Chapter Text
Since I started working with Shirley, what is it? Five years now professionally, or fifteen years if you count our first case at the age of ten? I’ve been no stranger to threats and even the odd abduction. No matter how carefully I follow her advice on getting away from someone and/or making their car crash to avoid being taken to someone’s house, there’s always someone who’ll put you in the back of a van, or handcuff you (I’m not as good as Shirley at getting those undone), or something. It can really put my study schedule behind, ngl, but I did agree to help her with cases while in school. And she always puts her cases on hold in exam season.
So here I am, just finished Pathology, being forced by two guys at gunpoint into some out-of-the-way house. I’m not worried – well, to be accurate, I’m not as worried as I could be – because I had time to turn on the GPS alert that goes to both Shirley and Gregson. Gregson knows I don’t turn that thing on unless it’s a genuine emergency, and they know to send help at once, so unless these guys want to murder me immediately – which wouldn’t make sense, or they’d have gunned me down in the street – I should be able to hold out for the time it takes him to get here. Gregson’s cool. It’s rare to find a bigshot captain of detectives who listens. They do, and that’s why I’ll take them over Lestrad any day.
“In here.” The guy waves me in with his gun. I take a moment to wonder what my life has become that this is routine. I push open the door and step into the room.
The first thing I see is Shirley. She’s seated in a wooden chair with her wrists cuffed to its arms. She’s looking her usual calm, collected self. But when I walk in, her eyes widen, and when she sees Firearm Guys behind me, she lets out a shout. “Hey!” She’s not talking to me.
Tearing my eyes away from her, I look around the room. There’s some bigshot in an expensive suit leaning back against a desk, his hands in his pockets. He’s flanked by a pair of big, dark-suited bodyguards in sunglasses. Ya Allah, bodyguard chic is so cliché. I avoid rolling my eyes with difficulty. Assuming the guys behind me are gang members or muscle or something too, there’s a total of four hostiles in the room, not counting Bigshot. Well – not Bigshot – this must be Rossiter Owens, the real-estate fraudster with one too many collapsing buildings and a girlfriend who was willing to spill the beans about him if she and her kid got into witness protection. Shirley knows where the girlfriend is, and no prizes for guessing why they’ve brought us here. From the way Shirley yanks at her handcuffs – darn, that’ll just hurt her hands, it won’t serve any purpose! Why is she being illogical? – from the way she yanks at her handcuffs, she’s figured it out too. But more than that, she’s scared. That makes me uneasy. Shirley is hardly ever scared.
“What do you want with her?” she sneers. “I told you I work alone.”
“Little birdie told us different,” says Firearm Guy #1. I take a moment to assess his posture. It’s confident, relaxed, but also in control, in a way the bodyguards aren’t. Has some authority to give orders, then. Not a boss, but perhaps high up in the security chain of command.
“Yeah, well, your birdie is wrong,” Shirley retorts. I can see what she’s doing and it’s actually quite smart – trying to convince them of my uselessness as a hostage. Except most probably these dudes have background information, but she’s doing the best she can with what she has. I’m not sure what part I should play here. Innocent Victim Knowing Nothing? I’m not sure I can pull that off. I decide to at least not hide my fear, looking apprehensively between Owens and his men. (Always men. Shirley would make ten times the security officer they are. Maybe it’s because women know better than to keep their mouths shut and blindly follow orders.)
“You gonna tell us you don’t know her?” asks Firearm Guy #1, smirking. “Go on, I’d like to see it.”
“Of course I know her,” Shirley snaps. “She works with me. But she doesn’t know anything. She’s nobody.” Gee, thanks, Shirley, I can’t help snarking in my head. But I know what she’s trying to do. It’s weird that it still stings. She’s nobody. Well, ouch.
“Yeah? Word is you care about her,” Firearm Guy #2 says. Firearm Guy #1 looks at him like he’s annoyed his friend stole his thunder.
“Yeah, right.” Shirley has noticed the cracks in their unified façade too. “It’s not too late to turn state’s evidence when the cops get here. You really wanna go down with the sinking ship?”
“For someone who claims my ship is sinking,” Owens speaks for the first time, “you seem to be in a vulnerable position.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Shirley says rudely.
“I did hear you were antisocial,” Owens says calmly.
