Henry
I jolt upright, my heart pounding ferociously, practically banging free of my chest. A cold sweat beads on my forehead and an oceanic roaring fills the void between unconsciousness and wakefulness.
There’s a metallic, acid taste in my mouth and the grip of antiseptic riding in the air. I fight down the violent hammering of my heart and blink away the darkness.
But the dark remains.
It’s night.
The purple-gray light of Geneva, the half-night of the city bleeding light into the sky, creeps through the window. The storm died, and now the city sleeps in the dampened, lulled state of watchful quiet that always comes after the rain.
It’s the perfect time for a cup of tea.
I suck in a sharp breath. Sleep has fallen away, and I remember.
I quickly reach up, splaying my fingers over my face. Feel the thick two-day stubble. Reach for the glasses tilted on my nose. Just to be certain, I pat my chest, feeling the pounding under my fingers. No breasts. I blink. Look down. My hands. My legs. My everything.
I’m at home in my body again. I feel like myself. Solid, steady, with dodgy eyesight and a love of football, physics, and tea and biscuits.
I’m me.
Dammit.
“Dammit, Ducky.”
I run my hands through my hair and shove it back from my eyes. I remember now.
I was dying.
I squint into the dark, catching the glow of the vitals monitor hidden by the shadow cast from the room door. It’s a small, sterile room, not dissimilar to the one Serena’s mom stayed in when in hospital. Four close walls, dour and claustrophobic. A square window. A plastic wardrobe. A narrow cot.
And a hard, plastic chair, grossly uncomfortable so you aren’t tempted to stay too long.
Except I’ll stay all night, won’t I? I’ll stay as long as Ducky does.
“You’ve a nice cot,” I say, my voice a low murmur in the silent room. “Perhaps we should trade.”
Ducky doesn’t answer.
Not that I expect her to.
She lies still and silent under the white cotton sheets, her black hair loose around her shoulders, her normally pink cheeks pale, her mouth drawn. When I was young I had an illustrated copy of Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Right now, she looks just like Snow White in her glass coffin.
Ducky would hate that.
I hate it.
From the first moment I saw her she’s been filled with life. She moves lightning-quick between one thought and another, her expression so animated you can catch a hundred emotions in one second. She’s always reminded me of the English weather, where bursts of rain and bouts of sunshine leap back and forth as quickly as sun and shadow flickering beneath the swaying branches of a leafy sycamore tree.
She’s always been like that. She sprints from one idea to the next, her enthusiasm contagious. When she walks she moves quickly, with a short skip to keep up with her racing thoughts. Her gaze continuously roves. Her eyes are expressive. She’s . . .
She worried that being with me would change her, or that being me would change her, but she’s always been herself. Filled with life.
When I was in primary school my parents celebrated their fifteenth anniversary. They hosted a garden party and invited the entire village. I asked my mum, “How do I find someone like you and dad did?” My mum said, “You don’t have to find them—they’ll come to you. The minute you look across a room and you don’t see anyone but them, that’s when you know you’ve found each other.”
The day I first saw Ducky, when I looked around the pub and there she was, stuck . . . I knew.
I reach over to the bed and take her hand—too cold, too limp—in mine. I run my fingers over the back of it, draw a soothing circle, then weave our fingers together.
“You shouldn’t have switched back,” I tell her. “If one of us had to suffer, I’d rather it be me.”
I was there, hovering on the edge of the storm. I felt myself slipping away. Then in the spinning darkness I felt Ducky reach out, grab my hand, and yank me back.
I was thrown into my body, alive and well. And Ducky?
I swear my heart stopped. My breathing too. The pain was excruciating. I know she chose to switch so that if one of us died it would be her.
That’s what it felt like. It felt as if I was dying.
Yet when the paramedics arrived, Ducky was fine. Only . . . not waking up.
I think perhaps that psychic was right. If we’d stayed in the wrong body for much longer, we wouldn’t have survived.
