Chapter 38 Elanie
I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen another being so surprised to see me. “Dr. Semson.” I lowered my fist. “Are you on your way out?”
He only stared at me, his round, silver-blue eyes not blinking once.
“Dr. Semson?”
Finally, he said, “Oh. Hello, Elanie,” while rubbing his palm into his chest. “I was. Heading out, that is. But…I don’t have to be.”
“I know I don’t have an appointment—”
“Who cares about that?” he said in a rush, then he scratched his head. “I mean, it’s fine. I have an opening. Do you want to come in?”
He took a step back, and I stepped inside.
“What’s going on? Are you”—he cleared some thickness from his throat—“okay?”
“I’m having some headaches,” I said, looking at his examination table, at the flexGlass jars of cotton balls and tongue depressors on the counter, at the handheld mirror reflecting the clouds floating by on the digital ceiling tiles. “And I’m not sleeping.”
“Here.” He extended his hand to me, and when I took it, I noticed how vibrantly blue his skin looked against mine. “Let me help you up.”
“Thank you,” I said, stepping up to sit on his table.
He let me go, curling his hand into a loose fist for a moment before reaching back to search for something on the counter behind him. His eyes stayed on mine until he found a yellow pad of paper and a pen. “You’re having headaches?” He jotted something down. “When did they start?”
“After I got back. I mean we,” I corrected while his jaw ticked. “After we got back, I guess. But they only happen at night.”
“Maybe that’s why you can’t sleep.” He scribbled something else. “It’s hard to sleep when you have a headache.”
“No, I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s the dreams.”
His hand stilled as his gaze rose to meet mine again. “Dreams?”
“Yes,” I said. “Every night. The same strange dream.”
“What is it about?” His voice wavered, and I wondered if he was nervous. “If you’re comfortable telling me, that is.”
“I’m comfortable.” I placed my hands in my lap. “Wherever I am in the dream, it’s dark outside. And cold. It’s snowing, and the wind blows almost constantly. But inside, it’s warm. There’s always a fire burning, wood popping, amber light flickering off rock walls. I think I’m in a cave.”
His pen slipped from his grip, clattering to the ground. “A cave?” he repeated, ignoring the pen.
“I feel like I should be scared in these dreams,” I said. “But I never am.”
He clutched his pad of paper so tightly his knuckles turned gray. “You aren’t? Because it sounds like it could be. Scary, that is.”
“I’m not scared,” I went on, “because I’m not alone. Someone is in the cave with me. But I can’t see them. I can’t see their face. I try so hard, every night, but they’re always in the shadows. Just out of reach.”
His eyes shone, his lips parting. I sensed the rapid acceleration of his heart rate.
“Whoever they are, they take care of me. They bring me food. They keep the fire going. They make me laugh and tell me stories. They keep me safe.”
A tear tracked down his cheek, but he didn’t seem to notice. “They sound like a good cave partner.”
“I think they were.” I was tempted to smile, which was something I hadn’t been tempted to do in so long that the sensation caught me off guard.
“I think they were the best cave partner a being could ever ask for. Maybe that’s why I never want to wake up from these dreams. Maybe that’s why, when I do, I try my hardest to fall asleep again, just so I can go back.
So I can be there again, living in that cave.
Surrounded by fire and snow and wind and warmth.
Surrounded by him. Because if I could go back, then I never would have had to leave him there alone. ”
He’d changed something about his office.
The digpics on the walls were different, tropical trees blowing in the breeze, a fire flickering in the darkness, and a fuzzy, precocious grint leaping between a dresser and a bed with a tie in his mouth, his thick, bottle-brush tail whipping through the air behind him.
“I’m not sure what it means, but there’s something that shows up in every single one of these dreams,” I said, tearing my gaze from the precocious little grint when my eyes started to sting. “It doesn’t matter if the dream is over in a blink or if it seems to last all night. It’s always there.”
I could tell that he’d stopped breathing. It had happened 2.3 billion nanoseconds after he’d stopped blinking.
“Do you know what that thing is, Dr. Semson?”
He shook his head, and another tear fell.
Leaning forward while my chest grew tight, while his beautiful silver-blue eyes swam through my misting vision, I whispered, “Sailboats.”
The pad of paper dropped from his hands, floating through the air until it joined his pen on the floor.
His chin wobbled, his eyes filling with tears as he whispered, “Don’t let this be a dream too. Please. I can’t take it.”
Climbing down from his table, I reached for him, placing a hand over his thundering heart. “It’s not a dream.”
“Is it you, Elanie? Is it really you?”
