by J. M.
I had to make her look at me. “Dana, damn it!” I shook her and pulled her around to face me. “Rest! You’re stronger than Laurie.”
“Maybe I got less poison than her. No. Oh, no.” Her cool back fell away from me, against my hands, and I lowered her to the deck, the way Rennie had Laurie. “Horst, I…I really am getting weak. You know about this stuff. My nervous system, my muscles? Is that it? It starts in the legs, and then…”
“Dana, you’re not dying! You’ve got to conserve yourself! We’ll get you back to the dock and get you treated!”
“Maybe I’m just sick,” she whispered. “Make me breathe. Rub me, something—it’s hard to feel.”
“Hang on, baby!”
“I can’t believe I’m leaving you, Horst. It’s swallowing me.”
“No—”
“Don’t forget me, okay?”
“Don’t let it—”
“Just pretend. These are the last things we’ll say to each other, just pretend—”
“No. No!” I flailed myself back into my chair. There was something potent, ripe, forgotten: the rest of the drink that had killed Mr. Hamlet. I rolled to it and snatched it off the deck. Half my soul wasn’t enough to live. Oscar pawed at me—
Another pair of iron-like arms braced my shoulders and neck from behind. I stretched my arm out, holding the bottle away from the hand creeping down along my bicep, my elbow. My wheelchair whirled, I curled the bottle into my belly. Dana’s wet hair lashed my neck and her lips were hot on my ear. “Don’t!” Her strength was an iron cloak, mine was a shriveled husk. Crumbling away, was I sick, was I the one who was slowly transforming? I was tilting and rolling in my chair, Dana’s bare arms pinning me—like the fairings and shafts of my motorcycle that day, shock, my tissues and organs fossilizing, Christ. With my elbows fused, I shifted the bottle to my other hand and butted my head forward—she hung on me. “No no no, Horst! I need you! I need you now!” The bottle popped away from me and bounced along the deck—another pair of hands, I couldn’t see whose, grabbed it and launched it high in the air. It clunked back onto the deck. It was too much, finally, too much—for Dana. My arms and shoulders worked free as she slid off my back. She lay next to my chair panting. She raised her arm—God, was she going to pin me again?—and hooked her fingers through mine. “I need you, Horst! Please, please don’t think about that!”
The bottle rolled to within inches of my wheel. Just lean forward—I launched out of my chair and flung myself on Dana. She groaned as I shifted her to wrap my arms around and underneath her. “Dana!”
Her head rested on my arm and she looked into my eyes. “Not yet,” she said weakly. “Just for a minute longer.” She took a long, shallow breath, her chest swelling against me. She barely moved her lips. “It’s the last time I’ll be selfish with you, Horst. I want to die in your world, not mine.”
What was she asking of me? What should I do? My world was a wasteland now. But I wouldn’t tell her that. All I could manage was her name again, as I poured the embers of my hopes and dreams from my eyes into hers. “Dana.”
She lifted her head laboriously; her lips brushed my ear. “Talk to me,” she breathed.
I loosened my arms to look back at her, and I felt myself liquefy in her beauty like the first time I saw her. That beautiful face with the wide brown eyes and shadowy lashes filling the world. Moving out, her slender shape and graceful limbs. She gasped softly, her mouth opened. My darling, wretched Dana. I cradled her against my chest and whispered. “Good night, princess.”
She sighed through a small and fleeting smile, then relaxed. Her arms dropped away from me, her lids fell shut, and she went limp and lifeless.
But it wasn’t enough. There had to be more than a moment of peace on earth for Dana, and more than a wish I alone had cherished. Dana and I had grown up together. Together, we had left childhood and entered the world of doubt. The blue air spread beyond us endlessly—where was she now? Did she have any share of the heaven we once believed in? Was she watching me, seeing my secrets? Was she still needing me? If my words and wishes could calm an agitated soul, if the most beautiful and innocent parts of the faith we had lost could be true, I owed her something more. I held her still-warm body and bent over her face, her sealed eyes wet with the tears that fell from mine, and said:
“May choirs of angels sing you to your rest.”
THE END
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