I Fell in Love with Hope - Lancali

am. I wonder if he does notice all those peculiarities. I wonder if he
ignores them because, for all he doesn’t like about me, he likes that I
am constant. I don’t bend and tiptoe for him. I don’t offer what I
would not have offered him before.
People need that sometimes. They need things to stay the same to
make room for what has changed.
“I think I’ll lose her every day,” I say, standing up and laying the Hit
List on the counter next to whatever Eric scribbles on. “Every night
once her mother goes home, I lie with her and I beg her not to leave
me.”
Hikari is no longer tempted by blades of any kind. She barely has the
will to be fed by others, let alone the will to feed herself. In the
absence of knives, she becomes vegetative. She doesn’t leave her
bed unless forced. She can’t be awake more than a few hours at a
time. She vomits after every meal. She loses strands of hair before
they have a chance to grow.
“Neo’s mother gave me this,” I say, caressing the front page and title
of our glorious little notebook. “It’s everything we ever stole.” It’s
everything they never got to steal.
“She thanked me,” I say, my voice weakening. I didn’t save Neo. I
didn’t save any of them. And yet, “Why did she thank me?”
Eric continues to go through his charts, letting them loudly fall back
into their trays as if to accentuate he has no answers to offer me.
The cat that has made a home on this floor hops onto the counter.
Eric ignores her too. With a hooked paw, she plays with his ID badge
clipped on the breast pocket of his scrubs. If I thought she was
capable, I’d say Hee was trying to cheer him up. At another time,
maybe if Sony were still alive, Eric might’ve actually smiled for her.