The first sign of trouble was that Vincent's door was ajar, though it didn't necessarily point to the kind of trouble Elira was hoping not to find. She pushed on the door gently and it swung open without a sound. The apartment was silent.
"Vincent?" Elira cleared her throat, realizing how soft and dry her voice was. "Vincent? Are you in here?"
There was no answer. Elira stepped through the door and stood motionless in the hallway. Maybe he wasn't here. Maybe he'd gone out to the other weapons shop to inquire about his prospective job. But then, why would his door be open? Had he been in such a rush that he'd neglected to close it behind him? That seemed a little unlikely. Maybe he was sick in bed. In that case, she should leave and not disturb him. But...
...maybe he was dead...
Elira shook her head fiercely. No, that wasn't it. It was more than impossible for it to happen twice to the same person. Lightning didn't strike twice in the same spot.
But could it strike beside its first target?
Would it have hit Vincent?
Elira had a sudden picture of Vincent standing on a hill in the middle of a storm, his coat and hair fluttering about him in the gusting wind, his mechanical arm raised to the elements. And then the lightning flashed and came down.
And she was the lightning.
No! Vincent was fine. She was just overreacting. There was no reason to be worried.
There's no reason to be afraid. Her heart beat was thundering as she chanted these words to herself under her breath, moving slowly along the hallway. There's no reason to be afraid...no reason...no reason...no reason...
Death often came without a reason.
But he wasn't dead. She knew it.
But if I know it beyond a shadow of a doubt, why am I still here? Why don't I just go back to the shop? Vincent's fine and he'll be upset if he sees me here...
Still, she kept moving.
Until she was shocked into numbness by the condition of his livingroom.
Gray sunlight meandered through the patio window, bathing the ashen carpet in a dull, cheerless glow. Books lay strewn everywhere, some torn apart and bleeding pages. One of the bookcases lay face down on the floor where it had been tipped from the wall, a few covers visibly peeking out around the edges of the wooden frame as if the books had been trying to escape the disaster. The other two bookcases were nearly empty, the shelves scratched and broken, looking for all the world as if someone had gone to them with a board full of nails.
It was a few moments before Elira could stir herself enough to close her mouth. What had happened? Had someone broken in during the night? Well, then, where was...
"Vincent? Vincent! Where are you?" Elira ran into the kitchen and found it in similar disarray, plates smashed on the floor, pots and pans littering the area like casualties. But no Vincent. The bathroom, too, was empty. She ducked out of it quickly, but not before she saw the shredded shower curtain.
The bedroom. Elira entered cautiously, not wanting to disturb anything, least of all the memories of that night that were possibly still lurking in corners. She stopped walking as her eyes fell on the bed.
The covers had been ripped from the bed and thrown up against the closet doors. The mattress had been cut up mercilessly, springs and bits of fluff poking up through the wounds. It was a ravaging legacy their lovemaking left in its wake.
And then Elira saw them. Two very familiar boots sticking out from the around the foot of the bed. For a full minute, Elira was unable to do anything but stand and stare, her breathing irregular, her heart drumming deafeningly, her eyes filling with tears of disbelief, agony, terror. And then, as if the strings holding her back had been cut, she stumbled forward.
He lay on his back, his face turned to one side, his hair a tumultuous mess. There was no blood. His clothing was not torn. Elira was puzzled until she saw the small pill bottle clutched in his right hand. A few of the white pills had spilled out onto the floor like a trail of luminescent tears.
Elira knelt down slowly beside him. This couldn't be real...this couldn't be real... She stretched out trembling fingers. His hand was still warm. It took a little effort to pry the bottle out of his grip. She recognized the name of the medication. A potent sleeping drug; she'd used to take it when her grief hadn't even allowed her the solace of sleep. But her psychiatrist had warned her against taking more than one at a time. And it looked as if Vincent had swallowed half the bottle.
