The touch screen buzzes gently with each prodding of my fingertips like the hum of a contented bumblebee. I can hear the sharpened splat of freezing rain dribble softly through the walls, almost inaudibly, making my bedroom feel quieter than it is. The idea of a whole universe trills around me, but I don’t belong to it. 

I eddy in the white noise of the thermostat, and the washing machine, letting the carnation patchwork quilt smother me with a suffocating sort of comfortable inferno. The orange of the walls seems to magnify the heat into a fickle oven - hell with mood swings- alternating between too cold and swelteringly hot, every few seconds. I keep my head covered, and one leg and one arm stick out from between my cotton bondage, in a futile attempt to balance my ebbing temperature, but I’m still chilly, and somehow sweating, at the same time. At least there’s no fever. 

My phone pants beneath the blankets.

It’s too rainy to do anything. I kick the covers off in one sharp motion, like a bratty toddler, wriggling on the mattress, when the smell of my own breath becomes too nauseating. My tangled hair is so dirty it sounds crisp against the bedding - chaffing my face and the pillow. I haven’t showered in…too long. 

I’m crazy hungry. But I doubt I’ll have breakfast before noon.

Kattar still hasn’t eaten yet. He can’t have his surgery on a full stomach. There’s too much damage to be repaired on his insides.

I force my eyes to come into focus, pushing back the fog creeping over the edges of vision - watching the little bar that tells me he’s typing, and then not typing, and then typing again, switching back and forth like a bipolar stoplight. It’s almost maddening how much time it takes him just to write ‘sure,’ or ‘awesome.’ I’m aggressively tired. I feel myself starting to doze again.

My half-conscious brain folds the room into a kaleidoscope in shades of autumn and gold. I’m not even sure what time it is. He’s going to say I’m drunk. 

I’m not drunk. 

It’s been two days since the last time I had anything to drink except water. It’s been way too cold, and the grocery store is way too far to walk to. 

My eyelids droop. The conspicuous square-shaped trash bag in the corner by my closet melts into the shadow behind the door. 

My gaze makes its way to the window, at a snail’s pace. It’s snowing again, but fortunately for me, I never have plans. I imagine the irony of it snowing every day until Christmas, or Christmas Eve, and then being a nasty, slushy December 25th, instead. I don’t even try to fight the black cloud settling around me, more tangible than the blankets- and heavier. Today’s the sort of day for gray thoughts and sleepy pessimism. I settle deeper into my rose-tinted complacency and decide to accept my own excuses. I’m not going anywhere. Don’t want to try.

I already went outside for 15 minutes today, besting yesterday's record by more than two hundred percent, before the freezing rain started. Kattar’s ‘something beautiful’ dragged me out of the blankets at an unholy hour, 7 a.m. to be exact, to go chasing after chickadees.

I woke up to hear them feasting in my birdfeeder, loudly prepping their holiday dinners, all of them chatting and laughing like no human family ever does, and I was sure they would vanish, like good dreams, if I didn’t get out there quickly. 

The feathered fairies had made a mess of the yard, changing the landscape into a snow-white everything bagel, with too much cream cheese. They spilled more than they ate, and ate, less than it seemed any living thing could need, fully confident in the future. I guess to creatures that small, the well of yellow birdseed must have seemed endless. Tomorrow must have seemed too far to imagine. The idea of losing themselves, or anyone else for that matter, anything that mattered to them even slightly, has never entered their minds. They must have laughed at the chilly body, shivering there in the snow, fretting about the cold in her legs.

*

I crop the fence out of the background of the photograph before hitting send, then let my eyes zone out on the screen. Kattar’s going to take his own sweet time replying. I’m so bored I don’t even want to watch television or read a book, but I don’t just want to sleep the day away. I’m so tired I don’t even think I could.

The wind licks at the evergreens outside my window, swallowing mouthfuls of pine-scented snow, and carrying them away. The whole house moans like it’s aching with cold. For once in my life I know how it feels. 

Up until now, I always just hurt on the inside. 

“Are those chickadees?” The text bubble finally asks. I force myself to focus on the screen.

