Chapter Seven

Retouch (v.) To make small finishing, correcting, or improving changes to something. (n.) something that has been retouched, especially a photograph.

 

It should have been an easy trip up to Hampstead on Wednesday evening for Thomas’s play.

The June night was fair and cool, perfect for walking to the tube, and Scott had made his way to the station with plenty of time to spare. He slipped into an empty seat as the train doors closed and smiled to himself, recalling the rehearsal video Olivia had sent of Thomas the dragonfly, singing in his best showtune voice among his frog and squirrel classmates.

The little dark-haired girl who was seated next to Scott looked up when he made a happy noise. She was younger than Thomas; her feet swung freely off the bench as she braided her doll’s long hair. Scott glanced at her mum, who sat on the girl’s other side. She gave him a little smile.

“She’s got pretty hair, that one,” Scott said to the girl in a gentle voice after a while of companionable silence.

She moved the doll a bit toward him and went on braiding, grabbing sections of hair and crossing them in no particular order.

He pulled a hair tie from around his wrist. “Want to see what I can do with mine?” She watched, rapt, as he gathered his hair in a ponytail, then pulled it through the tie twice to make a bun. Scott smiled at her. “Easy.”

But her mouth made a confused shape, and he watched her eyes trace his scar from his ear all the way down his jawline. She seemed transfixed by it, as if she wanted to ask a question but hadn’t picked one out yet. She caught his eye for a moment, then stared at his scar again plainly, as only children and Jason were bold enough to do. He let her, without turning away. It’s all right, he told himself. It’s only fair. What I did should be written all over my face.

“Now approaching Hampstead Station. Next station is Golders Green.”

“This one’s mine,” he told her and smiled one last time. “Good evening.” He looked down at her doll. “And good evening to you too.” She didn’t look away from him as he rose from the seat.

He turned and reached for the hold bar and promptly bumped into a man in a green coat whose short black hair resembled Omran’s. A hot flush curled up Scott’s neck. He must have looked stunned because the man asked if he was all right. Scott turned away to get his bearings, saying, “Yes, thank you, mistook you for someone else.” He pushed out the door trying to recall Omran’s face, now hopelessly mixed up with the features of a stranger.

Then there was the fire truck with its siren that screamed past outside the tube station. A few minutes later, cars screeched away from the curb when the light turned green, making Scott startle and curse, and then he had trouble navigating the full car park and the small but brisk crowd of people trotting along the pavement toward the school. Scott pulled his arm in as they bumped by, folding it close to his body to protect it.

All of it together is too much. As Scott steps inside the colourfully decorated lobby, his heart starts its erratic drumming and cold sweat breaks out over his lip. He searches the space for Olivia. She’d said they would meet at the double doors, but those are on the other side of the rotunda, and people are milling in a heavy current he can’t make his way across. Their excited voices echo and bounce in his ears, making him unsteady. He shuffles toward a wall he can lean against so he won’t fall over.

He presses his forehead against the cool tile as he reaches for his phone, the two sides of his brain arguing. Pull it together! You’re fine, straighten up now versus You’re not going to make it. You can’t stay here. What made you think you could do this? He tries to take steadying breaths through his nose, but the ringing gets louder with the echoes overlapping. He shakes his head at himself as he texts Olivia that he’s got to go home, so sorry, not feeling well. His mind reaches for the sanctuary of the darkroom, where he can be alone, where the amber light is warm and gentle on his eyes.

You’re here? Where are you? I’m at the auditorium

Scott’s hands are trembling, and it takes him four tries to spell out the next sentence.

Yes I’m here but can’t stay. Pls call me when it’s over?

I will. But text me when you get home, OK?

Will do. want to talk to Thomas later. call me, serious

I will. I’m worried.

I’m OK just knackerd. Talk later. X

I’m sorry.

Scott detests that. There is only one person who should be sorry here, and that’s himself.

Don’t b. Tell T break a leg from me

The deep breaths of cool air outside help a bit, and so does the bottle of water he gets from the machine at the tube station. He even considers turning around and giving it another go for Thomas’s sake, but the thought of having to cross the busy street again puts a stop to it, and the draw of the darkroom wins out. He wants to close the door against noise and light, hear the crack of the film canister as he breaks the seal and steps into a different time, the time before.

He pushes through the turnstile, shaky and ashamed, hoping there will be at least one roll left in his desk drawer.

*

There are four film canisters in all, and when his phone rings an hour and a half later, he’s just finished developing one—of the day he’d gone with Olivia and Thomas to the fair in Brompton last spring. There were kites and balloons and a butterfly house; Thomas had wanted to stay all day, to see the kites fly in the afternoon and the coloured lanterns at night.

The smell of darkroom chemicals still fills Scott’s nose as he sits on the edge of the bed. Although it’s early, his eyes burn when he shuts them, and he rubs one to ease it. Olivia’s voice is worried, asking if he needs anything.

“I’m good now, Liv. Seriously. I…” There’s no point in telling her anything but the truth. “Something about all the people, and the noise. It’s…hard sometimes.” He tries to stifle a cough, but it escapes, sounding raspy and weak.

“Babe, I’m sorry. I didn’t think about the crowd.”

Scott says nothing for a bit. If it’s not the crowd, then it’s the traffic. If not the traffic, then it’s a siren, or heavy heels on the pavement behind him, or a little girl who may have been frightened of him, or a man that still haunts him, with dark hair and a green coat. This isn’t up to Olivia to fix.

Scott clears his throat. “Is Thomas there?”

“Yeah, he’s right here. Love you.”

“Love you too.”

“Uncle Scott?” Thomas sounds breathless, still excited from the night’s energy. It makes Scott get up from the bed and pace to match it.

“Hey! How did it go tonight, T-man?”

“It was great! Everybody said my costume was the best one! Where’d you go?”

Scott cringes and shuts his eyes. “I’m sorry, tiger. I wanted to hear you sing, but I had to come home.”

“Well, Mummy said you can watch it on your phone.”

“Perfect. I can’t wait to see it.” Scott is back in the bathroom, the clipped length of film hanging on the line with a clothes peg to dry. The negatives look eerie with their reverse colour; what is light will be dark, and what is dark will eventually be light.

“Mum said it’s bedtime now, because it’s late.”

“How about one joke, then bed?” Scott’s eyes catch on a sweet image of Olivia crossing her eyes at a butterfly that had landed on her shoulder.

“Okay. I went to the doctor and told him I broke my arm in two places. Do you know what he said?”

Scott smiles. Thomas had told him this same one last week, but he’d used “leg” instead of arm and had bumbled the punchline. “No, what’d he say?”

“He said, ‘Stay away from those places.’ Get it?”

“Oh yeah, I do! That’s a good one.” Scott tries to make his voice into a hug that will reach right through the phone. Thomas should have been hugged tonight.

“Is your arm still broken, Uncle Scott?”

Another negative on the strip shows an exotic-looking swallowtail resting on a leaf with its wings spread wide, Thomas’s thin finger in the corner of the frame. “No, T, it’s not. It feels much better now.”

“But you’re still sick?” Thomas’s clear, earnest voice is a sweet gut punch.

