by Kallysten
Caroline grimaces. “I know. But I just.”
She sighs. She doesn’t quite look Calden in the eyes—good thing, too. Calden has no use for pity. She picks up a shawl from the table, bunched up from being used as a pillow, and gestures at the door before wrapping it around her shoulders.
“I’ll come with you while they prepare the operating room.”
“I’m just going to wait outside,” Calden says, rolling his eyes. “I don’t need a minder.”
“You’re not the only one who made a promise to Eli. And I need a smoke anyway. I need to wake up.”
They go in silence, Caroline briefly talking to a nurse to give instructions. She really should be preparing for the surgery, but it’s not Calden’s job to tell her how to do hers, so he says nothing as she accompanies him downstairs and out into the street. It’s also not his job to comment on the smoking habits of a woman old enough to be his mother, so he doesn’t ask when she started smoking again. They stopped together, once. Calden doesn’t ask if he’s picked up smoking again, too. Doubtful anyway: Eli wouldn’t let him keep cigarettes, and it’d be useless for Calden to try to hide them for later.
Out by the emergency room entrance, Caroline leans back against the nearest wall, and Calden itches to do the same. He forces himself to remain standing. Even with the cold air filling his lungs, stinging his cheeks and giving him a jolt, it’ll be hard enough to remain awake in the car. But he has to. He needs to. Get home, write up the details of the attack in his diary, and then Eli. Take care of Eli. Be good to Eli. Make sure—
“Do you still see it?” Caroline asks suddenly. “Or hear it?”
Calden’s head jerks up. “What?”
But his surprise comes less from the fact that Caroline asked than the realization that, no, he doesn’t hear or see Riley anymore. He’s afraid to think too much about it and wonder about the why, afraid Riley will come back.
Caroline lets out a sigh of blue smoke. “Your hallucinations. You said ‘shut up,’ so I’m thinking you heard something. You wouldn’t look at the corner of the room, so you were seeing it too. Or are still seeing it. What is it, Calden? Do you want to talk about it now that we have five minutes?”
Calden shakes his head, ready to let the topic drop, but he can’t help but ask, “Have you asked before?”
Caroline nods as she takes another long drag on her cigarette.
“I’m guessing I never answered, or you wouldn’t keep asking.”
“Or maybe you did answer,” Caroline retorts, “and I want to know if it’s the same hallucination. You’re still my patient.”
Calden snorts. “No, I’m not. And I didn’t. I wouldn’t…”
He trails off as a thought comes to him. He wouldn’t tell Caroline or anyone else he hallucinates about Riley telling him to kill himself—and he won’t put it in the diary in case Eli reads it. He said he doesn’t, but really, how can Calden know for sure? He doesn’t even want to put it in code in the diary, because that’s the first thing he’ll read when he wakes up next time, and maybe reading what form his hallucinations take might turn into a case of self-fulfilling prophecy. But if he gave himself a clue through Caroline, he might know if he’s right in thinking they’re always the same. He thinks for a second; it’s not difficult to think of a clue obscure enough for others but clear enough for himself.
“Next time I mention hallucinations,” he says, getting close enough to Caroline that he can breathe in a bit of secondhand smoke and realize that, no, he hasn’t taken up smoking again, “I need you to say this, precisely. Are you paying attention?”
Caroline stands a little straighter. She nods. “Do you want me to write it down?”
Calden makes an impatient gesture. “If you need to. Just say this: ‘Is nine enough?’”
Frowning, Caroline mouths the words. It’s clear she wants to ask what it means, but even if she did, he’d hardly explain to her what he’d confessed Riley, a year or so before her death: that he was in love with Eli, and that out of ten, he was a solid nine. “Is nine enough?” she’d asked, teasing. He’d teased right back. “He’d have to be my twin to be a ten.”
Before Caroline can say a word, Eli’s voice rises behind Calden.
“Someone asked for a ride home?”
