Silent Music

by Aisling Magic

  I know why you gave this to me, Kai.

  “Hey,” Madison says, joining me on the couch as our dads clean the dishes in the kitchen. “You okay?”

  I nod even though my blotchy eyes are indicating otherwise.

  I rub my fingers on the necklace, and her gaze falls on it. A mild smile touches her lips. “You know Kai read you your diary when you were … in the hospital.”

  This is new information. “Really?”

  My phone vibrates, and I look at the screen—Kai. My heartbeat staggers. Without thinking much about it, I decline and put the phone down.

  Madison laughs quietly, curling her legs. “Yeah, he used to read you an event each time he came to visit.”

  “I didn’t know that …” Somehow this warms my heart. He was there, speaking to me and re-living the memories we shared even though he knew that I was not aware of my surrounding. But amidst that warmth, there’s a layer of pain—because he waited and he’s still waiting, and I know he shouldn’t.

  The screen of my phone lights up again with Kai’s name. Why’s he calling again? To rub in my face how much I’ve changed? How different I am from the Phoenix he used to know? Why doesn’t he understand that I want him to go away?

  Madison smiles sadly. “He loves you, Phoenix. So much.”

  My heart thuds. “Tell me more about what he would do.” I don’t need the silence right now. I need someone to talk and keep all the noise from my head because once I’m alone in my room, Kai’s words will come to haunt me.

  My phone screen lights up again, and this time I press the power button until the screen goes black. I toss the phone aside and sink further into my comfort bubble with Madison.

  Humming, Madison ponders over what I’ve asked, and a secret smile appears on her face. “He’d come in the room, and first he’d kiss you, no matter how much you stank …” My eyes widen, and Madison chuckles. “Yeah, you weren’t given a proper bath every day, and where do you think you were shitting?”

  No way … it’s so humiliating to think that someone else was wiping my ass. This is not something I thought about.

  “So sometimes you’d smell, and no matter what, Kai would kiss you and then he’d get in the bed with you and open the diary and narrate what you wrote.”

  A smile graces my lips. “And then?”

  “And then after he’d read you something, he’d slide down next to you and wrap his arms around you. Sometimes he’d keep on speaking, telling you about how his week went and what he was planning to do and sometimes he’d fall asleep …” Madison looks at me with sad eyes. “You know,” she whispers, “my heart ached looking at him because he always believed that you’d wake up, Phoenix.”

  Guilt fills me. I smile through my blurry eyes. “Thanks for telling me all this. I think I needed to hear it.” I lay my hand on hers and give it a soft squeeze to let her know that I love her.

  “You’re not any different now, Phoenix.”

  “I know ...”

  She looks at me and starts to say something but stops herself.

  “What?” I ask.

  Madison clears her throat. “It’s really pretty, the chain.” She takes the pendant in her fingers and reads the quote silently. “He fucking loves you, Phoenix. Please tell me you started feeling something too.”

  I squeeze my eyes shut. I can’t answer this question. Yes, each time Kai is near, or he whispers how much he loves me, fire bursts out of my skin. He consumes me and makes me forget that I'm supposed to guard my heart against him. But I care for him—so much, and that’s why I’m giving him an out. So I don’t answer Madison because it’s … complicated.

  I take the chain and tie it around my neck. Madison shakes her head, disappointed, and gets up from the couch to pick up her ringing phone. The necklace around my neck brings me a strange sense of peace, and I take the pendant in my hand and re-read the quote again and again.

  “What? When?” Madison says in a panic. My gaze lifts to hers and fear tugs a part of my heart, sensing there is bad news. I wait for her to say something, but she’s still listening to the other person on the phone.

  “Kai, no …” Her voice cracks.

  I gasp. Kai? A sudden heat spreads over my body. My chest starts heaving. “What … what happened?” I ask. Oh no … please …

  His calls!

  Something changes in Madison’s eyes, but she keeps her eyes on me as she listens to the other person. My dads come behind Madison, and she nods a few times before disconnecting the call.