“Asocial, cretin. Get it right.”
I stare. I know better than to say anything, but it sounds like she’s doing her best to rile him up. Trying to get him angry? To slip up? Or trying to fill the time till Gregson gets here? She must know I’ve alerted them, she must know they're on the way.
He tuts. “Shirley. You’re making me glad you’re in my power.”
“That’s Ms. Bones to you.”
Owens gestures to his goons. Firearm Guy #1 sits me down in a chair and ties my wrists and elbows to the arms, making sure there’s no rope covering my forearms. Then he ties my ankles to the chair-legs as well while Firearm Guy #2 keeps us covered with his weapon.
I swallow. I can’t deny I’m scared: my chest feels like there’s a block of ice replacing my lungs and heart. We’ve been through things like this before, but I haven’t been tied up this tightly or rendered quite so helpless. I can’t help thinking I was right never to tell Ammi or Naveed about this side of the work. They’d lose their minds and be on my case morning, noon and night to quit working with Shirley. Farooq is cool – well – he isn’t exactly cool with it, but he’s as okay as he can be with his baby sis getting into danger.
“I think Shirley’s right.” I’m looking Firearm Guy #2 straight in the eyes. “Turning state’s evidence is your only way out now.”
“That’s not even convincing, Camilla,” Owens says. Ya Allah, he’s so patronizing. I wanna smack him. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Shirley opening her mouth to correct him, then she closes it again. Yeah, won’t help your case claiming I’m nobody if you get riled up about someone mispronouncing my name.
Firearm Guys move out of the way and Big Idiot Bodyguard comes up to me, taking up a position on my left side. In his hand is a flexible length of rubber tubing that looks thick and heavy and my breath catches in my chest. His eyes are already focused on my forearm and it doesn’t take a genius to deduce he’s gonna hit me with it. You better have a way out of this, Shirley, I think. Then I immediately regret it. This isn’t Shirley’s fault: it’s their doing. And by the blind panic in her face, I can see that none of her deductions prepared her for this. I’d feel bad for her if I wasn’t getting ready to be hit with a rubber hose.
“You ever hear the term ‘rubber-hose cryptography’, Shirley?” Owens says conversationally. “Instead of breaking the code for a password or information, you just use a rubber hose to get the person to tell you what you need.”
“Use it, you dirty coward,” Shirley snarls. Huh, I’ve never seen her so worked up before. “You’re too scared to use it on me, huh? Had to get one of my secretaries because you won’t touch me.” Secretary. Ouch, but okay, so that’s her way of telling me my role in this charade. Got it.
“Oh, I can touch you.” Owens’ face shifts somehow and just for a moment, I get a glimpse of the snake behind the urbane façade. There’s no mistaking his meaning and I almost retch. Thinking of someone doing that to Shirley… it’s… I find myself shaking my head as I sit there tied up. Some things are just… no. “But time is tight, and I think I’ll get better results this way.”
“You think wrong.” I can tell Shirley’s shaking, but she hides it well. “Rubber-hose cryptography you work on the one with the code, not some random secretary.”
The confidence in Owens’ smile chills me, and there’s movement on my left-hand side, and I barely have time to register the zwwiipp of the rubber hose through the air before it cracks down on my left arm.
I let out a yell. I can’t help it. For a moment I can’t think because there’s nothing but pain and it’s blinding. I feel my chest rising and falling, my breath coming in shallow gasps and I’m trembling all over. It takes what seems like a long time for the pain to subside, and even then it doesn’t subside all the way. It feels like maybe the bone is broken. My stomach roils with terror at the thought of being hit again on the broken bone. It’s not broken, don’t be silly my mind says, but I’m sick with fear.
And Shirley is screaming.
She’s saying incoherent stuff, curses that would make Mrs. Bones faint, just… shouting and screaming and undone in a way I’ve never seen Shirley. It takes me a minute to realize that she’s this hysterical over what's just happened to me.
And wallahi, that makes such a calm settle over me as I’ve never felt before. If Shirley is losing it, then it’s me who’s gotta be the calm one. Yes, my arm is burning already from just one blow, but I can handle it. Broken bones can heal, but if she tells them where their witnesses are being held… well, the witnesses can’t really heal from being murdered. “Don’t tell them anything, Shirley!” some idiot shouts into the room. What idiot said that stupid thing? Oh. Right. That was me.
