“Me, too,” the driver called from the front of the ambulance when I reached over to Daphne on the gurney beside me, squeezing her hand tightly.
“Her pulse is up,” another paramedic said, and I smiled, because of course it was. I had touched her, and even between worlds her body knew when mine was close.
“I will do everything in my power to make this happen, Mr. Gavros.”
“Thank you,” I breathed, feeling the rush of sleep pull me under. “And when they remove her heart, tell the doc to put it in my chest. Don’t sew me back up without it.”
Mustache stilled, the quiet in the cab seeping into every available space before he nodded.
I collapsed onto my pillow, listening to Daphne’s heartbeat on the monitor.
“Turn it up,” I whispered. “This is my favorite song.”
It was a slow row into the Undying Lands, a strange peace settling warm in my chest. All the things I had been afraid to feel rushed through me, flooding my veins with Daphne’s light. And then I remembered every moment I had ever loved her.
The sly smirk she gave me the first time I crawled through her window and onto her mattress, taking my hand before she even knew my name. I saw her shivering in the winter, pressing a kiss to my cheek and twirling under the stars. I felt her toes curl into the backs of my legs, the way her fingertips traced circles along my spine when we slept. The feeling of her mouth, the slick of her skin, the break in her body when we came together.
Daphne guided me deeper. The sound of her heart filled my ears as it fought to keep beating.
“I am coming, Daph. Hold on.”
Flashes of her smile broke for me, a montage of her life unfolding in the prettiest fragments. I saw her in every moment, from her knobby knees to the day she took my last name.
And then came the dream that would never happen, but I loved it anyway.
The swell of her belly when she danced in the kitchen, singing nineties songs into a potato whisk. The way our little girl scampered in on Christmas morning, holding a present in the dim light. A streak of silver falling across Daphne’s face as I leaned in to kiss that freckle on her neck, I loved so much.
And the best part?
I wasn’t a monster anymore, or something broken that we would both have to carry forever.
Here, the Underworld couldn’t touch me or ask me to break for it. The things I had done to survive washed away in images of Daphne sitting in the garden, twirling a piece of licorice between her lips.
This was permission.
Here, I was Thayor. Safe. Hers.
“Look, when she wakes up, she is going to flip the fuck out. She’ll tear at her scars, maybe even try to burn the world down. But I need you to tell her something for me.” I grabbed the paramedic’s collar and pulled him so close our faces nearly touched. “You tell my girl not to pray. Tell her I am not going to heaven or hell. Tell Daphne I am coming home.”
forty-one
The Poetry Of Reperfusion
Second Presbyterian Hospital.
Tissue match: check.
Blood match: check.
Intubate. IV. Oxygen.
Scalpel.
Sternum broken open.
Rib cage cracks.
Heart-lung machine.