  “What’s the matter?” Dad asks, but Madison doesn’t remove her eyes from my face. She shakes her head at me.

  “What happened?” I yell. “Please, tell us what happened?” Oh my God. He was calling me. He was calling me, and I ignored his calls.

  She walks toward me. “It’s Kai … there’s been an accident.”

  Kai.

  No.

  No.

  Warm fluid runs down my cheeks. I hear nothing but the loud and angry beating of my heart. “No … No!” I shout. “No.” Sobs tear from my chest as my world falls apart.

  My dads rush to me, and Daddy takes me in his arms. “Sweetie …” Daddy strokes my hair.

  “No … please … no …” Something fragile breaks inside me.

  Madison rushes to my side. “He’s at the hospital.”

  My head swings to Dad, pleading him with my eyes to take me there. I need to see Kai. He can’t leave me now. I won’t let him!

  Dad nods, and they all start moving. I rock, gripping the couch while Madison rushes to her room. I rock while Dad fetches his cars keys, and I rock while Daddy slides on his shoes.

  I rock and rock and rock.

  I rock … waiting because that's all I can do. Rock and wait ...

  Finally, I’m carried to the car where Daddy buckles me in my seat, and we drive to the hospital.

  Oh God, if I ever did a good deed, please don’t let him be hurt. Kai, not my Kai. My eyes blur the road outside, and I squeeze them shut. The images of Kai bathed in blood fills my head. The spark I saw in his eyes earlier when he sang to me morphs into indifference and ice takes its place there.

  And his words start hitting me in waves.

  Our noses touch, and he whispers, “I love you, Phoenix. Always have, always will.”

  The only part of my body I can feel right now is my heart because the pieces there are piercing through my soul. Why Kai? I started sewing my wounds. You can’t give me new ones.

  “I so want to kiss you, Phoenix, but I won’t. I won’t kiss you until you want me to and not one second before that.”

  I groan and hit my head on the backrest in frustration. I know Dad’s driving fast, but it doesn’t seem fast enough. Each pulse behind my ears is beating a thousand times in one second.

  “God, Phoenix, you’re my only wish, and if you’re with me in my last moments, I’ll die a happy man.”

  His phone calls? God, he was calling me. He wanted to say something, and I didn’t let him. I took that away from him.

  Why didn’t I take that phone call?

  Why?

  I keep my eyes on the road, following every turn, every car we pass, every traffic light. The hospital suddenly seems so far … so far.

  “If you want to spend your last moments basking in fulfilled wishes, know that I’m waiting with open arms. All you have to do is wheel to me.”

  I keep my jaws clench and stifle all the sobs reaching my throat ...

  What if I do get my wish? What if I do?

  “You need to go away.”

  No!

  No, no, no, no. Oh God, I’ll hate myself forever if something happens to him today.

  I’ll die. An eternity passes, and the car screeches to a stop. Daddy steps out and gets my wheelchair while Madison helps me out of the car. “Go in, I’ll park the car and join you,” Dad says and speeds away.

  Daddy wheels me in, and a nurse informs us that Mr. Eastwood is being treated and we follow her directions to the ro
om. We round the corner, and my gaze falls on a guy wearing the same violet shirt Kai wore tonight, leaning on the wall. My heart leaps in my chest as I recognize him—Kai.

  An unknown sound rips from my chest, and I wheel myself faster to him. Kai lifts his head and sees me. Warmth spreads over my body. His brows crease as he rushes forward to meet me. I throw myself into his arms, and he catches me.

  And the world feels right.

  The wheelchair slips away, and I grip Kai as we fall down. He wraps his arms around me as our butts hit the ground.

  God, he’s really alive.

  He’s alive. I pull him in a tight hug, relishing in how warm and safe he feels in my arms. I pull away and take his chin between my palms and rain kisses all over his face.

  “Babe, what’s the matter?” Kai asks.

  Hearing him speak makes him all more real. My heart takes over, and my lips smash over his. He freezes at first but then starts returning my kiss with equal passion and fire. I pour all my feelings—pain, agony, misery in this kiss, telling him without words how much he means to me. My fingers pull at his hair and bring his mouth closer to mine. Our tongues tangle and I taste him and salt—my tears are still flowing, washing down my pain.

