The Tearsmith, page 51
‘I want…my Band-Aids.’
The woman looked at me, taken aback, not knowing what to say. She blinked a few times, not understanding.
‘You don’t need them,’ she repeated, maybe wondering whether my senseless request was just a consequence of shock.
After I had lost my mind, shouting and scratching and tearing the IV drip away, the nurses on the ward had kept looking at me warily.
The woman seemed very relieved when someone else came in. She turned slowly and disappeared, forcing me to open my eyes.
But I wished I hadn’t.
The air froze around me, trapping the saliva in my throat.
Lionel was warily coming in, invading the room. His eyes were haggard and his lips bitten, devoured by stress. That was all I could see, because my eyes mechanically moved away from him to the wall.
I wanted to stop him, to tell him not to come any closer, but I realised that my throat was so tight I couldn’t make a sound. He stopped next to my bed and more than ever I smarted from how powerless I felt.
For what seemed like an eternity he sat next to me, in a silence he didn’t know how to break.
‘I know I’m probably the last person you want to see.’
He couldn’t even look at Rigel. The idea that he was lying behind him, hanging on to life by a thread, made my stomach twist like a cigarette being stubbed out.
‘I…I hear you spoke to a police officer. I know that…you told him it was an accident. I wanted to thank you for telling the truth.’
I stared numbly off to one side. Lionel kept trying to meet my eyes, as if urgently seeking atonement.
‘Nica…’ he whispered imploringly, reaching for my hand. ‘I never wan—’
He jumped as I forcefully jerked my arm away. The tubes of the IV drip flashed and I looked up at him, my eyes wide and white-hot like never before. My hands shook as with a glacial slowness I enunciated, ‘You cannot touch me again.’
Lionel looked at me, hurt by my unexpected reaction.
‘Nica, I didn’t want this,’ his voice was a remorseful lament. ‘Believe me, I’m sorry…I shouldn’t have said those things to you…I wasn’t myself…and the punch, Nica, I promise I never wanted to hit you…’ He looked at the capillary he had burst in my eye and bit his lip, looking down.
He still couldn’t look at Rigel.
‘I won’t tell anyone. About the two of you…’
‘It doesn’t matter any more,’ I breathed.
‘Nica…’
‘No,’ I whispered, inconsolable. ‘Nothing matters any more. I thought you were my friend. My friend, Lionel…do you even know what that means, friendship?’
My voice was unrecognisable, an icy hiss.
This wasn’t me. I was always gentle and tender. I had a smile for every occasion. There were crystals of wonder set in my eyes and my fingers were always covered in colourful Band-Aids.
But in that moment, I was the result of a tale torn in two.
The result of a birthday present shattered next to an ice cream kiosk. Of fleeing from a party. Of shuddering gasps of fear when his hands had grabbed me. Of the disappointment that had stung my heart when he spat out all his disgust and anger and threatened to condemn us.
No, this wasn’t me.
Parched, ashy pages scratched my throat as I said, ‘I would have forgiven you for everything. Everything…but not this.’
I knew it wasn’t his fault. And yet, looking back on the sequence of events that had started with a little snail, I wondered if Lionel had ever cared for me with the pure and unconditional selflessness that I had felt towards him.
‘Leave.’
He swallowed his distress.
It was true that I had a moth-like heart.
It was true that I pursued the light until I got burnt, because what I had gone through as a child had broken me, beyond repair. But even though the most ruined parts of my soul tried to persuade my eyes to meet his, nothing could convince me to forgive him.
He had torn away half of my soul.
Lionel pursed his lips, and tried to say something that wilted away into silence. There was nothing he could say that could bring back what he had taken from me.
In the end, defeated, he lowered his face. He turned and slowly walked away. I called after him.
‘Lionel.’
I lifted my faded eyes and finally met his gaze. ‘When you walk out that door, don’t ever come back.’
He swallowed in dismay and threw me one last look. And then he left.
Not even then did he look at Rigel.
Maybe, people like Lionel can never see reality’s true colours. They don’t have the courage to face the truth, to see it inside themselves.
Even if they did everything in their power to bring out the darkest shades, if they tore and scratched to let the ink spill out.
In the end, all they can do is walk away, not brave enough even for one last glance.
* * *
—
It was difficult to eat.
I never had an appetite, and sometimes I left the trays they brought me untouched. Anna tried to encourage me to eat, but there was a discomfort in her gaze that made all her efforts fruitless.
I could see it in her eyes that evening too, as she helped me to get into a position in which my cracked ribs wouldn’t hurt.
‘How’s that?’ she asked. ‘Does that hurt?’
I shook my head, almost imperceptibly.
After a while, Anna put her hand on my face and I looked up. I saw a trembling, sorrowful love in her eyes.
She caressed me for an extremely long moment. She examined every inch of my face, and I sensed what she was going to say before she said it.
‘I thought I’d lost you too.’
She looked in my eyes and the furrow in her brow deepened.
‘For a moment…I thought you’d vanish like Alan.’
She tried to hold herself together, but couldn’t stop her eyes brimming with tears. She lowered her face, squeezing my hand in her lap.