Elira's hand began to shake so badly that the pills rattled nervously against their plastic prison. She put the bottle down to stop the noise; it scared her in this silence. He had killed himself. Her face contorting, Elira bowed forward and buried her face in the black clothing, clutching at it spasmodically as she wept. He was dead. She'd killed another one.
Elira cried for what seemed like hours. And then, finally spent, she curled up beside his still warm body like she had the morning after, her head resting on his chest. A soft sob escaped her lips occasionally, but then she became quiet, as if she had died beside him.
But in the silence, there was a noise. A regular thu-thump thu-thump thu-thump as if someone were walking heavily with a limp somewhere nearby in the building. A death march. She thought she was imagining it, except that she felt it, too, through his body. It took her confused, grief-stricken mind a few minutes to recognize the sound of a heartbeat.
Elira sat up suddenly, staring at his body, his face. She put one hand to his stomach and thought she felt the routine rise and fall as he breathed. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she moved forward on her knees and put two fingers to his neck.
A pulse: slow, rhythmic.
She put her hand underneath his nose. Warm air brushed her fingers.
He was still alive. Elira started laughing breathlessly in relief, but then stopped. Perhaps he had taken the pills very recently and they just hadn't killed him yet. This thought disturbed her quite a bit. She didn't know how she could make him vomit up the pills besides sticking something down his throat, and for all she knew that could do more harm than good. Maybe she should call the hospital. But Vincent didn't have a phone. Surely someone on this floor would let her call out from their apartment if she said it was an emergency.
Elira rose quickly and ran out of Vincent's flat, stopping in front of the door opposite his to knock. The knock ended up being louder than she'd intended, but she couldn't worry about that now. And maybe the louder the knock, the more quickly the person living here would answer their door, Elira rationalized. After all, a loud knock sounded urgent.
Elira fidgeted as she waited, feeling every second go by, feeling every second wasted. And then, finally, the doorknob turned and the door opened. Inside the apartment stood a short, overweight man dressed only in boxers and an unraveling t-shirt. His face was broad and flat, reminding Elira of a bulldog, and he didn't look like the kind of person who thought much of charity.
"Yeah?"
"Um, yeah, hi." Elira faltered as she took a moment to gather her scattered bearings. "I...I was wondering if I could use your phone, please. It's an emergency."
The man continued to stare at her with dull, uninterested eyes for a few seconds as if he hadn't understood what she'd said.
And then he slammed the door in her face.
It was like that for the next four doors she tried. And the four after that. Elira would've kept on going, but the lack of compassion in the people of Neo-Midgar was making her sick with disgust. And she felt, too, that she had been away from Vincent for too long. This little endeavor had taken her almost fifteen minutes, and for all she knew they could've been the most critical fifteen minutes. She sprinted back to his apartment and through the door, closing it behind her. At the sight of his demolished livingroom, she felt her heart sink lower within in. She hurried into his bedroom. He was in the exact position she'd left him; Elira started to panic and quickly dropped to her knees at his side to check his vital signs. She was frustrated to find herself unable to tell if there had been any change to his heart or breathing rate. She stood and looked around the room as if there could be something she had missed that could possibly help her. And then desperation began to set in.
No. No. I am not going to lose it, she told herself, breathing with deliberate slowness. Vincent needs me. I am not going to let him die. I've got to keep busy. I've got to keep focused...
As she looked down at Vincent, she realized that his position on the floor looked uncomfortable. She glanced at the bed, but frowned when she saw again the damage that had been done to it. And then she had an idea. Stepping around the bed, she picked up the mattress and turned it over awkwardly. This side was undamaged. Then, with a sigh, she turned to Vincent.
He was heavier than she'd thought possible for such a skinny man. With some effort, though, she managed to hoist him onto the bed where she arranged him until he looked comfortable, placing a discarded pillow under his head. And then she sat on the bed beside him, trying to continue thinking rationally. What could she do? What could she do? What could she...