“You fucking coward! You scared to touch me?” Shirley yells at Owens, her glasses askew. “Do I scare you that much?”
Owens doesn’t even dignify her with a reply. I see his head nod.
There’s a zwiiiip sound and I suck in a deep breath just before another blow cracks down on my arm. This time I keep myself from screaming, but I can’t help a loud gasp. I find myself flinging my body forward in the chair, then back, my hair flying as I rock wildly back and forth. At last it subsides enough that I can stop, slumped in my chair. I’m trembling all over, my breath wheezing. Sweat has broken out all over me. Adrenaline, I think automatically. Body flooding with adrenaline, helping me cope. That’s gonna crash hard later.
Shirley is screaming my name. When I’ve stopped rocking, I look up at her and she’s crying. Huh. I’ve never seen Shirley cry before, not ever. But now tears are streaming down her face, pooling in the lenses of her glasses, which are half-off by now. My eyes are watering too, but that’s just from pain. Shirley, though… Shirley looks like someone just ripped out her heart and stomped on it. “Waheed!” she wails in a long-drawn-out cry. What on earth? I’ve never seen her like this. She looks at Owens. “I’ll give you the address, just stop it!”
“No!” the same idiot raps out authoritatively. The idiot’s still me, dammit. “I’m okay. Don’t, Shirley. Don’t!”
“Be sensible, Shirley,” Owens says. “She’s in medical school, isn’t she? To be a surgeon, I hear. A few more hits and she’ll lose the use of her arm. What kind of surgeon works with only one hand?”
“No!” shouts the idiot with command in her tone. Nice to know I can sound commanding while being stupid. “I won’t let you, Shirley! Don’t!”
Owens looks at the goon again and nods, and this time I don’t quite have time to brace myself. Zwiipp and then the blow to my arm cracks through all of me, echoing through my skull and rattling my bones. My teeth feel like they’re gonna fall out as I throw my head back and yell out, but even as I’m yelling I can hear Shirley’s scream, like she’s the one who’s been hit. For a while she’s just screaming, unable to form words, and it takes a long time for her shrieking to resolve into “Fuck you, you fucking bastard, you motherfucker…” through gasping sobs.
…It’s taken me this long to realize it, but it pierces my heart like a pierce-y thing that this is all because of me. It’s because they’re hurting me that she’s falling to pieces and screaming like she’s lost her mind. She’s… I’m shuddering and gasping and my chest is heaving like I just ran a marathon, the pain is spiking through me like my entire body was crushed under a compactor, but through the haze of pain I see her. She’s writhing in her bonds so hard the chair is lifting off the floor. Her head is lashing from side to side; her glasses have fallen completely off and are lying half-open in her lap. Her hair is wild, her face flushed, tears streaming down her cheeks, her wrists purple with how she’s straining at her cuffs, and she’s still shrieking curses and insults and screaming my name and crying, “Bastards! Assholes! Fuck you! I’m gonna fucking see you burn!”
I’ve seen Shirley mad and I’ve seen Shirley sad, and more or less everything in between – I’ve known her for fifteen years, after all – but I’ve never seen her so wrecked, so completely undone. And it shocks and humbles me to realize that it’s because of me. It’s because they’re hurting me that Shirley is beside herself, it’s because they’re hurting me that the only thing keeping her from giving up the witness’ location is me telling her not to. I know Shirley and I are best friends, have been since we were kids. But I didn’t realize… Even dazed with pain and half-blinded with adrenaline, the knowledge is sobering. Shirley would give up anything for me.
And that means I have to be the one to stay strong. “Don’t tell them anything, Shirley!” I bark out, and it’s an order. I put all the authority of our years of friendship behind it, every bit of bossiness I ever learned from Ammi, every bit of strength I dredged up over the years. “Keep quiet!”
“No!” Shirley glares at me, her hair all over and her face blotchy. “I’m gonna tell them!”
“You tell them and I’ll never s-speak to you again!” Drat! My voice is shaky! It’s gotta be all that adrenaline. Gregson will be here soon, Gregson will be here soon. How do I… “Remember when we were barred from the pool when we were kids, Shirley?” I yell out, hoping against hope her detective brain won’t fail her now. “Like that time!”