‘I don’t know what I would have done…without your sweet smile. I don’t know how I would have managed, not finding you in the kitchen in the morning, saying hello, looking at me like you do. I don’t know what I would have done without your happy face reminding me that it’s a lovely day even when it rains, or that there’s always a reason to overcome sadness. I don’t know what I would have done without you…without my Nica…’
Her voice broke and I felt her breaking through the numbness inside of me.
I moved my free hand to put it on hers, which was warm and trembling.
Anna looked up and I saw in that sky I loved so much the reflection of my tearful eyes.
‘You are the sun,’ she whispered, looking at me like a mother. ‘You’ve become my little sun…’
I wrapped my arm around her as tears streamed down her exhausted face. Anna desperately held me close to her and I closed my eyes, cradled like a child.
Our hearts laden with sorrow, burning together like a single flame, I shared the sobs shaking her chest, and she shared mine.
Like mother and daughter. United. Close.
Anna tilted her head and her eyes slid to the side. She looked at Rigel with the same desperate love that she showed for me. Then…she pulled away and looked me in the eyes, in that deep and knowing way that adults have. No, actually…that only mothers have.
And I realised. There, in the silence of the hospital, I realised that she knew.
In that instant, my heart collapsed like a house of cards.
‘I didn’t know how to tell you…’ I whispered, annihilated. ‘I couldn’t…I didn’t know how to show you that lying to you broke my heart. You’re the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me…I was scared of losing you.’
Hot streams of tears rolled down my cheeks. I was in pieces.
‘My heart was torn in two. I waited for you for so long, Anna, longer than you can imagine, but Rigel…Rigel is everything I have. Everything. And now he…’ I wiped my bony wrist over my eyes, burning with tears.
Anna hugged me but said nothing. Even she knew there was something unbreakable in the bond between us.
And yet…she didn’t make me feel wrong.
‘Rigel told me,’ she whispered, and something in my heart jammed like a rusty gear. I trembled in disbelief, overcome with confusion. All I could do was hug her tighter and wait for her to continue.
‘I know now that he would never have told me if he had any other choice. He knew that otherwise I would never have agreed to what he asked me. He…wanted you to have a family, more than anything.’
Anna held my face and looked for my eyes, only to find them lowered above my trembling, chewed lips. She leant her forehead against mine, holding me until I stopped crying.
‘The doctor didn’t tell you because he didn’t want to give you false hope,’ she whispered after a while. ‘But…he told me that hearing the voices of loved ones can sometimes help.’
I lifted my dull eyes and she continued. ‘It stimulates the consciousness, he says, and the long-term memory. None of us would have the power to make a difference. But you…’ Anna looked down and swallowed. ‘You have that power. He might hear you.’
That night, when the hospital fell as silent as a sanctuary, my heart was still quivering. For I don’t know how long, Anna’s words carved channels within me, echoing through my despairing mind.
I stared into the darkness. The only thing I could make out was an immense void that made every breath meaningless.
He was there, a few steps away. And yet…he had never been so distant.
‘You wanted to leave,’ I whispered into the darkness.
He didn’t move. I could hardly see him, but I would have been able to trace the outline of his face even with my eyes closed.
‘You wanted to leave without saying anything to me…because you knew that I would have done anything to stop you. You knew that I wouldn’t have let you.’ I stared at him blankly. ‘We have to stay together. But maybe that’s always been the difference between me and you. I’ve always deluded myself. But you…never have.’
My throat closed slowly, but I didn’t take my eyes off him. I felt something inside, pushing to escape.
‘The rose was yours,’ I continued. ‘You tore it to pieces because you didn’t want me to understand. You’ve always been scared I’d see you for what you are…But you were wrong,’ I whispered, my voice breaking. ‘I see you, Rigel. And my only regret…is not having been able to sooner.’
I didn’t want to feel tears burning my eyes again, but it was inevitable.
‘I wish you’d let me understand you…but every time you pushed me far away. I always thought you couldn’t quite trust me, that you couldn’t give me a chance…It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t me you didn’t give a chance to, but yourself.’
I clenched my eyes shut.
‘You’re unfair, Rigel.’
There was a silent earthquake trembling inside me, and everything became harsh and boiling.
‘You’re unfair,’ I accused him through my tears. ‘You’ve never had the right to make decisions for me…to keep me far away. And now you’re about to leave me again…Always alone, even at the end. But I won’t let you,’ I insisted. ‘You hear me? I won’t let you!’
I tore the bedcovers away. I reached my hand out towards his immobile body, burning with desperation when I realised he was out of reach.
I slipped off the mattress, and my feet shook as they touched the floor. My ankle hurt, stiff and swollen, and I gripped the bar of the bed as hard as I could, but it was a pathetic gamble. My legs gave way and I collapsed to the ground, falling on my free forearm with a searing pain. My cracked ribs screamed under my flesh and a rush of pain took my breath away.