Not bothering even with a goodbye to Caroline, Calden turns around. Eli is standing by the open door of his car. His eyes look bruised, the shadows under them too deep, but he’s smiling softly. Without thinking, Calden smiles back.
“Home sounds like a rather smashing idea,” he says, climbing into the car. Eli follows after a quick goodbye to Caroline and a quieter, “Three days. At least. Tell Doctor Langton, would you?”
If Caroline responds, Calden can’t hear it. He doesn’t ask Eli what that means. It’s fairly obvious. The hospital won’t call for his help for at least three days, presumably so Calden can catch up on sleep. He bites the inside of his cheek rather than protesting. He needs the sleep; he knows that. He just wishes he didn’t need to be mothered like this.
Just a block away from the hospital, they are flagged down to stop at a check point. On an attack night, cars are only allowed on the roads with special dispensation, which Eli produces for the soldier standing by the car with a rifle in hand. They only carry rifles inside the city; bullets have no effect on demons. Soon, they’re on their way again.
“So how did that reattachment surgery go?” Eli asks, his voice so composed that there’s no hint of the fact that, two years ago, it wasn’t just his hand but his entire arm that Calden reattached during a marathon surgery. The same arm with which he now shifts gears before reaching out to Calden’s hand and wrapping his fingers around it.
He’s been doing this since Calden woke up, but it still feels odd. Odd and pleasant and strangely familiar, too. It’s like Calden’s hand remembers the feel of Eli’s, its warmth, the way it presses gently without being overwhelming, even when Calden’s mind insists this is all new.
“Just routine,” Calden says, and proceeds to tell Eli everything about it, then about the holes Caroline must already be drilling in that man’s skull, because if he stops talking, surely he’ll fall asleep, and that can’t happen, not now, not yet.
“You’re a genius,” Eli whispers when Calden is done. “Do you know that?”
“If I did, I must have forgotten,” Calden replies, then smiles, just a little, to show Eli he’s joking. “Clearly you don’t say it often enough. Getting used to my brilliance?”
Eli laughs and takes Calden’s hand more fully in his, entwining their fingers and squeezing lightly. “Not likely. You just like hearing it too much for your own good so I have to pace myself.”
But Calden isn’t listening. He’s looking at Eli’s hand, wrapped around his own as though it’s the most natural thing in the world. And maybe it is. The words inked over Calden’s chest certainly hint that this happens on a fairly regular basis, and probably a great deal more. But it still feels new and too good to be true.
“Calden?” Eli says quietly as he gives another small squeeze to his hand. “Is this all right?”
Calden nods once, hesitantly, then again with more determination.
“It’s fine. Really… good.”
Eli laughs again. Calden loves that sound.
“You looked elsewhere for a moment.”
“No, I’m here,” Calden says, and his voice sounds oddly rough. “I’m with you.”
“I know,” Eli said, taking his eyes off the road to flash him a smile.
His hand shifts, turns over, and now they’re palm to palm, fingers entwined. His skin is warm against Calden’s. If Calden still believed in God, he’d thank him, her, or them that he can see his house just up the street.
(next chronological chapter)
June 27th
Eli sat in the armchair that was one of the few possessions he’d brought into Calden’s house when he moved in, stared at nothing in particular, and sipped from a glass of whiskey. It might have been his second, maybe
his third. He’d decided not to count.
As a rule, he didn’t drink much. He’d witnessed firsthand how enjoying just a drink every now and then to relieve the pressure of working on the frontline could too quickly turn into bartering all of one’s ration tickets for alcohol. Every once in a great while, though, indulging was nice. Tonight, he had what was, in his opinion, the best of excuses.
As he was raising the tumbler to his lips again, he heard noise from Calden’s bedroom. He glanced at his watch: four hours. He heaved a sigh. Calden had been tiring easily since coming out of the hospital ten days earlier, and he rarely went more than a full day without sleep. But when he did sleep, it was never for long enough. Doctor Bonneville had warned Eli this might happen, and there was a bottle of sleeping pills on Calden’s night table—not that he ever agreed to take any.
