Back To Where We Lasted

I am still sitting in a heap on the floor when Rachel comes in through the door. She walks in and I can hear the noise of her keys as they are dumped on the hall table and she's humming as she shifts through the mail. Normally I'd have gone through it by now and removed the scary stuff, but I'm stuck like a used tissue on the linoleum floor.

"Greg?" she calls to me, her step fading from a bouncy clatter into a quick run. I can feel her presence in the doorway when she stops suddenly, and the mail hits the table as she crouches down beside me. "Oh honey, I know things are hard now. We'll get through them, and you've got a letter from Dr. Grey. He probably has something to help; he mentioned that new drug-"

"No, leave the letter.” I said, my voice gruff and gravely. Rachel supported me as she guided me to a chair, but I cut in before she could speak again, pushing her hand away as she wiped at dried tears. "I went on the drug last time I went to visit him, " I began, but the soft intake of breath that came from Rachel said she was halfway to working out what I was going to say.”He said that the past trial had been sixty percent success in reducing the affects so I went for it. But the other forty percent got increased symptoms or the process sped up."

I raised my hand shakily and did my best to place it on her cheek, but I clipped soft skin with a long nail and she took my hand in hers. "Rach, I can't see. It's all black: there's nothing."

Rachel was leaning on my shoulder by the time I had finished, tears pouring into my skin and shirt. All I could do was stroke her hair, but even that was a struggle. I lost my hand in her sea of hair; brown, I remembered her brushing it this morning. Fifty strokes on the left, fifty on the right. I remembered her framing her eyes with eyeliner and mascara too, but not the colour of her irises.

The mental image of her appearance, carelessly unmemorized by the arrogant years I took for granted, were disappearing as I tried my hardest to imagine her. I could visualize her as she had stood this morning, but her face blurred and her arms ended after her elbow like she had no hands.

"Greg. Greg, what are we going to do?"