She shakes her head furiously, her hair obscuring more of her face, and I can’t tell whether it’s a smart move to conceal that she understands what I’m saying – Gregson used to be a lifeguard at the pool, the reference to the pool should tell her they’re coming – or just her losing her mind. “I don’t care!” she exclaims. “I’m not letting you get hurt again!”
“I’m not hurt,” I insist. “I’m fine.”
“Ah. We’re being too soft. Time to change that. Kill the left arm,” Owens instructs his bodyguard.
I’m terrified and my terror changes to excruciating agony as he smashes the hose down on my arm over and over, I can’t count the blows, and I can’t keep from screaming, and Shirley is screaming, and in the middle of all this screaming there’s a bang and a shout of “Police! You’re surrounded” and Gregson is here with the cavalry. I let my head slump sideways. There’s nothing but pain and my ragged breathing, in, out, in, out. Around me there’s chaos, clattering and shouting and people coming and going and then something shaking at the ropes binding me – wait? Cutting them?
The ropes fall away and I should be able to sit upright, but I can’t, I only slide down further in my chair. “Waheed,” I hear. Shirley’s kneeling at my feet, her distraught face upturned to me, reaching out to grip my good arm. She hasn't even bothered to retrieve her glasses from where they fell off earlier. “Waheed, oh fuck, oh gods, why didn’t you let me tell them?”
“Gregson…” I have to stop, shuddering all over. I wanted to say ‘I knew Gregson was on the way’, but I couldn’t. Couldn’t say anything. I just gasp and suddenly burst into tears, blubbering like an idiot.
“Oh, Waheed. Help’s here, there’s an ambulance, oh, Jamila, Jamila…”
She’s using my first name. She hardly ever uses my first name, now. I have barely registered that when her arms are around me, carefully avoiding my battered left arm. She buries her face in my shoulder and cries, and her arms are tight around me, and I bring my right arm up to wrap around her back. I’m shaking so hard in her arms it feels like I’m going to fly apart, but she’s holding me tight, tight and close and safe, and I anchor myself to her. “Don’t leave me,” I say. What a weak-sauce thing to say, really.
“I’m not leaving you,” she chokes, squeezing me tight and stroking my hair. “I’m here. I’m here, Waheed. I’m here.” She kisses my temple and sobs aloud. What the…? Shirley never cries, and certainly not like this. All this for me? Because I got hurt? Well, damn. “I’m here.”
“I’m here too, Shirley,” I murmur into her hair. “It’s okay. We’re okay.”
“It’s not.” Poor thing, she sounds heartbroken. “They hurt you, Waheed.”
I pull her as close as I can with my good arm. “It’s nothing that won’t heal.” I’m not 100% sure of that, but I don’t think the muscle is going to atrophy or shrivel or anything from the beating. “I’m safe, Shirley. It’s okay. I’m safe.”
“Waheed,” she sobs into my shoulder. Her face is soft without her glasses. “Waheed.”
“I’m h-here,” I tell her. My shaking is becoming worse. Adrenaline crash. I can’t even feel pain now, just cold and shaky, and I really need the hug she’s giving me. It’s so cold.
“Waheed. Shit, I’m sorry.” She keeps holding me and stroking my hair. There’s some noise behind her and I open my eyes (when did I close them, just enjoying being safe in her embrace?) and it’s the paramedics.
“I gotta…” I jerk my head with what strength I have left. She backs away at once, but she looks so lost that I look up at the woman in charge of the medics. “Can she stay?”
“Of course,” says the head paramedic. She has a name-tag, but I’m shaking too bad to read it. I let them half-carry me out of my chair and help me onto a stretcher – I’m shaking too hard to get on it under my own power. Wow, that adrenaline crash really is something.
“Sh-shirley,” I manage to whisper as they lift the stretcher, and hold out my good arm, reaching for her.
She immediately latches onto my hand like a kid who’s been lost and found her mommy. “I’m here!”
“Stay.” Ugh, I sound so pleading. But if Shirley’s here I can just focus on her hand in mine and close my eyes and let myself be taken care of. And that’s just what I do.