Maybe if I feed him something. Elira nodded to herself. Yes, she could feed him something. Maybe that would cause him to vomit up the pills he'd ingested. But what could she feed him? Solid food was definitely out; he could choke on it. How about soup? Elira stood and paced quickly into the kitchen. Dodging broken dishes and other assorted objects, she searched through Vincent's cupboards, eventually coming up with a can of tomato soup. Picking up a pot from the floor beside her, she made her way to the stove and placed it on the burner. It took Elira a minute or two to find a can opener, but less than thirty seconds to open the can once she'd found it. She dumped the red globs of processed tomato into the pot and poured in one can of milk instead of water to give it more substance. And she turned the burner on.
As she was stirring the soup, she thought she heard something. Frowning, she walked out of the kitchen and took a step toward the bedroom. The sound came again, a deep moan.
Elira was at the bedside within seconds.
Vincent turned his head one way and then the other, wincing convulsively. His shoulders jerked suddenly and he gave another moan. Elira wondered if he was in pain. Maybe enough of the drugs had been taken into his system to kill him. Almost frozen still with her panic, she was unable to do anything but watch him writhe about on the bed. And then, finally, she shot out her hands and grabbed his shoulders, shaking him. "Vincent! Vincent!" Her voice trembled, sounding odd in her own ears. Don't die, don't die!
"...no.............Lu...........Lu...cre...cia..."
Elira gripped him harder. "Vincent!"
"No........."
Elira shook him again, sobbing out breaths. Suddenly, his eyes opened, revealing two pinpoints of pupils almost lost within the red miasma that was his irises. His gaze bore into her. Elira felt her hold loosen in surprise. "Vincent?" she whispered.
He didn't answer. He seemed to be looking right through her. "Please," he said hoarsely, his lips barely moving, ".....forgive......me....."
Elira's own lips trembled. Her shivering fingers caressed his warm cheek. His eyes rolled back into his head and he became very still. Elira tried to control her panic as she put two unsteady fingers to his neck. There was still a pulse. She kept her fingers there a few moments longer than necessary, almost afraid that it would stop beneath her touch. And then she withdrew, not taking her eyes from him until she came to the bedroom doorway.
A layer of the soup had burned to the bottom of the pot. With a curse, Elira poured the salvageable part into one of the few bowls that hadn't been broken and scraped the rest into a small garbage pail she found beneath the sink. She then grabbed a spoon from the cutlery drawer and headed carefully to the bedroom, soup in hand.
It took her a few minutes to prop Vincent up enough that he would be able to swallow the soup, putting the pillow against the headboard so that his shoulders could rest on it. And then, pushing his head back until it, too, lay against the headboard, she opened his mouth and put a spoonful of tomato soup between his teeth. After a moment, he swallowed reflexively. Elira smiled. At least this was going well.
He had pleaded for her forgiveness. Well, not exactly. He hadn't been completely aware at the time. But perhaps, in some part of his subconscious mind, he had recognized her voice and had said the words that had been haunting him since his realization that he had hurt her by rejecting her, by trying to kill himself. Yes, she would forgive him; she would forgive him one hundred times over if it would draw him back from the brink of death.
But what had he said prior to that? Lu...crecia? Had that been it? What did it mean? It sounded almost like a name...
Elira would've continued wondering except that she suddenly discovered she had no pail with her if this did cause him to throw up. She walked back to the kitchen and emptied the garbage pail into a bag. It would have to do. She carried it with her back to the bedroom.
Vincent hadn't moved. Elira quickly force-fed him the rest of the soup and then stayed beside him, waiting for the effects. But there weren't any. After almost half an hour of waiting, Elira's worrying began to get the better of her. If he didn't vomit, the drug wouldn't come out of his system and it could kill him. She belatedly regretted not running out of the building and using a payphone to call the hospital. Why had she thought she could handle this? It was obvious that she had no expertise in this area; she was no doctor. But, she hadn't wanted to leave him...
