PART II

"THE PROCEDURE"

Chapter Ten

When faced with a real case of mortality, one remember the happiest moments. The first time it happened was when I was in the tube for the first time going up the platform. I can still remember that back then most of the memories were about my father, and of course a couple where of Katniss. The other times, it became more and more about Katniss, as we made our own memories together. Now as I sit on the edge of the bed, the memories that come are the ones that just happened. The kids down backflips into the water, and Katniss laughing and clapping as the children try to keep her attention. These last couple of days have been the perfect memories. We even had ice cream after spending the remaining hours by the beach.

It is what I think about. The darkness in the room surrounds me, but the memories keep me in the moment of the happiness of everyone. Today is just another thing that I have to go through, this time though like the others I have my family behind me to get me through it. I stand and look back at her there sleeping. I walk over to her side and gently wake her up. The first thing she does look at me and fear goes into her eyes.

"Are you okay?" she says.

"I am fine," I say. "Wanted to see if you want to take a stroll with me."

She turns and see the darkness coming from the window. Closing her eyes she lets out a moan and stretches as if being woken up from a deep sleep.

"What time is it?" she says looking at me.

"Don't know, but it is early," I say.

She removes the blanket and immediately begins to look for her pants. Although it isn't snowing here in District it is still winter time and the cool mornings are a shock to the body when you think it is warm. Once we are ready to go, I make the sign for quiet and she nods. We walk very softly to the door and then as I open the door Katniss begins to move with her hands pointed like a gun. I want to start to laugh, as it is true that we still do the military signals and still walk in formation. We walk towards the stairs and then I can see Katniss pointing at the loose floorboards. They always creek sound when she would go down them, so of course she pointed it out to me because I am the noisiest. Skipping one step and then moving to the other we finally get out of the house and holding out a shawl I wrap her around it.

"So where to?" she says.

I take her hand walk with her down the street. There is a place that I want her to see. The houses are all dark and the gravel under my feet crunches as we pick up the pace. She is there with me, walking side by side, she doesn't protest where we are going, she just wants to be with me. It is the same way I feel about her. It doesn't matter where we go, or what we go through, as long as we go through it together.

We reach the other side of the Justice Building. Right next to the building there is a road that has been cordoned off by a chain-linked fence. I move under the fence and I can feel her hand tense a little. I turn back to see her and mouth the words, 'trust me.' I guess it was the fear of the fence being electrified. I wait for her to hear if there is a hum and then finally climbs underneath it. There are no more lights on this road. I fumble into my pocket and product a small light. Slowly down, we walk carefully in the dark, the ocean waves on the left and the forest to the right. After a couple of minutes I see it. I turn around and whisper in her to close her eyes and place your hands around me.

She looks at me with an incredulous face.

"It is a surprise," I say.

"And you know how much I love surprises," she says sarcastically. She hates surprises, she would make me tell her when we are having parties for her, or when someone wants to meet her.

"Promise that it is just you and me," I say and she finally closes her eyes. I walk her very carefully to the place and then finally when she is in the perfect spot, I have her sit on the ground. I look down and across and can tell that it is almost time. I sit behind her placing my hands over her eyes. "Almost."

I remove her hands and lean into her ear.

"This is what I see when I think of you," I say. The sun begins to peek over the horizon. It is a very pale pinkish color long in the distance. She looks back to me and I wonder if I should have waited just a little bit longer to open her eyes. It was a better plan in my head.

"Sorry," I say. "I guess I should have waited a little bit longer."

She smiles and leans in kissing the tip of my nose.

"If you had," she said. "It wouldn't be you. Don't worry, we can wait, we got time."

Just like that we sat on the nearby tree and slowly watch the sunrise over the horizon of the cove here in District Four. It wasn't like the sunrises at the house by the lake, or even the sunsets on top of the Training Center at the Capitol. This one here felt just a little bit different sort of like it waited just for us to get here, like it was meant for us.

Once the sun was in the sky we both stood up and she finally could look where we were. We were on the other side of the cove on the very tip of the cliff. The trees that are on our back go deep into the forest of District Four, the road that we walked on was a service road that is hardly used.

"Ready?" she says opening her hand looking for mine. I place it in hers and we walk back down the service road. Her grip is tight and her paces are small and controlled. From her lack of talking I can tell that her breathes are short. We reach a tree and I stop walking. She turns around and looks at me.