Oh goodness, life on the other side of the stethoscope is a pain – waiting, CT scans, MRI’s, yes I know the risk of compartment syndrome and myositis ossificans, I just took a test on them recently. The UBC basketball team’s gonna have to do without me for a while, but I could have told you that already. No nerve damage, thank goodness, just some really bad bruising and swelling that ought to go down just fine with RICE. I tell Shirley about it so she can feel useful helping me with the ‘ice compression elevation’ part – forensic knowledge she’s tops at, but anything on a living body, well, she forgets about it “to make room for other stuff.” She doesn’t look like she’s making room for anything else right now: she sits by my bedside like a frowning gargoyle, alternating between paling and flushing, and glaring at anyone who so much as looks at me, even the doctors and nurses. When Gregson comes to take my statement, she looks like she isn’t sure whether to rip their head off for disturbing me or kiss them on the mouth for saving me in the first place. Then Gregson hands her her glasses - that is so sweet of them, to retrieve them for her from the crime scene - and she stares at Gregson, and the glasses, like they're some kind of alien object. It makes for some really funny facial expressions, and I wish I was well enough to take some pics.
After what happened, I’m shaken, of course – I’d be an idiot not to admit that. But there’s something about Shirley freaking out so completely that kind of… gives me room to be calm. Go figure. It’s like there’s only so much Freakout Energy between the two of us, and she grabbed all her share and mine, too. Whatever the reason, I’m not feeling freaked out, just really, really tired.
Which works out okay, me being like a limp dishrag, because Shirley’s Freakout Energy is all poured into taking care of me. When they put me in a room to rest until I’m cleared to go home, she’s there, holding my hand, never letting go. I gotta say, it makes me feel grounded and secure. Like it’s safe to relax because she’s taking care of everything. Although some of it kinda scares me, like when I drift off into a sort of half-conscious doze and I feel her kissing my hand. Whaaaat? Who are you and what have you done with Shirley Bones? Not that it doesn’t feel nice, it’s just… Am I dying or something? Last I heard you couldn’t die from compartment syndrome even if I did have compartment syndrome, which I don’t. No, I’m not dying: this is just Shirley freaking out. And…
…and I have to admit… it feels… kind of nice?
Shirley is – I know she cares for me, I know it. We’ve been friends since forever, after all. Still, she’s not very good at showing how she feels. She doesn’t make flowery speeches; she doesn’t make grand declarations or give birthday cards with sentimental messages. The last grand declaration she made to me was, “Of course I want you with me on cases, I wouldn’t want anyone but you” five years ago, and before that was “I think better when you’re around” when we were ten. Seeing her so completely undone… of course I don’t want her to be upset or freaking out, but getting into such a state for me, just because someone hurt me… Well, I guess I didn’t realize before just how much I meant to Shirley, and it kinda fills my heart with something big and soft and warm to know how much she cares for me. Maybe even… maybe even loves me, really. Nothing wrong with admitting that. I guess if our situations were reversed—but whoa, my mind shies away from that really fast. I would never want to watch that happening to Shirley. Shirley’s too perfect. She should have her own sign with ‘Keep Off The Grass’ or something, just so no-one ever hurts her.
Eventually I’m cleared to go home and they wheel me to the curb where an Uber is waiting. (I’m not out of my mind – I am not telling the family about this. Basketball accident all. The. Way.) Shirley opens the door for me (“Careful of your hand”), insists I sit in the front seat (“So you have more room for your sling”), and clicks the seatbelt shut around me even though I tell her I can use my right arm to do it (“No of course you can’t. And wait for me to undo it when we get home.”)
It's really strange. Half of me feels like I shouldn’t be letting Shirley do so much for me, and the other half is like a clingy child who really needs it. She takes my right arm like an attentive date when we get home, walking me slowly and carefully up the seventeen steps to our apartment (“Is moving hurting your arm? Are you dizzy at all, Waheed?”) and honestly, maybe I do close my eyes and let her guide me, I feel so shaky and weak, like I’m a puppet being held up by strings and if they were cut, I’d just drop. Then she settles me in an armchair, brings a soft pillow to put in my lap to rest my arm on, brings me painkillers and a cup of tea, orders in from our Vietnamese place, and kneels on my good side, touching the padded arm of the armchair. “Are you hurting? How do you feel? Do you need anything? Can I get you anything?”
“You can get me my best friend back,” I find myself retorting, “the one who isn’t feeling guilty and responsible.”
