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She’s the wrong colour. That’s the thought that keeps circling through your mind. Her skin is supposed to be bright, it is meant to flush prettily when she’s embarrassed or when kisses are pressed to the elegant arch of her neck. You wonder what else might draw the pink across her skin, you wonder whether you’ll be given the opportunity to find out.
She is the wrong colour.
You look at your hand clasped around hers and press your fingers into her skin to bring the blood closer to the surface. After a while you let go. The bright warm tone you recognise returns. Then it fades back into the dull pale that you’ve been looking at for the past few days.
You ration how often you do that. A few times a day, that’s all. It’s just...she’s the wrong colour and you can’t simply do nothing.
———————
The banging on the door to the hotel room is what woke you. You woke with a start to find her gone. You’d only had her for three nights but already finding her gone wasn’t a total shock. The hotel breakfast is shit and there’s a cafe round the corner that does take away pastries and coffee which she agreed to tolerate. You imagined her sneaking out to bring back breakfast just like yesterday morning.
The banging kept on. You assumed that she’d lost her key card. You sighed and called her a child under your breath.
The banging continued. You kicked off the covers.
“Mrs Baker? Are you there? Could you answer the door please?”
You paused before rationalising that it was unlikely that anyone sent to kill you would knock quite so loudly.
Her mustard...cape thing, or whatever it is, was gone so you pulled on your jeans and a jumper she bought whilst you were out together yesterday. She hasn’t worn it enough to make it smell of her. A shame really.
You opened the door and saw a panicked looking boy in the hotel’s green uniform.
———————
You’ve never thought of her as fragile. You’ve sat above her whilst her blood poured through your fingers, and you’ve held her as she’s cried but you’ve never thought of her as fragile.
Fractured skull.
Shattered pelvis.
Ruptured Spleen.
Collapsed lung.
Those things happen to fragile bodies and that isn’t how you think of her. She scales buildings in high waisted shorts. She slips knives into femoral arteries. She holds your whole body weight against hotel room walls because she can’t bear another moment without touching you.
She is not fragile.
So when a Doctor explains all those things you want to laugh. You almost do. Instead you nod solemnly and allow yourself to be lead into the ward.
She’s smaller than you remember her being despite having seen her last night. Memory can be a tricky thing. In the few days since the bridge you’ve seen her silliness and her temper. You’ve seen her cry and laugh and sulk. But what you see here is the most surprising of all; she is a human after all, just as fragile as anyone else.
———————
The carpet in the hotel corridor slipped under your feet.
The lift was slow.
The boys face was white.
You didn’t panic. That was a surprise, you are a panicker by nature but you were very calm.
The sun was out, it was going to be such a nice day.
There were people in the lobby and people in the street.
She was in the road.
———————
There’s a family who come every day to sit with a man who hasn’t woken up once since you’ve been here. A mother, a wife and two children. The girl reads out a T S Elliot poem, one that they performed in Cats. She’s learning it for school. The boy plays on his phone.
No one comes to visit her. Just you. It’s probably how she’d prefer it.
The nurses brush her hair wrong. You braid it as best you can. You watch YouTube videos and think that maybe you’re getting better.
It’s been two weeks. They don’t let you sleep at the hospital and the hotel continues to charge her credit card. So you come here at 9am and leave twelve hours later.
One day the man is gone and you don’t see the family again.
———————
You thought she was going to say it again.
The hair near her temple was slightly damp with sweat and your fingers gently traced the skin near her hairline as her head weighed heavily on your chest.
Maybe she felt your tension because in the end she didn’t say it.
It happened again over breakfast the next morning. She bacon was cold, the egg whites were runny and the coffee was terrible. You laughed at her outrage, and you watched it drain out of her as she laughed with you. You thought it would come then, the two of you giggling together over a shitty breakfast. She caught your hand in hers and dragged you out of the restaurant and back to the room.
You thought she might do it the night she cried. She told you about her mother who was cruel but not evil, the family that was brash but not terrible, all slaughtered in her rage. The brothers she felt something for, left behind. You said nothing, and wiped her tears. You thought it would happen then, she opened her mouth and you kissed her instead.
So yeah, you thought she would try and say it again.
You never thought about whether it ought to have been your turn.
———————
The longer this nothingness goes on the worse her chances. That’s what you know from TV, it is backed up by endless google searches.
You watch the machines, you watch the line as it peaks and troughs. Every dip pulling her further away.
She’s stable they say. You want to laugh again. When has a doctor ever described her as that?
You imagine telling her. She’d pretend to be offended at your teasing. You’d tease her again. She’d sulk. Despite yourself you’d find it cute.
You wonder if she can hear you. You wonder if you should tell her about it. You could whisper it in her ear. Maybe she’d hear, maybe it would push her body to fight harder.
You press a kiss to her hand because the words don’t come.
———————
When she was pulled out of the ambulance on a gurney, you trailed along behind.