Scott’s eyes fill, and he has to stay silent for a minute so Thomas won’t hear his voice get thick and uneven. He turns from the strip of ghostly images and walks slowly across the room. “I um…sometimes, I am, yeah. But I’ll be better soon.”

“Okay.”

“All right T, I’m proud of you, okay? And I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye,” Thomas says, and before Scott can answer, the call is disconnected.

Fuck. Scott swipes the call away and flops backward on the bed with a groan. He’s got the itch to turn on the heated underblanket, to put this day to bed and himself with it. But he’s not tired, just frustrated and small, and he’s got two hours before the film dries hard enough to make a contact sheet. He could wrap his arm up for the night, brush his teeth, and treat his scars. He could make a cup of tea since his throat hurts and he’s been coughing a bit.

Before he does, his eyes catch on the photograph on the adjacent wall. Its colours are muted in the dim light, but he can make out the curved shape of the tree branch and the dark fence behind it.

Look at that tree for me.

Scott stands up quickly, the phone forgotten, and closes the distance between himself and his desk where he’d left Jason’s reincarnation book. He flips it open to a dog-eared page that had confused him, with a diagram of the physical and astral planes colliding. He takes it with him to the kitchen and fills the kettle.

*

The next afternoon, Scott puts his water bottle down on the counter next to the newest addition to Jason’s office—a bowl of small, multicoloured crystal discs.

At first, he thinks they are fruit gums in a sweets dish, but when he looks more closely, he sees their hard, rounded shapes and polished shine. There are blues, greens, purples, and oranges, solid or marbled with pearly white-and-grey veins, and one is coal-black. Some are cold to the touch, while others are warm and soft. He holds a pink one up toward the sunny window, trying to see through it. He likes the way they feel, and likes the pretty clinking noise they make when he drops them back into the bowl. Scott wonders how Jason uses them.

He moves on to the feather, snowy-white with a leather cord wrapped around its quill. This he won’t touch. It’s smaller than he remembers, but seems powerful, and its fine edge looks more suited for cutting than for sweeping. The thought makes him uneasy, and he turns away from it.

Scott has been coughing all morning, and his jaw is tight. His eyes feel puffy from too little sleep, and his mind is foggy and slow like a hangover, all on top of the high ringing in his ears. It’s far from where he’d been Monday night when Jason called. He’d felt warm and at ease then, sharp and truly awake. The back-and-forth of his recovery these days is maddening, like being trapped in a revolving door that spins him from darkness to sunlight and back again in an endless loop.

Maybe today will be the day Jason won’t look too closely. Maybe he’ll skim over the rough parts and let Scott off easy, with no mention of the dark circles under his eyes or the chill in his hands. Scott knows it’s impossible, but he can wish; he’s disappointed, and he can’t stand the thought of Jason being disappointed too.

Jason opens the door after a soft knock, and Scott knows instantly that today is not that day.

“Hi, Scott.” Jason’s usual smile fades after a few moments. “What happened?” He puts his files down and reaches his hand out for Scott to shake.

“Is it that obvious?”

Jason rubs Scott’s hand between his palms to warm them. “Well, sorry, but…yeah. Rough morning?”

“Rough night.” Scott clears his throat, willing himself not to cough. His throat is a tricky thing. Sometimes what’s inside is a tickle or a scratch, and sometimes it’s raw like the beginning of a cold. But sometimes, like now, it’s heavy and hot and hard to swallow over.

Jason’s eyebrows furrow. “You’re cold. What’s going on?” He hands Scott his water, tipping his chin as if to tell him to take a drink.

“One step forward, two steps back, I guess,” Scott says, trying to be glib but sounding just like he feels, frustrated and sorry. He takes a drink. Had he really told Jason about the flying dream? Yes, he had, and Jason had been tickled. But now Scott’s feet feel hopelessly grounded, maybe forever.

“Want to tell me about it?”

The thought of unpacking last night’s events is crushing. Snapshots will do. “Panic attack before my nephew’s play, which I then missed. Darkroom. Not much sleep.” He raises his elbow up to his face and turns away. The cough can’t be helped. “Oh. And I might choke at any moment.”

“Hmm, I see that,” Jason says, his hands coming up under Scott’s jaw. They feel the soft muscles of his neck, then the joint at his ear, where the tendons get harder. “Drop this open, and we’ll have a look inside.”

Dr Wareing had found no issues with his throat, but surely there is something there. When his chin drops, Scott feels as if his cheeks are stretching past their limit, and his molars feel achy in their sockets. He closes his eyes when Jason brings an instrument up to look inside. Please, don’t give up on me.

“Say aaahhh.”

Scott lets out a sound for a long breath. It is clear at the beginning but weakens to a hoarse whisper.

“All right, you can close up. I don’t see anything, Scott. No drainage, no swelling or nodules, nothing strange at all.”

“Just like Dr Wareing said,” Scott grumbles, rubbing his neck. “There’s something in there. I’m not imagining it.” Ugh. He knows how insufferable he sounds. But come on.

“Wait, Scott. I said I didn’t see it. That doesn’t mean I don’t think it’s real,” Jason says quietly. “We’ll take care of it. Hang in there with me a little longer, yeah? I have some ideas. New things we can try.”

Scott wonders if the new things have to do with a white feather or a dish of shiny crystals.

“So, your panic attack, you had those same symptoms, the racing heartbeat and the nausea?” Jason has moved on to his eyes, so Scott looks across the room and tries to focus on the tree.

“Yeah, same as always.”

“But it doesn’t sound like you went right to sleep after.”

Scott should have realised this before, but he hadn’t made the connection. Every other time he’s had an attack, it’s followed by crippling exhaustion, where he’s had to sleep the rest of the day. But this one was different, a baby in comparison to some of those he’s had. Hell, he’d even considered turning around at the tube station. But he’d returned to his flat and gone straight to work in the darkroom.

“No, I didn’t have to. I wasn’t tired. I worked a while in my darkroom, and then I read.”

“Working in the darkroom? I’d say that’s an improvement.” Jason thinks a moment, then lifts his eyebrow. “Let’s do a short acupuncture follow-up with those same anxiety points after our other work today, okay? To reinforce them?”

“Okay, yeah.”

Jason nods, and Scott is relieved. Jason will drive them through like always. It will be all right now that they’ve got a plan. It makes Scott lift his chin and take a deep breath.

“What’s going on with your arm? You’re holding it funny.”

“Hmm?” Scott hadn’t realised, but his arm is bent close to his body, and his hand makes a fist.

Now, Jason focuses on his collar, looking at the skin that shows under the open button. “You don’t have your bandage on.”

“Oh, right. Brenna gave me a compression sleeve to wear instead.”

Jason’s face lights up as if he’s won something. “Well, this keeps getting better! May I see?”

“Um, yeah, sure.” This is the moment. Scott has pictured it dozens of times—lying down on Jason’s table with some foreboding minor-key music in the background, then Jason peeling the blanket back and recoiling in horror. But as it is, they stand face to face with daylight streaming in, and Jason’s bright eyes are curious. Scott takes off his shirt and pulls down the compression sleeve before he can overthink it, then places them in a pile on the counter.

