Rise [Bruno Mars]

Chapter thirty-eight

Chapter thirty-eight

Failure. Risk. Lungs. Animus.

I was dimly aware of the words murmured by women and men dressed in mint green and silver stethoscopes. They flocked Bruno who lied in a metal-framed bed, being poked, prodded at, a dusty machine counting his heart. He was polite, exhausted but polite, ending every sentence with thank you. I stood in a corner, cloaked in shadow. Although everyone knew I was there, I liked to pretend they didn't.

Not good for him. . .

Smoker. . .

A year. Maybe less. . .

Maybe. . .

Maybe. . .

May-

"You must be starving."

I blinked. The nurses were gone, the room dim. My ears picked up on a faint snore before my mom shifted on her feet and my attention focused on her. Focused, but not really seeing.

Remembering.

"South Asia," she said, tapping a stack of papers that would soon have her signature. "That's where my job is sending me. I can't really name a specific place. I'd be traveling. China. Afghanistan. . ."

"Would you be happy?"

"India." The way she said the country. As if it were written on her fingertips that curled atop the small stack of legal agreement papers.

"Would you be happy?"

"Would I?" Her curled fingertips went to her heart but she played it off as if she were toying with a button on her shirt. "I believe I would."

She was holding a plastic bowl. When I didn't take it, she extended it out an extra inch. But I looked at her face. It was the same one that said she would be happy leaving.

"Would. . . you keep in touch?"

"I'll message you every day, Adrian. Even if it kills me."

"It's soup," she guaranteed. "It's warm."

I accepted it, the spoon inside scraping across the bowl's rim. I was not as polite as Bruno. I did not say thank you. I did not say anything. My mom stole a glance at Bruno and chewed her lip, an infamous habit that a younger me had the luck to emulate. "So you found each other. That's a story I would like to hear some time."

You could read it, I thought, in the emails you never received. I gripped the bowl harder; the plastic bent.

My mom didn't notice. "I'm sorry to hear he's. . . I'm sorry about his situation, Adrian." She moved to touch my shoulder and I jerked away from her. Broth sloshed over the bowl's rim, splashing my boots, making my mother step back quickly to avoid it.

She stared at the mess for a long time. "I know this won't be easy." With that, she left, closing the door behind her.

Dripping with warm broth, I listened to Bruno's heartbeat.

*

"Thank you babe," Bruno would whisper, not happily, when I helped him upright, fed him the soup the nurses brought in. He would only take a few mouthfulls before grumbling that he was tired, and would sink into the pillows I fluffed for him, and close his eyes.