I Fell in Love with Hope(102)

“Do you love me, Sam?” she asks. “Or are you just taking care of me because you feel bad?”

“Of course I love you,” I whisper, harshly, holding her tighter. “Do you love me?”

“Yes,” she says. The sheets rustle. She wriggles from my embrace and sits up on the edge of the bed. “It’d just be so much easier if I didn’t.”

Her bare feet meet the tiles as she unhooks her IV bag and hangs it on a wheeled stand.

“Where are you going?” I ask.

“I want to see Neo,” she says.

The stand serves as her support as she exits the room.

_





Neo killed himself by starvation. His heart failed.

Hikari saw his body. She was holding his hand and woke when the life had already drained out of him. It felt cold, stiff, like a rock filled with icy liquid, she said. She talked about it without any emotion, as if she hadn’t processed what happened. I just remember her saying he shouldn’t have died like that, with a tube taped to the side of his mouth, his body nothing but a gray skeleton, and a butterfly rash on his cheekbones. She said he should’ve died somewhere surrounded by his books, at peace with his own ideas and his own creations.

I told her that Neo died in the way he wanted. I tell her he sailed his ocean, and he emerged with the people he loves on the other side.

She told me I don’t know that.

Since then, Hikari has entered a state of regression. She mutters to herself sometimes, as if speaking to someone in the room that isn’t me.

She tells me, I want to see Sony, and then walks to the gardens. She sits in the grass and stares at the clouds, talking, about what I can’t hear. She tells me, I want to see Coeur, I want to see Neo, and she goes to Neo’s room and reads his stories. She puts the sleeves of C’s jacket around her shoulders as if his arms could wrap around her. She remains a part of old settings, only brought back when she sees me.

Maybe that’s why she resents me. I understand the pain, but I also remind her of it. I understand what it’s like to finally find who you think you belong with and have them ripped away.

I walk behind Hikari by a hall’s length, the same way I did the first night I ever beheld her. The difference is stunning, an insult. Her yellow dimpled dress is replaced by a dull hospital gown. Her lively, curious steps are now slow, her breaths focused on the next. She does not explore, nor smile, nor steal a thing, not even a glance. Her silhouette is bent and broken and it limps behind that of her past.

She doesn’t want me to follow, but I do. I need to. For her. For my peace of mind.

When we reach Neo’s room, she halts before reaching the door. It’s open for some reason, held by a wedge. Neo’s mother stands outside with her back against the wall. Upon sight of us, she tenses. I don’t understand until I hear the shuffling of papers and the cluttering of packing coming from inside the room.

“Hikari,” I say, standing in her way so that she can’t see. “Let’s go see Sony or C, okay? I can carry you, come on–”

“What are they doing?” She squints, looking over my shoulder, trying to make out the people moving things around in Neo’s room.

I don’t know who the other two men are. Perhaps his cousins, perhaps some other extended family that was always so fond of sending bouquets instead of showing up. In their midst, Neo’s father neatly collects every single sheet of paper in the room, every notebook, every novel, every pen, and he places them with all the care in the world, into a cardboard box with a lighter right next to it.

“What–” Hikari is at a loss for words. She tries to walk into the room. “What are you doing?”

Neo’s father hears her. He looks up, his eyes raw and red and sensitive. He doesn’t acknowledge her or me. He wipes at his tears and picks up the last of the papers: Neo’s manuscript. And an old spiral notebook with the front torn off.

“Wait.” Hikari pushes against my front, but I block her path. “Wait. Stop.”

“Hikari–”

“That isn’t yours. You can’t take it,” she says. Neo’s father throws the lighter atop the stack and picks up the box.

“No, no please!” Hikari tries to grab him past me as he walks out of the room. Like a child reaching for a book on a too high shelf, she fights with what physical strength she has left.

“Please!” Hikari cries, clawing at me, at him, ripping her own IV out just to reach. “Please! That’s all we have left of him!”

She grabs the box just over my shoulder, but Neo’s father tugs it away, a disgusted, almost frightened look knitting his brows.

I feel the urge to hurt him, to pry the box from his arms and shove him against the wall just for looking at Hikari that way, but I don’t.

I hold Hikari back as her voice breaks and she sinks to her knees. “No, no, please, you can’t take them away,” she sobs, her fists clenching my shirt, her face pressed into my chest. “You can’t take them away, you can’t, please.”

I don’t know what’s come over me. A streak of protectiveness maybe. Anger at my inability to act.

Eric appears behind me, waving off the other two nurses trying to take Hikari from my arms.

All I can do–all I ever can do is be there. Be there as what is important to her is taken away. Be there as she is too sick to even fight it. Be there as the person I love cries and suffers and loses her right to grieve.