Something in her arm. A pinprick. Angel’s eyes seemed so big. Father Herlihy’s, too. Father Herlihy was crying. No, not crying. More like weeping. Tears streaming down his face, silently. He’d probably seen so much already. Maybe this was it for him. Maybe he was hitting the wall.
“Does she need blood?” Father Herlihy asked. “Because I could … I’m … I…” His hands opened and closed, as though he were already pumping his blood into her. What a strange thing to offer. How would he even know they matched?
“It’s really not that bad.” Hwa tried hard to focus on the father’s face. Make sure he heard her. Maybe then he’d feel less bad. “I’ve had concussions before.”
“Too many, according to your records,” Dr. Mantis said. “From tae kwon do?”
“And me mum,” Hwa added.
Father Herlihy ran from the tent.
She looked at Wade. “Did I say something bad?”
Dr. Mantis turned her head gently in its claws. “Look at me, please.”
Outside, someone was raising his voice. Wade’s huge shape rose and blocked the tent flap. The standard bouncer pose. Then a burst of illumination. A flash-pass. Credentials. Wade stood aside.
Daniel stood in the door.
“Hello, Mr. Síofra.” Hwa wondered how Dr. Mantis knew. Then again, he was a robot doctor. He probably really did have eyes in the back of his head. “How are your hands?”
Daniel had his hands behind his back. “They’re healing nicely. Thank you.”
He came to stand beside the bed. Ducked around the sack of saline hanging from the ceiling. Took one of Hwa’s hands in both of his. He said nothing. Just pressed her hand between his and blew on it, slowly, putting the warmth back in.
“You’re like a bad penny,” he said, after drawing another breath.
“What’s a penny?”
His face cracked into a smile. He wiped one eye with the heel of his hand. “Do you want to stay here after this is done, or come back with me?”
The fireplace. That bathtub. All that vodka. The things that made it nice to have a body that bled and burnt and died. Compensation for being meat.
“That second one.”
*
“I think I need a shower,” Hwa said, when he offered to draw her a bath. “It sounds like heaven, but I don’t think I can manage the tub right now. Getting in and out, I mean. I’m a little dizzy.”
“Of course.” Daniel reached into the shower and played with the knobs, testing the heat on his own arm. When it satisfied him, he turned back to her and looked carefully at her torn clothes. “Do you need help with those?” he asked quietly.
Hwa moved her shoulder experimentally. Pain shivered down her spine and along her sciatic nerve. “Yeah,” she admitted.
Daniel knelt. He started with her socks, lifting her foot by the ankle and placing it on his knee as he unrolled them. First one, then the other. He looked up at her from the floor.
“Turn your filters up,” Hwa said.
He frowned. “What filters?”
“In your eyes. The filters. So you won’t see … me.”
He stood. “Why would I not want to see you?”
She swallowed. “People edit me out,” she said. “I’m ugly to look at. And I’m twice as ugly to look at, naked. I’m doing you a favour, here.”
“Do you not want me to see you?”
Her mouth worked. She had been invisible—or blurred, or filtered, or hidden—for so long that whether or not she wanted to be seen rarely came up. “I don’t know. But you’ve gone this long without seeing it—me—and you’re probably better off.”
“I don’t know about that.” Daniel looked genuinely confused. “The augments in my eyes are to help me see more, Hwa. Not less. I don’t know what you think I see, but I have never edited you out.”
Hwa crossed her arms across her chest. She wanted to hide. Desperately. Her hands climbed up to cover her face.
“No, don’t.” Daniel sounded alarmed. “Please don’t do that. Don’t hide. Not from me.”
She started to curl in on herself. It would be better, now, to be smaller. To disappear. Daniel’s hands took gentle command of her shoulders. He kept her from falling.
“I saw you the moment you collapsed, that first day,” he said. “After the pain ray hit you, I cut off the camera feeds in my eyes. And I took your pulse, and I picked you up and carried you down all those stupid gangplanks. And I watched your face, and your halo, and I read everything I could about you, and I wanted them to get a doctor for you, but they wouldn’t, and so I waited, for hours, and, Christ, I’m so sorry I offered you this job, Hwa. Look what it’s done to you. What I’ve done to you.”
His voice was thick and wet. She splayed her fingers and looked up. Tears had slipped down his face. For once, he looked exhausted. No, not exhausted. Human.
“It was selfish of me,” he continued. “Selfish and arrogant and stupid. You’d have been better off if we’d never spoken to each other, after that day. If I had just left you alone. You were happy. And your friends were alive. And…”
Hwa let her hands fall. “You sound like you’ve been thinking about this a lot.”