by Nina George
I’d feel her breath, then her hands running over the fabric of my trousers to grasp my hips. Her quiet, purposeful hands would undress, admire, and touch me. Skin, life, skin, warmth.
I long to feel warmth and moisture, the patter of water on skin. Eddie’s skin and her whole body pressing against mine. An urgency in my abdomen, liquefying and hardening. Caresses, the heat between her legs, the softness of her breasts against my chest, my mouth closing first on one nipple and then the other.
Molding my palms to the contours of her upper arms and elbows, the swell of her backside, the curve of her thighs.
The changing texture of her skin as I approach her center.
Kissing every inch of her.
Hearing her moan.
Seeing her eyes gazing up at me, the laughter in them as her lips remain delicately parted and she says, “Taste me.”
I become absorbed with the idea of borrowing and inhabiting the young body of the doctor on the far side of that screen. Just briefly, for a short time, so I can touch my darling.
Would she see me inside that other body? Would she know I was paying thanks and homage to every inch of her being? The moles on her left breast, her rangy limbs, the swirl of hair at the back of her neck, those delightful laughter lines at the corners of her mouth, those eyes that contain the sea, life, dreams, eternity, everything.
“My summer’s day, my wintry sea, my home,” I whisper.
A wave of calm and peace ripples out from her and mingles with my vibrating senses. Tentatively, my thoughts venture into this peace. I have to think hard to know which direction to take.
I start with the girl. Madelyn told me that in one of her alternative lives she was married to Samuel, with whom she had grown happily old. If what I’m gently turning over in my mind is true, namely that all our alternative lives—in dreams, in dying, as a memory that can’t actually exist, as déjà vu, or when one feels a chance slip by—come into contact, then there must be one of Madelyn’s alternative lives in which she steps out of the shadow of her fear, survives sepsis, wakes up, recovers, escapes the last shadow that is imprisoning the girl beneath the waves, then takes the path on which my son, Sam, becomes her husband and they grow old together. That path will only be possible if Madelyn lives. And if I…
I can feel the tugging darkness below me, pumping and pulsing an insight up to me that I don’t yet fully grasp. When I do, it is as if I am jumping over the side of an enormous tanker that’s plowing through the sea at full speed, leaping out into empty space and—eventually, somewhere—crashing into the water, then sinking, my eyes riveted to the retreating world, life, and the last receding light.
I think it through a second time and fix every individual step in my mind. It’s like solving a formula whose X and Y are known only to the dead.
I’ve made up my mind. Eddie’s deep peaceful sleep was the key, but from now on I go it alone. Backward. To the edge. All I need to do now is allow myself to topple into the dark, billowing night waiting below, and then watch the ship continue on its course. All I have to do is let go.
Adieu, my darling. Adieu. It was the best of all lives.
Sam
It’s half past two. I sit down next to Maddie. My voice is cracking. I’m reading her A Song of Ice and Fire. George R. R. Martin’s epic tale will last us for a while, and I imagine her wanting to hear how it continues, refusing to die before we’ve finished, and then recovering so that she can read it herself.
Maybe it’s a stupid idea, but I don’t see what else I can do to detain her and bring her back. Occasionally when I’m drifting off to sleep, I can hear her in the maze of corridors behind the stage of The Nutcracker. She runs desperately through the wings, up and down stairs, calling my name. She calls for her mother and her father. I sit on the stage and wait. I cannot follow her into the labyrinth. I can only…
Hang on a second. What’s this? How long has this been going on?
“A bloody long time, mon ami. Now go!”
I’ve become so accustomed to my father’s dark pain and the tangible tension in the air by which I can tell he’s there, that I didn’t notice that there’s been a shift. His shimmering pain has turned to a gentle light, which is far more scary. It’s like the quiet that follows the final note of a symphony, the silence of a final exhalation, an empty room.
I hurriedly put down the book, get up, and open the curtain that has been drawn between C7 and Maddie. Eddie is still sleeping, with her hand on my father’s chest. I take a step closer, searching for him but not finding him.
“Dad?” I whisper. “Dad!” He’s gone. He’s no longer here!
One stride and I’m at his side, touching his hand. Please, please, let him merely be sleeping! Panic steals my breath. I check the machines. Pulse, heartbeat, sleep phase. Peaks and troughs and spikes. He’s alive, but he’s gone, I know it. His body is completely deserted.
It’s as if he has entered a zone that Dr. Saul didn’t sketch out. An unfamiliar zone between coma and death. An area between life and death, which no one has identified because it’s always moving.
I glance at Maddie, then back at my father, then at the heart monitors, and for one absurd moment I have the feeling that their two hearts are perfectly attuned, beating in time as if they were walking side by side. This moment lasts for a few seconds, but the lines suddenly diverge. Maddie’s heartbeat accelerates and my father’s slows down more and more.
I know what’s about to happen and yet I’m powerless to move or call out. It’s like a countdown to something, as my father’s heartbeat falters. Four, three, two, one, zero: everything happens exactly as planned, in every respect.
