I Fell in Love with Hope(90)

“Are they?”

“So great. But don’t try them, they’re bad for you.”

“If you insist.”

Coeur continues smiling, his eyes closing for a few seconds, then opening again, his head lolling to the side, then back.

“You said you’d steal me a heart, you remember that? Was this you? Did you get it for me?” Coeur asks in a whisper, his pupils expanding the longer they remain on Neo.

Neo’s lips thin, his eyes glossing as he remembers the slip of paper. The promise.

For Coeur,

I’ll give you a heart.

That piece of paper is still wedged in the Hit List like a bookmark. Coeur wanted to keep it somewhere they wouldn’t lose it.

“No, I didn’t,” Neo says, dragging his thumb back and forth over Coeur’s knuckles. “But you know you’ve always had mine.”

Coeur cannot sanely take in the words, but he can see the sentiment on Neo’s face. He looks at him as long as he can with a certain kind of joy only simple pleasures arise. Holding his hand. Hearing him. Seeing him. Being with him.

“Neo, Neo, Neo,” Coeur whispers, as if to himself.

“Yes, Coeur.”

“I love your name so much. It’s my favorite name,” Coeur says.

Neo attempts to keep his composure. He swallows hard, his exhales shaky and frail. His palm presses to the center of Coeur’s chest over the gown. The thunder and lightning rumble just beneath.

Neo drags his fingertips over Coeur’s face. He leans down and presses his lips to his. It is slow and gentle. Coeur kisses him back, as much as he can, the two of them parting with flushed smiles.

“You better kiss me like that when I wake up,” Coeur whispers.

Neo laughs a breath, a tear rolling down his cheek.

“I will.”

The nurse gently tells Neo that she needs to take Coeur to the operating room now. Neo nods in agreement, holding Coeur’s hand until he is taken down the hall.

“Neo? Are you coming?” Coeur calls, although the calling fades into babbling whispers. “Neo, Neo, my Neo,”

Hikari holds Neo’s hand. He doesn’t wipe the tear. He lets it hang from his jaw and watches as Coeur disappears into limbo.

I’ve told you before that I am not tied to my body. Similarly, my body is not tied to common perceptions. Normal people aren’t allowed in operating rooms, but you’ve probably gathered by now that I am neither normal nor person.

“Sam.”

“Yes, Coeur,” I say, standing at the head of the operating table. Around me, nurses and techs gather their supplies. Two surgeons get ready to scrub in. One nurse places each tool that shall soon be used to tinker with Coeur’s organs on a tray while the anesthesiologist prepares.

All can see me, I think. They simply do not think my presence is unnatural. They accept it like the sound of a scalpel against a metal tray and the brightness of the surgeon’s light.

“Sam,” Coeur says again, eyes half-lidded, yet on the verge of panic. “You have to take care of him while I’m under, okay?”

I caress his hand, the one that Neo had to let go.

“Okay.”

“You need to make him take his medicine. He–he has–has one round in the evening and two in the mornings. He won’t eat if he’s alone either, alright? Sit and–and eat with him, that way he’ll have a little at least. And–and you have to offer to do something with him otherwise he won’t get out of bed. Take him to the library or the gardens, but–but don’t let him sit too close to the hedge, his skin gets itchy. And he says he hates hugs, but he doesn’t, he needs them. Hug him tonight, alright? Just hold him whenever he’s sad or scared. And–” Coeur stops, breathing in as if he’s trying not to cry.

“Sam, if his dad comes, you have to protect him. I–I know you don’t intervene–I know that’s one of your rules–but you have to keep him safe for me.”

“I will,” I say and Coeur knows I mean it.

“Thank you, Sam.” He smiles and my hand slips from his. “You really are a strange, beautiful thing.”

The anesthesiologist stands over Coeur and places a mask on his nose and mouth. “Countdown for me sweetheart, okay?”

“Will you count with me, Sam?” Coeur breathes.

I nod.

Memories twist into each other, not like film strips, more like a book’s flipping pages melting into one another. That’s all a person is in the end, isn’t it? Bones and blood and beauty spliced to memories.

Four.

Coeur does not think of that as he descends into the depths of an ocean so deep, he cannot see the surface. He does not remember the things he did or didn’t do.

Three.

He remembers Sony cheating at monopoly, Hikari’s jokes and drawings, Eric flicking him, the long drives with his father, the sports games on tv he watched with his brothers, his mother chuckling and bringing him his dinner late at night.

Two.

He does not think of loneliness, hollowness, or heart. He thinks of Neo’s lips and the laughs he breathed against his neck and his cold, yet gentle hands, and his little smiles, and the tear that rolled down his cheek the last time he saw him.

One.

Coeur sinks into the dark.

And his love for Neo sinks with him.