Ch19

By the time she’d finished blinking past the gray daylight, he was already seated high above upon one of the incinerator towers, huffing and sweating. The climb didn’t seem feasible for anyone of any age, but there he sat, fidgeting and restless. They were as they had been on that dreary day they’d first met.

Norah watched emotion paint his face, only to be smeared away by his large hands. His troubled presentation prepared her to be patient while he found his words.

“Can I ask you a question?” he called down to her finally, twisting a thick cigar between his fingers that she hadn’t seen him light.

“Of course.”

“Did you read my file?”

Nor sat in silence a moment before allowing herself to confess.

“I did. Just before Alina’s session.”

Even from far below, she could feel his frustration on the wind and in the grinding fingertips buried in his scalp. He wouldn’t look at her, but she stared at him intently until her eyes watered.

His cigar never ceased its dance betwixt his fingers while his tics grew. Though he was nodding and composed, she could see the deeper damage dealt. She’d done wrong by her friend.

“I s-submitted every application. Passed all s-security clearances.” His posture collapsed. A slight stutter faltered his once unshakable voice.

“I know,” she said. Guilt heated her neck and cheeks.

“Both my doctor and my therapist s-s-signed off on my medical history. My diagnoses,” he added with a sidelong glance. That familiar lost expression poured over him. That immense uncertainty about where he belonged, or if he belonged at all.

“I know,” Norah affirmed softly.

“They even reassessed me before I began this work, at my request. I reached out to them.” His fear evolved into a brimming frustration he fought to conceal.

It felt easier to bear his anger. She swore she could see steam roil from his shoulders and tiny zaps of electricity bounce from his fingertips. This was better than his disappointment, which broke her heart to pieces.

“It’s been over twenty years s-s-since I was discharged. And I did s-s-so much therapy.” His eyes grew distant as he picked at his vivid memories like old scabs.

His pain and self-doubt weighed on Norah’s shoulders like a leaden pack. She’d truly wounded her best and only friend. Of course, this is what Kestrels do, she sneered at herself. Chase off the only people willing to deal with their shit.

An impulse to run away kindled beneath her skin. To drink herself into catatonia until she couldn’t remember what horrid things she’d done to the kindest human she’d ever known.

Though her limbs itched to flee like the child she was, she sat with the feeling and leaned into it. Because her shame would not serve Dexteras. It certainly didn’t serve her mother and father. Surely not herself.

What is the opposite of what cowards do?

“Dex… I…I’m so so truly sorry. They made the request before I knew you...” she began.

“But you had the approval of s-s-several doctors, of HR,” he stated. “You didn’t have to read it. You knew if I wasn’t s-s-safe, I wouldn’t be here. They wouldn’t have given me a job.” He buried his fingers into his hair.

“I never doubted your safety Dex, not even once, I promise. It just didn’t seem like you wanted to talk about the past. And then I was afraid maybe you didn’t remember….”

“Those are assumptions,” he said flatly, eyes bent with hurt. “And regardless, it’s mine to tell. With time, I would’ve been honored to tell you myself. There’s a lot a file can’t s-s-say.”

Her chin fell. Nothing justified her actions. She’d been selfish.

“You’re right. I should’ve talked to you. That’s all there is to it.” She inhaled his musky cigar on the wind. “You’re just… so…different. Different from anyone I’ve ever known, and I wanted to know you, to maybe help, to…”

But she stopped herself. She was pulling at the strings of her apology and its authenticity like an idiot. People were not paper. They were not their diagnoses. And she could not burden others with her own compulsion to help. She heard Marie’s lovely French accent in her thoughts again. “My life.”

Cigar smoke swirled about his silver hair as he watched her internal tumbling.

“It’s s-so easy to read a file, Nor. To make judgments,” he said, gentler now. “I receive them each and every day, as you do. You can’t find what makes people in ink alone.” Not once did he yell, but his voice lowered and his stutter rested. “And I’m not your client,” he said. “I am not your charge. I’m not yours to care for.”

“You’re not,” she agreed. “You’re my friend.” The boundary was firm, but safe. Healthy.

His wise ocean eyes flooded her their loving blue.

