Page 50 of Breaking Isolde
“I didn’t know,” I say. And it’s the truth. I never lie when it matters.
She stares at me, incredulous. “Bullshit.”
“I swear. They don’t tell me beyond what I need to know.”
She covers her face with both hands and shivers. “Of course you didn’t. That would mean you actually cared what happened.”
“I do care,” I say, and it slips out unedited, raw enough to surprise even me.
She peeks at me through her fingers. “Prove it. Go die.”
I almost laugh, but I don’t. Instead, I reach for her wrist and wrap my hand around it. Her skin is hot to the touch, pulse hammering. I lift her hand away from her face and hold it in mine.
“I didn’t know,” I repeat, this time quieter. “And if I had, I would have stopped it.”
She goes still, eyes wide, the fever-bright blue fixed on my face.
For the first time in months, maybe years, I let the mask slip. I let her see the exhaustion, the guilt, the way it eats me from the inside.
She breaks first, turning her face into the pillow. Her shoulders shake, but she doesn’t cry.
I sit with her, hand on her wrist, watching the sunlight creep in slow motion across the cheap linoleum.
After a minute, she stops trembling.
“You’re a liar, a cheat, a motherfucking asshole,” she whispers, but there’s no heat behind it.
I squeeze her hand, gentle, like I’m afraid she’ll break.
And maybe I am.
It’s one thing to break a girl, another to see her already broken.
I watch Isolde for a long time, memorizing the angles of her face and the way her jaw clenches in pain even after she drifts into sleep. There’s nothing delicate about her. She’s all hard edges and sharp bone.
Her fever spikes, sweat beading at her temples and soaking the pillow. She moans in her sleep, the sound rough and low, like a plea for mercy she doesn’t know how to voice.
I stand, cross to her desk, and find her phone. It’s dead, the battery at zero. I plug it in and rummage through her drawers until I find what I need: Tylenol, leftover antibiotics, a crumpled box of electrolyte mix.
I fill a glass with water from her bathroom sink pour in a packet of electrolytes, stir, wipe the rim with my sleeve, and set it next to her bed. I pull out two white pills and place them on her tongue, hand at the back of her head to force her to swallow. She coughs, almost spits them out, but I tip the water to her lips and she gags it down.
She mutters something, but her eyes never open.
The shame hits me in waves. I broke her and the Board just pushed the last nail in her coffin. She has every right to hate me, I hate my fucking self, but I can’t leave her like this. Every minute I spend here is another brick in the wall of my own damnation, but I don’t leave.
Instead, I strip her damp pants off, then her shirt, careful not to jostle her too much. The skin of her arms is clammy and shudders under my touch. I wipe her down with a clean towel, dabbing at the sweat that collects at her neck, her armpits, before turning her gently and wiping the hollow at the base of her spine. Her body twitches at the cold, but she doesn’t resist.
Finding a pair of pjs, I dress her, pulling the covers up to her shoulders. Her hands are small and strong, callused in the way of someone who’s never been afraid to use them. They look wrong when limp, like the claws of an animal sedated in a trap.
She’s gonna need food. I unlock my phone and place a call to the one restaurant that still delivers this late: a hole-in-the-wall Korean place that doesn’t ask questions and never skimps on salt. I order two soups, hang up after barking out the address.
Then I wait.
The minutes crawl. I alternate between pacing her room and standing at the window, watching the lights flicker on the quad. Every time I check on her, she’s more feverish, cheeks burning so red, I’m concerned she’s going to need the hospital. She talks in her sleep, broken fragments of memory and threat and apology all mixed together.
At one point she jerks awake, tries to sit up, and nearly pukes on the sheets.
“Bathroom,” she slurs.
