Chapter 3
She was here. Really here, standing in his dimly lit, over-sanitary home, drenched in rain, but bright. One year without sun. And now she had returned.
"It's... been a while. How have you been?" she said.
Her voice was still quiet, but some of its former shyness had subsided. Damir was certain that this voice had now become accustomed to being raised to answer difficult questions asked by professors, to have conversations with new friends, perhaps to order coffee with them, or even more. He knew she would be silent, perhaps only in studying...
"Damir, is everything alright?"
The concern was familiar.
"Fine. Just fine," came Damir's quiet reply. Over these past few years, he'd learned not only how to obscure himself from the world, but how to deceive it. Her voice pierced through his twisting, storm-cloud thoughts. She would detect any dishonesty from him. But how could he possibly tell her the honest truth now?
"Are you sure?" Amira replied, her voice now as quiet as it once was. Gentle. Far too gentle. Outside, thunder rolled.
“Yes, I’m sure,” he said.
His gaze was fixed upon her, the very sight of her threatening to blind him, burn him, threatening to shove his darkness from the inside out.
Another pair of headlights from outside the window interrupted. A car door opened and shut. A woman approached the door, and Damir met her there.
“Hello, Damir,” the woman said, her smile never betraying an ounce of the weariness that he knew was in her heart. She politely nodded at his company. He never wanted to let Amira into this world, the one where he, his father, and this woman, a former friend of his parents, and now caregiver, were left to an empty, clean house to forget what life once was before.
Privacy was something his father rarely had. And the triadic family of sorts ached with the grave knowledge they all held, the loss they shared, and the one they were facing now. The pervasive melancholy that consumed them, their grim anticipation, their desperate attempts at preparation. Death loomed in this house. This was why the woman came, for comfort, for care, but the end would come.
“He’s in his room. Sleeping. He shouldn’t need anything until he wakes up,” Damir said. The woman nodded, and entered the hallway to his father’s room, as if she were merely visiting her friend to have a chat. As if this was not a place where grief rose every morning like a thick fog.
He glanced at Amira briefly, and then the hallway. They stood in silence, without the need for explanation.
"You don't have to stay," Damir said, his voice being only slightly louder than a whisper. He found his gaze meeting hers, gauging her focus, wondering if he could perceive her thoughts as he once could. If she could perceive his.
"It's alright," she replied, her volume reflecting his. Her eyes meeting his.
"Okay. Well... you could... come with me, if you want."
"Sure. Besides, I haven't seen your father in a long time," she said.
"Alright. Would you mind taking off your coat and shoes, then?"
Amira complied, and Damir began the familiar trek down the hall, different now with the even, youthful, yet cautious, steps of the young woman behind him.
Amira and his father had only met once. But that time, just under a year ago, had been significant in her life, as Damir recalled. And it was later significant for his family, as well. It was nearly directly after this event that his father's health began to decline once again.
And not even three months afterward, he had been forced to face her absence.
Damir opened the door as he had many times before, to the sight he had seen many times before. The frequency of hurricanes hitting a particular location, however, would likely never make a community entirely prepared for the next devastating storm. Within it, a hospital bed, among all the mechanisms necessary for his father's current care, surrounded the frail man himself. Passing through that door from the hall was like entering an eternal, dreary, dusk. Not even the subdued, sunset-shades of light reflecting through the room could fool one into believing that it was anything other than what it was. His father remained asleep, caregiver by his side. She had already prepared for his waking, the sliver of irrational hope never leaving her weary eyes.
There were clear differences from this room and an actual hospital room, however, to Damir and his father's relief. The lighting was not nearly as sharp, and the chairs near his bed had been moderately used at one point or another in one of their homes an indefinite amount of years ago, before being rudely and suddenly displaced from the comfortable garage, into this forlorn chamber.
Damir did not dare to allow himself a glimpse of Amira's expression at this time. His father was paler than light itself, fragile and desolate, it was not difficult to imagine her thoughts at this time. He could only hope that he was not harming her by bringing her here. By letting her into this world once again. He stood at the side of his father, trying his hardest not to recall the last time he appeared to desire the breaths that sustained his life.
Trying his hardest not to recall the reason behind it. Prior loss. The direct cause of this illness, the reason he now represented breathing mortality. She who had once sustained them.
Tissue of all sorts, muscle and nerves, bones, coordinated themselves to reach another construction of nerves, bones and muscle, of tissue, voluntary movement coordinated by the secret knowledge and fear of the affections. One of the young man's hands reached her whose whose light was more than . The other hand met his father's. The caregiver took the man's other hand.
A long while they stood this way, before being seated. Until every breath was heard, the man's and the three around him. Until they knew, in great certainty, that this was not an ordinary sleep. The caregiver stood only to reach for her cellphone, whispering words of distress to paramedics. Her eyes matched the clouds outside. Amira had her gaze fixed on the farthest wall. Distant like he'd once seen her before. And his father breathed strangely, as he didn't wake to whatever the caregiver tried while remaining on the phone...
It was familiar. All of it familiar. The hurricane winds twisted within and wiped out all the homes and all the lives that once existed. And back at the beginning he stood.