“I wouldn’t have hesitated to tell you whatever you wanted to know. I’ve never had a friend to talk to about it. They even said the more I talked about it, perhaps more would resurface but...” he paused and shook his head. “The flashbacks, the nightmares, whatever they are...if they’re any indicator of who I was, I’m not so certain I want to know...”

“I do,” she whispered, chest tight. “I want to know everything you want to share. But I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to.”

Smoke filtered through his mustache as he took a breath and considered. “I knew you’d read it by the way you looked at me. Spoke to me.” A tic bent his head to his shoulder. “I’ve had to fight my-s-self every day to become who I am now. I don’t want to be over-sh-shadowed by who I was. I don’t want it to threaten my first sh-shot at friendship.”

She sighed with open relief at his willingness to still call her friend. She blinked away threatening tears, realizing she hadn’t quite grasped how much she loved being around Dexteras until she’d been faced with the thought of losing him.

“I promise you, nothing threatened that,” said Nor. “Can I ask a question?”

He nodded.

“When they brought you in, you asked…how they could see you?”

“I’d scream,” he nodded, spewing plumes over his shoulder. “I think I was trying to see if they’d look at me.” He fell deathly still as though he were trying to pluck the fragile memories like shards from a cut.

“Why?” she whispered.

He shook his head. “I don’t know, but for a long while, I thought I was a ghost. I’d wander the halls and talk to myself. I’d disrupt other patients. Ask them if I was alive or dead. Sometimes, I’d see if they could touch me. So, of course, I was sedated often for being a nuisance.” He watched his twiddling fingers.

“Sometimes, I still feel all of those things,” he finally admitted. “When I fell, it felt as though I’d…s-s-split open into two. Lost everything inside me.”

“That’s why you do this work,” said Nor. “You’re unseen as a translator.”

He eyed her from the chimney, brows tall with her deductions. “And you, Miss Kestrel? Why do you do this work?”

She searched the horizons of his wrinkled, stormy eyes. He held her gaze longer than she’d known him to prior.

“To make people feel seen,” she said. From the corner of her eye, she saw the mirage of a little girl in a black hoodie, folded on the roof, arms hugging her knees and rocking whilst she hummed. Shrill notes warbled from the girl like a baby bird abandoned in a nest. Norah blinked hard to erase the child from her vision.

“Is there anything you can remember? From the fall?” she asked, returning to him.

He rolled his neck and loosened his shoulders like wings. “Pain, bleeding, humans touching me. Fingertips and injections felt the same.” He swallowed and winced.

“Does it still hurt?” she whispered against the wind. “When you’re touched?” Shame twinged within for her ignorance. She’d held his arm so many times without asking for permission.

“Mmhm. Sometimes,” he grumbled, somehow able to hear her quiet voice from far above. He was attempting to roll a coin across his shaking knuckles.

“What kind of pain?” She pulled her father’s coin from her breast coat pocket and modeled the trick from below.

He followed her movements with his own digits, channeling some of his restlessness.

“You know when you cut your nails too short and your fingertips…ache?” he tried with a contorted expression. “Because they haven’t really been touched before?”

She nodded with wide eyes, trusting the dancing coin across her bones.

“That’s what it’s like. All over.”

“That sounds awful.”

He shrugged. “We all have things to carry, amica mea.”

“And the voices?”

The quarter fell from his hand. It fell from the heavens and clattered to the ground beside Nor with an unusual ping.

She leaned and plucked it from the gravel. The coin was hot from his fingers and unlike any other she’d seen before. It wasn’t a quarter. It read 100 Francs, 1889 on one side. It felt heavy and looked like solid gold.

“Mmhm,” his voice grumbled like distant thunder above.

“What do they say?” She’d had many conversations with those who’d lived with schizophrenia and hallucinations. They graciously explained how they fought to remain themselves despite the lies and uninvited clangor in their head. They taught her about surviving both quiet and terrifyingly loud days.

“For so long, I was uncertain who or what they were,” he said. “It’s mostly women and children, too many to understand. Always in pain. Always hurting. There’s no quieting them. No reasoning.” He rubbed a gaunt temple. “Auditory hallucinations is what my therapists called them.”

“You’re an incredibly calming and kind person despite all the chaos you know, Dex.” She warmed his strange coin in her hand, praying he’d’ come down soon to reclaim it.

“To be fair, you’re an incredibly calming person to be around.” His eyes found hers with ease.