“Jesus, mate, that’s…that’s gorgeous.” Jason tilts his head and leans in to get a better look. “May I?” He gestures as if he wants to touch it.

“’Course,” Scott says with a shrug, but his lips press together, and he looks down at the edge of the carpet.

“This looks really good.” Jason turns Scott’s arm gently, looking at its underside, then studies the S-shaped scar that starts at the shoulder and ends just above Scott’s elbow. “I love it. Don’t you?”

Scott glances at it, then turns away quickly. It looks ugly here in this room full of clean linens and smooth surfaces. “Um. I’m not quite at the love stage. I’d say we’re still getting to know each other. Like…an awkward blind date.”

Jason shakes his head, his smile growing. “There’s some contracture here, but this colour will flatten and fade a bit.” He steps around to see the back, touching Scott’s elbow gently. “Nah, mate. I think she’s the one. You’ve got a beautiful relationship ahead of you if you treat her right.”

Scott doesn’t follow. “Why is it a she?”

Jason is following the largest scar with the tips of his fingers. “You know, ‘she.’ Like a boat. Or an aeroplane. She’s going to take you places.”

She already has. Scott clears his throat. But. “Sometimes I don’t think she’s enough.”

The words surprise him; he hadn’t planned on saying anything about that, but it’s true. Sometimes he thinks he should have been paralysed, or made deaf so he can’t listen to music anymore or hear the voices of the people he loves, or blind so he can’t see beautiful colours, or places, or people. That would be better payment. It would be poetic justice.

“Oh, she’s plenty.” Jason nods, impressed. “You had a talented team.”

Scott can only shrug.

“They proper saved it, didn’t they? Incredible, with the extent of the trauma as it was.”

“How do you know what the extent of the trauma was?”

Their eyes meet. “From the report and the pictures in your file.”

Scott swallows. “Pictures?”

“From the ambulance, and the…oh shit.” Jason trails off. His face drops, the brightness gone. He bites his lip. “You didn’t see the pictures.”

Scott’s chest feels like it’s caving in. “No. By the time I woke up, it was all over and done. They told me what they did, and I saw loads of X-rays, but no one said there were pictures.” He looks down at the files. Rowe, Scott, Ortho. Rowe, Scott, Ophthal. Rowe, Scott, Physio. He shifts them around without asking, and a quick glance shows files also labelled ENT, Derm, and Osteo. “They’re in here somewhere?”

Jason makes a grab for them, bumping Scott’s hand away. “Yeah. But wait, they’re…um…” He sweeps the whole pile aside, shaking his head.

“They’re what? I want to see them.”

Jason raises a hand. “Hold on. They’re case photos, you know, for documentation.” Now it’s his turn to swallow hard. “They’re graphic, yeah? Rough.”

“I’ve seen rough.” Scott turns on Jason as if he’s ready to fight. There are pictures someone took of him in that missing, in-between time when he was gone and woke up different. He’ll be able to see what happened, what’s real, against what he’s conjured up in his imagination. “Anyway, they’re mine, aren’t they?”

Scott waits for Jason to argue because he’s standing with his hand on his hip and his chin up like he’s going to make a case. But then his eyes change, looking into Scott’s as if he can read something there.

“Prints or digital?” Jason asks. “I have both.”

Scott holds his gaze. “Prints.”

Jason turns to his files and picks out Rowe, Scott, Osteo. He flips it open to the back, to a stack of photographs.

“Right. There are a few from the ambulance, some from both hospitals, and two or three post-op.” Jason taps the pile on their edge to line them up, and Scott gets the feeling he’s stalling. “You’re sure?”

Scott holds his hand out.

“All right. Do you want me to go?”

Scott’s jaw hardens. “No, stay.”

There’s not much to see in the first one. He’s inside the ambulance on the stretcher, though it looks like a pile of brown fabric and green blankets, with some dark-brown hair showing at the edge.

The next one is out of focus, but he can make out the remnants of his shirt and his balled-up brown coat streaked black and red. The blankets are gone, exposing a large scarlet puddle on the white mattress. The blurry face, swollen and bloody, is covered with a clear plastic mask. Two sets of hands work in the foreground with scissors and a line of tubing.

The third is a close-up. Scott’s heart begins to tap erratically, and he takes a breath. “What is that?” Scott mumbles to himself, tilting it up to get a different angle. He brings it in closer to his face and squints. The wound is grisly, and the surrounding fabric resembles the curls of the burned papers from the sink.

“What is that?” he repeats, louder this time. Because it couldn’t be. It’s impossible. That’s his chest and his neck, so that must be his arm, bent at a terrible angle on the blood-soaked table. His skin is tan but also pink and red in places, and concave in the middle. Someone has placed a measuring tape along its side, giving the photograph the look of crime scene evidence from a cop show. The familiar sick feeling rears up in Scott’s throat, and he pinches his lip with his thumb and forefinger so Jason won’t see the quiver in his chin.

Jason is close enough that his body heat warms Scott, and his voice is calm. He speaks in short sentences, a bit of information at a time.

“This part is your shoulder,” he says, circling the murky mess of brownish-red. “This part”—he traces the grey section showing through—“that’s this bone here, your humerus.” He touches Scott’s upper arm along the bumpy trail of scar tissue. “This”—he circles another pale shape in the centre—“is here.” Jason touches Scott’s elbow. He points at an irregular mass of bloody tissue. “And that’s your bicep muscle.”

All the words Scott’s doctors had used flood back in blur. Compound fracture vascular contusion limb viability you are very lucky penetrating trauma extensive tissue damage it cleaned up nicely you’ll be just fine.

They go through the rest with Jason navigating, showing Scott what’s skin and what’s bone and how the team worked from the inside out to pull it all back together. The cramped, bloody ambulance turns into the stainless-steel sheen of an operating room, the broken mess getting progressively less gruesome in each picture until the one where Scott recognises the familiar trail of stitches and staples. On that first day, the lines were bold, and thick with black sutures, where now, they’ve faded into trails of purplish-red. He looks startlingly exposed among the sleek surgical blues and whites, and then childlike, bandaged and sleeping in the muted pastels of the recovery room.

After Scott puts the last picture down and they share a moment of silence to digest it, Jason speaks quietly.

“They did a proper good job, didn’t they?”

Scott is afraid his voice won’t come if he tries to say something, but yes, yes, my God, they really did.

“Listen, Scott. Are you listening?”

Scott’s eyes pull away from the pile to look at Jason. He nods, blinking back tears that almost spill over.

Jason turns to pull the tissue box closer to them, and Scott takes one. “This is where you are now. It is what it is. And I think it’s…lovely.” When Jason uses the word it isn’t a compliment, nor is it patronising. He speaks it as a fact, with conviction. “It’s what you’ve come out the other side of. What you’ve survived. It is enough, isn’t it?”

Scott looks down at his arm that hangs between them. Jason’s hand is still on it, resting on the forearm, covering the pitted scars. It feels protected, important.

“Maybe.” Scott sniffs. He recalls Jason’s footie picture—the look in his eye, the pain behind the smile. “The end of one thing, and the beginning of something else?”

