We Were Birds

Quinn was where Fern left him, and maybe that was the most surprising thing of all.

He was on the undersized mattress in the apartment that had become a place quite disregarded and disgusting - just lying with his head in his arm, like he was sleeping, but Fern could tell from the way his back tensed that he wasn't. And she wanted to freeze this moment, this moment just before he turned around and asked her to leave. Fern stopped moving, breathing, blinking or really living at all, she just stood and closed her eyes and made believe that this was just another day and that she was coming home from work again and everything was going to be all right. She made believe that he still loved her when she just knew he really didn't.

When she opened her eyes, she was looking at him and for a moment she thought she might fly or at the very least, cry. Instead, she stood at the door, letting him watch her, until she had to throw down her bags and rush to the kitchen sink where she promptly threw up her meager lunch of a praline biscuit that they'd given her on the train. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. He was supposed to yell at her and she was supposed to break down and beg. She wasn't supposed to be tossing her cookies - or biscuits, in this case - into the kitchen sink. Tears leaked from her eyes, tears from vomitting and then tears for not being strong enough to hold it all in. It was only when she felt Quinn's hand at the nape of her neck, pulling her hair away from her face, that she could finally stop.

Fern washed her mouth out, her body relaxing bit by bit under Quinn's hands. His palms moved in circles over her back, comforting her when he should be hating her, breathing softly in her ear and on the back of her neck when he should be shouting at her. She turned to look at him.

Quinn had forgotten her eyebrows and he had forgotton her thumbs and her belly button. Such insignificant things that he'd taken for granted before she'd left and when she'd gone they meandered away after her. It was small parts about her, small parts that now seemed so huge, that he forgot first, but then he knew he would start to forget bigger things like the way her legs moved when she walked or the way she tilted her head back just a little when she laughed. And maybe, if she'd stayed away forever, he might have forgotten her face. And then maybe her entirely. That had been the scariest thing of all. Because he could forget himself. But he couldn't forget her.

He put his arms around her shoulders - she seemed smaller but somehow stronger than the last time they saw each other - and held her close, wondering if there could be anything more painful than her going. No, there was. It was the pain of knowing that she was right to go and that she shouldn't have come back.

Her hands found under his shirt and she traced his back. "I'm sorry," she said.

"I'm dying," he answered.

Fern pulled away immedietley; doubt and fear clouding her eyes. "What?"

"I'm sick. I have emphysema. My immune system is breaking down. The next time I get a cold it could turn into pneumonia and then I could die." This was the short version of what the doctors had been explaining to him. Quinn could still remember going in because of his bad cough. How the doctor had tried to tell him, but even when they'd used the simplest of words, Quinn had just asked, What? What? like he didn't understand. He didn't understand. But now he did. Now he had to.

It took awhile for Fern to react, but when she did, she only nodded. Such typical Fern. She understood something so easily, she accepted it, and now she was moving to action. "Okay." Her voice was sturdy. "All right, well then, let's go. Let's do something. We have to have one last great adventure. We're not ending like this."

They took the next plane to France.

Strange enough, it was easy to get settled in France. Fern took a job at the Hospital as a nurse who also could translate for some patients - the job was hard but suited Fern and paid more than enough. They were able to rent out the attic of an old Moulin in Montmartre that was owned by an inherintley crazy, yet kind hearted, woman named Remy who owned more cats than she had names for. There was, of course, the favorite, Marcielle, a calico cat with double-paws who could open doors and spent much time with Fern and Quinn. From Fern Remy soon learned that Quinn could cook and hired him to cook meals for her and a few of her of her friends who, despite living in France, could not cook worth their life. Quinn spent more time than he thought he ever would with Remy and her cats. As he created her favorite dishes, however, she did her best to teach him French.

She said it was so that Quinn could get a job in a real restaraunt and someday become famous in Paris for being a great chef who also happened to be American. Quinn smiled and went along with her fantasy - he did not disclose his secret to her.

Remy's friends were all similar to her in being that they were French (and damn proud) and absolutely crazy. They occupied her house more than should be allowed and always came in shouting something and always left shouting something else. Sometimes when they talked slower Quinn could understand, but most of the time he did his work in complacent silence. Remy's friends all enjoyed pinching his cheeks and exclaiming that he was mignon and beau meaning cute and handsome - something Quinn never really liked hearing about himself.

On the other end of the spectrum, Fern's job was crazy in a much different way. Working at a hospital as a Nurse was much different than taking classes or working as an assistant. She was paid much more but was worked so much harder. And although she found herself often tensed with stress or nerves from working with a patient or a family member or a doctor or whatever new catastrophe the day hurled at her, she found that she could do nothing but love her job.

