“You want a drink?” he asked. Eli shook his head.
“Alcohol warms the blood, Vale,” he said, eyes still fixed on the icy water. “That’s not exactly what I’m going for here.”
Victor wondered if Eli would actually be able to do it, or if the cold would crack his mask of ease and charm, shatter it to reveal the normal boy beneath. The bath had handles somewhere beneath the icy surface, and they’d done a walk-through before dinner—neither had been terribly hungry—Eli climbing into the then-dry tub, curling his fingers around the handles, tucking his toes under a lip at the foot of the bath. Victor had suggested cord, something to bind Eli to the tub, but Eli had refused. Victor wasn’t sure if it had been bravado or a concern for the state of the body should this fail.
“Any day now,” said Victor, trying to diffuse the tension. When Eli didn’t move, didn’t humor him with even a hollow smile, Victor reached over to the toilet, where his laptop rested on the closed lid. He opened a music program and clicked play, flooding the small tiled room with the heavy base of a rock song.
“You better turn that shit down when you’re searching for a pulse,” said Eli.
And then he closed his eyes. His lips were moving faintly, and even though his hands hung at his sides, Victor knew he was praying. It perplexed him, how someone about to play God could pray to Him, but it clearly didn’t bother his friend.
When Eli’s eyes floated open, Victor asked, “What did you say to Him?”
Eli lifted one bare foot to the rim of the bath, gazing down at the contents. “I put my life into His hands.”
“Well,” said Victor, earnestly, “let’s hope He gives it back.”
Eli nodded, and took a short breath—Victor imagined he could hear the faintest waver in it—before he climbed into the tub.
*
VICTOR perched on the tub, clutching a drink as he stared down at Eliot Cardale’s corpse.
Eli hadn’t screamed. Pain had been written across every one of the forty-three muscles Victor’s anatomy class taught him twined together in the human face, but the worst Eli had done was let a small groan escape between clenched teeth when his body first broke the surface of the icy water. Victor had only brushed his fingers through, and the cold had been enough to elicit a spark of pain up his entire arm. He wanted to hate Eli for his composure, had almost hoped—almost hoped—that it would be too much for him to bear. That he would break, give up, and Victor would help him out of the tub, and offer him a drink, and the two would sit and talk about their failed trials, and later, when it was a safe distance behind them, they would laugh about how they’d suffered for the sake of science.
Victor took another sip of his drink. Eli was a very unhealthy shade of whitish-blue.
It hadn’t taken as long as he’d expected. Eli had gone quiet several minutes ago. Victor had shut the music off, the heavy beat echoing in his head until he realized it was his heart. When he’d ventured a hand down into the ice bath to search for Eli’s own pulse—fighting back a gasp at the biting cold—there had been none. He’d chosen to wait a few more minutes, though, which is why he’d poured the drink. If Eli did manage to come back from this, he wouldn’t be able to accuse Victor of rushing.