It’s enough to bring a bit of brightness back into Jason’s eyes, and Scott almost can’t bear to look at the kindness there. That’s Jason, behind him in the revolving door, pushing Scott out of the dark into the light. “That’s up to you, isn’t it?”

They stand like that for a few moments more with the story of Scott’s brokenness spread out before them. Scott reaches out for the first picture and then the last, and holds them side by side. Maybe he can carry Omran around on his body, and that will be enough.

Scott nods at the photos, then sweeps them up with a final clear of his throat. He swipes the tissue over his cheek. “Thank you. For showing me these. Now let’s get to it, yeah?”

*

Scott is face down, and Jason adjusts the pillow under his feet. He is comfortable and warm, and his eyes are quick to close. He likes this part, when all of what they do is still out in front of them.

“Question,” Scott says softly.

“Hmm?”

“What are you doing before we start, when you’re standing there?”

Jason doesn’t answer for a minute and adjusts the blanket around Scott’s feet instead. Scott wonders if he shouldn’t have asked.

“Um, tuning in, mostly, to where you are.”

It isn’t the answer Scott was expecting. He pulls his face up from the cradle and lays his cheek on its edge. “How do you do that?”

Jason walks along the side of the table, tucking and smoothing as he goes. “I get quiet. Stop thinking. Try to let go of my own expectations, I guess?”

The idea that Jason has expectations for him scares Scott a bit. What do they look like? Am I meeting them? He takes a small, worried breath.

“And I pray too.”

“For me?”

“No, not just for you. For both of us.” Jason rests his hands near Scott’s shoulders. “It goes something like, ‘Show me what you need me to see. Let me hear what needs to be heard. May the highest part of me serve the highest part of you.’”

That sounds familiar, and Scott takes a minute to figure out where he’s heard it. Namaste. The word in his mouth stirs a memory of the temple at Tirumala, in India, when he’d shot the story of the girls who sacrifice their hair to the gods. They would bow their heads and wish him this, even as they wept.

Scott settles his face into the cradle again. With the heat seeping up through his legs and his arm unbound for the first time, Scott tries to quiet his mind and focus only on the sounds of their breathing and the gentle string music. Something unspoken but understood charges the air around them, while a hard, dark part of him still hopes that as much as Jason might pray, there will still be things he won’t be able to see.

*

When Jason places the heat pack over Scott’s back, Scott takes his deepest breath since he got here. Jason is going to work on those crunchy, tight spots, he knows, so he wants to relax, give him the best shot at finding them and easing them away.

“So, I was sort of surprised to hear you were back at work.”

“Work?”

“Last night, in the darkroom. I thought you weren’t taking pictures anymore?”

Scott’s voice is muffled in the cradle. “I’m not. I just develop my old film.”

“Huh, I didn’t know there was still such a thing as film.” Jason presses down on his good shoulder with a flat hand, softly at first, then a little harder, pushing Scott’s chest into the table.

“Jason, that’s how cameras work.” Scott chuckles, interested to see where this will go.

Jason’s first push on Scott’s bad shoulder is nothing more than a warm graze. “No, no, that’s not true. I don’t know much about photography, but I know I’ve taken plenty of pictures, and film has never been involved, not once. Never.”

“Too bad, you’re missing out. I think the best pictures are taken with film,” Scott says, waiting for the pressure to get deeper. It doesn’t; Jason’s hand is a steady, pleasant weight that makes Scott forget his train of thought. He was about to say something, about how…how the film…has…a texture…but the pressure begins to move back and forth through the heat, causing the muscle there to shift. It rolls and spasms a bit, making the shoulder twitch up toward Scott’s cheek.

What was I thinking about? Film? Cameras? Yes, cameras. What comes to mind is one specific camera on the shelf of his cupboard, and it makes Scott wince. He can see the cupboard door, looming huge and spiteful in his small flat, but he can’t reach out to properly look inside.

Scott remembers the day in the hospital when he had asked Olivia for the camera. He was woozy, drugged up, and half-blind, but he had to see it and hold it in his hands. The things they were telling him, they just couldn’t be true; his camera was the only real proof that the day had even happened. That was the last day he’d touched it, holding its cracked body on his lap in the bed, trying to fit the zoom lens on one-handed. It was like a child’s toy that had been smashed in a tantrum, and he had cried until Olivia went to fetch someone to give him a shot so he could rest.

On the awful day Olivia helped get him settled back into his flat, she’d held the case out to him, asking where to put it. He turned away, pretending to busy himself with the washing, and told her he didn’t care. “I’ll just put it up here for now,” she’d said lightly, placing it out of the way on the cupboard shelf.

It had once been Scott’s best friend, who’d travelled everywhere with him, whom he felt naked without. But then they had a falling out, and now it’s a high-maintenance, stand-offish roommate who never talks and requires a wide berth of privacy. They hold a grudge neither side can forgive.

“Feel anything there? Any pain right now?” Jason asks, his hand still warm on the blade of Scott’s shoulder.

“No,” Scott answers, glad Jason can’t see his face. “Nothing.”

Jason is still for a moment, then sighs quietly. “All right. We’ll leave that bit alone for now.”

*

Some time later, after Scott has turned over, Jason leans on the edge of the table next to his chest.

“We’re going to try a stretch,” Jason says, pulling Scott’s injured arm up toward his own shoulder as if to rest Scott’s hand on it. Jason catches his eye and must see the worry there. “Don’t forget to breathe, okay? This won’t hurt.”

Scott looks up at the ceiling fan, which seems to look back down on him with its one naked, unblinking eye; he wills his arm to relax even as he’s got Jason in a strange half-embrace. The tickle is back in his throat, but he clears it and swallows. “All right, ready.”

The heel of Jason’s palm presses on Scott’s shoulder, while his other hand holds Scott’s forearm and pulls upward gently. “Is that okay?”

Strangely, it is; Scott’s body eases into the stretch instead of tensing up. “Yeah, it’s okay.” Scott closes his eyes as Jason pulls again, this time rotating his arm outward a bit. After a few repeats, Jason grasps Scott’s wrist and moves the arm around freely, loose as a cooked noodle.

It feels good, but something about the motion on that side of his body brings the tickle back, and soon Scott’s throat clearing turns into raspy huffs and then a full-blown barky cough.

“Ugh, can I have some water?” he asks, propping himself up on his good elbow.

Jason retrieves a bottle, and Scott drinks half of it down in three gulps.

“Where is it—here?” Jason’s hands hover over Scott’s heart. Jason must feel the throb of it, the way it’s banging against Scott’s ribs.

Scott grunts and shakes his head, pointing to his throat.

Jason moves his hands up to float over Scott’s neck, never touching his skin.

Scott wheezes a bit, but tries to hold still. This is it. He’ll finally see it, and he’ll figure out what to do, which Scott thinks might be wonderful and also terrible.

“How are we going to get you out?” Jason asks, squinting as he addresses the thing directly.

“Hey, what about your feather? We could try to sweep it out.” Scott believes it’s possible, no matter how strange it sounds. But still. Sweep what out? And where will it go?

“No, we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s wedged in. It has hooks.”

