The Pace

  “I know exactly how you feel.”

  He studied my face for a few moments and then whispered, “You are truly amazing.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” I assured him. I was a lot of things: different, private, creative, independent, inquisitive, but amazing, no. Certainly not.

  “You are,” he insisted.

  “You don’t know me very well,” I pointed out.

  “I know you better than you think, and I can affirm that amazing is an accurate description.”

  I studied his expression. “Why is that?” I asked. “Because you’ve told me the most outlandish thing in the world and for some reason, I can’t stay away?”

  He let out a chuckle. “Yes, that’s a big reason.”

  His admission reminded me that we did have a few very large, unresolved matters to discuss. It was hard to remember them with him sitting in my room.

  “That reminds me, there are things I want to know.”

  “I’m sure there are. I’ll tell you whatever you want.”

  I knew I didn’t want to keep questioning him. I had questioned his intentions and even existence since the day I’d met him. I wanted answers without any prodding.

  “I don’t want to ask you questions. I want you to tell me.”

  He turned toward me. “Starting where?”

  “I want you to tell me about your family and how you ended up like you are.”

  I scooted myself all the way to the head of the bed and lay on my pillow, signaling to him that I was planning to listen for a while. He took the cue, and although he remained closer to the foot of the bed, he extended himself so that he was lying across the bed as well. He propped himself up on one elbow and studied me intensely. I made sure that my expression was soft and inviting. He began his recollection as if it was a recent memory.

  “I was born in London, January 12, 1900,” he revealed.

  I tried my best not to flinch or appear uncomfortable.

  “I was my parents’ second son. A couple of years before I was born, my parents lost my brother. He was two years old, and he was hemophilic. My parents didn’t know until he fell down and hit his head pretty hard. It shook my mother up really bad, and she rarely ever talked about it. They traced the condition back to my mother’s family, so when I was born, they expected me to carry the disease as well.”

  I could tell that the memory was extraordinarily painful for him.

  “For as good of care as she took of me, no one would have ever suspected that my case was as severe as it was. Most kids with my condition would not have lived past their toddler years. She was an amazing woman. Only now do I realize how great of a job she did.”

  “What about your father?” I interjected.

  “I don’t remember my father much, but he was not Weston the second.” He briefly glanced at me to be sure I’d heard. “His name was Charles Wilson. He mostly traveled, and he died when I was three. He left my mother a substantial amount of money, and she used some of it to buy a bookstore and a brownstone near the medical district in London, in case something happened to me.”

  I studied his face closely as he spoke, and before long, I could actually picture him in London. I could see him wearing the clothes similar to the ones in the photograph I had seen. He looked just as perfect then as he did now.

  “So what happened to you?” I asked, refocusing.

  “When I was about to be sixteen, I had an accident that should have killed me. As my mother planned, I was close enough to be taken to a nearby doctor, which happened to be Dr. Thomas. I was dying, and he administered an experimental serum mixed with cold-blood, and here I am.”

  “So how does something like that work?” I had po­sitioned myself closer to him so that I could take in everything he was saying. He seemed undistracted by my closeness.

  “Well,” he said, “he was working on ways to cure sickness and prolong life. No human blood transfusion appeared to alter people’s ability to fight illness at the time, in a way that was beneficial at least, so he came up with the idea of using cold-blood. He had acquired different samples and one worked on me.”

  “Were you the first?”

  “No, he tried it on several people, and they all died. He had actually given up when I came in. My mother begged him to try anything to save me, and he did.”

  “So why did it work on you?”

  “He believed it worked because I was hemophilic and my own blood wouldn’t clot against it.”

  “So why do you not age normally, and why can’t you regulate your body temperature?” I caught myself. I said I didn’t want to be asking questions, but I couldn’t help it. I was intrigued.

  “Well I’m not exactly sure why I age so slowly. Dr. Thomas believed that the cold-blood transformed all of my cells and my metabolism. Everything is working slowly for me, and it seems that it causes my natural aging process to progress at a much slower pace. I can’t regulate my temperature because of the cold-blood. It is a part of me now.”

  “So what exactly is in your blood?”

  “I don’t know—various mixes. All I know about for sure is the gator blood. It was what he found to fight against infections, but he destroyed any other notes he had. He wouldn’t even tell me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Because he didn’t want anyone else to be able to replicate it.”

  I didn’t understand. “But if it cured you, why wouldn’t he want others to know about it?”

  “Because I wasn’t just cured. My transformation was not something I would wish on anyone. It took me years to recover. Years. He didn’t want to put anyone else through that again, and plus he wasn’t even sure if it would work a second time.”

  “So, you are the only one?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “So you think there could be others?”

  He shook his head quickly. “No. Dr. Thomas made certain that no one knew about me or the particular serum he used, but there have been other doctors who studied his work. They knew he was close to finding a cure for sickness and that he hoped to prolong people’s lives. Many others have tried to replicate previous experiments he did, but none of them have been successful, that I know of.”

