Fix Me [h.s]

14

Harry's POV

That night harsh winds surrounded our tent, and the gales whistled faint tunes in the near distance. I lay restlessly in the small space, listening aimlessly to the wind outside and the soft breathing of Phoenix next to me. She seemed so small, her body curled up like a baby. Without waking her, I left the tent and stood for a few seconds outside with my eyes closed.

The harsh weather attacked me immediately, and my hair splayed out everywhere. Without knowing where I was walking, I pushed through the wind and the patters of rain until I found myself at the edge of the campsite.

"What are you doing up Harry?" the voice came from below me, and I jumped at the noise.

The person turned on their torch, and after being blinded momentarily I saw that it was Dr Smith sitting below a tree under a flimsy piece of tarpaulin. His hair was matted to his forehead from the rain, and I stared in disbelief at him for a few moments.

"I-I needed a breath of fresh air," I stammered, and he smiled at me.

"Me too Harold. Come and sit next to me," the closer I got to him, the more I could smell whiskey on his breath. It was like seeing a familiar friend, he was almost like a ghost of my past self.

The ground was drenched but I didn't mind the cold and wet, so I sat beside Smith and reluctantly began to talk to him. He was drunk, that much was clear. But he was not so drunk as to be unable to speak, or remember where he was. So I decided to see it as an opportunity to gain information about things that had been puzzling me for days.

"Why is she like this? Why can't she get better?" I asked Smith, and there was a mutual understanding of who we were talking about almost instantly.

Smith sighed and scratched his wet hair, the water droplets shaking off his drenched hair like a wet dog and landed on me.

"Her condition is unstable. One day I think she's getting better, the next she falls back into her old ways. She is seriously ill, and her condition is more difficult to treat than say yours. She will always remain an enigma to me," Smith said the last bit wistfully, and it was clear that she was not just an enigma to him in a medical way.

"Will she ever get better?"

"A human can only undergo so much trauma before it reaches a point of no return. Who knows what Phoenix will be like in a few months, even a few days. Everyday she wakes up and suppresses memories that try to hurt her, everyday she faces new challenges," a gust of wind trailed off his sentence and we sat in perfect silence for a few moments.

I had never seen her side of the story so clearly, never understood quite as easily what she was going through. It almost made me ashamed for ever having doubted her, for ever thinking that she was only digging herself a bigger hole to climb out of. She wasn't the problem, the memories of her past were. They were the things that corrupted her brain, and she couldn't do anything but watch on as they destroyed her life.

"Do you love her?" Smith asked, and I shifted nervously next to him, glad that he could not see my blushing cheeks.

"I don't know," I replied back honestly; my emotions were turbulent at the best of times, and even I had trouble sorting through my brain to find out fact from fiction.

"She is quite a woman. Beautiful, fiery, funny. I often say to myself 'if only'. If only I wasn't her doctor. If only I wasn't so much older. If only she wasn't so unstable," I was surprised by his honest confession,  and if I wasn't so entranced by his words I would have seen the menacing and predator-like undertone of his words.

Nodding despite the fact that Smith couldn't see me in the dark, we remained in silence as the rain beat down on us and my eyelids grew heavy. Beside me, the broken man whistled a faint tune every now and again, its notes swallowed by the roaring skies. I felt at peace for once, like my thoughts had been collected.

It was an odd thought to think that only weeks ago I had been laying in bed at home, surrounded by empty bottles of beer, eyes sunken into my head as I watched the world go by through a fuzzy, alcohol- induced lens. My family had barely crossed my mind; I knew that thinking about them would only bring on a wave of homesickness that I didn't want to sit through.

With the madness that surrounded me, I didn't crave the substances I normally needed to survive. Instead I wanted companionship in people rather than glass bottles, and I wanted love from warm lips rather than the burning sensation of vodka passing down my throat. Was this healing? Or simply forgetting?

As dawn broke, and the campsite was still in a state of slumber, I left the sleeping Smith and made my way back to the tent. He wouldn't remember our conversation in a few hours, maybe he would believe it all to be a dream. As I entered the tent slowly, I marvelled at Phoenix's beauty again. In the warm morning sun her skin gleamed, her hair was made up of mahogany tones, and lips were pouted slightly.

I wanted to save her.

So I guess this is a sort of turning point for Harry as he realises what Phoenix has to go through. What will happen next?

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