Her blood was on your hands. Someone offered to wash them for you and you told them to fuck off. Her blood belonged to you and no one was going to take it from you.
You sat in the waiting room and thought about Paris. Thats the sort of death she deserved, slain by her nemesis in an apartment that was so fucking chic. Or perhaps killed in some sort of ridiculous super human shoot out.
She isn’t supposed to be hit by a car.
This woman who burns like phosphorous in the dim of your quiet little life doesn’t deserve a death as prosaic as this.
You made a list of all the ways you might like her to die. Weirdly it helped.
You thought about whether you’d rather neither of you had turned. You could be back making dumplings and she could be swanning around some beautiful European city, she’d be sad but alive at least.
You’ve always been a selfish asshole and in that moment you were no different. You couldn’t give up those last few days, even if it meant losing her. Your love has never been selfless and you couldn’t imagine ever willingly giving up the sound of light snoring behind you, or an arm draped lightly over your waist.
You watched how the waiting room was a game show. Quick chats in a corridor before being ushered away to loved ones for the winners, and longer discussions behind closed doors for the losers.
You waited.
You wondered what you’d do if she died. You drew a blank and decided to stop thinking about it.
You continued your list from earlier, for some reason pondering the manner of her death was much easier than thinking about what you might do after it. You added death by crossbow during a chase on horseback.
The doctors came back and called out for Mrs Baker. You forgot that was meant to be you and you sat for a further hour before they worked out who you were.
———————
They remove the ventilator and she breathes on her own.
They tell you that it doesn’t mean what you think it does.
They tell you about long term care pathways.
You stop listening.
Eventually they leave you with her and draw the curtains around her bed. You google what they were talking about.
It’s been weeks but it’s the first time that you cry.
———————
The first time was awkward.
You were nervous, worse still, so was she. It took a few tries for the two of you to work out what each other needed.
“I’m actually really good at this, you just make me nervous.” She whispered.
You smiled and kissed her again, it didn’t matter, you had forever to figure it out.
———————
You should have told her. Just once.
You could have whispered it when you danced. You could have told her on the bridge before she turned. You could have told her after. You could have told her when she lay on your chest. You could have kissed her in the lobby of the hotel and whispered the words into her hungry mouth. You could have told her straight to her face when she told you what happened in Russia. You could have whispered the words into her ear every day that you’ve both been here.
You’ve done none of those things.
She’s meant to be the psychopath but she’s the brave one with that sort of thing really. Recklessly telling someone that is trying to kill them that she really likes them? Untimely declarations of love even as you walked away from her?
You can’t even find the words for her now.
Your love doesn’t look like hers. You don’t have her words and clarity, or that still unextinguished hope that you always saw behind her eyes.
What you do have is weeks of your life sat next to a body in a bed. Perhaps she’s not still in there at all, but you’ve waited regardless.
You brush hair across her forehead and tuck a lost strand behind her ear. You think about how she might have wanted her life to look. You bet she’d have given you a different answer than she did in Paris if you’d have asked whilst cocooned in your hotel room together. She’d have said something hokey, something about just wanting you. You’d have rolled your eyes at her ridiculous sentimentality, and stored the words away inside you like closely guarded treasures.
Whatever she might have answered before it would never have been the future awaiting her now. You won’t let her linger on. You’ve got a week or so left before she’s due to be moved. So you’ll do it before then.
You open the notes app on your phone and review the list you made all those weeks ago.
This is when you first start to talk to her. You tell her about feeding her to pigs. You tell her about the crossbows on horseback. You tell her about making love and a knife pressed into her heart. Finally you tell her about being with her at the end and a pillow over her mouth.
Again it makes you feel better.
You kiss her cheek and don’t say the words.
You plan to do it in a few days.
It’s past 9pm and no one has moved you on, you take advantage of their pity and move the awful, torture worthy chair next to where her head rests on the bed.
You hope that she would understand that this is the best way that you know how to love her.
———————
You wake in the artificial light of the ward.
There’s a hand in your hair.
Her skin is still the wrong colour.
That sickening hope still lingers in her gaze.
Her voice is all wrong when she says it but you’ll keep this sound forever.
“Hi, Eve.”
———————
You’ll tell her about it years later.
You’ll tell her over a risotto which you won’t have watched well enough to prevent it congealing into a grey mushroomey mess.
You’ll tell her about the waiting room, you’ll tell her about how plotting a far more exciting end for her helped you to cope.
You’ll tell her that you cried just once.
You’ll tell her about the families that came and disappeared.
Finally you’ll tell her that you were going to stay with her until the last moment, that you were going to do it yourself.
She’ll look at you and know what you were trying to tell her back then whilst she lay in that bed and you waited and held her hand. It’s as true now as it was then. For you love isn’t about words and prayers and hope, for you it is staying by her side despite knowing that at its simplest love always means watching someone die.