Shirley blinks. It doesn’t take her a second to snap back, “Of course I’m responsible!”
Heh. I knew it. I love that Shirley is caring for me – to be honest, I need it, and it heals something in me – but there’s something weighing on her. She’s helping me out of love, sure, but her voice is sad and her whole demeanor is… burdened, somehow. And I don’t want Shirley burdened. “Look, I don’t know how much energy I have to talk,” I tell her. “But I gotta get this said…”
“Don’t – don’t tire yourself out. Take it easy. We don’t have to talk now.”
Shirley sounds so soft. So caring. The way she touches my good arm, with just her fingertips like I’m fragile, breaks my heart with its tenderness. I kind of don’t want to lose this caring, not now when I feel so shaky. But I can’t have her blaming herself. What kind of a friend would I be? “Shirley. It. Is. Not. Your. Fault.”
“Of course it’s my fault.”
I draw in a deep breath and lean back against the padded backrest. I don’t think I’ll be able to sit in a hard chair with arms for a while, but this padded easy chair feels different enough that it’s okay. “Shirley,” I sigh. “I don’t have all that much energy left, so maybe you can try to not give me a hard time?”
I can almost hear Shirley’s face fall. “I don’t want to give you a hard time.”
“I know,” I tell her gently. “I know. And I’m not blaming you. Look…” Turning my head toward her feels like an effort, but this effort is worth it. “I’m not gonna pretend I’m not scared and hurt and upset.” I fumble for her hand with my good one and she clasps it tightly. It’s kind of cute to see her affection so laid bare, when she’s normally so aloof. Not too aloof – I have never doubted her, neither her respect nor her friendship – but she doesn’t normally lay her heart bare like this, and it touches my own heart more than I thought it would. “And it makes me happy to know I mean so much to you, it does—”
“I’m shit at feelings, Waheed, I’ve always been shit at feelings, I’m sorry, I—”
“Shh.” I squeeze her hand and rub the back of it with my thumb. “What I was gonna say is… I do need my best friend to take care of me when I’m laid up—”
“I will! I—”
“…And I need to know you’re not feeling guilty and blaming yourself. If you take care of me, I want it to be because we’re friends, not out of guilt.”
“It’s not out of guilt! Of course we’re friends.” Shirley inhales and exhales. “But of course I feel bad. I should feel bad. It’s my fault.”
“That’s where you’re wrong.”
“I did this!”
“You hit my arm with a rubber hose?” Shirley winces like she’s been struck. “Sorry I said it that way. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“I’m not upset!” Shirley yells, looking like she’s on the verge of tears. “I… I never wanted you to get hurt!”
“I know the risks. Shirley, we chase after dangerous criminals. This guy literally brought down a building with dozens of families living in it. The blood on his hands…”
“I don’t care about the blood on his hands,” Shirley sniffles, finally breaking down. “I just want you to be safe.”
“I am safe,” I tell her, letting my affection show in my voice. “That alert you programmed into my phone was really smart. It brought Gregson running, and now we have more evidence against Owens.”
Shirley rests her forehead on my hand, sounding defeated. Her glasses are all smushed up against my wrist. “But you got hurt. Nothing matters if you get hurt.”
My heart gets big and soft again. “Shirley…”
Shirley drops her head even lower, so all I can see is her hair. "Not you, Waheed. Not you, never you. You're the most..." She chokes and my heart squeezes with emotion. "Me, sure, anyone else, sure, but not you. You're the only thing..." Her voice trails off and her hair moves back and forth with her headshake. "...You're the only thing. Not you. Not you."
"Shirley," I try, unutterably touched but trying to keep my head, "it's okay."
She looks up, her face flushed and agonized. “You should never work with me again.”
“Let me be the judge of that?” I prompt gently.
“No! We should dissolve the partnership. I can work cases on my own.”
“Shirley…”
“I don’t want anything like that happening to you again. I never wanted it happening in the first place.”
“Shirley, I know the risks.”
“I should keep you safe!”
“You can’t keep me safe all the time. It’s physically impossible—”
“No! I should have known! I should have deduced! I should have calculated this as a possibility!”
“We all make mistakes.”
“This isn’t a mistake! It isn’t acceptable! I got you hurt!”
“You didn’t get me hurt. They hurt me.”
“It was for me. To affect me. To get me to talk.”
