As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow (44)

I don’t feel the time passing. Not until my brachii muscles scream and I let my scalpel clatter to the medical basin. It clangs loudly, spraying flecks of blood over my lab coat. My arms shake and my neck feels stiff. When I look up, my eyes cross and I sway a bit.

“Whoa!” I hear someone exclaim, and a hand grabs my arm before I collapse on the floor.

I see two Kenans wavering above me. Their hair sticks up from all sides, a sheen of sweat glistening on their foreheads and worry coating their eyes.

“Salama?” they ask, their voice distant and echoey. “Oh my God.”

I blink and Kenan’s one face refocuses. He’s near, so near. He looks up, searching the atrium for help, and I’m suddenly aware he’s half supporting me, one hand on my back. My feet find the ground, and it gives me the boost I need to push myself up and away from him. The lingering heat of his fingers is still pressed against my back, burning through the fabric into my skin.

“I’m sorry.” He raises his hands, embarrassed and pink. “You were falling and I—”

“It’s fine,” I say, my voice raspy and throat rough. From misuse, from tightening its muscles the whole day, I don’t know. I look around and all I see is red and gray, figures slumped over one another and the miasma of despair clinging to the air. My head feels light from the lack of food and exhaustion, and I sway once again.

“Salama!” Kenan extends an arm and I hold on to it, my stomach twisting. I’m choking on the blood my hands are soaked in and I turn around to wash it away. My clothes stick to me like a second skin, and I need my brain to stop shouting at me.

“I need—” I say, then stop, feeling like I’m about to vomit.

He nods, quickly steering me away through the patients and flinging the front doors open. I’m confronted with the late winter wind, freezing the sweat on my face.

I’m supporting myself on his arm, gripping him tightly, trying to breathe through my nose and focus on anything but the gnawing sound of amputated bones.

Peonies. Fragrant flowers. A tonic from the petals can be used as a muscle relaxant. Peonies. Peonies. Peonies.

My legs still can’t carry me and I almost trip, but Kenan’s arm slips under mine, hauling me upward so my cheek is pressed against his jacket. The material is soft with wear and I take in his scent. Lemons. I have no idea how, but he smells like the freshest of lemons and it’s a comfort against the panic raging through me.

I’ve never been held close by a boy before, certainly not one I might actually like. Not someone to whom, in a might life, I would be married by now. I glance up at him. He’s staring straight ahead. A faint, light brown scruff dusts his jaw and cheeks, and I have this sudden urge to touch it. The thought shocks me, stabilizes me. I press a quivering hand against my chest.

Oh, it would be so easy to fall in love, I think wistfully. So easy.

He glances down. “Are you okay?”

My breath hitches in my throat. I try desperately to gather at anything scientific to explain the act of falling in love. How long does it stay in the body incubating before I begin to show symptoms? Is it chronic or fleeting? Are the circumstances with the war a factor in speeding up the process?

Will my heart even care that I’ll be parted from him within a month?

“Salama?” he asks again when I haven’t said anything in a minute.

“Y-yes,” I whisper.

He studies my features, and my synapses fire neurotransmitter after neurotransmitter. He analyzes my expression, and some emotion sears through his eyes.

I catch it before it disappears and fold it into my heart to replay later when I’m alone.

He sets me down on the cracked steps of the hospital’s gates overlooking the main road. There are a few scattered twigs on the cracked pavement. We’re far away from the front doors so we can’t hear the voices of those inside. He sits beside me, leaving a few inches between us, and rubs his hands together as if trying to get rid of the cold. His fingers are long, delicate. Like an artist’s fingers. I stare at them and imagine that might life: We’d be sitting right here, huddled in thick scarves and coats. He’d lace his fingers through mine and I’d marvel at how much bigger his hand is. He’d kiss my knuckles and I’d feel like I was floating on a cloud.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, biting his lower lip. “I know I shouldn’t have touched you. I—we’re not promised to each other, and—I—” He messes his hair, looking guilty, and drags a hand down his face. “I don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage or anything. Salama, I’m not—”

“Stop talking,” I say, and he falls silent, cheeks still red with remorse. “I’m not upset.”

My teeth chatter and I pull the edges of my sweater’s sleeves over my frozen hands and hug my lab coat firmly to me.

“May I give you my jacket?” he asks, and I stare at him.

He seems shocked by his question, but he’s determined.

I nod.

He shakes it off and looks slimmer without it.

No. Starved.

He drapes it over my shoulders, and I sink into the body heat still clinging to its insides. Lemons. It puts a damper on the regret, quieting the screams of those I couldn’t save, and blurs the image of Samar bleeding on the hospital bed.

I pull the lapels of his jacket even closer, focusing on my breathing until the nausea subsides.