26 April 2000
Death holds no meaning for me, except that which might take Cathrine or Quatre from my life. Fear is something that can paralyze, as it did me when they rolled my angel into the hall and onto an elevator. But that was yesterday, and this is today.
Today he looks at me through sunken eyes, heavily hooded with lightly bruised eyelids. He looks so frail, but I know he isn't. He never was. He never will be. The doctor flashes a pen light in his slightly dimmed blue eyes and jots down a note in the sloppy hand writing that all physicians are required to use.
"The blood pooling in the bottom of his eyes should clear up in a few days. Otherwise, you are free to go." My blonde lover smiles lazily up at me, hair in complete disarray. I can't help but let my lips turn up in response.
The blood in his eyes is a result from the sheer violence of his vomiting in the last twenty four hours.
Food poisoning.
Spoiled Milk to be exact. I almost laughed when they told me, when Wufei told me that the milk that my angel had used on his breakfast cereal was out of date. For the dim witted doctors it was what the holy grail was for the crusaders.
They got off lucky.
We got off lucky.
"Trowa?" this time it is his voice that calls my name, not some dazed facsimile.
"Yes Little one?" The doctor looks up at me and then to my love and then back again to me with an odd expression that I've seen many times before.
And I don't care.
I don't care what he thinks as I let my fingers trail over Quatre's flushed cheek. I don't care as I let my lips brush his heated forehead.
"I love you. Let's get out of here." he whispers to me in that gentle way of his.
"I love you too," I breathe against his forehead, for his ears only.
Ashamed you ask?
Never. Those words are golden to me and I refuse to let them fall to those who could never comprehend their priceless value. I draw his lips to mine to reassure myself that this isn't a twisted dream. His initial taste is bitter and stale from the dry air and sickness that is slowly retreating from his body. But I kiss past that till I taste him, my Quatre.
My soul.
My love.
And I wonder briefly if his god does exist.
The god that helped these incompetent people heal him.
The god that has wiped my angel's memory clean of that damned emergency room.
The god that has let us be together and love each other another day.
And for a moment, I let myself believe.
Erin Johnson
Please send comments to: johnsoel@purdue.edu