“Funny story,” I said while he covered my hand with his and held on so tightly I had to modify my pain threshold. Because I would never ask him to let go. Never again. “On Thura, when you and Maximus were talking, before Gol barged in, Mal told me what was going to happen. I remember being—”
“You…” He swayed on his feet. “You remember?”
Giving into every temptation, I let myself smile at him. And when I did, the floodgates burst open, words and tears and all the ways I’d missed him pouring out of me.
“Everything,” I said with a crack in my voice.
“I didn’t at first, when we got back, when I woke up.
But even though I couldn’t remember Thura or the cave or you, I still missed you.
Every time I saw you, I missed you. Like I knew deep down that some vital part of me had been found on that planet, with you.
And then, back here, I lost it. It was gone.
I know you tried to talk to me. I know it must have been so hard for you when I ran away.
” My ribs felt bruised, regret lodging itself firmly inside my chest. “But I was so scared, Sem. I was scared because I felt all these things for you, and none of them made sense. I’d see you, and know, right here”—I took his other hand and placed it over my heart—“that you were the most important person I’d never really known. ”
His chin sank to his chest, and if his hair had still been long, it would have fallen into his eyes.
“I didn’t want Mal to use his EMP,” I said.
“I tried to argue with him. I tried to find another way. It was only after he told me he could back up our memories that I agreed to it. Because I didn’t want to lose you.
I couldn’t imagine living without you. I couldn’t see any point to my existence if you weren’t in it.
Which I know is a very non-bionic thing to say, but—”
He huffed a laugh, then choked out, “You tried to tell me.” His gaze darted over my face, lips, eyes, nose. Like he thought I might vanish if he wasn’t paying close enough attention. “Before the EMP blew, you tried to tell me something.”
“That’s the thing about having your memories wiped.
” I brought my hands to his shoulders, sliding them up to cradle his neck.
My knees buckled at the familiar warmth of his skin.
“You forget things. Important things. Like last-minute backups. But gen-1s were designed to store their own memory after using their EMPs. Primitive flash drives stored deep in their ears of all places. Which was something even Maximus didn’t know.
Mal went to Maximus this morning to check his auditory processors because his left ear wouldn’t stop ringing, and Maximus found the drive. He restored us both.”
Sem said nothing, but his chest rose and fell, hard and fast.
“Are you okay?”
His throat bobbed sharply. “No.”
“I’m sorry, Sem. I’m so sorry. But I didn’t know what else to do. Please don’t be upset with me. Please—”
“Oh, Elanie. Sweetheart, no,” he said, shaking his head like he was finally waking up.
Finally letting himself believe that this was real.
“I could never be upset with you. I just… Saints help me, I’ve missed you so much.
” He cupped my face with a soft ferocity.
“And you have nothing to be sorry for. I’m the one who needs to apologize.
I promised you I wouldn’t give up hope. I promised you I’d find you again, and I didn’t. I tried, but I wasn’t strong enough.”
“That isn’t your fault. I’d almost forgotten who I was before I met you, how closed off I’d been. I lived with a wall around me, and you’d already broken through it once. It was probably hard to imagine having to break through it again.”
“But I was going to try. That’s where I was headed when I opened the door.
I was going to find you and try again, no matter how long it took.
No matter how many hallways I had to wait for you in, or how many Macey Valentine songs I had to sing at karaoke, or how many wellness presentations I had to convince Chan to let me interrupt morning meetings with just so I could see you.
I was going to do it. Because I haven’t been living without you.
I haven’t been able to breathe. I love you, Elanie. I love you so much.”
Throwing my arms around his neck, I kissed him, holding him as close as I could without hurting him while he kissed me back.
And even though it had been thirty-three days, 797 hours, and 2.
869 x1015 nanoseconds since I’d felt his lips on mine, with his hand pressed into the small of my back, his other hand cradling my neck, and the taste of our tears mingling on my tongue, the kiss felt eternal.
When we finally pulled apart, our eyes wet and our breaths heavy, I asked, “Can I see Grover?”
Sem laughed now. Really laughed. And the sound spread over my skin like tiny electric sparks, making me warm, letting me feel alive again. “He’s going to lose his mind once he sees that you’re back. I think he’s missed you almost as much as I have.”
Sliding my hand into his, I promised, “I’ll never leave either of you again.”
Pulling me close, he said, “Please don’t.
” Then he kissed me so deeply and so thoroughly I had no choice but to record it in my VC and add it to the Sem file that had been restored along with all my other memories.
Memories of how I fell in love in the most unlikely of places with the most unlikely of people in the most perfectly unforgettable way.