Patterns had already started to emerge, and Eli pulled out his phone. Right as Calden’s footsteps started coming down the staircase, Eli’s phone chimed as a message came in.
I don’t suppose you’re still waiting.
Eli didn’t bother typing a response. Calden’s steps had stopped for a second; no doubt he’d heard the chime of Eli’s phone. Soon, he came into the living room in his pajamas and dressing gown, his hair in disarray, the phone in his hand.
“Eli?”
Eli nodded at him and indicated the armchair across from him. “Have a seat, Calden. We need to talk.”
They needed to, yes, but Eli really didn’t feel up to it. They’d done this just that morning, and Eli had hoped he’d get a bit more time to prepare again. Every time he told Calden, it was harder than the last. He was sick of it already. They’d have to find a better way. Eli supposed he’d need to be entirely sober to figure that one out, though.
Calden looked troubled as he sat down. He always was. Eli knew exactly why.
“The date?” he asked after wetting his lips with whiskey.
Calden glanced at the phone, then back at Eli, frowning briefly at the glass in his hand.
“I guess it’d have been too much to ask you to wait for me at Lola’s for twenty-five days,” he said, his voice trembling ever so slightly.
Smiling sadly, Eli nodded. An attempt at humor—that was nice.
“I’m not that patient, no.” He observed Calden for a few seconds. “Do you want to figure it out for yourself or do you want me to tell you?”
Calden had tried to work it out three times; he’d never come close. The idea that his brain might not be working exactly as it ought to was literally unthinkable to him.
“Tell me,” he asked quietly, and Eli did.
Symptoms. Diagnosis. Encephalitis. Coma. Anterograde amnesia. Prognosis.
They were medical words, and as such they flowed easily off Eli’s tongue, even when it felt a bit too heavy from the alcohol. He didn’t say he’d all but lived in Calden’s hospital room for two weeks. He didn’t mention the dark circles under Lana’s eyes when she’d watched Calden breathe through a machine, and the tremor in her voice when she’d said it was something she’d hoped never to see again.
What was the point of telling Calden just how much they’d feared for his life? That part of the story was over now. To Calden, it had never happened, would never be more than words, easily forgotten.
With his fingers linked in front of him, Calden observed Eli in silence for a long moment after Eli had concluded with, “You went to bed four hours ago. That’s nowhere near enough. You should try to sleep some more.”
“How many times have you explained this to me?” Calden finally asked.
Eli took a sip from his glass. The alcohol burned, giving him an excuse to grimace. “No idea. I’m not going to keep count. Next question.”
“Are you always the one who tells me?”
“Your mother tried once in the hospital.” Eli snorted quietly. “You refused to believe her. You accused her of lying to you about… well, about a lot of things. She was not amused.”
And that was the understatement of the year. Lana had taken the accusation that she was directly responsible for Riley’s death like a blow. She’d immediately put up a good front—she wasn’t in charge of the city’s entire defense forces for nothing—but the façade had cracked just long enough for Eli to see how much it hurt that the only family she had left did not trust her; worse, that he claimed to blame her for the death of his twin when they all knew he actually blamed himself.
“How does it work, then?” Calden asked quietly, his eyes narrowing. He sounded like he was talking to himself rather than Eli. “If you’re to tell me about my condition every time I wake up, you’d need…”
His gaze flicked over Eli and the armchair as his voice trailed off; Eli turned his face away as he took another sip—the last one from this glass. He didn’t want to know what Calden saw when he looked at him.
“You’ve been living here,” Calden said with some degree of surprise. “How long?”
Eli stood and retreated to the kitchen to help himself to another couple fingers of whiskey. He could see where this conversation was going, and he was far too sober for it.
“Since you were released from the hospital,” he said as he returned. Sitting down again, he scrunched up his bare toes into the carpet, waiting for Calden to figure it all.
“If my condition was temporary,” Calden said slowly, “I could understand you moving in to help for a few days. But you said the prognosis is that my memory will remain affected, with no chance of recovering function.”
