Chapter 37 - Marco
I was in the bathtub.
The water was warm and it soothed the ache in my joints, which hurt a lot lately. Alexei was behind me, his chest against my back. His legs were on either side of mine, his arms resting loosely around my waist, his chin hooked over my shoulder.
He was playing with my hands.
My fingers, to be specific. His own fingers were tracing the lines of my palm.
They paused at the scar on my knuckle - the one from when I was twelve and fell off a bike I shouldn’t have been riding.
They continued, tracing the line of my thumb, circling the wrist where the IV had been, lingering at the place where the bruise was fading from yellow to green to nothing.
“Tell me about that night.”
“What do you mean?”
“When we met in Italy,” I clarified. “Tell me about it.”
I hadn’t had the chance to properly ask him about it, but I was curious.
Although I could remember a thing or two, mostly from the dreams I had about a boy with green eyes, I thought they were my imagination.
But I know now that it’s mostly a memory engraved in my mind which I can only reach when I dream.
“It was when I was ten. I went there with my father,” he continued. “I was brought along because my father was beginning to see uses for me.” His fingers continued tracing my palm. “I snuck out one night. I couldn’t sleep and I was pretty bored. I just wanted to go back home.”
His thumb traced the line of my index finger.
“I found a garden and then you appeared. You were so cute. I thought you were part of the garden.”
I blinked. “Part of the garden?”
“Some forgotten thing left there by mistake. A piece of decoration that had somehow come alive. You were small and you had these…” He reached up with one hand, touching my hair, touching the place where my curls fell across my forehead. “These dark curls. And your eyes. They were so bright.”
His hand settled back on mine. “We started talking, or rather, you started talking. You talked a lot. You told me about your hope star. the one your grandmother told you about.”
I closed my eyes.
The feeling was stronger now.
Not a memory exactly. Not something I could see or hear or hold. Just…a feeling.
Cold stone under my legs.
Stars above me.
A voice speaking back to me.
“You gave me your ribbon, your brave thing. You called it that. You said you held it when you were scared. And you gave it to me because you said I looked like I needed it.”
“I remember one night I ran from the hospital,” I started speaking. “I don’t remember where I went. I don’t remember how I got there. I just remember being somewhere outside, and then I got really sick after my mom found me.”
His fingers stopped moving on my palm.
“Everything is hazy, everything from that time. Everything from a lot of times. My memory isn’t…” I searched for the word. “Reliable. The doctors said it was because of the oxygen deprivation. When my heart struggled, my brain struggled. Things got… misplaced.”
I turned my head just enough to look at him over my shoulder. “But I did dream of a boy with green eyes a lot while growing up, and I’m guessing that’s you.” I sighed. “I’m sorry.”
His eyebrows furrowed. “Sorry?” he repeated. “For what?”
“For not recognizing you, for not remembering. For having you in my dreams and not knowing it was you. For letting you carry that night alone for years while I forgot.”
His arms tightened around me. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t forget… you just… put me somewhere you couldn’t find. And that’s okay. Because I kept you.”
I turned my head.
Fully now. Twisting slightly in the water until I was looking at him directly.
Face to face. “I promise you, my mind never really forgot you. You were always in my dreams. I just didn’t know your name.
I didn’t know your face. I didn’t know that the boy under the tree was real.
But you were there. Every time I closed my eyes.
Every time the dark came. You were there. You always have been.”
He looked at me for a long moment and I was afraid I said something wrong, but then he kissed me.
It wasn’t with the desperation that had characterized so many of our kisses before. This was different. This was so soft, so full of longing.
It wasn’t even a bit sexual. We kept kissing and I don’t know for how long, but I forgot where my body started and his ended.
***
Over the course of the next few days, I was getting worse.
I knew it was coming, but I just didn’t think it would be this bad.
It hurt.
I was used to the pain, but this was different.
I was dragged out of sleep with a gasp because I felt my chest was being crushed and I could not breathe.
The episodes came at night and I would wake up gasping.
Alexei would feel me start to gasp before the gasp was fully formed, would be sitting up before I was fully awake, would have his hands on me before I had finished realizing what was happening.
