"He told me no," she cried. "He denied me." She repeated these words over and over, trying to understand where she'd gone wrong. Sabé turned her head to look for an answer in Memily. "What did I do? Tell me, Mem. Be honest. Why would he do that to me?"
Memily swallowed. Sabé was her best friend. So she would tell her the truth. She would do anything she could to comfort Sabé, though she already knew her friend wasn't in the mood to understand Ducchi's reasoning. "I think he did the right thing."
"What? How could you say that? Memily, he's been begging me for years to tell him the truth. I finally do and now he doesn't care?"
"It's not that he doesn't care, Sabé, because he does." Memily grabbed Sabé by her wrist, made her look her in the eye. "Look, everyone is struggling with what happened back home. Everyone is trying to fathom it all. You're not yourself, Sabé. You aren't thinking straight. No one is.
"It's not that Ducchi is over you or anything. Sabé, he loves you enough to not use you. He knows you aren't in your right mind and he wouldn't take advantage of that. He doesn't want you to say yes to him because you're broken and fragile and you have nothing left. He wants you to say yes because you feel the same way he does."
"I do!"
"And how can he be sure of that when you don't even seem like you're lucid?" Memily stood and motioned for her to do the same. Sabé obeyed and Memily crushed her in a long hug. "Sabé, don't let this hurt you. He doesn't want to hurt you. He just wants to keep you safe. Trust me. Trust him. He only did this because he loves you so much. One day, when your thinking is clearer, you'll figure this out and you'll tell him the truth again. And really mean it. And Ducchi will gladly say yes back. For now, though, take the time to figure things out." She glanced at the main entrance door to the medcenter. "Everyone needs to."