"Mind if we stop for a little," I say resting on the trunk of the tree. She stops and looks at me a little worried. She places her hands on her hips and looks around. We are probably ten minutes away from the main road. In fact, I think I can just barely hear the people talking.

"You okay?" she asks coming near me.

"Yeah," I say. "I am fine."

She turns looking back. It is as if she doesn't want to hear that. It is odd, but sometimes although I know what she is going through she keeps me away from her. Her way of being strong for the family, I guess. She doesn't realize that she doesn't have to be strong, and that by letting them in, we are stronger together.

"Katniss," I say she turns. "I am fine…"

She nods and then looks away this time she looks up and I guess it is getting too much for her.

"Katniss," I say a little bit stronger. She turns around and I can see that she is upset. "I will be fine."

I close the gap and place my arms around her. I try to hold her, try to reassure her. It is a difficult thing when all I feel inside is a sense of fear for the unknown. The results of the test could very well be, just something minor, although highly unlikely. That not knowing, is what has me constantly thinking about it. I whisper again and again that it will be fine, that we will be fine, probably if I say over and over again I will probably believe it.

"How could you know," she says. "Peeta, today out of all days, how could you know that it will fine. I don't know how you do this. Here I am falling apart and you are walking around whistling happy music, like nothing is happening. You take us to the shore where you know the kids would love to be, you bring me ice cream after telling me this touching story, and now you take me to this wonderful place to watch the sunrise."

One tear streams from her face. She motions with both her hands. "What is all this huh Peeta, is this your way of saying goodbye to me? Is that what this is?"

"No," I say. "You still don't get it. This whole time I tried to…You really want to know…how I could be fine with all this? Truth is…I am not. I am scared out of my mind, I mean a normal person would be right? I want to yell, I want to scream, I want to find out why this is happening to me now."

"Then why don't you?" she says interrupting raising her voice. "No one will think any less of you."

"It all…comes down…to that day," I say holding the tears back. "I promised myself I wouldn't ever…."

I look down at my hands, the image still there, the feeling still there, it is always there, it never leaves it haunts me every day.

"Katniss…I am scared. From falling apart, from screaming, from losing it, I wish I could. I know it is has been years since…, but it isn't something that I forget, or even that I could forgive myself. So I have to keep everything in, can't lose control, can't grieve because it leads to anger and…I am sorry, I wish it was a better reason."

Her hands grab mines. I look up and she embraces me. It is the only thing that scares me the most. It isn't the nightmares of the games, although those come and those go. It isn't the war, and people dying, because it is all a blur. It isn't even the torture he had to endure through the Capitol. It is that moment, that split second where I lost it. It is as bad as feeling my foot is still there, because I can still feel her neck around my fingers. It scares me.

"You mean all this time, you couldn't cry, couldn't grieve, anything…because of what happened years ago," she asks.

"It is stupid," I say embarrassed.

"No," she says. "It isn't. But you can't live like this Peeta, you can't be strong all the time."

We start to walk towards the Square and find that some of the officials were waiting for us in front of the Justice Building. They escort us to the Medical Center where Katniss's mother works. It is a large complex that has multiple wings and different specialties. Delly, just getting into the District walks with us down the hallways until we reach a large room. In the room are a variety of doctors there and one of course that I recognize immediately, Katniss's mother. She smiles and helps me into a chair explaining that soon an earpiece will be provided and that Katniss would be speaking to me on the other end.

"The machine that we will attach to your head will be monitoring brainwaves and the pathways that light up," she says. "Katniss will be asking you questions, mostly about things that you had done, memories, fresh ones and old ones to see where the problem is. One we have isolated the area, we will take a closer look at it. Then we will decide whether or not it is serious enough to have a surgeon look at it, which they are prepared in the other room just in case."

Once the beeping started I try to drown it out. The machines and the heart rhythm always brings me to a point where I can breathe which of course speeds up the rhythm and then the beeping increases. Even if you try to calm yourself, it only brings a more panic emotion and then all you can do is realize that you are not even in control of your own body. The doctors they try to put in a relax state but the white coats and the glasses always brings me anxiety.

"Peeta," I hear in my ear. "Can you hear my voice?"

I nod.

"Good. I need you to focus on it, and try to calm down," she says. After closing my eyes and focusing on her voice and the tone and the way it always sounds like she is singing. I love hearing her talk, it is one of the reason why I ask so many questions.