Henri
Each time the oar dips into the water, breaking the reflection of the sky and the stars, I see Eddie’s face on the surface and watch her wake up. I see Sam as he realizes, and then I’m ready.
The sea is calm beneath a sunny winter’s day. This color was always my favorite—this bright metallic blue, as translucent as glass, the same shade as the sky.
I stand up and the boat wobbles. I pull in the oars. I won’t need them again. Then I leap into the water. I have to dive deep to find the girl. The sea has taken her far, far down. It wants to keep her there among the rocks and the shells and the dread. Her hair floats around her head like seaweed.
She’s lying in the embrace of the final shadow, the beautiful woman who’d like to make the end of our lives easy. She would gladly carry us to the island, free of pain and fear. But she too has her task and her element, and she cannot do everything; she can only be there when the time comes. She looks at me without surprise.
I pull Madelyn toward me by her blond seaweed hair and grab one thin, slippery upper arm. As I tug her toward me, I swallow a mouthful of icy, salty water. Gulp by gulp, it cools me down and takes hold of my entrails and lungs. Eventually it will encircle my heart.
The sea takes me fully into its embrace, as if it were happy to see me after all these decades, so happy indeed that it refuses to release me. There’ll be no need.
The delicate, strangely familiar face floats toward me. Maddie stares at me with a mixture of endless questions, trust, and hope. I cling to the child more tightly so that both the shadow and I are now embracing her.
When I reach into the shadow, it feels as if I’m grasping seaweed, as if I were running my fingers over a wet flowery lawn, wild and tall and…
Eddie
“Look, little Eddie, I haven’t mown the lawn. I’ve left it to grow. Is this how you want it?”
“Yes, Dad,” I say.
“Will the unicorn like it?”
“It’ll love it.”
My father smiles and walks to the center of the lawn. The poppies sway for a moment, and then my father is gone. My heart sinks to see him leave. There’s never enough time. But the dream continues, and I know I’m dreaming. A b
lue moon is riding in the sky. I’m walking through the tall grass behind our house. The stems almost reach my chin, and I can only just see over the tips of the ticking grasses. Dawn is breaking, and out of the glittering thicket, through the dewy stems and the blue half-light, the unicorn steps out of the dark. I hardly dare to greet it.
It’s magnificent, a great, strong, beautiful beast, but I can tell from its gait that it’s injured. It’s injured in the only spot where unicorns can be wounded—in the heart.
It sends me a thought: I know I’ll be safe with you. Then it wends its way deeper into the grass and very slowly, with a pain-filled expression in its otherwise shining, lively eyes, it lies down.
I tread carefully across the damp lawn past the poppies, the cornflowers, and the sunflowers. I kneel beside the unicorn I have been awaiting for so, so long. It is a timeless creature. It is afraid of nothing, not even death. But I can see and I know that it’s going to die. It gradually lowers its head until its glittering horn sinks into the thick vegetation.
It’s safe now. I stroke its head, my fingers oddly accustomed to its shape. Its shiny, fearless eyes are so vulnerable and inviting. I want to explore the spaces behind them—those dark, deep, never-ending spaces where no fear or sadness exists.
What does it know? What secrets will it tell me? I have a thousand questions, but only one is truly essential: “What must I know?”
The unicorn stares at me, and there is a change in its shining gaze. Suddenly the world tilts. Henri and I are lying in the grass among the bamboo groves on the roof of the old tulip warehouse. The trapdoor leading to the staircase down into my loft is open.
“Make love to me,” I say.
“Of course,” he replies. “Always.”
He turns onto his side and draws circles with his warm, knowing finger on my naked stomach, small ones radiating out from my belly button at first, then larger ones that run across my stomach, my chest, my mound of Venus, and my thighs. He kneels beside me and caresses me with both hands, and I feel like weeping with relief at how beautiful it is and how long it has been.
He says, “You know that small chapel at Saint Samson? When you make it there, I’ll be there too. I’ll be everywhere, always. I’ll accompany you and I’ll wait for you and for Sam.”
His hands pause.
“Carry on,” I demand.
“Sometimes impossible things happen,” he adds, and his hands also perform impossible things that make me feel so good. “The inexplicable is part and parcel of life.”
“Will you make love to me again?”
He smiles. “Yes.”
Henri covers me with his body, obscuring the sky and the stars with his kisses, and at first we simply lie inside each other, and all boundaries dissolve. The boundaries of my body have dissolved: Henri is in me, and I am in him. He slowly rises to a sitting position, pulling me up with him until I’m in his lap, kneeling at first, but then I push out my legs and interlock my ankles behind his back. He holds me in his embrace.
We gaze at each other, and the wind circles us, the blue moon holds us in a pool of light, and a distant sea rolls across my husband’s eyes. He lays his hand on my heart.
“I’m so sorry, my darling. I’ve always loved you, and I’d have gladly been your husband.”
“You are my husband.”
He smiles. “You must live, Edwina.”
He withdraws his body from mine, leaving an absence, an emptiness that grows bigger and bigger and I know will last forever. He releases me.
“No,” I try to shout, “don’t go!” But he’s already leaving, retreating with increasing speed. He keeps his eyes on mine the whole time, and those eyes radiate love.
