Page 10 of A Lab Rat's Guide to Fated Love
“Okay.” He finally nodded.
“Okay?” she asked, unsure if she’d heard him correctly.
“Okay,” Vir replied. He set his cup down and leaned back with his arms crossed over his chest again, head tilted to the side.
“Okay!” Nori beamed with a wave of relief washing over her.
Vir’s relaxed demeanor switched, and his eyes widened into shocked circles, strangely reminding Nori of kittens with their pupils dilated into giant glassyorbs. It was almost comical to watch. She would’ve laughed had the man not paled a few shades lighter, looking like he’d just seen a ghost. A millisecond later, he slumped in his seat.
“Please don’t die,” Nori whispered under her breath while they rushed him to the emergency room.
Vir
Waking up at the emergency room—again—Virpushed himself upright to find a dull green curtain drawn halfway around his bed, giving him a partial view of the space. He seemed to be the only patient in the otherwise vacant room.
Vir sighed, glancing at the IV stuck into his arm right as the nauseating smell of antiseptics mixed with rubbing alcohol assaulted his nose. He despised hospitals with every fiber of his being. He was so sick of being a patient. But that’s what he was going to be for the rest of his days alive. The fainting spells were only going to get worse as his heart progressed further into failure.
Right. He groaned again.The experiment.
He pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes, recalling the atrocity he’d agreed to moments before he’d passed out. And the woman who had presented it to him, calling it a cure. A cure he hadn’t believed in. Not in the slightest.
Why, then, had he agreed to be Dr. Nori Arya’s lab rat?
Maybe because she’d sat across from him looking like a live-action replica of the woman haunting his dreams every night? Hauntings that were oddly welcome. Hauntings that he’d grown so accustomed to, he longed for them all day, just so he could see her again in his sleep come nighttime.
Dr. Nori Arya. It washer.
From the shape of her face, the curves of her small mouth, the subtle way she’d bobbed her head while speaking, right down to the loose shoulder length ringlets of her hair matching the soft brown of her eyes. It was her.
But how was it possible? There was no way they were the same person. He wasn’t even sure if the woman in his dreams was a person and not a figment of his imagination.
Vir shook his head, recalling the eerie dreams that had begun soon after his final diagnosis a few months ago. Every night, as soon as his head hit the pillow, he’d find her waiting for him. There, at the edge of the stream near his childhood home, or saving a table at his favorite café or tiptoeing between shelves at the library he frequented.
They’d talk for hours, sometimes days on end, before he had to wake up. And every single time that he did, he’d forget her name and all of their conversations right away. The only indication of them having met the previous night would be the lingering warmth in his chest, the memory of her small hand in his, and the image of her cherubic face imprinted in his mind.
He was convinced his brain was making things up as some sort of twisted coping mechanism. A futile, last-ditch attempt at self-preservation, maybe. He didn’t care. None of it was going to matter in a few months’ time, anyway.
Nori, though… she was real. Not a dream. Nor a figment of his imagination. But she hadn’t shown any signs of recognition towards him.
Of course she hadn’t.
The resemblance was just a coincidence. Uncanny. Outrageous. Batshit crazy. But a coincidence, nonetheless.
Vir swore under his breath, letting his hands drop to the sides.
What had he done? Nano-mites? Have tiny robots crawl through his bloodstream, hoping they’d somehow force his body to stop rejecting his heart? He must’ve gone temporarily insane. Then again, he had a feeling had the woman asked him to offer his neck for her portable guillotine right there at that booth, he would’ve likely agreed to that, too.
An amused chuckle huffed out of him as he recalled her shocked expression. Maybe he did need psychiatric help after all.
Assuming he were to go through with her offer, and it did work out… he might actually get to live. Finishing the thought alone made him want to roll his eyes all the way back into his head.
Alternatively—realistically—he’d die within the year like he was supposed to, as Nori had so bluntly put. Only there’d be no rotting-away-on-a-sunny-beach for him. Though itwouldmake Adi stay off Vir’s back for a bit longer. Prolong his coming to terms with the inevitability of his brother’s death. Was it a fair bargain? Likely not. But Vir could live with that… for however long he had.
He caught himself mid-chuckle again and shook his head. He was doing an awful lot of chuckling for a guy speeding towards his own funeral.
“You’re awake.” Fehim appeared at the foot of his bed, his face showing a familiar mixture of concern and relief Vir was used to by now.
“Sorry, I passed out again.”
