DAY 15

The Messenger finds a surrogate home in the Bsharri hospital. His discharge is delayed, according to the nurse he is sexually attracted to. Her nametag reads Sabal and she is surprised to find he also speaks her language, which is sign. She doesn’t voice words. He is unsure if it is a physical disability or a mental one. Whether she is not able to speak, or whether she chooses to be mute. On his end, he enjoys the silence between them. How she communicates to him with the touch of her hand. He never once considered his body this landscape of mysteries until she touched it. In the mirror, it had always appeared as one embedded with land mines and irreparable failure marks. But there are other meanings she unearths in her explorations of it, buried truths.

He discovered her inability to speak after another intimate bathing session. Once again, her very presence in the room inspired a physical compulsion in him. And for a second time, she appeased it with a skin-to-skin touch, after which he desired to talk to her. He wanted to express his sexual attraction to her outright and apologize for it. He worried if her interpretation of his arousal demeaned her in any way. He also craved reassurance from her. Despite his automatic attraction to her presence in the room, he didn’t expect her to relieve him of this internal torture every time she entered to care for him. She didn’t respond to his questions or apologies. She nodded and smiled. Smiled and nodded. After the first time, he understood the embarrassment of not having anything to say. Now that she had crossed the line twice, he needed to know how she felt about it. For some reason, he required a guarantee she did this to him only. Like an awkward commitment or promise ring of sorts.

After he spoke to her, she didn’t respond by voice. He tried to get her attention while she collected her bathing materials, but to no avail. She didn’t flinch at the sound of his voice.

So he waited for her to catch his eyes before he tried sign language.

His message made her blush red.

“Thank you for reminding me I am alive,” he had said with his hands.

She responded in kind.

“You have many scars.”

“I have fought many battles,” he answered, “more with myself.”

She nodded. She understood.

She then walked over to the head of his bed. He observed the roundness of her breasts, the soft skin between her chin and neck. She extended her arm before his eyes and he saw scarred lines there at the wrists.

He expected her to cry. The very coincidence of their mutual attempts to die almost persuaded him to do so himself.

“I want you to stay. When you leave, I wait for you to come back,” he gestured before rambling with his hands.

“When you come back, I never want you to go. When you go, I think about you until you return.”

She placed a hand over her mouth to prevent an obscene burst of laughter, or a grunt.

The quiet in their exchanges combined with the effort to communicate with her in sign created a poem between them. Sign language. His interpretation of her sign language and the secrets beneath the surface of her own skin. How they motivated those same fingers which squeezed him ever so gently and firmly to make him release himself into her hands.

Abruptly, she turned as if to hear something in the dead quiet of the floor. She walked over to the door and locked it again as if to imply she needed privacy to bathe her patient. Except this time, she removed her white nurse’s shoes, climbed over the steel railing at the foot of the bed and sat crosslegged there.

She removed her top and unclasped her bra. Her breasts fell and peaked at their darkened nipples. She placed both hands on each of his legs. He trembled in their tightening grip on his skin.

This time, she placed him in her mouth and swallowed him.

The Man interrupts this sequence with sarcasm.

“So you are writing pornography now?” he jabs.

My office is quiet and the lighting is soft at three in the morning. I waited for my wife to fall into a deep sleep before I escaped down here. Or else, she might have thought our recent love-making renaissance cheapened by the departure of her husband to another passion.

“Just because you are getting more of it these days, doesn’t mean it has to spill into the story. You were about to introduce him to the protagonist? And you had to write another sexual scene before that? To what purpose, it baffles me.”

He sits on the leather sofa, below my degrees. His words reveal jealousy tonight, as if he feels cheated himself not to have slept with this woman first.

“Of course I am. Who wouldn’t be jealous of a relationship with no talking and the only means of communication sexual?”

I laugh at his sarcasm and he smirks at me. Sex scenes are very difficult to write and I know he understands the challenge. He is simply growing impatient with the plot of the story.

“You need to get him out of that room now. It is becoming a haven. The sex is fine and I really like Sabal.”

He hums to himself as if to imagine.

“But our protagonist is literally around the corner, a few rooms down, so you have the opportunity to kill two birds with one storyline. Have them meet in body at the hospital. How will you do so without making it appear contrived? Now that you’ve given The Messenger a girlfriend, he will be hard-pressed to find the man who he knows will murder him. This will stall the story, improve his character development, mind you, but practically force you to come up with a miracle to introduce Kashif.”

