of the day, all through the night. All I think about is—”
“But you need to still feel him. As a man, not as a patient. Let me be his doctor, so you can be his partner. I got the clinical side of things, okay? And one last thing. It’s too late to save yourself. Pulling back from him now isn’t going to make the goodbye any less painful. You’re already in this with him.”
“I’m not pulling away. I haven’t…”
Last night, she thought. In the bathroom. When she’d covered herself… as if Daniel were a friend. Or a stranger—
Lydia got to her feet in a rush. “I’ve got to go find him. Ah—do you need him back down here?”
“No, we’ve replenished his fluids and I’m waiting for a couple more test results. I’ll let you guys know if he needs to see me again.”
“Thanks, Gus.”
“Always.”
When she opened the door, he said, “Remember, he’s still the man you fell in love with. Inside his body, his soul is what it always has been. That hasn’t changed—and neither have you.”
“I need to believe that, Gus.”
“So be like Nike.”
“You mean, Mikey? From the Life cereal ads?” she asked, confused.
The best doctor she’d ever met lifted one of his feet and pointed at his sneaker. “No, Nike. Just do it.”
FOURTEEN
XHEX! XHEX—WAKE UP!”
At the sound of her name, Xhex whipped up her head so fast, she nearly spiked her skull like a volleyball. Blinking furiously, she ground her fists into her eyes.
“Wha-what—what?” She started talking before she realized what she was saying. Then again, there was only one thing that mattered. “Where’s Doc Jane—we need—”
“He’s awake.”
Focusing on her mahmen, Xhex couldn’t understand the words at first. But when they sank in, she jumped up and looked around Autumn’s robed figure. There… on the hospital bed… John was in the exact same position he’d been in, slightly elevated, a cannula under his nose and looped around his ears, his arms out straight by his sides, his lower body covered by a precisely folded blanket that she had tucked around him herself. Down the center of his bare chest, the incision that had been sutured closed was a good twelve inches long, no bandages covering it so that the superfast healing of the species could be monitored for evidence of infection.
So yeah, everything was exactly how she’d left it when she’d put her head down on the rolling table for just a moment—except for one small and extraordinary thing.
His eyes were open.
“John,” she choked out as she launched herself up to the head of the bed. “John.”
That blue stare was the kind of thing that she hadn’t realized she’d resigned to never see again. But now it was locked on her, the pupils evenly dilated, the whites only slightly bloodshot.
What about the stroke risk, she thought. That had been a concern, hadn’t it?
Down at his hips, one of his hands flexed, and she clasped his palm. “Hi—hello. Oh, God, I’m so—” As his lips moved, she shook her head. “Don’t force yourself to—”
The squeeze was stronger than she would have thought possible. And then he lifted up his other hand. In slow, halting positions, he spelled out in American Sign Language:
I. L. O. V. E. U.
Maybe she was just dreaming. Maybe this was one of those moments in the middle of a tragedy when you fell asleep and your subconscious performed miracles to make you feel better.
“I love you, too.” She leaned over him and brushed his hair back. “You’re going to be okay.”
She didn’t know if that was true—but assuming this was not a figment of a sleep cycle, an “okay” outcome was a helluva lot more likely now than it had been before she’d passed out on her forearm. Glancing over her shoulder, she met her mahmen’s tear-filled eyes and mouthed, Get Jane. Autumn nodded and left as quickly as she could, the door easing shut as she limped off.
“One squeeze for yes, two squeezes for no,” she said. “Are you in pain?”
Squeeze. Squeeze.
“Are you ready to feed if Doc Jane says it’s okay?”
Squeeeeeeeeeeze—
The door was thrown open, and yeah, wow, it was like they’d won the doctor lottery: Doc Jane, Vishous, Manny, and Ehlena streamed in like they had been pacing just outside the recovery room. Instantly, activity bloomed around John, the staff checking his monitors, his vitals, his pupils, his lungs, like the pit crew at an Indy 500 race—and Xhex stayed right in the middle of it all, even though she was in the way. No one asked her to step back, though.
Not that she would have under any circumstance.
Doc Jane was the one who drew her aside toward the end of the assessment. “He really wants to be here,” V’s mate said with a smile. “He’s doing so well, it’s flat-out miraculous.”