“In one of those novels I read that you call ‘dreck’, there’s a line—”
“I’m sorry. I won’t call them dreck again. I’m sorry—”
“Shirley! Just listen to me. One of the characters says, ‘A man without love gives no hostages to fortune.’ Do you know what that means?”
Shirley pauses for a moment. “It means they’re sexist,” she says with a touch of her usual confidence.
“Granted. But other than that. What are they trying to say?”
Shirley takes a moment to think. Of course – if it was something technical, she’d be all over it, but as usual, feelings have her stumped. “Uhh… if you don’t care about anyone…” She scratches at her chin. “You… won’t be taken hostage?”
“Close.” I smile. “If you don’t care about anyone, they can’t be used against you.”
“That’s right!” Shirley smacks her forehead. “That’s right, caring is a mistake, I’m so stupid—”
“No. No! Whoa, stop.” I give Shirley’s hand a little shake. It’s all I can do with my good hand. “It means, like, yes if you never love anyone, no-one can be used against you, but what kind of life is that?”
Shirley stares, looking lost. “I don’t understand.”
My heart softens. Ya Allah, what am I going to do with my best friend? “You idiot,” I smile gently. “It means that part of the risk of loving people is that they might get hurt. And that makes you feel terrible.”
Shirley’s stare goes blanker. “So… it’s better not to love… right?”
I sigh. “Can you?”
“Can I what?”
“Keep from caring about other people?” I prompt. “Your mom? Me?”
She blinks hard, once, twice. “I don’t want to… not care about you,” she says firmly.
“I feel the same,” I tell her, nodding.
“But I don’t want you to get hurt!”
“Don’t you get it, Shirley? It’s one of the risks of being alive!” I glare at her. “One day, when I’m ninety-nine and you’re a hundred, one of us is gonna die. Is it better to live those ninety-nine years enjoying each other’s company, or live lonely for ninety-nine years because we’re afraid of the pain of loss we know is gonna come in the end?”
Shirley frowns as though the question is genuinely deserving of deep thought. “It wouldn’t be ninety-nine years,” she mutters absently. “It’s eighty-nine, because there’s ten years of our lives we didn’t know each other.” I grin, knowing that to be pedantic is in her nature. “It’s a hard question,” she says, her brow furrowing deeply in thought. “I might… I might need more data.”
“Well, until you have more data,” I smile, nudging her, trying for lightness, “can you quit talking about how we need to dissolve the partnership?”
Her eyes come up to meet mine, agonized. Her glasses need cleaning; they're all blotchy. “You got hurt!”
“And that hurts you,” I finish for her calmly. “Just like I would feel bad if you got hurt. You’re hurting now, and that makes me unhappy.”
“I’m not hurting.”
“Hurting here,” I say, slipping my hand out of hers and reaching out to tap her chest over her heart.
“I’m not the one who got hurt—”
“Don’t you get it, Shirley?” I snap at her. “You feel pain when I get hurt, just like I’d feel pain if you got hurt, just like you’d feel pain if your mom got hurt. That’s part of what love is. It’s no fun, but the alternative is not to have the other person we love, so we gotta put up with it.” I feel my eyes harden. “And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“But… your arm…” Shirley reaches out and feathers her fingers over the back of my hand, her eyes so, so sorrowful as she looks at my bandaged forearm. “It feels…” Her eyes come up and cling to mine, lost and desperate. “It feels…”
And suddenly, I know what Shirley’s feeling. “It feels like you wish it was you, doesn’t it?”
Shirley looks me full in the face, eyes wide and mouth open. “Yes!” she bursts out. “Yes! That’s it, exactly, and it doesn’t make any sense! It’s not logical to wish you were hurt! But I do!”
With my uninjured arm, I reach out and gently cup the back of her neck, drawing her into a one-armed embrace. She comes readily, her arms coming up around me like I’m fragile, her head coming to rest on my shoulder. “That’s because seeing the person you love hurting,” I explain, “hurts worse than if you were the one injured.”
“But that doesn’t make sense,” Shirley whispers helplessly into my shoulder.
“No,” I tell her. “But it’s true. It’s one of the reasons why loving other people is so hard.”