Quinn teased that Fern liked it because she was finally able to be useful to someone. Fern laughed and agreed that maybe this was true, but at least she could admit that - and admitting she had a problem was the first step to solving that problem. She liked when people needed her, she'd said with a laugh. But then Quinn had gone all quiet-eyed and took her hands and had kissed her palms and told her that he needed her too. Differently, but needed her all the same. And then they'd hug for awhile, standing in that tiny attic of Remy's, just holding onto each other like they'd drift apart if they didn't. And they'd kiss and make love quietly while Remy moved downstairs and they'd giggle when they'd hear her sing some old, strange French song.

Their story now seemed to have a certain sad ending, and they would do everything they could before they reached that inevitable end. Quinn said he'd never give up. And he never did.

They did not speak often of how Fern had left for those months. Some days she'd get misty eyed and she would try to apologize, but Quinn would shake his head. He was selfish and he loved her and he was so happy she was back, but her father had needed her too and she'd missed him and because he'd loved her, he'd let her go. "Like Beauty and the Beast," he'd say with a smile. "And then you came back, and with one kiss, princess, you transformed me." He'd laugh then. "Besides, when you went away, you were saving up for nursing school. Now you're a real nurse and you have a good job and maybe I'll never get that sick so maybe we can someday buy that house down in Maryland."

Fern would smile and nod and they'd once again talk about their future...this time, though, there was always an underlying note of sadness. The conversations of the future - even false happy futures, especially those - did not last long.

On rainy Saturday mornings, Fern and Quinn would sit downstairs with Remy and drink coffee while she told them stories of her life. She talked slowly for Quinn and Fern would translate most of it, but after a few months, he began to not need her as much, as long as Remy kept speaking slow.

Remy was a poor farmer's daughter who had no hope of ever escaping her life. From sun up to sun down she worked her family's farm - her only solace was the fact that she loved the family horses. In town there was one rich family, wealthy beyond all the others, who owned the Chateau de Villeduval on the cliff overlooking Remy's farm near the river. The family had one son, Henri, who was handsome and well-liked by all the town. However, he had a secret. He was sick. Henri came often to the river near Remy's farm to think of his life and his early death which he'd accepted long ago. It was there that he met Remy, who - as she said with a laugh - thought he was a horse thief and tried to run him out of the farm with her father's cane. Henri and Remy fell in love and ran away to Paris, where he'd bought her the Moulin and had died only two years after their marriage.

She laughed when she spoke of Henri, and that was what puzzled Fern the most.

At night, after they'd been with Remy all day while she talked of life on the farm, days spent with Henri and then what it was like when they'd first come to Paris, Quinn held Fern in the crook of his arm and trailed a finger from her forehead to her nose and looked at her with such seriousness that she couldn't stifle a laugh. But then Quinn took a deep breath. "That might be how you are, Fern, you know...laughing about me and what we had these days. After awhile I think the pain lessens, you know, time and all that, and maybe even if you never fell in love again you could be happy with your friends and your animals and with what you had...I don't know, I'm just thinking."

"I was thinking that too," Fern replied. "But maybe because I'm a different person. Maybe because we're different than Remy and Henri, but I can't see myself ever truly being happy. Maybe I'll laugh, and maybe there will be a few moments when you'll be out of my head altogether, but I cannot see myself knowing where to go after you go. After you go someplace that I can't follow."

Quinn held Fern harder. "I don't know, darlin'," he said, kissing the top of her head. "I'm scared."

That was the first time he'd ever said that, and it struck Fern. She balled her hands into little fists, like she was going to punch something but would never really because she just wouldn't, and rested them against Quinn's chest. "Me too," she answered, for that was all she knew how to say. She wanted to say something to make Quinn feel better, she wanted to take away that fear. But she couldn't because the same dark twisting feeling that was settling inside Quinn was choking Fern.

Another year passed, this different than that perfect year in the City. Fern discovered marzipan and macarons and Quinn discovered the beauty of the Eiffel Tower very early in the morning when almost no one was around. They found theirselves connecting and disconnecting in different ways in that city, like they each had different strings that kept rearranging between them. Their bonds were severed but then retied stronger than ever. These twisting strings, bouncing off each other in waves of energy, connected Fern in Quinn so strongly that it would take nothing but themselves to cut them. The only thing that would ever stand in their way now was self doubt. And as this strange, breathless, waiting year, Fern and Quinn knew something that they had long suspected of each other.

Not even death could keep them apart.

And so it was, after a year, when Quinn came home one day with a barking cough, red nose and sore throat, that they packed up, quit their respective jobs, said goodbye to Remy and left, bound once more to the city so Quinn could die in a familiar place.

Three weeks after they returned to the city, Fern admitted Quinn into the hospital. And from then on, it was only a matter of time.