2.1.53

Chapter Nineteen: Savior

A loud thunderclap woke me up. It was followed by a sharp pain in the back of my head. It was dark everywhere and the only thing I could sense was the pain and the sound of the raindrops hitting against the window. Another thunderclap barely illuminated the room, but it was enough to see that the other side of the bed was empty.

I unlocked my phone and checked the time to be 3 in the morning. I sat up on the bed. For a moment I wondered what I was doing in a hotel room but then I saw her silhouette during a thunderclap. She was sitting on the balcony, watching the rain in the dark.

I got out of bed and walked up to her. She heard me slid the balcony door.

"Why are you still awake?" She asked me.

"Thunderclaps. You?" I asked back.

I noticed she was holding a glass of liquor in her hand, probably her favorite whiskey.

"Because I refuse to waste my days sleeping" She brought the glass up to her lips.

Its been over a year and a half when I met her in the abandoned park, the day I lost my grandma, the only person I had left. To my knowledge, no one actually comes to that abandoned park, so it was a place to go find solace in a world of chaos. She was sitting on the bench, crying, telling her about how cancer has made her days limited to a stranger, me. But even in her despair, there was something tranquil about her. Perhaps it was her eyes, or perhaps it was how she emphasized small details, perhaps it was something beyond comprehension.

She told me how her cancer treatment failed and the doctor informed her that she can breathe her last any day now. I told her about my grandma's death and we talked and we sat in silence. At the end we decided, death can creep up to us any day and left the park with the promise that if death doesn't creep up to us we will meet on each Sunday.

The next days were filled with anxiety and an unknown terror. I knew she was just a stranger to me and I was just another stranger to her but the thought of not seeing someone because they died between two meetings was an uncomfortable feeling.

Sunday came lazily, and the journey to the park was more anxious than that of the rest of the week combined. But I saw her sitting on the bench. She cried again, confined to me that she was going through the same feelings as me and that it made her life more miserable. We talked again, we stayed silent again and, in the end, we decided we shouldn't put each other through the anxiety and the unknown of waiting till Sunday anymore.

She moved into my apartment that day, apparently, she too had no one in her life except herself. So, we startled living together, in two separate rooms, busy with our own work. But each night after dinner we sat together on the balcony. Sometimes she played her ukulele, sometimes I told her a story I read. She loved drinking whiskey and I liked the feeling of nicotine in my bloodstream. There were no judgments, there were no attachments, just two strangers talking and sometimes staying silent, together.

But strangers don't remain strangers for long, we started caring for each other. We started talking more, she started cooking for me, I started bringing little gifts for her. Two separate bedrooms became one bedroom and a storage room. She started drinking less, I started smoking less. We went to malls together, Saturdays were reserved for our date nights. The balcony sessions that once ended up in separate cold beds then ended in each other's arms.

But then a few months later, life showed us our place. Prinita became sick, very sick. She was in ICU for 14 days and then about half a month more in the hospital. Our balcony sessions turned into hospital sessions and the endings turned into her sobbing in my arms and falling asleep. When she was released from the hospital I imagined things to go back how it was before. It was known to us from the beginning that Death can creep into us any day, that Life is meant to be lived one day at a time but knowing the same fact as strangers and then knowing it as a couple are two entirely different things.