feel better. Lily seems to feel better as well, as if I had forgiven her for some crime I didn't know she was guilty of. I make her swear to come back with me right now. I ask her without thinking, but she agrees. The fire roars.
But I can finally breath.
And, before we leave, I throw a bucket of water in the fire's face.
Lily's been living with me for two months now. She has finally got her blood sugar reader, which allows her to avoid most of the episodes (and makes me less needed), but my own health is declining quickly. When I wake up (if I managed to sleep) my eyes are all puffy, and I'm anaemic. Even after I ate, the metallic taste of my own saliva doesn't leave me. I regularly go to the hospital, but not enough, it's too crowded. There are so many people there that it feels like the entire world is on dialysis.
Also, I keep searching around the city for a donor. I know that Lily would be compatible with me, but I don't dare to ask, considering her health. I don't want to ask at all, actually. Not that – not her. She already suffers enough. As for her, she doesn't talk about it. Ever.
We often go for a walk along the dyke, the two of us, arm in arm, because I insist, I like to feel her very close. We go slowly towards the wind, facing the jeers of the mottled gulls, the nestling of the year. We watch people scraping under the stones at low tide, handling their crab hooks – as if they needed it! Then, we gaze at the ghost ship skyline, placed on the horizon like a blob of paint added afterwards on a masterpiece, a profane blob that shouldn't be there. Incongruous ship on whose deck I wish that Lily and I could walk together someday.
What could be done so that we could live there?
Today, I couldn't get up. Lily asked the neighbours to help her carry me to the hospital – after she tried and failed to contact the Emergency Service. I fainted in her arms when she dragged me out of my bed.
I woke up on a pallet in a hallway, listening to the wailing of the sick. Lily was seated next to me and didn't care about the comments made by the grey cheeked nurses who struggled to pass.
I clutch her hand, and realize how weak my own is. Lily senses my movement and looks me in the eyes. Despite her exhaustion (gosh, what must I look like?), her hazel eyes haven’t lost their wit, and are enough for me to pull myself together.
I gesture for her to lean over me. She does so. I don't want to be heard when I offer, with a heavy heart, to give her my pancreas – the faulty organ of her body.
She jumps back and shakes her head. I read in her eyes that she'd prefer the trade to go the other way around. That she'd prefer to save me. So why doesn't she speak? All she has to do is to propose. But I already know. We've probably waited too long. It's probably not possible anymore. I'm probably doomed.
Ah, how beautiful it was to want to keep living together.
I make the same offer as before. She rejects it again. Then I gesture her to go. The look she gives me when she obeys breaks my heart.
I watch her leaving for a long time, even though she's disappeared around the corner of the hallway a while ago. Then I hail a nurse. I require to talk to a doctor. They confirm that it's too late for me. I knew it. I knew it. I bite my lips so as not to cry. With a sudden rush of courage, I inform them that I agree to give all that can be saved from my body. I insist on the pancreas. On the name of the receiver.
Times are not about survival at all costs (they haven't been for years already), and when an incurable patient asks to die at once, it's granted under a few conditions. I meet them all. They prepare the operation room. They gather the receivers – even Lily, who cannot take my right to die away from me.
I see her again just before I'm taken to the room. She stands next to me (I'm lying on the metallic wheeled bed), wavering like when we met. But this time it's out of distress, and she won't fall. When I hear her broken voice, I can feel my heart being torn apart.
I catch her arm, and drag her to me. Her lips taste like orange juice.
I whisper to her to take me with her on the boat over the horizon.
I close my eyes and endure the shock of the bed being pulled away.
***
Lily makes a last effort. The sun has been beating down on her head for two hours already, the wooden oars have burnt her hands; yet, she is proud to have taken the boat so far. The small blue and white hull hits the rotting metal of the large ship. Shaken by the roll, Lily does her best to straighten, and grabs a rusty ladder. Her scar, next to the bellybutton, hurts.
Once she had reached the deck, she advances to the prow. From there, she casts her eyes on the coast.
She hates that world that left Yoko to die. She also hates herself, for not having found the courage to tell her that she had already given away a kidney when she was a child. She had wanted Yoko to have hope until the end, hope of hearing her offer that non-existent kidney.
But if she really loathes herself with all her heart, it is because of something else that she never confessed. If they were placed together, it was mostly because, without a kidney, Yoko was doomed – and it was very unlikely that she would ever find one, that naive girl who thought that people would reach out to her, since she had always reached out to them! And then, Yoko could give her her pancreas. The Social Services considered that this pancreas had to be given to someone young, and not wasted like so many others. An opportunity for Lily, if she was able to seize it. She had been told that only the donor can decide. But we can give a push in the right direction.
It’s a success, isn't it?
Lily's eyes stop on the tall building where she lived for three months, finally resting upon the little window on the third floor.
It seems to her that she can see a shadow, behind the panes. A shadow with cheerful eyes.
A faint smile rises on Lily's face. She doesn't need to promise herself to come back on the ghost ship. She will not leave it. That is Yoko's gift to her. She gave her the ship on the horizon.
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