  Wait. Is he hurt?

  I separate his body from mine and look for wounds. My hands wander over his face, his neck, his chest, and his arms and all over. Are you hurt? I try to ask, but no words come out. I shake him and look at Daddy. He looks at me with wet eyes and looks at Kai. “I guess she’s asking if you’re hurt?”

  I nod, and Kai frowns again. So I shake him again for not getting an immediate reply. He takes my cheeks in his palms. “I’m not hurt. I’m perfectly fine.” My chest allows itself to breathe freely.

  It’s okay. Kai’s okay. Then why is he in the hospital? I wave my hand up showing the walls … Hell!

  “What am I doing here?” he provides, and I nod vigorously. He strokes my hair. “It’s Greg.” I make another sign with my hand. “There’s nothing serious,” he replies, “but he broke an arm and they’re trying to fix it.”

  I nod and touch my lips to his again, but this time softly, needing the connection. My arms tighten on his torso, relishing the movement of his chest—he’s alive, breathing.

  Even after we separate, my tears keep on falling, and Kai keeps on wiping them away, reminding me that he’s all right. He lifts me and carries me to the nearby bench. Taking my place on his lap, I rest my head on his shoulder.

  My memory jogs back to each of those moments when Kai tried his best to talk to me after the coma and every other moment when he rained his love on me, and I rejected it. They hit me in waves, and I sob harder. I’d never thought about the pain that my dads, Madison, and Kai went through when I was in a state of coma, but now I realize what my family went through. While I wallowed in self-pity after I woke up, I never thought about how they’d suffered for those two years, not knowing whether I’d wake up or not.

  Less than an hour—that’s how long I thought that Kai was hurt and my world collapsed. But he had to live with me in the coma for two years.

  KAI

  Slowly, I remove Phoenix’s glasses and hook them in my collar. My head rests over Phoenix’s head as I continue to rock her knowing she’s falling asleep. She still sobs at times even though she’s between reality and dream.

  I replay all that happened. I got the call from Sophia informing me that the hospital called and said that Greg had an accident. I then called Mom and Dad, who said they’d rush over. Mom and Dad got here a few minutes ago, and Dad went to get coffee for Mom because she’s tired of all the tears she shed.

  Phoenix jolts up and looks at me. The tears clinging to her lashes fall off, and I brush them away. Her cold fingers touch my face, and her eyes roam over my face.

  “Kai ...”

  I caress her cheek. “Babe … everything’s fine.”

  She takes a few breaths, her eyes peering into me. She gives her lower lip a bite. “Kai, I don't want you to go away. I didn't mean all that I said tonight. I was scared and silly, and I'm so sorry that I hurt you. I didn’t want to be shackled to you, and yes, these are Sydney’s words. Yes, I’ve let her make me believe that I’ll just slow you down. That I don’t deserve you. That you deserve someone better. Someone who’s going to walk alongside you.” She looks down and blinks tears. I don’t speak because I know she’s not finished. “I’ve been fighting with myself for so long … and now I don’t have that strength. I don’t have the strength to be separated from you. For once, I just want to be a little selfish and keep you for myself whether I deserve you or not.” She squeezes her eyes shut.

  “But it’s all so complicated.” Phoenix opens her eyes and threads her fingers in my hair. “At times all I feel is numbness, and other times strong waves course through me, making me feel happy without any reason. I can’t explain that, Kai … I can’t.”

  “Phoenix,” I whisper, willing my heart to stay strong a while longer. “I can’t explain it, but whatever it is, go with your heart. Your heart can speak a language you don’t understand, words that you can’t make sense of right now but it’ll never lie to you.” I say and wait. My insides twist. Her next words will either revive me or kill me.

  She nods. “You need to know that … when I heard that you had an accident, my breath was ripped from my chest. I hated what I was feeling … like a part of me was taken away from me.”

