The Mercy of Birds

CHAPTER 10: IMMORTALITY

CHAPTER 10
IMMORTALITY

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It was hard to believe that every decision, every turn, every truth, and every lie he told would lead him to this day. Back then, when the notion first came to him at eighteen, the same age when she had murdered them, he scared himself to death for even thinking about it, jumping to conclusion that he must began to lose his mind too like her, but now here he was, in this washed out room, the big windows that lined up in rows on the wall to his right allowed the mellow glow of the midday to illuminate the vast space. He glanced around the room and found that there were two other meetings between visitors and inpatients that happened alongside them but he couldn't hear anything from their table.

They were arranged to meet at the centermost table where the nurses and security could oversee them easily. It was the first time ever that Clementine, an ex-inpatient of the stricter building, had someone to visit her other than people from the law enforcement and attorneys, and they were a little cautious with the protocol. She was known to have murdered two people after all. Words also finally circulated around that he was the renowned composer, Cameron Crane and that he was related to her, so if something dire was to go down at this meeting, it would most likely make headlines by tomorrow.

The sound of the door opening made him snap out of his reverie and he immediately stood up after some time waiting. Fixing his gaze at the entrance, his breath hitched when a woman clad in the hospital uniform stepped in the room, followed by Dr. Singh, and a security guard behind them.

That woman was her, and she was simultaneously everything and nothing like he imagined her to be.

She didn't see him at first, almost captivated by the ray of light that pervaded into the room, before they approached him and the awareness of his presence seemed to dawn in on her.

His mouth went dry. He stood stock-still like a centerpiece of the room, even his shaking had stopped and so was the shivering of his bones. The tidal waves that rippled in his stomach abated, a sudden calm of the sea that had just been assailed with a deadly storm a minute ago. Their eyes met and it was just so surreal to be true. The idea of her that had been distorted into a nightmarish phantasm, an incarnation of evil, a diabolical whore of Babylon—and many other accursed nicknames their mother had labeled her as just seemed so impossible after seeing it with his eyes that the real her appeared so feeble, so plaintive.

Was it just the play of the light or was it the trick of the devil? But how could he deny the feeling that pervaded inside him? Of poignancy, and melancholy, and grief, and sorrow... a flood of it all. How could he ever feel something that was not abhorrence for a murderer? Had he also fallen from grace?

"Clementine, this is Cameron. The man that you've been wanting to see," Dr. Singh introduced them and he didn't know why she said it almost in a way that they really were strangers that met for the first time. It struck him with fear for a split second, was it her mind? Did she remember him at all? Had she forgotten him while she was all that he thought about?

"He–hello, Clementine. It's been a long time. I... I've grown up now," he announced as he tried to grasp in that sense of loss familiarity. He indecisively held his hand out, thinking more of whether it would make her uncomfortable or inconvenient than his own sake.

She stared at the big hand that was stretched out in her direction and everyone waited for her to receive the handshake, but she was immobile the whole time, making the wait fruitless and his hand fall with no one to hold it. He had expected this, though. He had expected all the rejections, unresponsiveness, growing pains that came with it, but it was more or less, a new feeling that he hadn't been used to yet, so the disappointment ached slightly.