It was the face of an angel, though perhaps not everyone could see through the years it carried. A grey tinge had crept into the complexion. The eyes had faded until their colour could not be named for certain. Deep lines worked their way through slack flesh, leaving a permanent record of all the emotions this face had ever expressed. Tenderness. Grief. Guilt. Love. No small part of those feelings had been afforded to her. In this face she saw the first person who ever thought she deserved to live, and to live with as much happiness and comfort as anyone else. Leaning forward, she took hold of a hand worn thin as much by work as by age, and cradled it carefully in her own. She'd always been told she had a strong grip, for all she only had three fingers.
He blinked at her, his gaze slowly coming into focus. "Susan, Tim said you'd be coming by today."
"Dr. Turner, I didn't mean to wake you. I only wanted to be close," Susan rested her shoulder against the bedside, letting it help her balance.
"I retired years ago. I'm too old to stand on ceremony, and we've known each other for too long. I think it's time, young lady, you started to call me Patrick."
"You'll always be a doctor to me," Even as she spoke, Susan could see him marking her with a trained eye, checking for small signs of health and growth.
He lingered on the way her hands stuck out from her shoulder, on the way her feet didn't touch the ground even as she sat on the floor, and the stack of four mechanical limbs beside her. She was used to wearing the appliances now, but today she'd opted to take them off, to simply be herself, a woman with hands and feet, but no arms or legs.
"I'm so sorry..."
"None of that now. My Mam never held with 'sorry' and I don't either," She interrupted him.
"You could have had a normal life, if it wasn't for me. If I hadn't prescribed Distaval... if only I could have found a way to make amends..."
"I have a beautiful life, and that is thanks to you. I won't pretend it isn't hard, because it is, but just because a life isn't easy doesn't mean it isn't worth having."
"But I've been so haunted by what I've done."
Even now he grieved for the part he played in her disability. It wasn't the first time he'd apologized for his actions, though perhaps she could make it the last.
"It's time to let go of all that now. My family taught me I wasn't less a person for what happened to me. You taught them that, before they could teach it to me. Besides, I didn't come here to talk about the past. I've got a whole new future ahead of me. I came because I want to invite you to my wedding."
"Oh, Susan, that's wonderful. I'm delighted for you, I really am," His drooping eyelids opened a little wider, and he lifted his head off the pillow. Moments later his strength failed him, and he slumped back down.
"I've mostly been saying my goodbyes these days. It's not too often any more I find myself saying hello to new faces," Another unspoken apology hung in his tone.
She had known even before she'd come into the room. She'd been warned, and prepared ahead of time, that goodbyes were all that life still afforded him. That didn't mean he had to go thinking only of the end, not when lives were still moving ahead thanks to him.
"There's no need to feel guilty if you can't make it. You've had so much guilt already on account of me. I don't want you to feel that for another minute, you understand? I don't want that any more than I want your 'sorry'. You made it possible for me to have love. That's what I really needed."
The self-blame in his eyes was all the answer he gave. His breath came too slow, and too thin to spare on talking. If she didn't reach him now, she never would.
"Don't take your hurts with you. So many people were willing to sweep it all under the rug, to let people like me die, even when it meant more babies being born mishapen. But not you. You spoke up about it, and saw I got all the help I needed. You've been my guardian angel. Don't you understand? It wasn't doctors like you that hurt us. You're one of the ones who saved us."
No medicine, good or bad, could save him now. She could only watch him grow weaker in her grasp, as she'd been told she'd once grown stronger in his. Without her mechanical arms attached, she couldn't reach her face to wipe her tears. The appliances made so many tasks easier, but she wouldn't put them back on yet. She wanted to hold him with her own hands, not artifical ones.
"I don't want to leave you. You kept me alive. I came alive because of you."
She hadn't come to say goodbye, or even to say she wanted to see him again. She had come because she had words for him, ones she had slowly shaped throughout the course of her life, words that only now found form.
"I forgive you."
