"Ouch," Warshon chuckled, his voice a wisp of sarcasm.
The girl risked a glance up. "What?"
"You were all smile when Erdem was here. But when it's just us, you look so sad." He feigned hurt, letting out a sigh.
Scouring for a reply, she drew in her chin while nibbling her bottom lip.
"Next time," he went on, "I'll be sure to let him bring you the bad news."
"More bad news?" She sagged a little further, her resolve tinged with doubt, enveloped in the shadow of her own fortitude, her blinking eyes mesmerizing.
It took some effort to subdue the yearning to hold her in his arms. Warshon clenched his hands in his pockets. "You'll be fine," he said. Standing next to her by the treatment table, he flicked a glance at the beeping monitor on standby. "We haven't done the echocardiogram yet, have we? Maybe the myocarditis is mild, and you'll be scampering in no time."
"And what about the pneumonia?" she murmured, her eyes roaming over the print of her CT scan.
Warshon narrowed his gaze, one brow jutting over the other. "You know how to read the CT scan?"
"Wish I didn't but experience is a bitch."
A soft laugh. "How many times have you had it before this one?"
Panic ruffled in those big eyes glittering like emeralds. When she hesitated, he added, "Don't lie, I'm your doctor."
"Six," she spoke in a shaky voice between wheezing breaths, like a child caught red-handed in the middle of mischief.
"And how old are you?"
A simple question, but there was a moment of hesitation, "Twenty-two next month."
Perhaps it was the moment, or perhaps it was the quaver in her voice that gave away her despondence if not guilt, which Warshon always noticed in his patients with chronic conditions. He glided a hand under her chin and held it up to force their eyes to meet. "Listen to me, Mira," he said. "It's not your fault that you're sick."
"But it is." Tears brimmed in her eyes, damping those long lashes, yet she didn't let them fall. "I had the best treatment in the Commonwealth, and I'm still a wreck. Do you know what it's like to stare indefinitely at the ceiling above the recovery bed? It's like reading a damn textbook, so dull, so heavy, and yet a prerequisite, which I must finish reading but never can no matter how hard I try." She choked on a fit of cough.
Warshon backed a step, his breath heavy, fearing that he wouldn't be able to keep himself in check this time, that he would taste the tears in her eyes and share her bitterness. But as he watched her crumble, choking on a fit of cough, he cussed at himself.
Wrapping his arm around her, he put her head to his chest, his other hand patting her on the back. The second her face was shielded from his gaze, the tears she wouldn't let fall with so much stubbornness flooded in a warm gush, dampening his shirt.
He kept quiet and held her while she let it out.
Women cried to exhort and extort, their tears a means to an end. Warshon remembered how his mother used to cry when he was only beginning to read. She cried for him to hate his father, to hate the Qusbecq that was also part of him, and to hate the world that rejected her. She cried when he disobeyed her so he would never forget that everything she had lost was her sacrifice to him. Even Lord Qusbecq was in every bit as despicable as how she had accused him of, Warshon couldn't deny that a small part of him cavorted the day when they took him away from her. And since then he had learned how they all cried when they wanted something. Save one. Guiliana Cafaro. Never had she shed a tear before him, and he thought, really believed, that she was the one. But when she told him that between them, there was nothing. Never had been. Never would be. He shed a tear for her to set himself free.
He glanced up at the ceiling. A textbook, so dull, so heavy, and yet a prerequisite she could never finish reading. What an analogy, he brooded, filled to the brim with despair and yet willful.
He lowered his gaze and stroked her ash brown hair, soft like feathers and disastrously trimmed. Whether it was the first time in the back of his rover or now, he understood her tears that were never meant for an audience but an atavistic snarl from the pit of dire straits answering the call of life. Standing in the way, he happened to bear witness.
"You will finish reading it," he crooned. "I'll help you. I promise."
She sniffed, nudging away as she wiped off her tears with the back of her wrist, "Sorry."
"Nothing you need to apologize for." He pulled a tissue from the dispenser on the desk.
"I, erm, smudged your shirt."
"Tears are just saline water."
"What about snot?" Her voice dwindled.
He laughed. "Then, I'll think of a way for you to make amends. But for now," Grazing her cheek with a thumb, he held her chin up and patted her face dry. "I need you to lie down on your left side."
A little to his surprise, she didn't word another protest but lay in the lateral position he requested while he unbuttoned her shirt, or his shirt which she had been wearing since he took her home. Veins bulged in his hands.
"Relax," he said under his breath. "It's not like I haven't seen everything already if it makes you feel better."
She gaped, her arms raised defensively across her chest, her plump cheeks flushed. "It absolutely does not!"
He grinned, prying her arms apart as he whispered into her ear, "Then, how about this, how about that I find them absolutely adorable?"
Squirming in his grip, she let out a whimper.
He let go and snapped on the vinyl gloves. "It's gonna be a little cold, ok?" Another murmuring cry as he applied the conducting gel on her perky breast and the small nipples the color of toffee cream, his throat dry. His gloved hand halted by the round scar two inches above the nipple on her left. Too engrossed in saving her the first time, he didn't give it much thought. Now he got to look at it, he realized it was a cigar burn, and judging from the size of it, and the irregularity of the skin, she had been burned at the same spot multiple times. His gaze narrowed, roaming between her face and the scar, questions hot on his tongue. He pursed his lips. Swiveling to the monitor, he snatched up the probe. Silence ensued, shrouding the room like a gossamer chipped by the beepings from the ultrasound, his brows drawing close.
"Is it bad?" asked the girl, blinking helplessly, her porcelain smooth skin dappled by the sun slanting through the window.
He eased the frown into a smile, putting away the probe on a tray for sterilization, and peeled off the gloves."You'll live long and prosper, Mira," he said. "A moderate inflammation that's gonna take some time to go away, and that's it. You can handle it." Helping her up, he pulled more tissues and wiped the gel off her, each stroke careful and light.
What happened? He kept his eyes on her scar. Who did this to you? Wishing she'd answer his thoughts, he huffed a long sigh. "Ok, we're all done here." He smiled more. "Now, we just need to give you a blood test, get the medicines you need, and we can get out of here."
She only nodded, her hands busy with the buttons. "And go where?"
"My place." He helped her button up. Upon sensing her reluctance, he added, "Or do you have a better idea for lodging?" When she blushed in reply, he grabbed her waist so thin it evoked tenderness. "Lying on your back in bed or sprawling on your stomach, on the couch, the lawns, the carpets, wherever you like, however you like it, so you don't have to stare at the same, damn ceiling during your IV treatment."
"Why?" Another demur, not much louder than her wheezing breath. "Why are you doing all this?" She fidgeted, her thumbs twiddling with each other as if she didn't know where to put her hands.
"Didn't someone say it wouldn't be good for my karma should I leave her to die?"
"That's not really what I said," Her blinking eyes were fixed on the floor. "Your karma's fine so long as you don't kill me. You don't have to go out of your way to –" Her voice trailed off into a convulsive cough that reddened her cheeks.
He put her hands around his neck, his other arm went under her knees. Lifting her off the treatment table, "Hold tight."