Chapter 49
Damien
Play - not a lot, just forever by Adrianne Lenker
Wishes for freedom
When I was a kid, my mother was alone. She’d been trying to survive on her own since she was fifteen. I remember not understanding why her eyes were always red, or why she’d cry or scream whenever I asked where she went at night.
I didn’t know what addiction was. I only knew the version of her I saw; dark circles, bruises she never explained, tears she pretended weren’t there.
She was never beautiful to me, because pain was all I learned to recognize.
She used to tell me that I ruined her life and I believed her. I thought I was something she was stuck with. A disease she couldn’t get rid of, something she had to carry against her will.
I didn’t know she would die of an overdose when I was fourteen. After that, I was sent from one foster home to another. I fought, took whatever work people would give a kid who didn’t ask questions. I learned quickly that feelings were a liability.
When I grew up, I kept my distance from women. I was afraid of what wanting might do to me. If I let myself touch someone, it was carefully. I made sure she was okay at every step, then I left. Clean exits, no damage, no expectations. And they were fine with it.
I’ve always seen women as strong. Stronger than the world that keeps pushing against them. My mother raised me alone, she fought her own mind just to keep a roof over my head. My father was nowhere to be found. I never knew him or searched to find this bastard.
Never knew what he sounded like, or what he looked like. Not even the shape of his absence, only the damage it left behind.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s the worst part. Not knowing whether he left because he could, or because he was built that way. I’ve spent years asking myself the same question.
What if it’s in me?
What if whatever made him disappear is something I carry too, buried under the discipline and rules?
I don’t trust blood. I don’t trust lineage. I don’t trust the idea that love alone can undo patterns that have already been written.
So I keep my distance because I refuse to become another man a woman has to survive.
I learned this early, and I never let it go: I can hurt a woman, and I don’t want to.
I always kept my distance. But seeing my student, Mireya, standing there in a white dress, blood spilling down her stomach, something awakens.
I do not want to hurt her. I never have and I never will. But someone did.
I have spent my life afraid of the damage I could cause and now I’m faced with proof that someone else didn’t hesitate. For an unimaginable reason, the thought makes my blood boil in ways it never did before. So I grab her hand and take her to my apartment.
Probably reckless to take my student in, knowing anyone could see us. But I don’t feel like I control anything at that moment.
We’re inside in a few seconds. She lets herself be guided in silence and it’s not like her.
Mireya always has something to say. A sarcastic comment, a complaint, some excuse to pretend she doesn’t need anyone.
She keeps people at a distance even when she’s standing right beside them. But tonight she’s quiet.
The bathroom is cold and I see her shiver the second we step in.
I turn the water on, lowering the pressure until the sound softens.
Too much noise drowns out the signals. The changes in someone’s breathing, the moments where they’re trying to convince you they’re fine.
And I need to hear her, and I hate that I need it.
Because I’m supposed to be objective, I’m supposed to know where the line is.
But right now, all I can think about is the fact that she looks exhausted from holding herself together for too long.
So, I work like I always do. Protocol. Blood, wound, making sure it stays clean, I know how to handle all that. What I'm less good at is handling her in that state.
I want to ask, I want to be angry, ask who did this. But none of that would help her right now. Instead, I take a long and slow breath, trying to keep pretending that this is all protocol.
I carefully move the fabric of her dress up to look at the injury. The second I realize how close I am, how vulnerable she is in front of me, I look away.
“You need to get under the water, Mireya,” I say softly.
She looks up at me and I’m graced with her pale blue eyes. I thought her eyes were empty before this. I understand now that emptiness wasn’t the problem. It’s the distance.
She’s too far gone into herself.
“Okay,” she murmurs as a lonely tear falls down her cheek.
She moves toward the shower silently. I step back, giving her enough space. Through the frosted glass, I can see her silhouette as she turns on the water.
Her head turns back toward me as the fog covers most of her face and body, and my eyes catch the tattoo.
A scar runs across her upper back. Someone has turned it into a line, a thread that twists along her skin.
A bird perches on it, a nightingale, but one wing is broken, feathers missing, and its beak is closed.
“Do you know Philomela?”
“No,” I say.
“She's…” she adds softly. “A woman whose voice was taken from her for being a woman.”
I've never heard this story before, but the tone, the way she tells it, gives me something to latch onto. “That’s a nightingale?” I ask, curious.