“Do you remember anything before the fall?”

“No. I just feel…a void. I can’t be certain if something was taken from me…” he rubbed his brow. “Or if it’s something I never had. Drives me mad like a hole in your teeth your tongue keeps running over.” He inhaled a shaky breath and let it slip from his chest in plumes of cigar smoke. “I’ve never told anyone any of that. Ever.” He graced her with a bright, sparkling eye. “I knew no one would believe me.”

She searched him a moment before replying. “I believe you.” It was obvious from the moment she’d met Dex that he beheld a miraculous, impossible story within himself that she was eager to hear.

Bursts of smoke scoffed from his lips. He shook his shaggy head as though she’d told a cruel joke.

“What? It’s true, Dex,” she snapped, irritated by his disregard for her honesty. “And I want to help,” she added. “You’re my friend, and I want to help.”

He shook his head, brows stitched. “Nothing about what I feel makes sense, Nor. It’s asinine,” he muttered. “I know nothing about who I was before twenty years ago. But I want for so much, I hurt for so much. How can I miss something I’ve never had?” he begged.

She sat for a moment within the holy ground of the question, letting the two coins clatter and slide against one another in her palm.

“You can, you know,” she called. “My parents were never there. I’ve never known a healthy, consistent adult, but there’s still a…a pain. An ache.” She had to squint to watch him through the peeking sunlight. “So, you can absolutely miss something you’ve never had.”

White hair fanned his face and tattooed neck as he stared upon her. “What happened to you, Nor?” he asked.

She chewed on her lip, considering how she could spin such a tale within such a small, delicate moment. But she did owe him something.

“My mom and dad loved each other in the beginning, I think,” she began. “Mom was never supposed to be able to have kids and Dad didn’t want any, so they set out to live their dreams.” Nor raised exasperated hands to the heavens. “I didn’t get the memo though. She got pregnant and there I was.”

His lips curled beneath his twitching mustache. “So you’re a miracle.”

“Mom thought so. But Dad never saw it that way.” She looked to the concrete now. “I made them loathe each other. He drank. She drank. He’d cheat on her. She’d drink more. He gambled. She did pills, drugs, anything to unfeel what he did.” Her spinning quarter had resumed along her knuckles.

“They’d scream, hit each other. I can still hear the yelling. It was...” She shoved her fingers through her hair until they braced at her neck. She squeezed there at the painful muscles that kept her skull affixed.

If anger was a time of day, it was late evening when Leonard Kestrel shouldered through the front door, stumbling and clumsy. Anger was stale cigarette smoke and watered-down whiskey glasses, bits of ice clinking. It was rum-rich tsks on tongues. If anger was a storm, it was the distant thunder of slamming cabinets and clanging dishes.

And when fire began to spit, and voices began to swell, Norah had to take cover or else be consumed.

“That must’ve torn the world into pieces, Nor,” said Dex, interrupting her thoughts.

She stared up at him, having never heard trauma breathed so poetically.

“Watching them lose each other was worse than her cancer. Worse than the fire.”

“The fire?” His brows bent.

Nor attempted to shake the hot prickling salt in her eyes. How did he not know about the fire? Everyone knew about the fire…

She wasn’t ready for this.

It was too much.

She shook her head again and again.

She’d never had a chance to tell the story aloud. They all knew, so why bother? She wiped her sweaty hands down her pants, remembering the locked door she couldn’t enter. The key around her neck, sweaty and stuck to her stomach.

“Your story is a gift to give to others only when you’re ready,” he said, holding her with doleful consideration. “You’re a decorated soldier of life, and I’m honored by whatever you share with me.” He pulled on his tobacco with a confident nod. “I’d follow you into battle, blindfolded.”

She sputtered up at him with tear-stricken chuckles. She’d never met anyone who could match her skills of metaphorical conversation. It made their vulnerable conversation burn in her chest like good whiskey.

“Was Corvid always your home?” she called into the clouds.

“No one could find anything on me that day. No paperwork. No family. Very much like Alina.” He sighed. “I don’t even have a last name.” He held his cigar, tapping his fingertips against the burning ember, daring it to bite him.