And she still didn't want to leave him. If she went off to find a phone, he might awaken and have a moment of clarity before falling back into unconsciousness or, God forbid, before passing away. She would miss the moment if she wasn't there, and she wouldn't be able to tell him she forgave him. She wouldn't be able to ask him for his forgiveness for bringing him to this, for pushing him to be something that, maybe, he hadn't been ready to be.
She'd never been able to ask Eagan to forgive her. And she'd never been given the chance to forgive him. She'd carried the guilt around with her like a burden for years afterward. She didn't want to have to deal with that again.
And so, maybe it was selfish, and maybe it would end up being euthanasia. But she was going to stay with him.
She moved Vincent gently until he was again lying flat on the mattress and removed his boots, putting them by the foot of the bed. She then picked up a blanket from the floor and threw it over him. He had no chairs for her to sit on next to the bed. And so she crawled up beside him and lay down on her side on top of the blanket. Instinctively, she draped one arm across his stomach; it was the only way she remembered lying beside him.
She would take her chances.
Vincent had two more episodes that afternoon, but each one, instead of draining him, seemed to energize him. The third and last had the longest duration, almost five minutes; a new word, something that sounded like 'ho-jo', started coming up with as much frequency as 'lucrecia'. At one point, he'd even sat up, trying with his eyes wide-open and unseeing, to leave the bed. But Elira had grabbed him around the waist before he was able to get very far, holding him back. He'd started to thrash his arms, but just as Elira had begun to cry out in fear that he would injure her, he fell limply against her. She'd set him back down warily.
But the episodes never gave way to one moment of sentient thought. Elira wondered constantly whether the aggressiveness meant his condition was improving or he was getting closer to the end. She wished for the former, but suspected it to be the latter, the drugs just giving him a dizzying high before the final drop.
But she didn't want him to die before she was able to say what she wanted to say to him, ask what she wanted to ask of him. She didn't want him to die, period. Perhaps she didn't know him well, but she'd trusted him; she'd let him past her defenses into a bond with her. He'd become a friend, but even a little more than that. She'd known him without knowing him.
The ripping of the bond as he left the mortal coil would hurt.
But he didn't die. It was a little after six when his eyelids fluttered open; Elira knew immediately that it wasn't another episode. Each of those had been sudden. This awakening came in levels, as if Vincent were climbing a ladder of consciousness. And then, kneeling over him, holding her breath, she saw rational eyes return her look. And then Vincent frowned, squinting his eyes shut against the light from the window as the sun set over Neo-Midgar.
"Elira?" he croaked.
"Yes." He was alive. She wanted to hug him, to hold him, to even just put a hand to his cheek. But she restrained herself. "It's me."
"What are you doing here?"
What was she doing here? Shouldn't it be obvious? "You didn't come to work. I was worried."
Vincent pushed himself up on shaky arms until he was sitting with his legs over the side of the mattress. Elira followed him, letting her own legs dangle over the edge. Strands of Vincent's hair fell across his face despite the bandana, but he didn't seem to notice. Elira almost reached out to push them aside.
Vincent put his right hand to his head and massaged his temple a couple of times with the heel of his palm. Elira peered at him in concern. "Are you all right?"
He nodded slightly, but winced anyway.
"Do you want anything? I can make you something to eat, or get you some water or something if you want."
He shook his head, closing his eyes. After a moment, he took a breath as if to calm himself.
Elira peered harder, noticing the small frown lines between his eyebrows. "Are you sure you're all right?"
Vincent didn't answer. Elira wondered if he even knew the answer.
A silent minute passed before Vincent stood. Elira followed him unbidden. He stopped walking at the corner of the kitchen, surveying the damage.
"Do you know what happened, Vincent?" Elira asked quietly. "Or, was it like this when you got here?"
