The Loneliness of Distant Beings

Chapter Twenty

I'm out at this bar with Ezra, double-dating with Emme and Leon, and basically all four of us are ignoring each other and just sitting under red and green flashing Christmas lights and watching everyone take it in turns on the karaoke. At some point Ezra and Leon go to get drinks and Emme takes my hand, too hard.

'I'm so excited,' she tells me.

'What about?' I say, blankly.

She looks shocked. 'Your wedding of course!'

'Oh right.'

She doesn't seem sure what to do with my lack of reaction, but ploughs on. 'I know you have Pan, but just let me know if you need another bridesmaid, OK?'

I blink at her, say nothing. What is there to say? I feel like I've lived a whole life she knows nothing about, like I'm a new person that she wouldn't recognise, like our friendship belongs to this whole other time that no longer exists. Maybe some of all this is on my face because she draws back, moves away, curling her lip a little as they arrive back.

Leon talks about his Service, which sounds an awful lot like waste management, and this makes me think of Dom and so it takes me a while to tune the conversation back in but when I do they are talking about the wedding again. Just because I can't go down that road, I interrupt.

'When will you guys get married?' I ask, turning the tables, watching them both shift a little and glance at each other before Leon says, 'I think we'll stick with tradition and do it at the end of our Service. I know a lot of people like to do it a little later or earlier these days but – what can I say? – I'm a conventional guy.' He reaches for Emme's hand then and squeezes it while she does this cheesy smile and pats at his fingers awkwardly. 'We're not as desperate to get baby-making as you two lovebirds!' And he does this stupid laugh and everyone joins in except me because I'm too busy cringing.

It turns out Leon put his and Emme's names down for the karaoke and when they come up she screams and spends like half a minute pretending she doesn't want to go, before bounding up there and duetting that Christmas song everyone loves about giving hearts as gifts with him. I watch them awkwardly stepping from foot to foot and looking in each other's eyes and messing up their harmonies and laughing it all off for a while before I say, 'I can imagine them being happy together in the end. They're as corny as each other,' while Ezra makes a face, and then I add, 'By the way, I hate these karaoke places. I can never get over how futile it is. It's depressing.'

He shakes his head. 'Hemple, you think everything's depressing.'

Which is when my pod beeps in a call, and after listening to the person on the other end, I tell him, 'I have to go.'

When I get to Med, I have no idea where I'm going. I go to the waiting room, which is the only bit I've ever really seen except for the inside of Dr Mad's office but I am so freaked out I guess the girl at the desk there thinks I'm having one of my episodes and doesn't actually listen to what I'm trying to say. Just then Emme's dad, Doc Wong, comes striding down the orange-lit passageway to the left and he sees me through the round window of the double doors, sees me just in the split second that I am deciding not to be here, that I am turning to go. Like he knows what's going through my mind he comes to the door and pushes it open gently, watches me duck under his arm and then nods up the corridor.

'I know you must be scared,' he says to my back as I head towards the door he's pointed out. 'But I'm pretty sure you're not as scared as she is.'

As I get close I hear Pandora – yelling, hissing, shouting – keeping up this steady herrrr herrr herrr sound like it's some kind of mantra, and suddenly it seems like opening these doors is going to spark off a chain of events that I will be completely unable to control. But I don't even know if it's the thought of that that stops me, or whether it's just fear: fear of blood, fear of pain, fear of death, fear of suddenly realising that we can be broken and smashed to pieces and destroyed. Lucky then, really, that a nurse chooses that exact moment to come out looking for something and sees me.