The Man is right. I know creating a transition between the act of love and the act of death is a difficult one. He is correct to fear the wonky bridge between the two. The Messenger, after his sexual gravitation to Sabal, will be inclined to stall his meeting with Kashif. What The Man and The Messenger don’t realize is that character is not the only driving force behind story. The Messenger is guiding the point of view, yes. However, a story is happening below the surface right next door in the hospital. There, in a similar hospital room, rests the motivation behind every one of Kashif’s present and future actions. His daughter, delicately dying.

So I have Sabal convince The Messenger to stand up one day. He does so on weaker knees. Before long, he is walking strong enough to venture outside their secret love nest. She proudly shows him off to other nurses in the hallway. They smile at him, some suspiciously, like they know.

As The Messenger walks the parade route to the well-lit waiting room at the end of the hall he glances into the neighbouring rooms. He is curious to know if others abide with him on this step down floor. Or did he receive special privileges from the doctor who attempted to murder him before saving him for one more chance at accomplishing his mission.

When he glances into one of the rooms, he sees a golden haired man with an angular jaw. The man is standing directly centered in the doorway with his arms crossed. The Messenger sees a pair of white, narrow feet at the edge of the hospital bed. The feet are delicate and feminine enough to hint at the salvation of a glass slipper.

The golden haired man stares back for an instant before The Messenger shifts his attention to the next room.

He doesn’t know what he expects to see. He doesn’t even know what he wants to see. His curious, former self must be creeping up on him again, he fears. In his private room, his only focus is Sabal and her visits. In the hallway, he feels eyes observing him, some of them blue and evil.

Sabal has two hospital trays facing one another in the emptied waiting room. Her smile is wider and prouder.

She points to the dishes. They don’t resemble the measured portions. And there is no intrinsic metallic or plastic smell to the aroma of the food. He realizes at once this is a homemade meal. She had made him lunch.

“From my garden,” she gestures.

The tomatoes in the salad are blood red paste tomatoes and the softer, goat cheese is ghost white.

“From my heart,” she gestures again.

He notices a slab of reddened meat dripping watery blood into the other contents.

She approaches him closely, her breasts pressing into his bony chest, her hips magnetized to his. She slips her hand down to cup him.

He understands very quickly without her gesturing what she means by the inclusion of real meat in his diet.

The Messenger basks in the bright sun on his back as he eats the homemade meal. Sabal doesn’t eat much. She is watching him eat and enjoying the food more this way. In her blackened eyes, he sees so much relativity, so much inherent understanding, like the actualization of a past life rediscovered. That’s how he feels and can’t express in sign language. Like they already know each other before the invention of words.

In the doorway, the man with golden hair walks by. He eerily surveys the scene from the corner of his lighter eyes. He walks away.

“Who is that?” The Messenger asks when Sabal also notices.

“I don’t know. A new visitor. Never saw him before.”

After they finish lunch, The Messenger feels dizzy at first. He has not eaten this amount of food for quite some time. By the time they return to the room, the blood in the red meat kicks in. He closes the door in behind him, embraces Sabal from behind and then pushes her onto the bed, her face down in his slept-in sheets.

He then rips her pants down and returns the oral stimulation from behind. She doesn’t moan or make a sound. He could feel her trembling on his tongue, dripping onto it.

She pulls him by the hair up and punches him hard on the side. He doesn’t understand this message. She keeps assigning it to him with force, the punches stronger and faster. He looks over to her face. She is biting the sheets now, no sound, no growl. He can hear a rip in the sheet.

He forces himself into her and she snaps her head back. Now she is slapping the mattress. Something is bothering her, disrupting his rhythm. She swings her arms back and they flail into him. Some of the blows nearly wind him. She is insistent and violent in these gestures as he increases his speed. He is breathing heavy and feeling faint again.

Finally, she stops and removes him cold. He is suspended before she leads him to the spot she wants him to re-enter. He nearly hyperventilates but does as he is told and she returns again to biting his bed.

It hurts and there is blood on him now. When he releases himself in her, her neck twists and her face is sinister, almost out of body.