Hooks. Jesus, of course it has hooks—hooks that tether him down all the way back to that day, fix him there, making sure he can’t forget. Good. If Jason can’t get to it, he can hang onto it a little longer.

“You know,” Jason says, his eyes still focused on Scott’s neck. “I think I’ve been seeing this all wrong. What if…we stop thinking of it as something you have to get rid of? Maybe it’s something you need to say. It’s stuck in your throat.”

Scott’s heartbeat quickens as he watches Jason move to the counter. A moment later, he hears the plink plink of the crystals in the bowl. “Uh…what are you…” he begins nervously.

“Aquamarine, blue lace agate, and…lapis.” Jason returns with three blue crystals in his hand. One is light and cloudy, another has irregular stripes of sky-blue, grey, and white, and the last is dark-navy with flecks of silver. They look as if Jason just got them out of the ocean, shiny and clean.

“What are those for?”

“Lay back, will you? I’m going to put these on your throat, here?” He places two stones low on Scott’s neck. The last one goes in the dip between his collarbones. “That feel all right?”

Scott swallows, wondering if they will somehow act like magnets, pulling the heavy thing out of him for Jason to finally see. His heart is beating fast, and a prickle of sweat breaks on his forehead and under his arms. “Fine, I guess.”

“Good. They aren’t too heavy there? Or too buzzy or anything?”

Buzzy? “No. They’re all right.” Scott breathes in and out carefully so they don’t slip off, and he finds that concentrating on staying completely still calms his nerves.

“I’m going to turn off the music so we can hear you better.”

Wait. Wait Jason, hear what? The music fades, and soon they are alone in the silence.

“Okay now, here’s your part. I want you to hum, okay? Like this. Hummmmm.” Jason’s lips are closed, and the sound is a soft but strong monotone.

The heat in Scott’s palms flares up. “What now?”

“The vibration of it will loosen things up in there, get the blood flowing. Try it. Hummmmm,” Jason repeats. He is eying Scott with that look, the one that says Scott’s going to get on board whether he wants to or not.

Scott’s throat feels scratchy inside, and a hum would probably come out sounding more like crackly static. He scrambles a bit, trying to come up with an excuse not to because, seriously, what is this? His voice is so weird-sounding. It would disturb the peace in here, and not only that, but what if it does loosen things up? What if that locked down, heavy thing breaks free and slips out, what happens then?

“Ugh, Jason, this is…” He almost says stupid, but that would be insulting, and also untrue. What he really means is terrifying. Too hard. Too close.

“Here, I’ll do it with you. It’ll be easier. You join in, right?”

“Uh. Right.”

Jason hums that same note a third time and brings Scott’s hand up to his throat to rest next to the crystals. Scott takes a shaky inhale, and when he begins, the vibration rumbles gently underneath. His hum disappoints, as he knew it would, fragile and full of holes.

Jason puts three fingers on the other side of Scott’s neck and presses down gently, perhaps searching for the secret. “Nobody’s going to hear you, Scott. It’s just me. Try it again. Lower.”

Scott doesn’t know anything about singing aside from chorus in primary school, but trying for a lower pitch feels like a good idea. It’s hard for him to know where to look. He chooses a wrinkle on the shoulder of Jason’s shirt and concentrates as they inhale at the same time, with Jason nodding. Scott’s throat likes the lower note better, and it starts out strong. There’s a little throb of it in his fingers, but it fades quickly into empty air.

“That was better!” Jason says. “Why don’t you close your eyes? That might help.”

Scott wants to keep looking at Jason’s shoulder because it’s solid and strong and it helps him focus; he takes one last look and lets his eyes shut.

When it’s dark, the task gets simpler. He hears Jason take a breath in, and he does, too, and out comes a sound that’s steadier. Jason shifts Scott’s hand away from his throat to the area right under Scott’s ribs, the place where his breath expands.

“That was the best one yet. One more.”

This time he is alone, but it’s all right; the simple, steady sound he makes feels like it is starting to fill not only his throat, but his mouth and his cheeks and his sinuses and even the space behind his eyes. He lets it go for as long as he can, liking the feeling of being filled up with it.

“Ooh, that was weird,” Scott says, a bit fascinated. The crystals on his throat are getting warm.

Jason smiles. “Good. Let’s add a vowel sound now, properly open things up. How about ooooooooo?”

Scott has a twinge of nerves. His mouth has to be open to make that sound. He giggles tensely, glad his eyes are shut. “Oh God, really?”

“Yes, really. It’s either that or ‘Disco Inferno.’”

“Ugh. Okay.” He takes an unsteady breath.

The sound is timid, and his lips are tense around it, but soon Jason joins in, and Scott is buoyed by the help. It ends stronger than it began. That wasn’t so bad; their voices actually blend easily and sound fine in this soft space.

“More?” Scott asks.

“Yes, more.”

Scott is getting better at this, fast. It feels good to impress Jason, so he concentrates on getting a good breath to start with that makes his hands rise on his ribs. The next one is louder and has a sturdy sound, like he means it, and the one after has a nice round balance all throughout, and he gets that vibrating feeling in his cheeks and his forehead. When he lets it fade, the darkness he sees breaks up into two distinct shapes: sky and land.

He continues without being told; he knows this will be the way in this time. Making the sound becomes as easy as breathing. He exhales the round note, pauses, and then breathes in, watching the trees form as the sky gets lighter. Again, and the tops of the mountains appear with their peaks dark against the sky. Again, and the sky gets lighter still, the stars for the first time beginning to disappear into a sky no longer deepest black but cobalt-blue, the colour of the hour before dawn.

Does this mean the night is over? Does this mean my time in the valley is almost up?

“I see it, I’m going,” Scott says, just before he loses touch with their room. The sound his voice makes floats through the trees, past the bird that is out there watching him, all the way to the sun that sits just beyond his sight. He calls out to the fire, too, as if it might hear him and answer back. When he spots it, he’s relieved to see it’s as strong and high as ever, taller than he is, so it can envelop him when he walks through.

*

Sounds come to Scott first, before the scents of candle wax and sawdust, before the sight of the walls made of marble and stone. Excited voices, all belonging to men and boys, chatter over one another. There are deep whispers as well as long, drawn-out notes in song that blend, falter, then blend again. The noise may be dissonant, but to Scott it is rich and lovely, and he feels at home inside it.

When he opens his eyes, he and the other choristers sit in a wide stairwell off the nave of the King’s Chapel. They sit three or four to a step, with Scott and John at the top, a bit removed from the others. From here, the two of them can survey it all—Choirmaster Wydeville pacing on the landing in his long black robes, and all the choir with their crisply ironed cassocks, fresh-scrubbed faces, and combed hair. Excitement fairly shines all around them; the youngest are fidgety and getting louder while the older ones are calm, although Scott suspects they are putting on a brave face. None of them have sung in King’s Chapel for an audience, after all, not even the oldest of them, Robert, who is nearly twenty and has been here ten years.

“The royal procession has been delayed, and we shall wait here until it arrives,” Choirmaster Wydeville had told them over an hour ago, an eager cheeriness in his voice. Since then, the choir has gone from warmed up to cold and warmed up again, and most of them have made at least one trip out to the privy behind the gatehouse, on account of their boredom and nerves.

