Charade

Benji

It was twilight when I knocked on Lily's hospital room door.

By then, visiting hours were over and the halls were quiet. Patients were in bed, watching late night talk shows on twelve inch screens. Doctors were at home pouring cheap scotch into dirty glasses. Old, grumpy nurses walked the halls, making their rounds, wondering why they're never offered a dayshift. Vic was somewhere on a dark street, watching the electric streetlights flicker on, clutching a bag full of brand new skimmers. And while he was out, he'd asked me to watch over his little girl, and to make sure nothing bad happened to her.

I knocked gently before I entered.

"Hey, Lil." I said, walking in.

I struggled to smile when I saw her, lying there like that, her skin so pale and lips crusted white. Her huge eyes looked dull and droopy, but her mouth was in a smile.

"Hey, Benji." She said croakily.

"Vic asked me to come over and see how you were."

"I'm good. I don't stay awake more than half an hour at time – doctors say that fatigue is normal – but at least the pain killers are good."

"That's good. I mean, not great, but at least you're not in pain. Oh, and I brought you something."

From the bag slung over one shoulder, I pulled out season seven of Good Riddance, remembering a conversation we had one morning about the show. Lily burst into a wide grin, eyes brightening another shade of blue.

"Is that the latest season?" She exclaimed.

"Yup. Would've got it on Blu-Ray, but the TVs suck in this place."

"How could you even afford it? They're, like, seventy bucks when they first come out."

"Five finger discount," I said. "Can you believe DVD stores still keep the discs inside the covers on display?"

"That's... you're amazing."

"I don't know about that," I scoffed, plugging the disc into the built-in DVD player. "If I was that amazing, I probably would've paid for it."

I turned around and went to flop down in the chair beside Lily's bed, but she caught my arm.

"Wait," she said, moving over. "Come sit here. I hear those chairs are shit."

"Oh, no, you don't have to – "

"Come on dick head, I already moved over."

I smiled and did as she said, sitting on the narrow bed with her lying beside me. Carefully, she moved over and rested her head on my shoulder, and, just as carefully, I put my arm around her tiny frame. She reminded me of a little girl, the baby sister I never had, so scared and alone like I had once been. I smiled sadly down at her.

"You didn't have to do this, you know, Benji." She said softly.

"Yeah, but I wanted to. I mean, I've never been really sick before or anything, but I don't imagine it's much fun. And at least we can do something together."

Lily fell quiet for a few seconds, and then I heard her sniffle.

"Thank you," she said. "For this, for... for everything. Nobody has ever been so nice to me before."

"Oh, darlin, you're very welcome," I said.

For a moment, I let myself remember the days after we first met. Lily's sharp tongue and hostile nature had me shaking in my boots. I never thought we'd be like this, so very similar, with beaten-down hearts and a taste for small, perfect moments like these.

"I love you, Benji." I heard her whisper into my chest. Her voice was so soft and sweet and childlike that for a moment, she really was my sister, and she really was dying, and I realized that the only reason I had cared whether she lived or died had been Vic's sake. But lying there with her, knowing her story, knowing we were broken in all same places... I cared. And I cared because she was important to me, not just to Vic.

So I told her I loved her, and I fell asleep.

© A.G. Travers 2015