He would give me the medications and then he would hold me.
While I was shaking.
While I was crying.
While the pain ripped through my chest in waves that I couldn’t breathe through and couldn’t think through.
He always held me with his hand in my hair, on my back. “Shush,” he would say. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.”
He was always controlled and he always kept me calm.
But I could feel how hard he was shaking against me.
He was terrified.
He was holding me and telling me it was okay, but he was terrified.
And I could feel it.
Every time.
I would eventually relax when the pain subsided.
Not because the pain went away - it never fully went away, just receded - but because his arms around me helped me forget it. I’d just melt against him and it would be better.
I would close my eyes.
He would keep holding me.
And eventually, I would sleep.
And he would not.
Now the doctor was just confirming what we already knew.
We were in his office and I could barely hear what was being said.
“I really advise you get admitted to the hospital. Your heart is getting weaker day by day. The episodes are becoming more frequent. The medication is no longer sufficient to manage the symptoms in an outpatient setting. You need continuous monitoring. You need to be somewhere that intervention can happen immediately if another crisis occurs.”
He looked at Alexei. “I really advise it,” he repeated. “Strongly.”
I tightened my arm around Alexei and shook my head wildly. “No. No. I’m not….I won’t…no.”
Alexei caressed my head and whispered, “It’s okay. Calm down.”
Then he looked at the doctor and his voice changed. “He will stay with me.”
The doctor opened his mouth to argue, but Alexei didn’t let him. “You, however, better work fast and hard to find me that heart.”
“It doesn’t work that way. Finding a match is hard. It’s not something that can be rushed—”
Alexei kept talking. I think he was threatening him now, but I stopped listening.
I wanted to go home.
I wanted to lie in his bed and breathe in his smell and feel his heartbeat under my ear and pretend, for a few more days, a few more hours, a few more minutes, that my days weren’t counted.
That I wasn’t ending.
When they were done, Alexei drove me back home and I was grateful he didn’t let them keep me there.
I know my parents wanted to, but if I would be there I’d just be miserable and I didn’t want to be locked in a hospital in my final moments.
I wanted to be with Alexei. And he knew this and respected it.
God, he was perfect.
When we arrived, Alexei helped me out of the car, then we went inside.
I sat on the bed.
He knelt and undid my shoelaces.
I looked down at him. I could see his shoulders were tense.
He was barely eating or sleeping lately.
He seemed fine from an outsider’s perspective, but I know he wasn’t - not just his physical state, but the pain I see behind his eyes is unbearable sometimes.
I wish I could have reached inside him and pulled the pain out with my bare hands.
I hated watching him suffer more than I had ever hated anything.
“I don’t know how to fix it,” I mumbled.
He looked up at me with those green eyes that had been in my dreams since I was a child, and I wanted to protect him.
“Fix what?”
I reached down and caressed his face.
My hand found his cheek, my fingers tracing along his jaw, across the line of his cheekbone, over the scar near his temple that I had noticed the first time I fell in front of him in a hallway and had memorized through months of proximity.
“Your pain…. I don’t know what to do to make it better.”
A tear fell on my cheek.
I see how much he suffers.
How could I miss the evidence of what this was doing to him?
He was suffering because of me and I wish I could have taken his suffering into myself until there was nothing left of it in him.
He held my palm against his cheek and turned his head slightly to kiss it. “I’m okay,” the words were a lie.
“As long as you’re here,” he continued, “I’m okay.”
“And when I won’t be here…?”
What happens to him when there is no me left to come home to?
What happens to all that pain when there is no longer a body for him to hold through it?
What happens to all that love - the immense, all-consuming thing he built around me - when I am no longer here to receive it?
Where will he put it when I’m gone?
“Don’t say that.” His voice changed. It sounded violent. “Ever again,” he continued.
I swallowed. The lump in my throat was so large I couldn’t breathe around it. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
I leaned forward and kissed his head. “I’m sorry,” I said again, against his hair. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry.”
He leaned up and kissed my head in return. His lips pressed against the top of my skull, against the place where my hair parted. “It will be okay.”
It will be okay.
It will be okay.
It will be okay.
It will not be okay.