  God, Phoenix! “I—”

  She cuts me off. “Maybe it’s not love, not yet. But I have feelings for you. They’re strong, stronger than me. Kai … I want to give us a try.”

  Out of everything that I was expecting her to say, that was not it. Happiness rushes through me, their waves bursting through my pores and making the hair rise across my whole body. My forehead touches hers. “Phoenix, babes, a try is all I need. It’s all I need.”

  Her smile lights up this dark place. She brings her mouth up and presses a gentle kiss on my lips.

  A few minutes later, sleep claims Phoenix, and I lift my head to see Sophia smiling sadly. “Sometimes I wonder who’s luckier between the two of you,” she muses, her eyes sweeping over Phoenix’s sleeping figure. “I think it’s her.”

  I look down at the woman on my lap. “But I think it’s me.”

  “And this is exactly why I think she’s the lucky one.”

  This makes me chuckle. “If you say so.”

  A nurse interrupts us announcing that they have fixed Greg’s broken arm and we can meet him. “Stay here, we’ll tell him you’re outside,” Mom says, taking a last look at Phoenix in my lap and then walking inside with Dad and Sophia.

  I allow myself to breathe freely now that Greg’s okay and Phoenix said that she wants to give us a try. But what the hell actually happened for them to rush in here?

  “I lied.” I look up to see Madison standing in front of me looking at Phoenix. She takes a place at the end of the bench, lifting Phoenix’s feet on her lap. “Because I saw the look on her face when I said your name in panic, Kai. She looked like her world was coming to an end. I’m sorry, but my mind whirled, and I misled her into believing that you’d had an accident because I knew that this would definitely get her to admit her feelings for you.”

  A heavy weight builds in my chest. “God, Madison … this was not—”

  “I know that was a horrible thing to do, and I regretted it the moment she started screaming, but it was too late to change anything.” She peeks at me from the corner of her eyes. “It wasn’t so bad after all,” she says and shrugs.

  Phoenix is going to light fire to the world when she wakes up and learns the truth. “This is not how I wanted her back,” I say, letting my head rest on the bench.

  “I know. It just happened,” Madison says. “I saw her panicking, and I lied because I know that she loves you and she just needed a boost. I know it was the wrong thing to do, and I’m sorry.”

  She’s lying—like right now. I can feel it in the way she’s speaking, the
way she’s avoiding my eyes, the way she’s biting her lips. What she did was far more serious than the explanation she’s giving right now.

  “That’s not why you lied, Madison?”

  Her eyes swing to mine. I see water gather on her bottom lids and fall. “It is.”

  “No, it’s not. Tell me the truth.”

  “I had to do it,” she whispers, her eyes vacant.

  “But I don’t understand.” Madison has been very serious about Phoenix and me coming back together. She was doing more than she ought to do, and I always thought that it’s her love for Phoenix, but now it looks like there’s something else.

  She lets out a humorless laugh. “Love is like a flower, Kai. It withers if you don’t water it. Or like a baby, it needs care—it forgets you if it doesn’t see you in a few weeks. Love is not the big thing that people talk about. It’s not a cactus which doesn’t need water. It needs something to keep it alive. It needs care, attention, respect, time, togetherness, to remain in one's thought, the actions that we do for the other person.”

  “You think that the distance between Phoenix and me was fading the love between us?”

  She wipes her tears away and nods. “I never knew who my father was. My mother went crazy after he left her. She didn’t care about her own child, she didn’t care that her child didn’t have food, and she didn’t care that someone was raping her child. She didn’t care that her child was fearful every night trying to survive. The day my father left, all the love was sucked out of her, and you know what a person is without love? That person becomes a living corpse, and I didn’t want to see a replica of my mother in Phoenix. I was scared … scared that by the time she realized she loved you, it’d be too late and she’d have lost you forever.”

  “Madison … I didn’t know. I’m so sorry for what happened.” I adjust Phoenix’s head on my lap and smile sadly at Madison. I have no idea what I should tell her because this is such a delicate topic, and I refuse to make her any more uncomfortable. “You meant well,” I say. “I hope she remembers this when she wakes up.”