Forgetting Sylva

Voices

"Are you sure, Syl? That this is what you want to do?" Mum looks at me closely, tears in her eyes. I tighten my weak hold on her hand and try to smile.

"Of course. Why should I just rot in the ground when I can help people, even after I'm gone?" Dad winces, and I take a breath; remind myself to alter my words, to filter them more carefully around mum and dad. "I want to help people, please. Let me do this one thing."

Mum looks at dad, and dad looks at me, and I look at mum, because we both know that this is her decision; dad's hand on my shoulder and the soft look on his face already tell me that he wants whatever I want.

"Ok," she says, softly. "If this is what you want to do, Syl, then I'm ok with it."

"Ok with what?" We all turn towards the door, and Lance stands just inside of it, the door swinging behind him, his eyes dark and strangely frightened.

Mum opens her mouth and then closes it. Dad puts his hand on her shoulder and looks at Lance. "Syl wants to be an organ donor."

"Is an organ donor," I correct. "Is."

Lance does not smile. He looks at me, frozen in the doorway. "Let's give them some space, Ev," dad murmurs, steering mum out of the room, past Lance, darting me a quick look and closing the door behind him.

It is just Lance and I, in the room. And there are only a few metres between us, but the distance in his eyes is vast and endless. "Lance, I-"

"Were you not going to tell me, or something?" he asks, his voice quiet. And, for some reason, this makes me unfathomably angry. I have not gotten mad throughout this whole thing, my sickness. But I am the one who is dying. I deserve to be angry. I am allowed to be mad.

"Why does it matter to you?" I ask, my voice deathly quiet. "It's not your decision, your body, your choice. It's my body. My weak lungs, my strong heart. I can help people with this. It's mine and it's my choice to give it away! Why should you act like you get a say, when I'm the one who's dying!" My voice has risen to something close to yelling, and, in the absence of it, the room is silent.

Lance looks at me steadily. And I realise what I have said. And that of course it matters to him, because he loves me, and how could I forget that, when he is looking at me like he is now: patient and quiet and darkly intense. I can feel tears rising, burning in my eyes. And then I am sobbing, and he is climbing onto the bed beside me and carefully rolling onto his side, pushing my hair from my eyes, his long, slim fingers holding my face. And I am crying because I don't want to die I don't want to it isn't fair. I cry until I feel empty, until my lungs ache and my face feels strange, my skin covered in drying tears. And he stays there, running his fingers along my neck and over the bridge of my nose and beneath my eyes, his fingers catching my tears.

I breathe until my body remembers how to do it on its own, and then I look at him. At his beautiful, sharp face, etched with grief and pain and love, and loss that has not yet come. His familiarly brilliant amber eyes and the dark crescent of skin beneath; I want to trace the shape of it with my fingertips, but my hand is too heavy to lift, today.

"I love you, Syl, and I'll support you in whatever you think it's right to do. But I can't help that I hate the idea of parts of you inside of other people." He does not take his eyes from me, and I can see how it would unsettle other people, his gaze. But, to me, it is comforting.

"It feels weird, thinking that, soon, someone else will have my heart." His eyes darken, but he does not interrupt me to tell me that 'soon' is the wrong word; we both know it to be true. "But if it saves a life, then I'll do it. I won't need it, after this, anyway. Besides," I say, smiling a little as his thumb traces circles on the side of my neck, "you'll always have my heart. The one that matters, anyway." There is a slight smile in his eyes, at that, but it is sad. He kisses me, once, softly, and then rolls onto his back and takes my hand in his.