Of course, the king would be delayed; all manner of folk crowd the streets from London to Cambridge to catch a glimpse of the royal entourage as it makes its way to the newly completed chapel at King’s College. The last of the stained-glass windows had been fitted two weeks since, capping the construction project begun long before their grandparents were born. Scott doesn’t know whether to believe William, the lead tenor and infuriating know-it-all, who says it’s been two hundred years in the building.

“Seems fitting we should have to wait a bit longer,” John tells Scott with an easy grin that fails to soothe Scott’s nerves.

There are many Johns among the choristers, but next to Scott at the top of the stairs is his John, and together they are JohnandGeorgie:

“Where are JohnandGeorgie? They will be late for vespers.”

“JohnandGeorgie, this room is a proper sty.”

“JohnandGeorgie, time for turndown.”

Where there is one there is the other, and so it is here and now. His John is ever calm, his brown eyes warm, watching Scott tug restlessly at the prickly lace collar under his cassock.

Scott turns to him, knowing the question is pointless before he asks it. “How much longer?”

“When his majesty sees fit to grace us with his presence, and no sooner.” John straightens Scott’s collar, which has become bent with his meddling.

Stray notes bob and tangle in the air, and Scott can pick out some basses rehearsing a few measures from their complicated part in the Credo, and the other trebles are practicing the solo for the Sanctus. It makes him wonder about his chances and his competition. Master Wydeville picks the soloists at the last moment to keep everyone focused; the boy who has displayed the best pitch and timing on the day is chosen.

He knots his eyebrows. “Who will Master pick to sing the Sanctus?”

John smiles. “Don’t be a dunderhead. ’Course it will be you. You know it best, and anyway, it’s you who’s got the sweetest voice of all the trebles, and the strongest.”

His John is not one to bestow compliments easily, and Scott’s chest grows warm. He folds his lips between his teeth to keep from grinning like mad, but he knows it is true. Vanity might well be a grave sin from which he prays every night to be delivered, but Scott cannot pretend he doesn’t hear the tone in his own voice that makes it different from the others. It is clear, bell-like, with none of the weak vibrato or trouble with breath or power that afflict the rest, and many have told him he shall go far, though he is only twelve years old and his voice has yet to change.

Still, their audience today will be no less than the king, along with the queen and their courtiers, and the cardinal, too, with his holy retinue.

“What if I forget the words, or flat the E?”

“You won’t, Georgie. Remember, come down on top of the note.”

“Yes, that’s right. Land on the E rather than climb to it.” He nods, but looks again to John, still searching for reassurance.

The smile his John gives him eases Scott’s worry and makes his heart thump. “Pretend you’re singing it to me out in the garden.” John chuckles. “Only, um, louder.”

Scott finds he can chuckle about it too. “Louder” may not quite describe it; their voices will have to be enough to fill the vast expanse of stone and marble, with its vaulted ceiling so high the boys have to be careful not to fall over backward when they look up. At first, they were timid, used to the close quarters of the tiny side chapel where they could hear one another plain and close, each voice a separate string in the chord. Once they learned to project their voices to the far corners of the hall, Scott decided he had never heard anything so beautiful in his life. The rumbling of the men’s basses is like thunder in a cloud, while bright tenors and trebles float in the air making the place, already magnificent with gold and marble, come alive with sound. He wants nothing more than to do this forever with John and Master Wydeville and the rest. That’s what they will do, he’s decided. He and John will live out their lives here, become full choir and then choirmasters and composers, working for the king and for God.

“Can we not get started, right away?” Scott swipes his sweaty palms against his robes, and John grabs the one closest to him, rubbing it with his thumb.

“Georgie, you will be fine. Better than fine. How can you not? You’ve practiced it five hundred times.”

That is true. Scott practices the Sanctus while they walk to lessons, while they wash dishes in the kitchens, and, of course, at daily practice. He sings it in the privy and their sleeping room after turndown until one of their roommates, Nicholas, who is two years older and a bore, tells them to “Stop your squalling, dullwits!” So they do, unless neither of them are tired, in which case John will pull the coverlet over their heads so they lie with their noses almost touching and their feet entwined, whisper-singing in the darkness. It’s usually John who recalls the pitch and timings best, reminding Scott of the harmonies as he sings the lead lines. Scott likes to hear the little rasp in his throat when John sings so softly. It lulls him to sleep more often than not, feeling the slip of John’s mouth against his forehead before he turns so they can sleep spoon-fashion.

“One more time?” Scott asks him, and John nods with a little smile.

Scott is about to start when William turns around and knocks on Scott’s knee. “You would do best to hope it will not be you, Georgie, for the Sanctus. You would be gone before nightfall.”

“Shut it with your stories,” John snaps at him, tightening his grip on Scott’s hand. John is only twelve as well, but can forget that sometimes, like a spaniel puppy barking at a wolfhound.

William rolls his eyes. “Come now, John, don’t be dim. The cardinal can do whatever he pleases, and the king can’t stop ’im.”

Scott watches colour rise in John’s cheeks.

“We belong to the king. No one can take what belongs to the king. Everyone knows that, right Georgie?” John looks at Scott expectantly, but Scott isn’t sure; there have been whispers among the boys for weeks about a time before any of them were here, when the cardinal took one of the older boys, the king’s favourite singer, to have for his own choir at Christchurch. Where the story came from, Scott doesn’t know, and he doesn’t want to believe it could be true. Even so, Scott envisions the boy being plucked up from his desk, still wearing his vestments and carrying his music, to be carted away in a gilded carriage driven by the cardinal himself into a dark night, never to be heard from again.

John gives Scott a comforting pat on the thigh. “Don’t listen to that rumpface. He just likes to hear himself talk. Now. Tell me what we shall have for dinner. I’m hungry.”

John and Scott talk of how they might steal away a pudding to their sleeping room until the noise outside rises to a dull rumble, then to a rousing clamour with drumbeats and cheering. Master Wydeville turns to greet the messenger in the hall as the bells peal above them.

The choristers rise to their feet at once and scramble to the bottom of the stairs to form their lines. Master Wydeville only has to face them with one strong look to settle them; their preparations are over, and it is time to go to work.

“For the glory of God,” Master Wydeville declares.

Twenty-six voices respond as one. “For the glory of God.”

Their entrance song, “O Splendor Gloriae,” sounds just like they’ve practiced, although they are finished too soon due to the lengthy procession that moves more slowly than they had expected. The cardinal is still approaching the chancel when the last line of the hymn is finished, and they watch in silence as he hobbles up to the elevated altar, using the arm of a younger priest for balance.

Scott does his best to concentrate on praying, but he can’t help studying the cardinal as he reaches the celebrant’s chair. To hear William tell it, this holiest of men should be hook-nosed and warty, like a witch wearing a black hood and a pack on his back, ready to stuff them inside. But he looks quite harmless with his powdery skin and weepy eyes. He has a thin white beard, and fine silver hair peeks out from under his scarlet cap. He wears a red cassock with a large golden cross that hangs low on his chest and bounces against it as he moves. Scott has never seen a man so old, or so obviously holy; even the king looks plain in comparison, in the first pew with his dotted ermine cape and dark-brown waistcoat draped with gold.

