The Vanishing // Jake Kiszka

Part Two

Day 396 ~ Amelia

His preferred it when I called him Jake. Whenever I had cause to use his name. He began to move around on his own on the fourth day, stumbling into my side tables and clutching his ribcage with each tumultuous step. Like a fawn on trembling newborn legs.

It was somewhat endearing. The way he smiled through the pain and sat with me at the kitchen table eating vegetable soup and crackers in the silence within which we had both become accustomed to. An impenetrable veil between us that didn't seem to want to come down.

We shadowed one another. His eyes averting to the ground whenever I stole a glance. My concern for his healing injuries something I didn't want him to confuse with mounting interest. Even though I had begun to actively consider him, despite my inward protests that he would one day want to continue his search for others.

He was a gentle enigma. My fear that he might gain enough strength to hurt me dissipated with each passing hour. When he didn't sleep he would sit by the fire with a book, his gaze easing up from the pages whenever I had reason to pass. Sometimes he would smile, other times he would just follow me with his eyes before reverting back to his story.

I didn't want to come to rely on his presence. I had made my choice to stay at the cabin and try to survive. I had driven across the country and seen nothing but desolate emptiness. The hopes of my family sitting on the cabin porch waiting for me dwindling with every mile I'd reached.

I didn't want him to become necessary to me. Even though I suspected that I had become somewhat necessary to him, if only whilst he was still recovering. I prepared myself for the day he would stand up and announce that he was leaving. That day drawing unflinchingly closer by the second.

"Amelia." He said, the sound of my name on an unfamiliar voice sending an unrequited chill down my spine.

There was nothing nefarious in his tone. He sat, quite pleasantly, on the chair which he had commandeered for reading and placed his book on the coffee table by the fire.

"Are you in pain?" I replied, shooting up from my place at the kitchen table where I'd been peeling carrots. "Can I get you something?"

The easing of a joyous smirk curled within the corners of his mouth. As if he was amused by me. Shaking his head as I stood in the open space between the kitchen and the den. Feeling a little foolish for rushing to him like that for no particular reason at all.

"Nothing a little whiskey couldn't fix."

He knew better than to ask for a drink whilst on the course of medication I'd put him on. He was staring at me with a mischief that would usually incite me to join, but I'd tried to keep a professional distance. He was my patient, not my guest.

"I had to put you on a course of antibiotics for the wound to your head." I explained, "I didn't want there to be a risk of infection. If you need some pain relief, I can grab you some tylenol."

His shoulders slumped. And he forgot himself for a moment. Hissing back a stab of pain as he eased back into the chair. He was a terrible patient. Pain didn't sit well with him, despite the fact that I had noticed two major scars running up either side of his left forearm. They were neat and perfectly stitched, no doubt from surgery rather than an open wound. I had meant to ask him about them, stopping myself when I realised that I shouldn't get to know him.

"Forgive me." He sighed, "Sometimes I just need a little something... to forget."

He was bored. I'd seen boredom before. When people who could barely stand would fight to get out of bed just to shift their perspective a little. Nights in the hospital when I'd catch my patients trying to inch their arms up the vending machine to retrieve snacks simply because there was nothing else to do. Nothing good ever came of boredom and he seemed to know this, his gaze shifting around the room looking for something else to do.