Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
NYLA
He would have crashed.
That’s the thought that hasn’t let go of me all shift long. Jaden might be dead now if I hadn’t forced him to put on the safety harness. And he would be badly injured if he hadn’t jumped out of the vehicle at the very last second because he absolutely wanted to give the patient the glucose.
Without a doubt, he saved that woman’s life – but in doing so he risked his own.
What happened really shook him, that much was obvious.
Yet every time I tried to bring it up with him during our shift, he responded with a funny anecdote, suddenly had something important to do, or urgently needed to know who should write the soundtrack if my life were ever made into a movie.
As so often in the past few hours, I sneak a look at Jaden, with whom I’m currently taking stock of the materials and medications that need to be restocked in the ambulance after today’s duty.
With a tense expression, he pulls open the top drawer of the cabinet while I sit on the stretcher armed with paper and pen, waiting for his orders.
‘Adrenaline 1 mg/1 ml: three ampoules. Metamizole 1 g/2 ml: five ampoules,’ he says.
We’re alone, and neither an emergency nor anything else can interrupt us. I record the inventory on the form on my clipboard. ‘What was that about today? Why did you put yourself in so much danger?’
With a stiff movement, Jaden opens the door of the base cabinet and crouches down. ‘Ringer’s lactate 500 ml: four bags.’
So he still doesn’t want to talk about it. Chewing on my lower lip, I write down his information. ‘You could have been seriously injured or worse. Doesn’t that give you pause?’
A brief hesitation, his jaw muscle tightens. ‘Lidocaine 2% 100 mg/5 ml: two ampoules.’
I slide forward on the gurney so that I’m right behind him. ‘You were totally out of it, Jaden. Don’t pretend that was normal.’
Without looking up at me, he takes the resuscitation bags and counts them. His fingers are trembling, I can see it clearly. ‘Ambu bags, adult size: two.’
God, even a blind person would see that what happened is weighing heavily on him. Why can’t he just admit it?
I note down the quantities, crouch beside him, and force him to look at me. ‘You could have died,’ I say urgently.
His breath catches. ‘But I didn’t,’ he replies quietly, puts the neatly stacked resuscitation bags back in the compartment, and turns to the nasal cannulas.
Maybe he can shake other people off like this, but not me. ‘And that makes everything okay?’ My voice has taken on a forceful edge.
‘Nasal cannulas, size small: two.’ There’s a desperate plea in his words.
On impulse, I close the door of the cabinet whose supplies he’s currently checking. ‘What on earth is wrong with you?’
Jaden sits down on the floor next to me and gives me a searching look that goes right through me. It’s as if he’s looking for something, for an anchor, a clue, anything that will save him from having to answer me.
I hold his gaze, because I want him to know I’m not going to back down.
For a while we just look at each other, then a relieved expression flits across his, unfortunately, far too attractive face. ‘So that’s how it is.’
‘How is what?’ I ask without thinking.
‘The way you worry about me… how scared you are, how important my well-being is to you…’
Oh God, what is that sparkle in his eyes supposed to mean? Is he actually flirting with me?
A strange tingling runs through my stomach, yet—or maybe precisely because of that—I study him seriously. ‘You’re just trying to distract.’ Again, and by now I’m almost sure I know why he’s doing it: there’s something he doesn’t want to confront because it hurts too much.
That phone call that clearly got to him, the extreme rescue operation and his refusal to talk about it are proof that I’m right.
Now he leans toward me and braces his hands on the ground. The muscles under his shirt tense. ‘You know, this thing between us, it could be so beautiful.’
No, it couldn’t. ‘You would have climbed down the cliff without a safety harness.’
He comes closer, his green eyes holding me far too captive. ‘Like the other day, when we danced in the rain,’ he says wistfully.
‘That was a mistake.’ I move back, yet his scent still creeps into my nose and I feel how my body wants something different from my head. It wants to touch Jaden, feel his skin, sense his heartbeat.
‘No,’ he replies. ‘It was anything but a mistake.’
I don’t know what to say, only that I should put some distance between us. But in the ambulance it’s too cramped for me to get away from him.
‘You liked it.’ His gaze sticks to me. ‘You liked letting go of everything for a moment and just being.’
Images of the two of us appear before my mind’s eye. Him, gently rocking me back and forth, raindrops running down his face. The image is so vivid that I almost feel his arms around my torso again, his breath on my skin, his closeness that makes me so…
Knowingly, he nods. ‘You liked not having to worry, not thinking about yesterday or tomorrow.’
Yes.
‘You liked that there was only the now.’
Yes.
Not for a second does he release me from his gaze. Suddenly the air between us feels thin. I swallow hard.
‘And ever since, you can hardly think about anything but that dance and what it did to you.’
Oh God, yes.
How does he know that?
He smiles, suddenly looking so enraptured, as if he himself were back there again. In front of the clinic. In the rain. With me. Just about to kiss me.
‘Admit it,’ he asks me, and I can feel the longing in his words. Feel how important it is to him that I tell him how much I enjoyed that moment of freedom, of not thinking, with him.