The cardinal offers his blessings in a weak, reedy voice, and the choir punctuates each with song. Then the psalms are read. The Gloria is fine and clear, and the Credo sounds rich and full, better than Scott has ever heard. Master Wydeville mimes with expressive eyes to remind them to keep breathing, stand up straight, and keep their throats and cheeks soft.

After the Kyrie, Scott wants so badly to whisper to John. His questions are piling up, and his John always knows the answers. Did you see the king’s crown, John? What kind of gems are those? And what about the cardinal’s rings? How they shine! Why is the queen sitting so far from the king? But his questions will have to wait. This is the holy liturgy of course, requiring silent piety, and John is too far away, in the front row with the rest of the altos.

The boys rise as one at their choirmaster’s signal. This is it. The Sanctus.

Scott takes a deep breath and looks to Master Wydeville. Please, pick me. Scott places his finger on the first note on the page as if it is already decided, and waits. He hears the basses inside his head and uses them to find his own note, pulsing a whispered hum there.

Master Wydeville raises his arms to shoulder height, then turns his gaze to Scott. Their eyes lock for a moment, and Wydeville nods.

John, it’s me. He picked me.

A tingle runs down his arms as Scott fixes his eyes on Wydeville’s hand. On its downbeat, Scott begins.

“Sanctus.” Holy. He is careful not to overpronounce the S sounds, or bring it up to volume too fast. He has one purpose, to let his voice be driven by the movement of the choirmaster’s arm as if being played with an invisible bow, like a cello or a violin.

After a breath, the word repeats. “Sanctus.” The timbre of Scott’s voice is sweet but solid, and he pushes it more strongly out from his stomach instead of his chest. How good it feels to finally open his throat to set the sound free! The sun is shining through the ruby-reds and rich purples of the stained-glass windows; it is warm in here, safe, and so beautiful. This is surely where God lives, Scott thinks, though he knows his John disagrees. John says God is everywhere, outside and in, air and water and fire, all around them, always. But this is the house the king built for God, that took a hundred years to build, and Scott wants to fit here, become a part of its beauty, weave his voice into the walls and never leave.

Breathe. Plant my feet. Come down on top of the E.

“Sanctus.” Holy. Goosebumps rise on Scott’s legs with the power of the note, extended completely now to the full and true fortissimo his voice can reach. He meets Wydeville’s eyes, which smile at him from their edges, and they go on together, two parts of a finely tuned instrument.

“Dominus Deus Sabaoth. Pleni sunt cæli et terra gloria tua.” Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of thy glory.

Now, John. Sing with me.

The altos are the first to join him, and then the basses. Scott is just where he wants to be, their notes winding around one another with his at the centre. Thy glory rises over their heads, thy glory climbs the high vault above the altar, thy glory reaches all the way to the Crucifixion window where the outstretched arms of Jesus embrace them from the cross. His mum had told Scott that he was born for this, that he would make their name, and Scott does believe it; this is serious work, and the power of it makes his eyes water a little.

“Hosanna in excelsis.” The phrase ascends to a crest until the last bars, where the notes finally find a common chord. The power of their full harmony is stunning, and Wydeville’s eyes shine when he cups his hands and brings the sound to a sudden close. He folds his hands to his chest as he mouths, “Amen.”

Relief flows over Scott, the very best feeling of excitement and exhaustion and pride after a difficult job well done. Now he can drift through the Benedictus and their closing hymn, as neither is a challenge for him. His mind can wander again to dinner and celebrating, and then to the future, where he and John and their friends will fill this hall with song after song, beautiful notes and sacred harmonies as far as the eye can see and the ear can hear.

It is as if John can read his mind about it; he turns to face Scott, showing his back to the altar, something he’s been reminded over and over never to do.

Scott’s eyes go wide. Face front, John, face front. What are you doing?

But his John doesn’t wear his usual fond smile. In fact, the look on John’s face makes Scott feel like he’s swallowed a hot rock that is burning its way down to his stomach. John’s eyebrows crease, and his mouth is dropped open with worry. Is John…afraid? But that cannot be. His John is never afraid.

John, turn around now! You’ll be sent to bed without dinner. But hard clarity rolls over Scott when he looks up to the chancel. The cardinal’s eyes are on him as he leans to the priest next to him, pointing a withered finger Scott’s way. The priest looks up to find Scott, too, listening to the cardinal’s whispers.

Scott wants to hold his John’s hand. He wants to pull him close and ask him another question, the most important one of all. His mouth is suddenly dry because the separation between them feels immense and final.

Is he going to take me away?

Scott knows the answer. He can read it on his John’s face. There won’t be pheasant with pudding tonight, there won’t be turndown with his John beside him, there won’t be a new song for them to sing together tomorrow or the day after or ever again. They will not walk this hall together as men.

I’m sorry. It’s because I’m so proud. But I prayed, John, I promise you I did, not to be so proud, for God to take my pride away. But He didn’t. Why didn’t He? I wanted to sing beautifully. Mum told me God loves beautiful singing. But wait, don’t worry. If I pray, He will take my voice away so I can’t sing anymore, and then he’ll have to send me back. He will send me back. That’s what I’ll do. I will pray so hard. You’ll see.

The story unfolds all at once, inevitable, as if it is written into the very stones of this place. Scott will sing for the cardinal at Christchurch, and when his prayers are answered and his voice fails, instead of being sent back to Cambridge, he will be sent to Bristol to compose, and then to Canterbury to teach and direct. He will make his name with fame and wealth, as his mother had predicted, blessed by the God who Scott comes to know is all around them, everywhere, as John once said.

Still, Scott will look for his John in every face, in every singer, in every audience for the rest of his life, but he will not see him again. Scott will stay loyal to God who took his voice, as he asked. But it will always be his most bitter truth that God the all-powerful—God who parted the sea and resurrected His son after three days’ death, who turns autumn to winter year after lonely year—never does answer the simplest and most fervent of Scott’s prayers, the one he prays for decades that his John will find him and hold his hand again.

*

“Did you find the fire?” Jason’s voice is low and pulls Scott back into the room, where the soft flannel sheets are the first sensation he feels. When his eyes drift open, Jason is looking down at him.

“Yeah. I did.”

“Well done. Do you want to talk about it?”

Scott reaches up to his neck to touch the crystals resting there. They clink softly in his hand when he gathers them, and he leans up on his good elbow to study them carefully, as if they might hold the lesson he is supposed to learn. He sits up, a bit of sadness clinging to him, and tucks the blanket around his waist.

“I was just a boy this time. And I…did something that I thought was right. But it wasn’t.”

“I’m sorry,” Jason says. But he doesn’t push for information, and Scott is glad. Instead, Jason makes his way toward the counter. “You have a nice voice, you know.”

“Hmm?”

“Your voice, it’s nice. You do sing, don’t you?”

Yes, I did, once. I sang with you.

The thought makes Scott’s mind snap to attention, and it takes him a moment to catch up. Wait, was that…did we?

