Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
JADEN
If we don’t, we’re left with nothing. Not even this very moment.
Nyla’s words are everywhere inside me, even where they don’t belong. I can feel that they’re true. She saved my life today, and knowing that calls into question everything that has been unshakable until now.
‘Don’t throw your life away like that,’ she begs me, as if she knows me, when in fact she doesn’t know the first thing about me or about what she calls my life.
She doesn’t know how hard it is to keep breathing when you can’t get any air.
She doesn’t know what it’s like when there is no place in this world you can flee to.
And least of all does she know that not every wound can heal just by facing it.
Some wounds never heal, so we have no choice but to bandage them carefully so that at least we don’t have to see them anymore.
‘And what if it’s not a life anymore?’ I hear myself ask, and I don’t recognize myself. Why am I saying this out loud? Why am I even thinking it?
Melancholy rules her expression, and as certain as I was earlier that she didn’t have the slightest clue about anything, I am now just as certain that she at least knows this. This feeling of no longer having a life.
‘Then you have to fight to build yourself a new one,’ she answers softly.
Build a new life. What for? So that I have something again only to lose it all over again?
There’s something in the drawer that I want to give you.
I can feel the memory taking shape inside me, and it becomes clear to me that this—whatever it is—is turning me into someone I don’t want to be.
That Nyla is awakening a side of me that would be better left sleeping.
Even so, I manage neither to distract us both with a joke nor simply to get up and walk away.
Instead, something else happens. Just a moment ago my fingers were still touching her chin; now they wander to her cheek and nestle against her skin.
‘It would be a losing battle,’ I say.
Her lips tremble slightly. ‘You don’t know that if you don’t at least try.’ She sounds convinced, and in her gaze I see how desperately she wants to cling to her own words.
Dammit, what am I even doing here?
What’s the point of talking to her about these desolate topics when we could be laughing and singing and being happy right now?
What’s the point of brooding when we could just let ourselves fall into the moment and find out where it carries us?
None of us knows what tomorrow will bring. We live today, and that’s the only thing we can rely on. Even so, her words still resonate within me, and a part of me senses that she’s not entirely wrong. But where her thoughts drive me, there is pain.
With my thumb I stroke her delicate skin. ‘What if we simply forget who we were and who we might be?’
Her breathing quickens. ‘But who are we without all that?’
‘Just us.’ I move closer to her, wanting to feel her warmth.
She doesn’t pull away.
‘Just here.’ That’s what I want.
Uncertainty is reflected in her expression, yet I now take her face in both my hands and come so close that the tips of our noses almost touch.
Her scent envelops me. I feel her shallow breath on my lips.
There is nothing but longing in her gaze.
For this moment that wraps her in lightness, for the happiness of freedom.
For us.
‘Just right now.’ In slow motion I close the last few inches between us, imagining what it will be like to kiss her. What it will feel like to drift away with her… far, far away…
Her palms touch my chest, so gently that I barely notice it. Her lips brush mine. ‘Stop,’ she whispers, yet she doesn’t move an inch.
I freeze. ‘Why?’
‘I…’ She exhales softly. ‘I can’t do this.’
But her eyes are saying something completely different. ‘What can’t you do?’
‘This.’ She lowers her lids. Our eye contact breaks off, and reality crashes down on me like a storm I never saw coming.
I was just about to kiss Nyla. In a way I don’t want to kiss any other woman. Not just for fun, not casually. No, I wanted to kiss her to be close to her.
‘The two of us, that can’t… I mean, we just shouldn’t…’ Nyla shifts a little away from me and runs trembling fingers through her hair. ‘It’s not possible, I’m sorry,’ she then says contritely, gets up, and grabs the clipboard with the inventory list from the gurney.
‘Why not?’ The question just slips out of my mouth, which is almost crazier than what has happened in this ambulance over the past few minutes.
She studies me intently. Hesitates. Then lowers her lids. ‘We should continue.’
‘Yeah… sure…,’ I force out, confused by everything she’s still doing to me, even though she’s no longer anywhere near me.
Just like before, she’s now sitting on the examination couch, pretending to check her notes. Mindlessly, I open the door of the base cabinet and pull out the resuscitation bags.
I count them. Several times. Still, I have no idea how many there are. ‘Ambu bags, adult size: three.’
Nyla clears her throat. ‘Earlier I wrote down two.’
I glance up at her briefly. The pen between her fingers trembles. ‘Then two,’ I say, disoriented, and put the resuscitation bags back into the compartment.