Chapter Text
“St. Francis Alzheimer’s Hospital?” James frowns down at the file folder in his hands, as if staring at it hard enough will somehow change the typewritten rows of words.
“I’m sorry, James,” Natasha says softly. “I wish I had better news to give you.”
“No, it’s—it’s not your fault.” He sighs, his whole body slumping into the sofa cushions until he looks half his usual size.
Natasha sits down next to him, resting her hand on his knee. “I know it’s not, but I’m sorry anyway.”
James manages to smile at her, although it never even comes close to reaching his eyes. “I should go and see her. Soon. I mean…” He swallows, hard. “I mean, who knows how much time she’s got left?”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
He’s quiet for a minute or two before answering. “Natasha, it’s not that I want to exclude you, but—“
“But you want to get a reading on things first, and you don’t necessarily want anyone around for that,” she finishes for him.
“Mostly. Yeah.”
“I understand.” Natasha gives his knee a light squeeze.
“I do want you to meet her,” James says.
But Natasha doesn’t meet her on the second visit, or the third, or even the tenth. In spite of that, the room is never quite empty and they’re never really alone in it, what with the nurses and techs and volunteers flitting in and out, relentlessly and aggressively cheerful as if their optimism will somehow bring back their patients’ lives in full expansive Technicolor. James hates them all, because he can’t seem to rise to their level—it’s so effortless for them, whereas he can’t even manage a genuine smile for his little sister, who lights up every single time he walks into the room.
All he can do is give her something brittle and plastic in return, hoping she won’t notice the cracks. She does anyway, because Becca has many problems with her memory now, and often she is more like a small child than a woman, but she is not stupid. She never was—and she can still read him like a book.
“You look sad, Jimmy,” Becca says to him abruptly one morning as he’s sitting on the edge of her bed while they talk, reaching up to brush her thumb across his cheekbone as if to swipe away any tears lingering there.
There aren’t any, but she’s not far off, he thinks.
“Nah,” James says breezily instead, hoping it doesn’t sound as hollow as it feels. “I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately, s’all.”
Becca frowns. “Dad should lay off you. He doesn’t see all the nice things you do for everyone.”
“It’s okay, Becks,” he tells her.
“No, it’s not,” she says. “He only ever notices it when you get in a fight, and that’s not fair. I wish he wouldn’t yell at you so much.”
“Nobody yelled at me,” James tries to say, but Becca is having none of it, and she props herself up on her elbows.
“Where’s Dad?” she demands, her voice stronger than it’s been in a while.
“He’ll be home soon,” is all he can think to say.
“What has he been doing, doesn’t he know how Ma worries when he’s out late?” Becca frowns. “He hasn’t been playing cards again, has he?”
“I don’t know.” It isn’t an untruth, exactly. James has no idea what happens after you die, but it has to be better than this.
Becca turns flat, dark eyes on him. “I hate it when you lie to me, Jimmy. Where’s Dad?”
“He can’t make it, Sissy. I’m sorry.”
“I’m tired,” she says, and flicks her blankets at him, a gesture of dismissal that’s been familiar ever since she was born.
Becca’s bed is huge, James thinks as he gets up to leave.
Well, not exactly. It’s an average-sized bed, the kind seen in hospitals and rehab centers and clinics and nursing homes everywhere. It’s just that Becca looks so small in it.
“Like a little bird,” comes a whisper from the corner, and James whirls around, startled. It’s not often that anyone gets the drop on him like this, but—
He blinks a few times to clear his vision, but the woman is still sitting there on the floor, a small mountain of naked pearlescent-grey flesh with a knot of squid-ink hair on top of her head, though it’s starting to come undone and straggle down her neck like errant seaweed. A rat perches on her knee, watching interestedly as she drags a hooked ring through her flesh, over and over, her pointed teeth gritted in concentration.
She’s carved a ragged star into her left arm; it drips red all over the floor, just for him.
James doesn’t even bother pretending to himself that he isn’t running away. That would be a lie.