I Fell in Love with Hope(77)

Hikari whimpers, C rushing to pick Sony up. I open the backdoor and fumble for the tank under the seat and the oxygen mask.

C sits Sony down so that her back leans against my front. Hikari is crying in fear, her hands shaking as she helps me put the mask on Sony’s face.

The engine rumbles, and the headlights stretch into the empty lot, Neo turning the key in the ignition. He moves into the passenger seat over the console to make room for C. He reaches behind the middle compartment, grasping for Sony’s hand or knee or anything he can hold on to, not bothering with his seatbelt.

“Sa–mmy,” Sony tries to speak. Her vocal cords are submerged. Her body is weak and cold, yet still laboring. Even with consciousness, a body has automated responses set in an attempt to keep itself alive. Sony’s one lung will keep rising and falling till it doesn’t have the means no matter what ravages it.

“Squeeze our hands, Sony, take deep breaths,” I say, holding her neck straight, keeping the pathway for her lung as open as I can.

It’s the middle of the night and the roads are empty. C slams his foot on the gas, remembering the fastest route to the hospital.

Sony spits up more blood and puss. She doesn’t have the strength to tilt her head, so it ends up in her lap. Hikari tries to clean her up the best she can with her sweater. Panic trembles through her hands and her voice alike.

“Hikari?” Sony rasps.

“I’m here, Sony. Just hold on, okay?”

Sony smiles deliriously, her body going completely limp in my arms.

“You’re always so warm,” she says.

“Sony? Sony, stay awake! Sony!” Hikari yells, but Sony’s eyes have already slipped back into her head.





wings




Reality isn’t kind to those who deny it. It thrusts itself back upon you, not with a knife in the back, but through the lung, staring down at you distastefully for leaving it behind.

A metronome is all reality leaves behind with its blade scraping the ground. It pulses in the form of a heart monitor, drawing a steady string of green mountains on the screen.

We cling to it, to the beat that slows with each passing hour, afraid that if we let go, it will become lax, and the beat will turn into an infernal, constant ring.

I sit up in my chair, careful not to make noise. The ICU is loud outside this room, but with the door shut, you could hear a feather drop. Neo, C, and Hikari sleep in three chairs on the wall facing the bed. They fell asleep when the doctors left.

The harsh acceleration of the truck, the horror-stricken yelling, Sony’s choking–it’s all there–in their dreams, haunting them. We arrived at the hospital with Sony fading in and out of consciousness. They rolled out a stretcher and took her from C’s arms.

Despite Hikari’s inability to handle the fear and the panic, she managed to calm down enough to call Eric in the truck. He was waiting in the ER, and when they wheeled in Sony, he did something I’d never seen him do.

He froze.

He saw the blood and heard Sony’s struggles, and he just stopped moving.

A mass of people surrounded her. They stuck a hole in her chest, a geyser of liquid spurting out. Then they took her away, yelling one code after another, sticking her with needles, and disappearing with our Sony still unable to breathe.

We shook. Hikari buried her face in my chest, hands fisting my shirt as I held her against me.

Eric tried to run to where they treated her, yelling over nurses and doctors that didn’t know Sony, about her history, her treatments, everything.

They had to kick him out of the room. Neo, C, and him stared at the hall entryway to the ICU and we waited an infernal set of infernal minutes until a doctor came out.

Now, Sony lies in a room I can only describe as blue. A path of tubes works under her nose. Her chest is a mess of medical work. It must’ve been an infection, working slyly without symptoms until it pulled the drain and flooded the battleground.

“We got caught, huh?”

I look up to a grating voice. It’s weak, rocks scraping the back of her throat. But it carries a melody I know. Sony is there, behind those half-lidded eyes. A flame burning low, but still burning.

I rush for her hand, nearly disrupting the fragile systems all connected to her, through needle, tube, or whatever apparatus.

“We always get caught,” I whisper, squeezing it.

She doesn’t squeeze back. I don’t think she can. She can’t sit up or move. She can barely turn her head.

“They didn’t ruin my wings, did they?” she asks.

The tattoo isn’t visible beneath the bandages, but her wings were too young to undergo so much. All that’s left is ink feathers plucked and fallen beneath the crown of her collarbones.

“No,” I say. “They didn’t.”

“Good.” Sony smiles. “I’ve always wanted wings.”

I nod, coursing my touch back and forth over her knuckles.

“You said that to me the night we met, you remember?”

“Of course I do,” she rasps. “You never had chocolate before, you little stranger.”

“You introduced me to candy and ice cream and fries too.”

“Gosh, I’m a bad influence.”

I chuckle. She wants to laugh too, just to join me, but I think that is also one of the things she can’t do right now. She can’t sit up or move to look for herself. She can barely turn her head.