It wasn’t a question, so Eli said nothing. Calden’s gaze felt heavier and heavier on him. He hid behind his glass.
“How did we go from me ruining your life by demanding too much of your time to you resigning your job at the hospital and moving in with me?”
Eli closed his eyes. Which part should he address first? God, but he didn’t want to do this, not now, not again, not so soon after the last time. He’d thought he’d get at least a full day.
“You need more sleep,” he murmured. “There are sleeping pills in your bedroom. How about—”
“No,” Calden cut in sharply, jumping to his feet and pacing through the room. “I’m not tired, not in the least. I want… no, I need to know what happened. Everything that happened. Everything I said. Tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Eli snapped. “I didn’t quit my job. I took a leave of absence. Although I am rather lucky I wasn’t fired. Apparently ‘standing guard over comatose friend’ is not quite good enough an excuse for not doing my job, or at least not when there are demon attacks still happening.”
Eli took a sip at the memory of being berated by Petters right outside Calden’s room. Calden had still been asleep then, but Lana had been there. She’d walked out, as regal as a queen, and told Petters she had need for forceful men like him on the frontline, and would he like to join in? His face had turned paler than his starched medical coat. He’d never last on the frontline, and it was obvious to all three of them at that moment. When Lana suggested that, instead, he might take on Eli’s duties at the hospital for a few days, Petters was all too happy to agree.
“So your current job is… what?” Calden stopped pacing and turned a sharp look to Eli. “Home nurse? As much a waste of your abilities as dropping surgery was. I hope Lana is making it worth your while.”
Eli snorted. One day, Calden would react differently. One day he’d say ‘thank you’ rather than getting annoyed that he had to rely on someone. One day… Eli was very good at deluding himself.
“Lana isn’t paying me. You are.” He raised his glass to Calden as though in a toast. “I’ve got full access to your bank account and ration tickets. Your idea. Thanks again for that, by the way.”
Calden looked shocked. He always did at this point. “My bank account? I signed off on that?”
“Your idea,” Eli said again. “Your mother arranged it, but I can show you your signature on the papers. You thought it was the only way to be sure your bills would get paid in time or that y
ou could live here rather than in an institution. Well, the only way other than—”
“Depending on Lana,” Calden finished for him, now thoughtful but less agitated. “Yes. I can see that now. It was for the best.”
“Was it?” Eli snorted. “Can you think of no reason why it might be a hardship for me to be with you 24/7?”
Frowning, Calden drew the robe tighter around him before plopping himself on the sofa. “If it was that much of a hardship,” he said, “you wouldn’t have agreed.”
Eli shook his head. He knew not to expect this. Calden had never asked about it so far, and today, more than ever, it hardly mattered if he did. But really, wasn’t that the sort of thing one’s best friend, whether he had his full memory or not, would ask about?
“You’re not going to ask what Bryce thinks of all this, are you?” he mumbled before taking a deep gulp. “Of course not. What does it matter to you? You couldn’t be bothered to tell me what you knew about his first husband, why would it all matter any more now?”
“If you’d asked me,” Calden started, but Eli cut in angrily.
“Oh, fuck off! You knew I wouldn’t ask you. And I’d bet my right arm you knew I wasn’t going to ask him. You weren’t trying to look out for me, you weren’t trying to help me understand why my husband was pulling away from me, you were just doing what you do best. Showing off. Showing me how much smarter you are. How blind I am. Would it have killed you, really? Once in your life, would it have killed you to be a good friend and say, ‘Eli, your husband’s ex cheated on him with a woman he claimed was his best friend from all the way back to their college years, so you might want to assure him you’re not going to cheat on him with your best friend even when he calls at ridiculous hours because he needs to pick your brain about some experimental surgery’? Or you could have told him yourself.”
His throat felt too tight to continue, and he took a drink.
“How long, Calden?” he asked, staring at the empty chair in front of him rather than at Calden himself. “How long have you known he and I were doomed?”