Monday, August 8, 2005

It was dawn, the comma to a long night, but there was no certitude, no assurance that often comes with a new morning. The train had ground to a broken halt moments after we tore through the last borough, tired beyond description, our clothes still damp from the downpour. We had spent a taxing evening locked in our train car, with the potential for home so close yet confoundingly out of reach. All we could do was look out the window at the stillness.

“You’re getting worse,” I remarked to Muse.

“I’m fine, thank you,” she replied wearily. “Really.”

“We need to get you some help. A doctor. You need a doctor.”

“Are you even listening to me? Do you even want me to get better?” her eyes flashed angrily. “Tell me you want me to get better.”

“Of course I do, you know that.”

“Do I?”

She was right, and she knew it. I had tried to mask my surprise and take the turn of events to stride, but I wasn’t doing a very good job.

“Those people…” I trailed into quiet, unwittingly voicing my thoughts. “Why? How could you do something like this? Can they change back?”

“No,” she replied, shaking her head sadly.

“I didn’t mean to–”

“Look, I didn’t wake up one morning and say to myself, ‘I want this. I want to silence people,'” she said earnestly. “We all have our stories. Mine happened to start badly.”

I fidgeted with the hem of my coat. There was nothing to say. It felt shameful, judging Muse after her ordeal, but it was also liberating to announce the blamable cuts of her past. In my own childish way, this was my cruel reply to her normally unflappable confidence. Here, at this point, I didn’t have the framework to answer her, so I retreated to an empty call for the routine.

“We’ve got to repair this and get you right again,” I concluded.

“Fine,” she sighed resignedly. “Let’s do something. For your sake. I know a person.”