Page 18 of Into Ember

I open my eyes to tell somebody about three—

Gerald is on the windowsill.

WHAT?

Gerald.

My Gerald. My pothos. My plant. Chipped pot, the trailing arm I keep meaning to trim, the leaves, GERALD, sitting on a windowsill in a cabin in wherever the hell we are like he pays rent here. My whole chest seizes, because there are only two explanations and both of them are that I’m dying. Either I am hallucinating my houseplant, which means my brain has started showing me comfort content on the way out, or my plant teleported, and plants don’t—

The three is gone. The three is GONE, I’m back to nothing, my breath is a fist beating on a locked door and the sound in my chest surges and—

Gunnar keeps almost touching me. Hand out, hand back, hand out — hovering at the edge of me like the world’s largest tattooed hummingbird, and if I had any air to spare I would scream at him to pick one.

“Closer,” Leif says.

That I hear. How does that come through?

Don’t care.

Everyone shifts and looks at him.

“She needs us closer.”

“I can — hear you,” I get out. Two words per breath. That’s the budget. “Discussing me. Like a — malfunctioning — appliance.”

“You’re not malfunctioning,” Brock says, gently, right against my knee.

Rayner shifts behind me — half a step, coming around, probably to see my face —

Worse. Immediately worse. The heat leaves my back and every dial he was holding down comes back up and my body tips after him, tips, in the chair, like a plant, like GERALD—

“Why does it feel worse when you move?!”

It rips out of me on air I couldn’t afford, and it lands in the room like a dropped glass.

Nobody answers.

Nobody. Answers.

Erik’s hand tightens on my wrist. Brock looks at Leif. Gunnar looks at the ceiling. And Rayner — Rayner just moves back. Doesn’t say a word. Puts himself exactly where he was, solid behind my chair, because my body asked and apparently that’s reason enough for him. And slowly everything starts to come back down, and I hate all of them, and I don’t want a single one of them to move ever again.

Glances go around the table. They talk in glances, I’ve watched them do it all day, and this round ends with everybody moving at once.

Brock settles against my chair leg, shoulder to my shin, knee bracing mine. Rayner sinks down at my back — the floor complains — and becomes a wall, warm straight through the chair, through my shirt, into the hinge of my shoulders. Erik keeps my wrist and adds my hand, folding it into both of his. Gunnar drags a chair around with entirely too much noise, drops into it at my other side, and finally — finally — leaves his forearm on the armrest, two inches from mine. There if I want it.

And it works.

In for four gets to four.

The breath lands. All the way down, the first whole one in — I don’t know how long, panic doesn’t keep time — and it’s loud in the quiet room, and everyone hears it, and I don’t even care. Because my heart starts descending from my ears back toward its legal residence and the sound in my chest drops to something almost like a purr.

A purr. That’s — no. Later. That’s for later.

Words start arriving again. Brock’s, low and even at my knee, something about you’re all right, we’ve got you, nothing here will touch you. I catch about half. The half is nice.

My fingers, I notice, are knotted in Erik’s sleeve.

When did that happen. I don’t remember grabbing him. I look at my own hand like it’s wearing a costume.