I’m not sure Ducky will survive now. Except she has to.
I called her parents. Her mom asked me to keep my promise, to stay by Ducky’s side and hold her hand until they could arrive. I know I didn’t make that promise, but I have no intention of breaking it.
Jillian raced here, her husband Daniel right behind her. When she first saw me, she said, “Serena?”
I shook my head. “No, sorry.” And I was.
They left after two hours of pacing and questions and stress, and only because Daniel insisted Jillian had to rest.
Now I lean forward in the hard plastic chair and brush a strand of hair off Serena’s cheek. I know she hates it when it falls over her face.
“You’re all right,” I tell her, keeping my voice low, blending with the echoing footsteps in the hallway, the low nighttime murmurs of the staff, and the gray light of the room. The cold air from the overhead vent drags over us, catching her hair and sending the metallic whisper of antiseptic through the air.
I grip her hand tightly, trying to infuse her with my warmth. Her features are more familiar than my own. I’ve spent nearly two years memorizing the way her lips curve into a smile, the way her hair falls from its braid, and the way her eyes spark and then glow like the milky way whenever I enter a room.
Switching places with her didn’t make me want her less. It made me love her more.
“You’re all right,” I say again.
Her hand remains still beneath me, her breathing even and quiet. Her eyelashes don’t flutter. Her heart rate doesn’t increase.
“You should come back. You should wake up.”
I wait to see if she will.
When she doesn’t I pull the chair closer, scraping the legs over the floor, and then wrap close to her, cocooning her, just like we’re dancing again.
“You should wake up because I love you. And I know you and I’m certain you’ll have a lot to say about it. I wanted to tell you about everything I learned being you . . .”
I wait, smiling at the soft line of her cheeks and the high, questioning fling of her eyebrows. Even in sleep she raises her eyebrows at me.
A warmth settles in my chest, and I run my fingers over the back of her hand.
“At first I didn’t like being you. I dislike coffee and cats and spicy food. Not to mention, you have a serious lack of respect for hoovering and tidying up. I tossed dirty laundry everywhere. It was disturbing. Not to mention, you fidget, you’re too short to reach the top cabinet, and honestly, men stared at my breasts too much for my liking. And don’t remind me about menstruation. Or chocolate. If I want chocolate, I want Cadbury white chocolate, not Ghirardelli Dark. It was strange being you, like I’d slipped on a pair of shoes that didn’t quite fit and they were rubbing me raw and chafing my skin.”
I wait to see how Ducky’s taking my confession. She doesn’t seem disturbed. Her eyes are still closed, her breathing still shallow, so I continue.
“Here’s where it gets strange. It didn’t take too long for me to get used to that shoe. I think it was your memories, the glimpses of your past and the emotions I felt that were clearly a fragment of you. The first memory I had was of your back yard, when I felt as if I’d swallowed starlight and a comet shot across the sky. It reminded me of the first time I saw you. I knew I’d experienced you falling in love.”
I brush her hair back from her face and take a deep breath. Outside in the hallway two nurses walk past, debriefing on a patient. Their voices echo over the tile floors and the plaster walls and then fade.
Ducky and I stay wrapped in the intimate confines of her room.
“That wasn’t all,” I say, pulling the scratchy cotton sheets higher, trying to give her warmth. “I caught your loneliness and your dreams. I felt the awe and love you have for your home, but also your desire to leave and explore. I felt your longing in England for a large family that might love you. And I saw the night we first met.”
I pause, waiting to see if Ducky will wake up to join in the conversation, but she doesn’t.
“I know what you felt when we made love. Not because I saw the whole thing, but because I felt the same way. And then I felt your fear. I wish I could say I don’t understand, but I do. I was scared too, but I thought we’d leap together. I was angry when I first saw that in your memories, you choosing to run away. But then . . .”
I take a deep breath, pull in the scent of mint and apple that clings to Ducky, and remember the scent of starlight that I always caught hints of when I lived as her. For her, starlight is love.