“You’re kind and gentle and doing important work right now,” declared Norah. “And I know those aren’t the pieces you’re missing, but it’s what I see. It’s what’s important.” She hated how it’d spilled from her lips. It didn’t translate how she’d intended it to. She was simply chasing the selfish impulse to understand him and help him understand himself. But she realized all too late that she’d minimized his past, his pain.

Dex shook his head, eyes contorted in hurt, brows buckled. “But what if I really hurt people in the past? Or worse?” The lost boy in his voice grew defensive and fearful once more.

“Dex that-”

“Depression, Cotard’s, Agoraphobia, PTSD. That’s an awful lot to be wrong with someone.” His frustration rose but she didn’t recoil.

“Those are diagnoses Dex. You said it yourself, your truth is not in ink alone.”

To her horror, Dexteras stood and hopped from the immense height with a groan, touching down with a mighty hand to the cement like a deity from the heavens.

Nor forced her mouth shut. She was obviously going to have to get used to impossible things if she was going to survive this day and this man.

“You read about the sorts of things I said and believed when they found me,” he mourned. “What kind of monster must I have been?” he raised his tired bones to the skies. “It’s evident that I was terrified of myself.”

He approached nearer, eyes wide and watering. Norah swore she could feel an electric, tickling life against the hairs on her arms, as though he were approaching lightning.

“I hear voices that scream and weep. I still feel like my skin doesn’t fit. I have anger and unworthiness that doesn’t belong anywhere, and honestly, I don’t feel that I belong anywhere.” He was toe to toe with her now, eyes sad and upset, jaw grinding.

Norah dared not flinch or blink on the shore of his brewing mood, his internal storm.

“And it’s not just ink. All of it is within me. Presently. Today. Right now.” He was tall and towering before her, blue eyes pacing her with heavy-lidded wariness. His white mane draped his face, shrouding his features as the wind whipped and blew. She could almost hear his desperate clawing against the bars of his composure, teeth clashing, eyes watering. His breaking beckoned a memory to her consciousness:

She sat before Professor Everett Scop in his tiny office, surrounded by counseling books and viny plants. He was a narrow man with narrow spectacles and heavy bags beneath his eyes.

He was full of childlike wonder and adult pains. He stepped carefully between both worlds, making him an enriching instructor for young therapists. This day, he was inquiring about her poor attendance and the light that seemed to flicker out of her each day.

“Mom is dying…” Young Norah rubbed her dead father’s coin between her fingers. “I was just given POA in case…” Her molars scraped in her skull with a whine. She shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“What about your friends?” he asked.

“They don’t know what to say. I’ve been bringing them down, making them feel bad. It’s not their fault. They haven’t been through this shit. I can’t hurt them too…”

“What are you feeling, Norah?” His thin features wrinkled at her lovingly.

“If she gets sicker, I’ll have to go home. To care for her. Again. And if I go back to that house, I don’t think I’ll escape this time. I don’t think I’ll make it out alive.”

Scop had a way of allowing the silence to sit without threat. It took a seat between them until he found the words. Then, he asked the most powerful question that had ever graced Nor’s Brokenness. It was the same question she brought to Dex now:

“How have you survived all of this?” she whispered, looking up into the timeworn storm of his shining eyes. She hoped he knew that it wasn’t an inquiry of the fall that should’ve killed him, but an ode to his mental and emotional resilience. The love and kindness that’d somehow breathed within him.

Dex huffed. His red eyes were interrupted with blinks. It seemed as though he’d been ready for battle, but Norah sent his defenses home. She was relieved to see the puffed wind in his chest decompress.

His voice broke as it left him. “I don’t know that I have, Nor.”

“I don’t think I did,” echoed Norah Kestrel from so very long ago in her professor’s office.

Dex’s jawbones rolled and shifted, biting back something that trembled his chin. He looked down at her, blinking against wind and salt.

She made a gesture to touch his shoulder, and when he nodded in consent, she pulled him into an embrace. She’d read that hugs were most therapeutic at twenty seconds or more and thus counted as her head rose and fell against his chest.

Hot, silent tears soaked her shoulder. His limbs tensed. He wriggled with discomfort as though confined to a cocoon he’d outgrown.

“You’re worthy to be touched and heard and seen, Dex. You’re here. You’re here now, and that’s all that matters.”

And finally, he broke. He wept and quivered and clutched to her as though drowning. Knees buckling, they sank to the ground, where his pieces could fall apart.