Vincent made no reply. He stepped carefully through the kitchen and went into the livingroom. Shoving a few of the books aside with a foot, he sat down amid the mess with his back to her.
"Vincent? Please answer me. Why'd you take those pills?"
He made no move to respond, as if he hadn't heard her. As if she wasn't there. She became a little frustrated. She'd stayed by him for hours, suffered with him through his small incidents of delirium, fed him soup, and now he wasn't even willing to look at her. She deserved an explanation, didn't she? She deserved to at least know why he'd swallowed half a bottle of depressants.
Maybe he was angry at her. Maybe he thought she'd somehow saved him when he'd wanted to die. Or maybe he was feeling guilty about hurting her by trying to kill himself, knowing what he knew about Eagan, and was too ashamed to face her.
Maybe she would have to start.
"Vincent," she began, stepping a few paces away from the kitchen. He didn't make a move. Elira steeled herself against his coldness and continued. "I'm sorry I yelled at you yesterday. I was just...angry, because you wouldn't explain why you didn't want me around you. I didn't really mean those things I said about never wanting to speak to you again."
Vincent still said nothing, did nothing.
"Are you mad at me?" Elira asked after a pause. No answer. "I'm sorry about everything. I'm sorry I..." ...tried to help you... "tried to break through your solitude without even asking if it was all right with you. I was just lonely, and I thought you...well, anyway, you looked like you could've used some help. I didn't mean to...to hurt you, or make you uncomfortable. I certainly didn't mean to bring you to this..." Elira gave a little sigh.
Vincent said nothing. Elira tried not to flinch. No forgiveness for her. No redemption for such a wicked sinner, so horrible a human...
She turned, but kept her eyes on him. It grieved her to think that this would probably be the last time she'd ever see him. He didn't glanced over his shoulder, unwilling to let his memory have a departing picture of her. Clenching her teeth on her feelings, she directed her face forward, ready to leave.
"You shouldn't apologize for another man's sin, Elira. The fault has always lain with me."
Elira pivoted suddenly, intent on approaching him and telling him he was wrong. They were both at fault, she the most for starting all of this. She wanted to say that she forgave him every wrong he thought he'd committed. But before she'd taken a full step, he spoke again.
"Please, go. I'll see you at work tomorrow."
She wanted to say no. She wanted to go to him anyway. But he looked so pitiful amongst the confusion that had once been his livingroom that she could deny him nothing. And so, she departed.
Upon entering her shop a little later, she went straight to her apartment to hang up her coat. Before she'd even grabbed a hanger, however, Benita rushed into the flat behind her, shutting the door quickly as if she'd had someone chasing her. Elira looked at her strangely.
"What is it, Benita? You look as if..."
"Yeah, yeah. I have something real important to tell ya, Lir."
Elira put her coat away. "The heck you say."
"This is serious, Lir. Terry's brother called while you were gone and said that Terry was almost killed last night."
Elira turned to Benita swiftly, fearfully. Was her curse spreading?
Benita nodded, and Elira noticed for the first time how pale the woman's face was. "Looked like he'd been mauled by an animal er some'n. Tore up real bad, lost a lot a blood. Lost an eye, too. Doctors managed to save 'im, though."
Elira frowned. "An animal, he said? There shouldn't be any animals in Neo-Midgar. There isn't even a zoo in this city for an animal to escape from."
"Tha's what makes it so odd," Benita continued. "Some think it was an animal that got over the city walls somehow, but I dunno. There ain't nothin' in this area that coulda done that kinda damage."
"Is Terry going to be okay?"
"Yeah, the doctors think so. Tonight's s'posed to be the critical time, but they say he's got a good chance a survivin'."
Elira nodded distractedly, staring vacantly into her closet. Only when Benita gave her a tap on the arm did she return to the present. And then she followed the older woman down the stairs, her mind twirling.
If Elira had believed in fate, she probably would've thought it was teasing her.