I couldn’t imagine what people would think of me, if they saw me then. I was a pitiful spectacle, pressing my lips together, tears splashing onto the tiled floor. But in some way or another, I managed to find the strength to crawl to his bed.
I took his hand and struggled to pull it towards me. I held it, as he had held mine so many times, in that dark cellar when we were children.
‘Don’t leave me alone again,’ I begged, on my knees, my eyes ruined by tears. ‘Please, don’t…Don’t go where I can’t follow you. Let me stay next to you. Let me love you for who you are. Let’s stay together forever, because I can’t stand a world where you’re not with me. I want to believe, Rigel…I want to believe that there’s a fairy tale where the wolf holds the girl’s hand. Stay with me and we’ll write it together…Please…’
I pressed my forehead against his hand, bathing his knuckles in tears.
‘Please…’ I repeated, my voice twisted with sobs.
I don’t know how long I stayed there, wishing I could meld with his soul.
But something changed that night.
If it was true that he could hear me…
I would give him everything I had.
The next day I asked the nurses to no longer close the curtain that separated me from Rigel. Not in the morning nor the evening: at every moment, I wanted to be able to see the face of the boy in the bed next to me.
When Anna arrived at the hospital, she didn’t find me with dull eyes and a blank expression as she had the previous days.
No.
When she arrived, I was already awake, sat up in bed, my gaze alert and attentive.
‘Hello,’ I greeted her, before she could say anything.
She stared at me in surprise, blinking, and when I realised Adeline was with her, a wave of warmth softened my gaze.
‘Hi,’ I said quietly. Speechless, she glanced at Anna and then looked back at me with a heartfelt expression.
‘Hi…’
A little later, as she braided my hair, I ate a spoonful of apple sauce.
* * *
—
Relentlessly, the days went by, one by one. As my medical situation stabilised, I spent every free moment making sure Rigel might hear me.
I read him books and stories, tales of the sea. I read whatever Anna brought me, and my words accompanied the silence until evening fell.
Doctor Robertson came by regularly to check on me. He looked at the book I was holding, and when his eyes moved to Rigel, the world suddenly stopped and I felt a suffocating hope take my breath away.
I froze and stared at the doctor with a burning hunger, as if he might glimpse in that immobile body some detail that others hadn’t been able to see. Some movement…or reaction…anything that could catch his professional attention.
Each time, when Doctor Robertson left, my heart ached so much that I had to bite my lips so as not to ruin the pages of the book with my fingernails.
The darkness of the previous days was fading.
I had asked them to always keep the curtains open so that Rigel could sense the sky. Or so that I could see it for him, and tell him about it.
‘It’s raining today,’ I told him one morning, looking out the window. ‘The sky is glistening…It’s like a sheet of metal, dripping water.’ Then I remembered something, and meekly added, ‘Like when it used to happen at The Grave. Do you remember? The other children would say it’s the colour of my eyes…’
As always, my words were met with no response. Sometimes that silence stirred in me a desire so absurd that I imagined I could hear him reply. Other times, the suffering was so heavy that it seemed like a battle I could never win.
And the more time passed…the more the hopes that he would wake diminished.
The more the days relentlessly went by, the more my frustration seemed like a venom that took away my hunger and the flesh off my bones.
Billie and Miki tried their hardest to stay with me, and Anna sought out countless ways to comfort me – she brought me the mulberry jam I so loved and sometimes she pushed me around the ward in a wheelchair.
One day, the nurse called her and she left me for a moment next to the coffee machine, promising she’d be right back. She must have been frightened when she came back and didn’t find me where she had left me. She looked all over the ward for me, worried to death, and it was only when she passed by our room that the panic gripping her throat finally lifted. I was there, next to Rigel’s bed, my hand on his, my shoulders hidden by the back of the wheelchair.
‘You have to eat,’ she whispered, after throwing away the Melba toast with jam that I had refused to touch. I didn’t reply, trapped in an impenetrable world of my own, and all Anna could do was lower her face, vanquished by my silence.
She helped me wash. As I unbuttoned my shirt, in the bathroom mirror I saw all the sharp edges of my body, evidence of the loss of all the lifeforce I had tried to transmit to Rigel. If there was a price to be paid to give him all I had, it was in the dark circles that encroached on my protruding cheekbones.
I couldn’t sleep at night. Wrapped up in the bedsheets, I counted the sharp beeps of Rigel’s heartbeat, the only sound in the darkness, praying I wouldn’t hear them stop. I was crushed, suffocated by the terror of falling asleep and no longer hearing that sound when I woke up.
When the nurses noticed the stress on my face, they gave me drugs to help me sleep, but I persistently struggled against them, bringing my body close to exhaustion.
‘You can’t go on like this,’ Doctor Robertson said to me one evening, when I had reached my limit.
I was verging on a breakdown, and my healing progress had taken a terrifyingly sudden dip.
‘You need to eat more and rest, Nica. You won’t get better if you don’t sleep.’
He looked at me, dwarfed under the bedsheets, as slender and frail as a chrysalis. He seemed to have reached the end of his tether.
‘Why? Why are you struggling against the drugs to sleep? What are you fighting?’