For a while I look at him, then I lower my lids. ‘Yes,’ I whisper into the silence between us, and I don’t even know myself why I’m doing it. Because that’s not what this is about at all right now. ‘But that doesn’t change the fact that today you could have lost your life.’
He looks at me, no longer defensive, but as if he were searching for words to explain something to me for which there is definitely no reasonable explanation.
‘In the end all we have is the present moment. This one breath we’re taking right now, this one beat of our heart,’ he then says softly into the silence between us, and I feel the weight of his words. The truth in the letters, his pain in every sound.
What he says hits me where it already hurts anyway. Because a part of me knows that Jaden is at least partly right. We can dream of whatever we want, conjure up a future we look forward to, keep alive wishes that mean the world to us.
But we don’t know whether we will ever have all that.
Lilly’s dark circles are darker today than usual, her cheeks look sunken. Not even the colorful scarf on her head can do anything about the pallor that the nausea paints across her face.
Still, she smiles gently as she leans back in the treatment chair and closes her eyes. ‘When I’m healthy again, there are a thousand things I want to do.’
I watch the infusion fluid crawl through the tube that leads to the crook of her arm. It’s her ninth cycle; the fact that her body is still putting up with this borders on a miracle.
‘Do you know those crazy street-food stalls at the farmers’ market?’ Her lids still closed, she lets out a long sigh. ‘They have the wildest stuff there. I went a few years ago, but I didn’t dare try the really weird dishes. Grasshoppers and all that, you know.’
‘I tried those once.’ Back then, on my backpacking tour through Asia. Back then, when my life still belonged to me. ‘Believe me, you didn’t miss anything.’
For a moment her fist clenches. ‘When I get out of here, I’ll make up for it. I’m just going to try everything there.’
It’s incredible how she manages to stay so positive despite her prognosis. ‘That’s crazy.’
She blinks wearily. ‘So what? Crazy is good.’
It used to be. Before the diagnosis, the hair loss, the nausea, the inflamed mucous membranes. Today it’s different; absolutely everything is different.
A shiver runs through me and I pull the blanket up to my chin. ‘Okay, what else?’ I ask her, realizing just how tightly she’s clinging to these dreams. That she needs them so she doesn’t lose hope, and I don’t want that to happen for anything in the world.
‘Well, there’s this man I could never forget…’ she begins, then immediately waves it off again. ‘Not important. What I really want is a garden,’ she breathes wistfully. ‘A quiet paradise threaded with the scent of blooming lavender bushes and wild roses.’ Her hand finds the pendant on her necklace.
‘So that’s why there are flowers by your name?’ I ask, looking at the silvery, gleaming Lilly lettering with the blooming Y.
She nods. ‘But I don’t just want flowers, I also want an apple tree.’ Her features relax. ‘Just imagine it: sun-warmed stone paths winding their way through lush greenery, butterflies dancing weightlessly above the blossoms.’
‘Wonderful.’ More than anything, I wish I were already there and not in this treatment room.
‘An old olive tree spreads its gnarled branches, casting shade and whispering softly in the wind. Somewhere a little brook is babbling, the water glinting in the afternoon sun.’ Her voice grows ever quieter, as if talking were too exhausting for her.
I reach for her hand. ‘One day we’ll sit there together.’ With the scent of lavender in our noses, the chirping of birds in our ears, and the tingling of sunrays on our skin.
Lilly’s eyes are already closed again. ‘We will.’
Sitting with me one day in her own garden was only one of Lilly’s dreams. There was so much she wanted to experience, and she never got to do any of it.
I’m thinking about all of that now as I sit on the floor in the middle of the ambulance far too close beside Jaden. I only realize I’m shaking my head when Jaden gently takes hold of my chin to stop the movement.
‘In the end, all we have is the present moment,’ he repeats what he said earlier, fixing me with an intent gaze. ‘We shouldn’t waste it worrying about the past or the future.’
I wish it were that simple, but it isn’t.
We have to plan ahead, take care of ourselves.
Without a seat belt, things could have ended badly for him today, and if Lilly had taken her symptoms more seriously, thought more about her health, she might still be alive.
She would have her garden, would be eating crazy street food, dancing through the nights, and doing a whole lot of other nonsense.
Or would she have been just as afraid of all this as I am? Would she still have planted her garden knowing she might never see it in its full glory? Would she have danced all night even though it would have pushed her body to its limits?
Thoughtfully, I look at Jaden, who lives his life free from any kind of fear.
At least he pretends to. ‘Even so, we mustn’t forget what was, nor how what we’re doing now will affect us.
’ We have to take care of ourselves. He has to take care of himself.
‘If we don’t, we’re left with nothing. Not even this very moment. ’
Something in his expression changes, as if he were thinking about my words. Sorrow etches itself into the depths of his iris. Whatever is going on inside him, it’s similar to what he went through during the phone call today.
Now he’s the one shaking his head, and I’m the one stopping him.
So we sit facing each other, touching, and with every second that irretrievably slips away from this moment, I see a little more in his eyes of the battle he is currently fighting with himself. And I also see that he’s in the process of losing it.