“Yeah.” This time Shirley doesn’t object. She just folds me tighter into her arms and squeezes me, her hand coming up to cup the back of my head and hold me close. “I feel terrible, Waheed,” she murmurs into my shoulder. “And I wasn’t even hurt. You’re the one who was hurt.”
“Shh. I know. It’s easier on me.” I hold her as tightly as I can with my good arm. “But I’m gonna be okay. I promise.”
“I know,” Shirley whines, “but it still hurts.” That last comes out of her so petulantly that I can’t help a smile. She leans back and looks into my eyes. “What can I do to make it not hurt so bad?”
My heart fills. Shirley’s scientific mind is twenty years ahead of her age – and her emotions are twenty years behind. The naïve way she asks it steals my heart and makes me want to do anything to protect her. “What do you feel you want to do?” I ask gently.
“I wanna like… wrap you in bandages and make sure nothing hurts you ever again,” she blurts. “And I wanna make sure you’re not hurting now and taken care of and comfortable.” Her face crumples again like a little kid’s (not that I recall her doing that when we were kids). “I just want you to not hurt!”
“Shh. Okay. Okay.” A lot of times Shirley seems older and more authoritative, but this time it feels like I’m the one who has to take control of the situation. I tilt my head and meet her eyes with a little smile. “I’m not in pain, Shirley. They gave me painkillers and I’m not hurting. Not even a little bit. Okay?”
Shirley sniffles. “You better not be lying to me.”
My smile broadens into a grin. “Since when have I been a good liar?”
“You’re not a bad liar,” Shirley defends doubtfully.
“But I’m not a master of disguise like you.”
“No, but…” Shirley inhales and exhales deeply. “If you’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
"And you'll let me bring you your meds and stuff before you start hurting. At all the times the doctor said."
I'm still smiling, my heart warm. "Yes, Shirley. I will let you give me all my medications."
"And you'll let me take you to the doctor? And see her with you?"
"Yes, Shirley," I say obediently. This shouldn't be making me feel so soft, but I can't deny it. "You can take me to all my doctor's appointments."
"And - and like. Change your bandages if you need it." She looks down, shaking her head. Her hair is just a mess at this point. She looks up at me and her face is pleading. "Let me take care of you."
I smile, any residual tension that was in me draining away. "I promise, Shirley. I will."
Shirley's jaw clenches. “And your arm’s gonna be okay,” she confirms. “The doctor said so.”
“Yes,” I reassure her with another soft smile. “I promise.” This is no time to tell her about the risk of compartment syndrome and the near-certainty of permanent scarring. I’m going to get 100% function back. Fine motor function and everything. That’s all that matters.
“C—can I do other stuff for you, too? Till it heals? Like, help you with cooking and getting dressed and stuff? Whatever you need?” Shirley asks urgently. “That feels like it might help me not feel so bad.” She meets my eyes with perfect innocence and vulnerability. “I feel like I just wanna take care of you 24/7 till you’re on your feet again. Till you’re all better.”
Well, how am I supposed to keep my heart from melting? “Okay,” I tell her with a smile. “I’ll let you. As long as you know it’s not your fault, okay? It’s theirs. Not yours.”
“Yeah.” She’s still close enough to touch. My hair is touching her hair, our foreheads almost touching but not quite. Her glasses just brush my eyebrows. “I know it in my head. But it feels different in here.” She puts her hand on her middle, somewhere between her chest and stomach.
“I know. I’d feel the same if it was you.” My good arm is still on her shoulder. “You just gotta keep remembering they’re the ones who hurt me, okay? Not you. Them.”
“Okay,” she says thinly. “Okay.” She swallows. “Thank you, Waheed.”
I pull her close and kiss her forehead. “Thank you, Shirley.”
Shirley draws back. “For what?” The I got you hurt is plain in her tone.
“For being my friend.” I smile softly into her eyes. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“And you’ll let me take care of you till you’re better?” Her hand slips into the hand on my injured arm, so gently I can barely feel the touch.
“Yes.” Grinning, I reconcile myself to a week of burnt toast and setting the kitchen on fire. I won’t hurt her feelings by saying she’ll need to be the one to work the extinguisher since I only have one working arm. If there’s one thing Shirley Bones knows, it’s fire safety.
And with Shirley cooking, we’ll need it. Oh well, we can always order in. Which reminds me, where is that Vietnamese?