  “So people are looking to replicate it?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you think they would do? What if they just want to find a cure, too?”

  “What I have is not a cure.” He dropped his eyes.

  “Why? You have been the perfect age forever. Why wouldn’t you be glad?”

  He smiled lightly. “Didn’t you notice what happened to me at the pier?”

  Somehow, I’d almost forgotten the look of death he’d worn in my car that evening. I shuddered at the memory.

  “Sorry,” I said, frowning. “But, other than needing to stay warm all the time, what else is so bad?”

  His mood shifted dolefully. “Well, it gets very lonely for one, and for another, it is very difficult for me to keep track of time.”

  I pondered that idea and couldn’t see the downfall.

  “What is so bad about managing your time?” I asked naively.

  “Well, for me, time moves differently. I’m progressing slowly while everyone around me is progressing quickly. A year for you and a year for me are not the same. We figured out that I age one year for every thirty, and if I let it, thirty years will feel like a year to me.

  “What do you mean, if you let it?”

  “I have to concentrate very hard to slow down what is happening around me in my mind, so that it doesn’t seem like a blur.”

  “A blur?”

  “Yes, that is what it feels like. If you can imagine the headache that would give you, then you can have a pretty good idea of how I felt for a long time. It took me about two years to figure out how to manage it. If I don’t force my mind to stay on pace with real time, then everything around me goes by too fast for me to focus.”

  “Is that why you were mumbling things about time and seeing
me when you were passing out?”

  “Was I?”

  I nodded, and he rolled his eyes, trying to shake the thought. That brought them to my attention.

  “And your eyes?” I asked.

  “What about them?”

  “Why do they have that glassy film on them sometimes? Almost like a faint shine on a lake at night.”

  He smiled. “You’re very observant,” he noted. “Well, apparently I’ve acquired transcendent eyesight also.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I can see very well. All the time.”

  “Interesting. What about now?” I asked. It was relatively dark in my room, and I wanted to know how well he could see my expressions.

  “If I wanted to I could read you a book right now.”

  “Okay then. That’s pretty good,” I understated. “So what are you going to do now that you are like this?”

  “Finish what Dr. Thomas started. I hope to make something good out of all of this.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, there is something in my blood that definitely has the ability to cure people, and right now my goal is to help doctors find it without having to go through what I have had to deal with. No one would truly want this if they knew what it was like, so I hope to be able to take some of what I have and incorporate it into a medicine that doesn’t alter people—just simply cures them. Labs that my uncle funded are close to a breakthrough. We have already found that proteins are great antibacterial fighting agents. Extracts have also been proven to help heal burns and other infections.”

  “So why can’t people know about you then?”

  “That’s a good question. You would think people would take what I have and use it for the greater good, but unfortunately, that’s not how the world works. We have encountered many different people looking for the missing pages to his journal, and many of them have bribed, stolen, extorted, and threatened my uncle. The people who want what I have are willing to kill for it, and I don’t trust them. I can’t trust anyone.”

  “Then why did you trust me? Why tell me?”

  He snickered. “Well, you made me jump into cold water, and the rest is history.”

  I nudged him. “I didn’t make you.”

  “Well, I wasn’t going to let you do it.”

  “Okay, but you didn’t have to tell me. You could have made up another reason.”

  “That would be lying, and I told you, I wouldn’t lie to you.”

  I felt myself blush. “Why is that?” I asked.

  “Because you saved me.”

  “You said you weren’t going to die, remember? Sleeping, that’s what you called it,” I reminded him.

  He raised an eyebrow in recognition. “True,” he admitted. “I wasn’t, but you saved me in other ways.”

  I moved my pillow closer to him and nestled up against his chest. He naturally began stroking my hair, and I closed my eyes in complete peace. Given my nature, I was surprised that I wasn’t asking him a thousand other questions, but the truth was, I didn’t want to. It was clear to me that he was something special. I had thought so from the moment I met him, only I couldn’t figure out what it was. The truth was beyond my wildest imagination, but now that he’d told me, I could see it. I could see him being sick and dying. I could also see his mother begging for his life as if I were standing there pleading for it myself, and the fact that he was lying next to me brought me comfort no matter how impossible it was. I snuggled closer to him.

  “I’m glad you came,” I murmured.

  “Does this mean that you are okay with this?”

  I thought for a moment and soaked in the feelings that were going through me. “It appears that way.” He stopped stroking my hair and I froze. “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “You don’t have to be okay with this. If you don’t want—”

  “No, I want this. I don’t know what exactly this is, or why I don’t think you’re insane, but I believe you, and I like you, and that’s all that matters.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure. Now if you don’t mind.” I pulled his hand back to my hair so he could continue. He chuckled and started softly rubbing my hair again.