“Forgive me,” he says.
Just before he plunges over the edge into space, his gaze darkens into an expression of despair, fear, and formidable determination.
“Henri!” I scream as I awake.
Henri
So this is your choice? the final shadow asks. Like this? Then come.
The shadow loosens its grip on Madelyn. The little dancer freezes. She stares at me for a long time as she treads water, and then the child makes a push for the surface, toward life and light, and I hope that she won’t encounter a glass barrier that prevents her from taking the final step.
I stretch out my hand to the shadow. However scared I am of death, it’s the only solution, the only time I’ve ever made the correct decision and not flinched at the crucial moment. Eddie must live her life to the full, not linger with a man who’ll never be anything but a breathing creature without a will of his own. Sam and Maddie are made for each other. It’s good like this—the perfect outcome.
The shadow drags me through the water. The pain is so all-consuming that I open my mouth and allow the sea to invade and take possession of me. I’m incapable of moving my arms or my legs, and they hurt like hell. Everything hurts, as if all at once I can feel every single cell of my forgotten, abandoned, defunct body. The pain is overwhelming; it roars and stabs, filling me with nausea. A loud, deep rumbling sound reverberates in my ears.
I’m sinking faster and faster, mingling and dissolving into the sea. I touch the sand and stone on the bottom, which opens and sucks me in. But as I disappear something completely unforeseen occurs.
Sam
Everything is in free fall: his temperature, his blood pressure, his pulse. It’s like a stately old oak crumbling to the ground. At the same time his fingers are in spasms, clutching repeatedly at Eddie’s as she stands by his side. His arms twitch, his cheek muscles tense and relax, and his eyelids quiver.
I can sense his arriving. No, it’s more like he’s being pushed; something is driving my father with great force back into his body. Now he’s hammering his heels on the bed, and finally the machines also register the change. Spikes show up on the EEG connected to his head, alerting the doctors on their control podium. Within two minutes Dr. Saul is on the scene, the strains of a restless night evident from his face. He peers at the young duty doctor with the red sideburns and the scar on his throat.
“Stress-induced activity,” the young doctor says. “He’s coming back, but his circulation is on the brink of collapse, and the oxygen content in the blood is falling sharply.”
“Can you hear me, Mr. Skinner?” says Dr. Saul.
“Please,” whispers Eddie, pale but composed. She puts her hand on Dr. Saul’s shoulder. He turns to face her, and she gently shakes her head. The doctor steps back from the bed.
“Samuel,” Eddie orders. “Come here.”
My father’s sweating, and the ventilator’s wheezing. It’s as if he’s trying to breathe and swallow on his own. Swiftly they remove the aspirator from his mouth. Eddie clings to Henri’s hand, and I stand in the same position as I always do so that he can see me if he opens his eyes.
And then my father does open his eyes and he is here. He is truly here! He gazes lovingly at me, and the pain on his face almost overwhelms me. There’s no means of alleviating the torment caused by his fever, inflammation, and fractured skull. No drugs, no sleep, nothing. He’s being burned alive—but nevertheless, he is alive!
Then his eyes swivel with enormous effort to Eddie, and he stares unwaveringly at her.
I turn my attention to Maddie. She too has opened her eyes. She looks at me! Now I understand everything, but I refuse to accept it.
Eddie
“Painkillers, we have to…” “Blood pressure…” “Hypertension…”
I want them to stop for a moment, all of them, and listen to Henri.
“Be quiet,” I say, then I roar, “Will you please be quiet for a second! Shut up!”
At last they stop.
Henri’s eyes are cradling me, and his hand is alive and squeezing mine.
“I love you,” I say.
His gaze softens, and I can see the eff
ort it requires from him just to keep his eyes open. He tries to say something, but all that comes out is a feeble sigh.
“Maddie?” he asks, attempting to turn his gaze to Sam. I don’t know how he knows her name, but Sam’s answer is swift and reassuring. “She’s going to recover, Dad.”
Henri’s features relax. Our eyes meet again. You too, I pray, you too.
“Don’t go,” I whisper.
With unbearable effort his lips articulate an “I,” then “love,” and finally “you.” Last of all, in an exhalation, Henri pronounces the words “Forgive me” so loudly that everyone beside the bed hears them. This both breaks my heart and heals it.
“Of course,” I say.
He squeezes my hand harder and harder, and again I whisper, “I love you, forever and ever.” He continues to gaze at me with infinite love and unbearable terror in his eyes.
Henri doesn’t breathe again. With an expression of stunned surprise, he falls back into a boundless void, leaving me behind. His hand lets go of mine, but I hold on to it. I hold it tight as Sam rushes to Maddie’s bedside and grabs her outstretched hand, as Dr. Saul gives instructions for resuscitation, as Dmitry tries to push me aside, as the machine that has measured Henri’s heartbeat for the past forty-six long days and nights draws a straight line under everything, as the final beep rings out—and I know that Henri will never return.
Nurse Marion flings a window wide open. I sense Henri Skinner linger in the ward for one minute more, and then he turns away and silently abandons life.