The phone conversation this morning was slightly disturbing. Lady Une had no news on Wufei and Trowa, and after I asked her about that, towards the end of my call, she suddenly was called away from the phone. I told her I would be staying another two weeks to see to my father's funeral and settling the last of his accounts here before flying back to London, if the office was up and running and ready for me to return.
She said that by all accounts they were ready for me to return, but that I shouldn't rush myself out of the house to get back to work. It was the closest way she had of telling me to take my time and deal with my grief over my father before coming back. It was sage advice, I'm sure, but nothing I can follow right now.
There was a study done, one that I read in a magazine in the lobby of the hospital accounting office as I went to pay off my father's medical bills, that says jobs people return to for the purpose of ignoring grief cause more stress, accidents, and in some cases (usually relating to law enforcement and emergency response services) deaths than any other jobs. Including, the article stated, those that were forced positions due to lack of education or financial hardship. What I'd like to know, instead of how dangerous it is to go to a job for the purpose of forgetting grief and pain, is how long people keep those jobs.
I am in the kitchen, staring out the window, blindly. I haven't had the strength to move since I hung up the phone. The house is silent. The equipment brought home to monitor my father's health is packed in its boxes and will go back to the hospital and outpatient care centers this afternoon. My own things are packed up as well, the suitcase I brought with me sits open in my old bedroom so that for the next few days I can live as though nothing had changed, but the drawers in the old redwood chest are empty, as is the carved wardrobe with the faint lingering scent of incense my mother used to tuck in the corners to keep our clothes smelling fresh. Mine still smells faintly of my favorite scent from those days, and all my clothes, despite the fact that I've washed them since taking it out of the wardrobe, still seems to have the smell of my childhood clinging to them. After the equipment goes back to its various homes, I will be going to stay in a hotel. The house, filled now with only the shades of my childhood and the vague ghosts of my memories, is too empty for me to stay in alone.
I know that if I spend too much time away from work, I might just change my mind, again, and decide not to come back at all. I contemplated not returning to the Preventers, and staying in the house here. I could find work in one of the hospitals in the area, and I'd be out of the line of fire. My father's last words to me, because for an hour or so before he passed on, he did see me finally, and spoke to me as I was longing for him to, had nothing to do with me quitting my work to move on with my life, as I had once both feared and hoped they might.
He simply advised me, "Do what your heart tells you. Following that will lead to your own happiness."
I thought for a long while on that, so long that I didn't sleep last night. The empty house was silent for once, as though the walls themselves were giving me the time to think about what my father had to say, but I couldn't bring myself to choose whether or not to stay at the Preventers. My mind drifted aimlessly, as it hasn't done in a long time.
Without my father's declining health to dwell on, and with my own recovery from the wound I received on L2, the only thing I could think of was Wufei.
He will be back, my mind repeated to me all evening, and so, as I watched the sunlight creep into the house this morning, I called Lady Une.
When he comes back, the place he will be is in London, whether at his apartment or at Headquarters is immaterial, because I know that's the place that he has to return to. And I want to be there, waiting for him.
The only way I can think of doing that is to go back to the Preventers. It feels like someone is smiling at me in the sunlight filtering through the gauzy curtains in the kitchen window, and I glance outside, seeing the small shrine on the hill behind the house. There will be two more stones put up within the shrine before I leave.
They will bear the names of my father and my brother. I commissioned them from the stonecutter in town with Emily's help. Things here will be left in order. That is very important to me.
And when I leave, it may be here that I am never returning to. I look around the kitchen, and see the memories of my childhood ghosting past me. Lin and I chase Samuel around the kitchen while our mother makes dinner and our father bellows for quiet, he has a headache. Returning home from one of the dates that my father had arranged for me, and finding my mother waiting with silent commiseration and a warm cup of cocoa on the table for me.
I tuck them all away in the corner of my mind, along with my most recent memories, and turn to leave the kitchen.