“Yeah. At my bird feeder.”

“One eternity later…” I mumble under my breath.

“The picture’s not the clearest.”

I sigh, but can’t deny it. I’ve never been much of a photographer. 

“If they come back, I’ll see if I can get you a better shot.”

“No, it’s no big deal,” he replies quickly. So he can if he wants to. “I can still make them out pretty well. They’re really cute.” Another exorbitant pause. “Kind of look like chicks with a bit of black on their backs.”

“That’s probably why they’re called chickadees.”

“I always thought it was because of their call. Yk, ‘chicka-dee-dee-dee.’”

“Ehhh.”

My arms are tired of holding the phone. My brain is tired of reading, and trying to make sense.

I want some tea, but I don’t feel like getting out of bed. I look at the clock. Almost ten am. 

I’ll get up in ten minutes, I lie. 

I’ll get up whenever the hunger is too unbearable.

“One of the nurses recognized me from the chase scene in ‘Last Responder.’”

A rush of anxiety calls my mind to attention. 

“That means the editors didn’t do their jobs well,” I say, trying to stay nonchalant, grateful he can’t see my expression through text.

“Hah.”

There’s a pause, but this time, I’m almost certain he’s talking to someone.

“I told the nurse what you said. She says I’m hotter than the actor.”

I don’t answer and pretend I don’t agree.

“You’d think someone would have caught the error before release.”

“That’s what you get for doing b-movies.”

Not that it matters. 

Anyone would watch anything that has his face on it.

For as long as I can remember Kattar has been popular with ‘the ladies,’ like some sort of Mex-asian teen pop idol, if that was even possible in the early 2010s. He looked like he should have been part of a Disney Channel Original - dark dark eyes, slanted in sharp-edged half moons, and a complexion the color of peanut butter candy. His mom used to say he was “Adonis, take two,” and I was Venus. I’m not sure she knew they had a twisted love affair. 

In junior high school, we started attending the same school, and we shared a locker, sorely against my will. 

I almost always ended up with a love note or a phone number, intended for him, mistakenly shoved into MY binder, complete with a misspelling of his name, if it was from someone he didn’t know, and a gag-worthy pun, regardless. (‘You’ve got me seeing stars, Catar Moon.’) 

It was so annoying it was almost hilarious. I remember how we would joke about his ‘curse,’ his mother lamenting ‘Aish, my son. I shouldn’t have made you so beautiful.”

Then in college, he grew his hair long, and all hell broke loose. 

It wasn’t that anything was really different except that it was multiplied. We’d gone to a small high school - only about 300 students, but our college was a small country. 

Almost daily some new girl would notice him, ask if he was single, make some comment about his hair, or his jawline, or his height, or his eyes…give him her number.

It used to make me so furious, though there was no reason I should have been - and that made my boyfriend, justifiably, angry. 

Lately, I just wonder if those days are gone for good.

Kattar’s still sending text after text about a thousand and one things, and I couldn’t care less. Losing my mind just a little bit as he complains about the cafeteria food-

I can’t help it- I have to ask…

“Kattar, what are the doctors saying?”

There’s a brief pause. The moment when I shattered the rose-tinted glasses. And the optimism evaporates into concrete facts.

I’m sorry.

The texts start spilling over each other, in rapid sentence fragments.

“Doc says I’m recovering rapidly. from the concussion and the organ damage. So if all goes well, I’ll be let out by Christmastime.”

I feel my stomach churn, and my heart plays this game seeing how long it can wait to beat again before my chest tries to strangle it.

Don’t say it. Don’t say it. 

But why isn’t he saying it? He knows. He knows.

I wring my hands, silently begging him to stop dancing around the elephant in the room.

But he has to. Be the artificial ray of sunshine. For my sake. I almost puke.

“It’s actually crazy. The nurses say the concussion wasn’t that serious. Despite the blood. And there haven’t been any complications. They’re expecting a complete recovery with no lasting head trauma.”

I grip the blanket until my knuckles turn white. 

Resisting the scream.

Finally, I ask. I have to.

“What about your legs?”