The Gifts of Mortality

Chapter 6, part two

Agent Rachel Hall walks next to Samil as he recalls the humans he had loved. She had fallen back to his side when he began stumbling through his memories of Kalama, Mehdi, and Chen instead of remaining ahead of him. He's thankful to her for joining him. Some of the Egyptian curators can speak English and he could share his secrets much more quietly this way.

"It sounds like Chen was lucky to have you by his side—in life and in death," she says.

"What do you mean?"

"He spent his life with you, and you were with him when he passed, right?"

"Well," he begins, drawing out the words as he collects his thoughts. "I wasn't with him much as he grew older and sicker. I was away the night and day he died, and I returned about a week later."

Agent Hall is silent for a few moments. "Did you two grow apart?"

"No, I loved him as an elder as much as I did when he was in his youth. I simply felt uncomfortable around him, knowing what was coming."

Again, the agent doesn't respond for a while. When she does, her words form an accusation. "How could you?"

"What?"

"You left him to face death alone."

"There was nothing I could do. I can't prolong life and the immortals who can don't pay me any heed," he says, frustration and defeat sneaking into his tone. He looks down at the smooth tiled floor and away from Agent Hall.

"But you should have been there with him! Did you do that to the others, too? Kalama and Mehdi?"

Samil wants to deny it, but he can't. "What would it have done if I had stayed with them?"

"So much, Samil."

He looks over at her, emotions and confusion playing over his face as the wheels turn in his head.

She continues. "We humans are just as scared and uncomfortable about death as you and the rest of the immortals are. Do you have any idea what it means to stay with someone through that discomfort, to be brave with them, and to be devastated with them? Do you understand the power of being with someone through their fear? Staying with them when their body and likely their mind are at their worst? To always respond to them with compassion?"

"I wouldn't have known what to say to him!" He's no longer speaking in English. Since he's raising his voice and the museum workers flocking behind them can probably hear them, he switches to the immortals' language, which he knows Agent Hall speaks.

"Nothing you could have said to him would be as bad as leaving him alone," she says, answering him in the immortals' tongue. "In fact, being with him and saying nothing was likely what Chen needed. He needed you with him. He needed you to listen to him. He needed you to love him through it all. That's it."

"How would you know?"

"Because I've loved people who have passed away, and I let them down. I've been scared and avoided people who needed me. I abandoned them, and I wish I could go back and change what I did and reclaim those moments that I lost. But at least I feel some remorse for it."

"I didn't know," he says. "All he needed was me to be with him?"

"Yes. He needed you to listen to him, be with him, and attend to his needs. Serving him, loving him, that's what he needed."

"I still love him. I still think of him and feel love and pain, all wrapped up together. It is the same with the others, too."

He is silent for a few long moments with his mouth hanging slack before continuing. "Kalama was like Chen. She got sick while still young and it took several weeks of illness to weaken and kill her. I wasn't with her as she was dying or when she died.