“Then I saw the night at the pub where you let me go, and I felt how much it hurt. And there was another memory. I don’t know when it was. We were in the cafeteria at work. I was having a cup of tea by myself, and you were sitting at a table across the room drinking an espresso. I had the impression this was a common occurrence.
“You came and sat down far away but facing me and pretended for just a moment that we were at a table together. That we weren’t separated by a room full of people and our own inability to connect, but instead we were enjoying a moment, just the two of us. The feeling of that moment, it was a yearning so intense it would have shocked me if I hadn’t felt the same exact thing every single day I spent without you.”
I squeeze Ducky’s hand, feeling the thrumming electricity that’s always there when we touch.
“So after that I didn’t mind being you. I understood you, even though I thought I never would. I wanted to protect you and your family and be there for you in any way you needed me. Even if the only way you needed me was to help your family or be your friend. But Ducky, I’m not just your friend. I love you. I want to spend my life with you. I want to wake up next to you every morning, argue theories at work, bring you coffee and chocolate when you need it, and take you with me to visit my family and yours. You can make messes and I’ll tidy them up. I can eat steak and you can have tofu. We’ll let Purrk rule the flat, but we’ll also ask Kate to find us a rescue corgi. You’ll read sci-fi and I’ll watch football. And sometimes we’ll walk through Geneva and you’ll take me and my coat on a magical tour to all your favorite places. And then, when we get home, I’ll kiss you and you’ll kiss me. And we’ll live happily ever after. But we can’t do that if you leave. We can’t do that if you don’t wake up.
“Please, Ducky, wake up. Wake up. You said you never wanted to give up your life for love. Don’t. Don’t give it up for love. Come back to me and live your life for love. Grab it. Take it. Live for love.”
I clutch Ducky’s hand. “Please.”
I stare down at Ducky, at the shadows falling over her face, at the sweep of her eyelashes and the upturned corner of her lips. At first I thought what happened to us could be explained by science. I thought we would find the solution with our minds. But if it was science, it wasn’t any science I can understand. Instead it feels as if it was another mystery we may never know the answer to. There are doors in the universe that we’ll never hold the key to, nor unlock. So now I think what happened was beyond our comprehension. Yet when humans reach things beyond the understanding of our minds, we use our souls.
How did Chopin compose masterpieces? How did Galileo sail the stars? How did Tesla call down electricity? Through dreams. Perhaps through love.
How do you describe a feeling that can’t be put into words?
Through a song? Through a handful of wild daisies? Through holding a hand in a darkened room when the only hope you have is each other?
Or do you take that feeling and package it in the most inadequate words to exist in the English language? Perhaps when we say them, we can only hope the other person understands—that they feel what we feel—that to them “I love you” means just what it means to you.
Starlight over redwoods, wind trailing over bare skin.
Sunshine peeking through the rain clouds, a cup of tea and a beloved book in your hands.
A cat purring in your lap, a corgi cuddled over your feet.
Your newborn niece curling her hand around your finger.
Your mom singing to you in the night, rocking you close when you wake from a nightmare.
A gentle kiss in the rain with the woman who will always stay in your heart.
There are a million expressions of love. They could fill the universe in all their infinite glory, and yet . . . we can only say—
“Henry.”
Ducky drags in a sharp breath. Her eyes fly open as if she’s still spinning, flying back into herself. She grips my hand, searching through the shadows and the gray light of the hospital room until she finds me.
I sink into the light in her eyes. It’s all the stars, the entire universe, and my chest feels as if it breaks open and my heart tumbles to lie at her feet, hers for the taking.
“You’re here,” I breathe.
She came back.
And then I remember what she said. I remember what pulled me out of the deathlike darkness and yanked me back into myself. I remember.
And I decide that maybe those three words are enough after all.
Ducky squeezes my hand and says—
“I love you.”