For the next hour it was all about answering questions. Lots of, 'do you remember when…' and a couple of 'what happened that day…' back and forth and the doctors looking at screens. Katniss's mother would come every so often to check my vitals and to just keep me calm.

"Remember the time we first came up on the roof top garden?" she says.

"Yes," I say. "It was the day, umm, before the games."

"Peeta," she says concerned from my pause. "We couldn't jump off the roof, so we walked to a small area of the roof. Remember it was the first time we heard."

I have to pause. I know this. What is it? The sound, is it birds? Is it people? What was it that we heard?

"Peeta you still there?" I hear over the ear bud.

"Yes," I say unsure. "Katniss, I…I, don't…"

"It is okay," she says. "It wasn't that important."

It sounds like it would have been. The sound is important but what was it, and why was it important?

As the questions get more specific and older, there is a struggle inside me to remember more specifics. I can hear doctors running and whispering in between each other. The sound isn't something that I could decipher now, it is like the nightmare, the sound has begun to slow down.

"Pee…ta," I…hear. "A re, you o kay?"

I try to f…oc…us. It is hard to focus. The…room…go…e…s blurred. The las…t thi…n…g I rem…ember…is hear…ing.

"Put hi…m under."

And then nothing...

KATNISS

You know one thing that Peeta and me always had in common, was our hatred for hospitals. Don't get me wrong we both agree that doctors are necessary and that most of them do what is right to help others. My mother being one of them, and my sister Prim was always a healer. It isn't the people that we hate, but I guess it was the sense of finality in everything they say or do. It is never a possibility that things might, just might get better. "The ideal is this, what we see is what we can understand, and so if we cannot see the answer to the puzzle then it isn't really there, that it really doesn't exist. But the truth is that love is something you really cannot see, so does it mean that it doesn't really exist?"

It was the way Peeta thought. If we had the ability to love, then there is always hope. One of the many things that I love about him, it is one of the things that I miss about him right now. It is the only thing that I can think of. The different little things that he would do to get me to smile.

I look around and realize that I really do hate hospitals. The waiting rooms are the worst. The not knowing what is going on or not being able to help. I can feel my hand moving through her hair. The why she sleeps, reminds me a little bit of Prim. She always would curl up next to me, or place her head on my lap when we would just wait for dad to come back from the mines. Probably that is what she is doing now, my sweet little girl, waiting for her father to come back home. She has been here for hours and she must be tired.

"Sweety," I tell her. "Why don't you go to back to your Grandma's. If there is anything new then you would be the first one I call."

I hear her mumble something as though she was truly asleep. Peeta always tells me that she gets that from me, the love of sleep. He would say 'I could never understand how a hunter that loved to sleep in, don't you have to get out early to catch the worm or something.' Of course I would always tell him that 'it is only because I had to get up, and now I don't have to.'

"It's okay mom," she responds back. "I am okay, I am not tired."

"Liar," I say jokingly. We have had this conversation before, and of course she was more like Peeta in that instance, her father's stubbornness, his fierce loyalty. I swear whenever he put his mind to something, the only way to change it, or to get him to do what I told him would be to drug him. "Now go on, not another word and take your brother with you. I will call you as soon as I get word."

She slowly gets up rubbing her eyes. Once she is standing I am sure she is going to make her case about staying. Before she could say anything, I lean in and kiss her on her forehead. It would be what her father would do if I was in there instead of him. God, I wish I was in there instead of him. Lilly leans in and gives me a kiss on the top of my head and tells me that she loves me. Nudging her brother awake, they both walk out of the waiting room of the Medical Center. He doesn't protest, mostly because I think he is still sleeping. They both stumble out towards the exit doors and then finally as the doors open I can see the light of the day filtering in.

I wonder what time it is, or how long I have been here waiting. The last update that I got from Doctor Asher was that they had to perform an emergency procedure as there was some small hemorrhaging. They needed to get it before swelling would develop and then they would have to wait until it went down.

I stand and walk to the nearby coffee machine. It is horrible stuff, coffee, makes you feel all jittery, never really like that feeling.

"Katniss," I hear behind me. Turning around I see Annie walking in accompanied by Liam and April. "How is he?"

What do you say when you don't even know? All I can see is flashes of his smile and the words that he told me just earlier this morning. It is the only words that I had been telling everyone who was asking. It was what he felt would calm me, so I guess it should work for others. It should calm me, but all I can think about is what I cannot see, but I believe that it is there.

"He is fine," I say. "He will be fine."