"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
― George Bernard Shaw
Ava returned to her duties in the early afternoon. She could have easily slept through the day, as she was so tired and drained, but orders kept arriving, and the orderlies checked in persistently. When she finally descended into the dispensary, she undertook the unrelenting chores of mixing, grinding, measuring, and pouring. There was nothing unfamiliar about her prescriptions and she was able to fill them with a minimum of consultation to her manual. Besides the prescriptions, there were patients sent to her by the infirmary for smaller ailments: a lingering earache, a sprained finger after an icy slip, an irritated stye on an eyelid. Soon she had a kettle of water boiling and cups of tisane distributed among those waiting.
He didn't come by today, she thought wistfully.
The hour grew later and soon she would be able to close the dispensary for the evening. He hadn't come to see her and she realized she had spent the day hoping he would. She wondered where he could be.
It was the little things that gradually began to annoy her. The drying cloth that kept falling from its hook, the drawer that stuck anytime she hurriedly rammed it shut, or her last patient's persistent throat clearing. She struggled to keep herself from unraveling when she locked the door for the night, turmoil unfurling inside her despite her outwardly calm. She engaged in her evening routine mechanically; it felt even more devoid of purpose. She detested how she could not shoo away the hope, her eyes darting to the door at the faintest rattle. She lay down in the unmade bed, staring up at the swirling shadows dancing across her ceiling. An annoying creaking eked from the empty mirror frame as it swiveled lightly, to and fro, with cross winds seeping in from the cracks in the masonry. As the sound grated on her, she rose from her bed, stormed to the mirror, and placed a placating hand over the frame to still it once and for all. When she released her hand, again the mirror frame began to rock slowly.
"Enough!" she yelled, gripping the frame angrily.
A stinging sharpness pierced her finger, and she pulled her hand away to see that a shard of broken glass attached to the inner rim of the frame had created a small cut on her finger. She watched the drop of blood swell into a rich, deep red, over her skin.
It would be so easy, wouldn't it? Just one drop…
Why is it doing that?
The feeling wasn't all unfamiliar, Cole knew. It was common; he'd sensed it so many times, in both the young and the old, in the turmoil of the present, in the reminiscences from the past, in the anxieties of the future. The strangeness was in how the feeling did not relent now. It stayed with him like a long, lugubrious shadow, unwelcome companion, weighing on him. He could not lose it, shake it, no matter what he did or where he went. It crept up on him and once it gripped him, he felt removed from the world, as if everything around him were happening far away, seen from behind a distorted window. The feeling was made of longing and a paradoxical loneliness that was filled with another's presence. He stopped roaming and set a precise course.
She was standing before the frame, a finger in her mouth, staring into her own mind. Cole might as well have drifted in with the wind for all she knew, since when the frame swung again, it was he who stood on the other side, contemplating her with those gentle eyes.
She blinked at him slowly and took a step backwards.
"Don't come any closer," she cautioned, risking a rapid glance at the red bloom spreading over her fingertip before placing it back into her mouth.
"It doesn't work like that," Cole told her. "It has to be done with intent."
She reached for a handkerchief and wrapped it tightly around the cut.
"If it were that simple, the battlefields would be swollen…" he told her, his voice quieting down.
She appears sad, he detected.
He lifted his hand towards her, tentatively, pausing, unsure.
What comes next? he wondered.
Ava smiled weakly and raised her other hand, fitting her palm over his. They stood across from each other, a mirror frame and splayed hands between them, hers warmer and smaller.
"You seem to know when I am not well." Her eyes glistened. "You've shown me nothing but kindness."
He examined her.
"I am trying to see, but it slips away, does not stay, I cast the line but it floats back. I cannot see…" he confided. She tugged at him gingerly, leading him to her side, by the fire. He openly stared. How little attention he'd paid to their features, to what was on the outside before- always seeing through other eyes. He discerned the graceful curve of her neck, the wisps of fine hair that spilled from her bun. He focused harder, the silence in her mind unnerving him.
Then, he thought he had it.
"Just a few words could end whatever distance there is, hope turns to fear. What do I do? What should I do?" he recited.
"No…I know what to do," she whispered, staring into the fire. "I just never found the courage to," she confided.
Cole's eyes widened.
That's not right, he told himself. Had he read her wrong?
Full of ebbs and flows and I never know which.
He closed his eyes and listened.
Silence. An unexpected door, shut against me.
But how? But how? He had felt the emotion so clearly, so it had to be. It was there, as real as she.
"He hasn't come back since," she revealed. "I wonder if he is disappointed. Or perhaps embarrassed. Sometimes I'd catch him looking and I'd think, 'Maybe'…but perhaps I just tricked myself into believing it because I wanted it to be so. I thought to myself…" She shook her head, a pain-stricken grin on her lips. "I thought… 'Improbable!' Who could ever like such an impossible man? Who could love a man in that ridiculous, dowdy nightshirt of his?" her voice broke slightly at the memory. "Who else?" she wondered, her eyes lost in the flicker of the burning fire.
It hurts. Cole thought, his eyes shutting out her words, understanding at last those hadn't been her thoughts he'd gleaned.
Mine.
I've always felt the warmth, but never stepped into the flame.
And now I am burning.