I Fell in Love with Hope(26)

“You okay?” Neo asks.

Sony rests her head on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “I just missed you, silly baby.”

—

The weather starts to bite in the last week of November. Our climbs to the garden become less and less frequent. We blame it on the wind instead of Sony’s lung. Her smiles have started to thin. Her laughter is raring. The freckles on her nose are pale. Neo and I don’t race her anymore. We take the elevator rather than the stairs. Soon enough, Sony can barely walk without collapsing.

Her heart monitor beeps throughout autumn’s end like a metronome. I keep my own count, holding her hand as my finger trails the pulse in her wrist.

“Neo,” Sony says, her voice a raspy thing.

“Yes.”

“Why do we have diseases?” she asks, looking at the ceiling as if she could look through it and see the clouds passing by.

Neo sighs, playing with Sony’s other hand, fidgeting with her knuckles. He’s wearing her sweatshirt, a neon one with smile written in a curve at the center.

“Illness is temporary,” he explains. “Injuries borrow our blood, infections use our cells, but our illnesses are different. In a way, they’re self-inflicted. An error in the code. This kind–well–it owns us, it hurts us, because it just doesn’t understand.”

Language is flawed. That’s what he means.

We don’t have diseases.

They have us.

They found a home in us.

“Why can’t we make it understand?” Sony asks, fear trembling from her throat.

Neo bites his lower lip to keep it from shaking. He’s grown attached to the fire between us. So much that he tucks red strands behind her ear and pretends he isn’t holding back tears.

“We have soldiers in our blood,” he whispers, like the start of a bedtime story. “They’re ruthless and unbiased. To them, there’s no difference between who they’re meant to protect, and an enemy.”

The metronome slows. Sony’s lung matches the beat of her heart.

“They’re blind. You can’t convince them of their wrongdoings.” Neo says. He continues to pet Sony’s hair. “The irony is lost on them.”

Like an apology for the sins of our sickness, Neo drops his head to her shoulder and holds Sony till she falls asleep.

—

Winter arrives. When it does, death no longer waits for Sony.

Little by little, the fight tilts in her favor. The inflammation in her lung goes down with every step she climbs and every laugh she manages. One day, she puts on her dirty white sneakers and steals apples in the early morning. Neo and I wake to the sound of her chewing and her chuckles as she watches cartoons.

“Neo, let’s do a puzzle,” she says.

“I hate puzzles.”

“You adore puzzles. And it’d be great if we actually finished one.”

“Fine. But only because you’re disabled.”

Sony snorts. “Your back’s screwed. Soon you’ll be disabled like me.”

“Yeah, yeah. You got any corner pieces?”

—

“Sam.” Someone whispers my name. I wake to Sony’s head in my lap. “Look, Sam,” she says, holding up Lord of the Flies with the giddiest grin. “I read a whole book. See? I can’t wait to tell mom.”

The wild children in it, the ones who held onto their humanity past their hardships, remind me of her. My devil searching for her wings. I fix the breathing tube over her lip and tell her I’m proud while she flips through the page she’s conquered.

Sony gets discharged in February. Every check-up she has, she practically rams into Neo and me with hugs and thousands of kisses. She even starts coming to the hospital for visits. We have puzzle nights once a week.

—

One day, Sony comes to the hospital without calling first. Neo and I watch movies in an empty waiting room, Eric’s shift allowing us to sprawl out on the chairs past our bedtime.

Sony walks through the door like a lost soul. She wears nothing but pajamas and those dirty white sneakers. Her eyes stray, from the ground to us to the hand squeezing her arm.

Neo and I sit up, making room for her between us.

“Are you okay, Sony?” I ask. She looks at her shoes, tapping the soles together.

“Yeah,” she says, her voice a distant thing. Concern crinkles Neo’s forehead. Sony sniffles, her jaw locking, unlocking. “I’m a little cold, I guess.”

“I can get you chocolate if you want,” I say. Sony scoffs, her hand ruffling through my hair as she pulls me in, nuzzling against me. For the lack of cuts, bruises, and wheezing in her breath, silence ruminates around her like a fog. “Was today not a good day?”

My quiet is a constant, a formulation of my curiosity’s wish to listen. Neo’s quiet is verbal. On paper, he’s as loud as they come. Sony’s quiet is made of sorrow. It aches in her chest beside her heart like she could breathe from it. Tonight, it brings her here. It steals from her fire and her full-bodied movements. It tears her down, half of herself left to live.

“No,” Sony breathes. “It wasn’t a good day.”

“Sony.” Neo beckons her gaze. He crouches in front of her, reading her pain like lines in his stories ready to be erased. “What happened?”