“A punishment for enduring,” she replies, her voice slightly hesitant, “Some men think that silence erases it, but she found another way to speak.”
I looked away, but the tattoo appeared again for a moment, rippled by the water and the curve of her back. My fingers itched to touch it, trace the lines of it, to understand. But I didn’t. Some things weren’t mine to ask for.
I wanted to ask, to know who I should kill for doing this. Instead, I simply breathed and waited.
“I’ll leave you some clothes here,” I said, going to my room and taking some clothes with me, then placed the t-shirt and sweatpants on the edge of the sink. “You can change when you’re done.”
“Thank you,” she murmured.
I went out and closed the door behind me, letting the steam and the sound of the water mask my thoughts, which revolved around that tattoo and that vulnerable soul I wasn’t allowed to touch.
When she returned, wrapped in my oversized clothes, I looked away slightly, but the sight was fascinating. She floats in this fabric, her long and raven hair wet and sticking to her neck.
“Sit down,” I say, gesturing toward the sofa.
She obeys without a word, as I approach with the kit, and I feel that tension again. The stitches are quick, the bandage tight but gentle, I don’t want to scare her away.
I don’t want to hurt her.
So I focus on the wound, on its trembling, on what it allows me to see without words.
“Does it hurt?” I ask softly.
“Not really,” she says, and yet her slight flinch at each stitch betrays her.
“I need to clean a little more,” I warn.
“It’s okay…"
“You want to talk about this?” I venture, my hands continuing to work.
“I didn’t tell you how Philomela’s story went,” she says, a faint perceptible smile on her lips.
“What happened to her?”
“Her sister avenged her, she did horrible things to her son to punish her husband who abused Philomela.”
“How did he react?” I reply, focused on the movements.
“He chased them like his sin was erased the moment she got angry about it.”
“He’s a bastard,” I spit out.
She laughs softly, and my stomach flips at the sound. I like it. I like it a lot. “I’m a big sister too, and I’d do anything for my little brother,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.
I raise a hand, ready to touch her arm, then stop myself. I can't cross that line. All I can do is continue the treatment with precision, my cold hands on her cold skin.
When I finish, I check the bandage's pressure one last time. “It's all done.”
She breathes, and her gaze falls on me, almost vacant. “Thank you.”
“Just be careful and avoid sleeping on it,” I reply as I settle her on the sofa, covering her legs with a blanket. I lean against the wall, silent, but I can't bring myself to leave the room. She's sleepy, and something about that vulnerability tightens my chest.
Then she moves, gently.
She gets up, slides toward the window. The fabric of her t-shirt floats around her, and I restrain myself from moving closer. Her fingers brushed against the cold sill as she leaned forward slightly, looking out.
“Do you think that one day I could be free too?” she said, almost to herself.
Free…
I didn’t know how to answer that question. So I stood there, motionless, watching her every move. Finally, she turned, moved away from the window, and went to the desk.
She took a sheet of paper and, with almost ceremonial care, wrote a word: Freedom on it. Then she folded the paper, transforming it into origami, a delicate little star. I watched her, fascinated despite myself by her concentration and the way she did it so quickly.
“Come here,” she says softly, raising her hand.
I move forward, and stop in front of her, as she places her palm in mine, the fragile star resting on it. She opens the window, the icy night air rushes into the room, hitting me immediately.
“It’s too cold,” I say instinctively. “You just got out of the shower.”
“Make a wish,” she says. “Go on, think of something,” she whispers again before staying behind me and holding my hand outside of the window. “Let go of it.”
I close my eyes, and I think of her. Of whatever happened to her, those situations she should never find herself in. I hope she never finds herself in those situations again, and I let go with her fingers holding mine.
The star falls into the night, mixing with the ones already in the sky, and disappears.
I turn around, her hand still in mine, and she looks at me with a small smile.
“Funny, isn’t it?” she asks.
I nod, lost in her soft disturbed eyes. “Yes, It is.”
And for a moment, all that exists is that little star, the cold wind, and her.
She moves, looking outside, hesitant, then takes a step, standing beside me, resting her head on my shoulder. I feel her shiver for a moment, then I put my arm around her, gently, to offer her some warmth.
I say nothing. I remain there, speechless, fascinated, unable to do anything else. Then she speaks softly, “I want to be like that star, until then, I’ll keep making wishes.”
“I’ll make some for you,” I reply without understanding why I’d say that.
“Thank you, Damien.”
Damien…
“You’re welcome, Mireya.”