  After a few moments, a thought transpired. “Can I ask you something?”

  “You can ask me anything.”

  “Why me?”

  He pondered that question for a few moments, but he never ceased playing with my hair. “That is a question you will have to ask fate,” he concluded.

  “Fate? You think it was fate that brought us together?”

  “I know it is,” he replied.

  It seemed as though I was missing part of a little secret. I can’t say that I fully believed in fate at the time, but I did like the idea of putting my crashing into him episode off on something other than my stupidity. I liked the idea of believing that I was meant to run into him. I liked the idea so much that I reveled in it until my eyes got so heavy, I involuntarily slipped into a peaceful slumber.

  I don’t think I will forget a single moment of that night. It was the first time where there seemed to be no hesitation hovering in the air around either one of us. My nervousness with being near him had ceased, and any doubt I’d had of his feelings for me had faded away. The closeness between us was so right, and so natural, that there was no way for me to doubt it. I wanted him, and I was sure of it.

  After that night, it became routine for Wes and me to spend time together every day. I accepted him for who he was and he, for whatever reason, wanted me, too. A day didn’t go by that I didn’t see him. During the week, he would come over and help me patiently with my homework. I knew he must have been bored, but he insisted that he got a kick out of watching me learn the material.

  On occasion, I would ask him just to do it for me, but he kept saying I’d regret “compromising my in­tegrity.” I think he was completely wrong in that. My integrity would’ve been just fine. That much I knew, but he didn’t seem to mind sitting with me while I did my work, and I found that I learned better with him there, so I couldn’t complain. Plus, he was an excellent tutor, and I even grew to like government, a little. Getting firsthand accounts from someone who had actually lived through several presidencies made learning about it much more interesting.

  My favorite moments were of the times we spent together at night. He stayed with me almost every night, and it was during those hours that I came to know more about him. Each new piece of knowledge made me hungry for more. Everything he revealed about himself was central to his character and survival.

  For one, I learned that his body temperature range needed to be between 70 and 90 degrees. He was most comfortable when it was in the middle of that range, and once his body temperature went above or below, he would start to have problems functioning physically and mentally, like what I had seen at the pier.

  His losing consciousness was a sight I never wanted to repeat, and given that it was wintertime, I found myself always monitoring the heat or checking to make sure he was adequately bundled when going out. I was a complete nag who was getting on my own nerves with it, but he didn’t seem to mind, even though he was an expert on taking care of himself.

  During one of our nights together, I also learned things about him that had to do with his mental and emotional survival. He opened up to me about how difficult some years had been for him. He said there was a period, after Dr. Thomas died, when he was so lonely and depressed that he couldn’t see himself living. He had no one he could trust and had given up trying. He mentioned the word suicide, and I cringed. I eventually asked him what had stopped him from doing it, and he said it was two things. The first was a promise he’d made to his uncle to make sure good came out of his existence, and the second was the hope of finding me. He told me he was convinced I’d come into his life, and if he had to live a solitary existence until the day he met me, then he would do it.

  My heart turned to absolute mush. It’s not everyday that a girl is to
ld by her boyfriend that he’d lived through forty years of solitude waiting for her to walk into his life. It made me feel wanted and needed. They were feelings I hoped would never go away, and I wanted to take the opportunity to tell him how I felt. It was simple: I loved him. Now, all I had to do was find the right time to say it, and I took a chance on the right time being then.

  He had been lying on my bed with his body turned toward me, and I was nestled into his chest. Sometimes, it seemed like he was more open with me when I wasn’t watching his every expression and on that particular night, I gave him privacy as he talked about the difficulties of his past by burying my face in his chest. Having granted him the absence of my stare also made it easier for me to murmur those binding words to him. I cleared my throat and released the words, “I love you.”

  Once I said them, I felt momentary stiffening in his muscles, as if he was surprised by my declaration. I braced for the rejection.

  “You don’t know how good hearing those words makes me feel,” he whispered. His voice was reflective, but silence followed for several seconds. I waited as my pulse started picking up in concern for the lack of immediate reciprocation. I wondered if I had said it too soon. After moments that were probably shorter than I remembered, my trepidation was eased. He shifted himself lower so that his eyes were even with mine, and then he put my cheek in the palm of his hand.

  “Sophie,” he affirmed. “I love you more than anything else in this entire world. You have no idea how much.”

  Hearing him say those words solidified every sacrifice I had made by giving him a chance. Every ounce of sanity and rationality that I’d given up in order to trust and believe him was well worth the feeling I had at that moment. It all seemed so surreal that I wasn’t sure if any of it was actually happening.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “What?”

  “Your face, I don’t recognize that look.”

  I started thinking about my newfound fortune. “Well, I’m just thinking that this seems like a dream. It’s too good to be true.”

  He chuckled. “Which part?”

  “All of it, but especially the part about you loving me. Are you sure?” I asked.