“Scott?”

The boy who sat next to me on the stairs. My John. The boy who believed in me. My John who I lost, because of my voice and what I did with it.

Scott rubs a hand over his forehead, confused.

“I used to. A little.” He clears his throat. It’s a bit mad, deciding which of his two pasts to tell Jason about. “Had a bit part in the year ten musical. But then I switched to the school newspaper.” His voice sounds lower to his ears, older. Heavy with the weight of a different life.

“Ah, of course. Photographer and all.” Jason comes back to the table with a bottle of water. “Let’s do your needles now. Ready?”

Scott nods and trades the crystals for the bottle. He takes a few long gulps that run smoothly down his throat, the burning lump nowhere to be found. The wide open, beautiful chapel space is still fresh in his mind, along with his music book, and the faces of his friends, all of which he tries to commit to memory. But more than that, there is a feeling that lingers, a bewildering mix of excitement and pride tinged with what so quickly turned to loneliness and loss.

He looks at Jason curiously, on the off-chance that his half-mad theory might be true, that Jason might show some sign of recognition.

“Jason, do you…sing?”

“I do. Beautifully, in fact.” Jason elevates the head of the table, giving Scott a chuckle and a shake of his head. “But only in the shower. Nobody needs to hear me sing.”

I needed to. A long time ago.

Jason is oblivious, turning to take the paper envelopes that hold the needles from the counter. “All right, you can lean back now.”

After he settles, Jason moves the blanket from his leg and rips open an envelope. They exchange a look that means they are both ready, and Jason taps the first needle into the thin skin at the top of his foot.

Scott finishes his water and takes a deep breath. That’s five times he’s walked through the fire. Five books with his name on them in the library, five files in the database, his “Akashic record” that he now has come to understand lives in his fire. Scott is still getting used to the vocabulary of this new system; while reading last night, he finally made friends with words that had once made him cringe, like “collective consciousness” and “universal mind.” He’d also looked up definitions for a few terms that kept coming up: etheric record, dharma, and auric field.

Jason taps the second needle into the fleshy muscle near Scott’s knee. “Doing all right?”

“Yeah, I’m good.”

Then there’d been the part in the text that seemed to explain what might be going on in Jason’s treatment room, the paragraph that Scott copied into his black notebook. It described the Akashic Records, made up of every lifetime of every being who ever lived, as the energy that holds the entire universe together. It’s threaded through every piece of the cosmos, like the connective tissue in the body weaving through every tiny cell.

Hadn’t Jason said something like that once, that events or memories could be stored within the body, and could be released so the brain could see them?

The next three needles go into Scott’s wrist quickly, each with its own little burning bite, and then a fourth just under his elbow. Scott had thought they looked like antennae last time, and now he looks at them again, how they reach down below his skin to get at what is underneath. Didn’t Jason also say that emotions could be held in the body too? That they could cause sickness or disease, but if they could be loosened, they could be free to go somewhere else where they would be useful? That when they were no longer welcome or needed, the feather could sweep them away?

His thoughts are interrupted when Jason takes his chin between his index finger and thumb and tilts Scott’s head a bit, to look over the long scar on his cheek.

“That’s looking really good. You’re treating it?”

“Mm hmm. With Kelo, three times a day.”

Jason examines it closely. “Nice,” he says quietly and gives Scott another nod.

“How do you do that?”

“Do what?” Jason is focusing on the position for the last needle, the space between Scott’s eyebrows. Their faces are close, and Scott notices the way his eyelashes sweep when he blinks.

“That thing you do. Your relentless…hope.” Scott says it like it’s a foreign concept he’s never heard of before.

“Relentless,” Jason repeats, and it looks like he is testing the word. “Nobody’s ever called me that before. I like it.”

Jason’s smile makes Scott smile, too, and he suddenly knows that he is all right, feeling like he’s on the cusp of something he’s been dancing around for weeks. It’s all starting to make the first bit of sense. Could it be that maybe he’s not crazy? Maybe he’s not sick? His arm is healing. His voice is strong. He’s getting better. If Jason can see it, perhaps it’s true. Maybe he has come out the other side of this; maybe he really could be ready now, to put that heavy thing down.

Could I?

The last needle goes in easily, with no pain, and Scott keeps his eyes open. His shoulders are relaxed, he’s warm, and he can breathe easily, in and out and in again, with nothing compressing his throat. Could this be it, the moment that changes everything? I could say it. All I would have to do is open my mouth and let it out. Omran sits next to him in the cab looking out the window. Scott wishes he could see his face, and it makes his heart pound with nervous heat.

“So.” Jason leans against the edge of the table next to Scott’s leg and folds his arms. He is smiling.

“So.” Scott tilts his chin up, trying to hide his nerves.

“How’s your throat?”

Scott lets out an anxious chuckle. “Um, is this one of those times when you ask me a question and you already know the answer?”

“Maybe.” Jason shrugs, then nods. “Probably.”

It feels like I can breathe again. It feels like I might tell you everything. “It feels good.”

“No pain? No congestion?”

Maybe it’s something you need to say. It’s stuck in your throat. Scott flexes his hands and looks down at his lap. “No, not right now.”

“I thought so. Good. Keep your eye on it over the weekend, and let me know if anything changes.” Jason comes closer and puts his hand up in front of Scott’s throat with a questioning glance. “Can I feel here?”

Scott nods, and Jason’s hand moves to the side of his neck, where his pulse would be. The fact that Jason must be able to feel his heart yammering makes Scott look away, down to the baseboard under the window. “Why would it change? I mean, didn’t the crystals cure me? Or whatever?” Scott shakes his head, feeling a little silly saying it. “It feels fine, now. Truly.”

“Cured? Um, no. They can help, but you’re the one that has to do the curing.” Jason takes a step back.

Damn. Scott doesn’t have to ask how that’s done. He swallows and bunches up the blanket in his fists. He catches Jason noticing, and he tries to play it off, but it’s too late.

“Same rules as always.” Jason’s voice is reassuring. “Keep your jaw loose, hydrate, keep warm. Things are going to start to shift in there—” He points to Scott’s throat. “—and when they do, it might sound funny, or it might be hard to talk or swallow. It might even hurt.” He pauses, looking like he’s having trouble figuring out how to say something. “Six months is a long time to carry something that heavy.”

Scott chooses his words carefully and is deliberate when he speaks them. “I lost my voice once, Jason. It was a long time ago.” I loved someone. And I lost him. He’s thinking about his John, but he’s thinking about Omran too. The stories cross over one another, and it’s all a jumble of responsibility, guilt, confusion, and fucking bad timing, with his voice and what he does with it somehow in the centre of it all, again. He scrambles for a way to say it. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get this right.”

Jason studies him closely with that curious, direct look, and it seems he somehow understands what Scott didn’t say out loud. “But you are getting it right. You may not believe that, but it’s true. I know you’re working hard for this. Hang in there with me a little longer, yeah? We’re close now. We’re going to see this through.”

His tone leaves no room for doubt, and his words carry enough determination that there’s plenty for Scott to borrow.

“All right,” Scott says. He meets Jason’s confident gaze. “Let’s see this through.”