Life in San Fransokyo

Cold Comfort Part 2

"Hey,Hiro," Elsa greeted him, who was sprawled on the sofa playing with his handheld. "Is Tadashi home?"

Hiro snorted. "The jerk's upstairs," he huffed, barely sparing her a glance. "But if I were you, I'd stay away. He almost bit my head off earlier."

A concerned frown wrinkled her forehead. "Why? What happened?"

"I don't know," the boy answered, frustrated. "One minute I'm trying to snap him out of it—he’s been in bed all day today. The next he's slapping my hand away telling me to leave him alone! So I did. Just left him up in our room." Hiro rolled his eyes. "If he keeps up this 'leave me alone crap'"—Hiro made quotation signs with his fingers—"I really will," he muttered darkly, going back to his game.

Oh no. Elsa's heart sank. She knew it wasn't fair of her to expect so much from him, but she had hoped he wouldn't succumb to trauma because he seemed so strong and put together—before the accident he had been her rock whenever she doubted herself, and during the course of their relationship she noticed her lapses had lessened. About two weeks after the accident though, midnight calls to Anna became an everyday occurrence that her sister grew suspicious.

"Spill it, Elsa. What's wrong?" Elsa flinched at Anna's bluntness. A long habit of concealing was hard to break that she tried to fob her sister off with a weak 'what do you mean?'

"What do you mean 'what do you mean'? I meant exactly what I asked you, Elsa. What's wrong?" Anna repeated the question with mild exasperation. "I can tell something's bothering you. There's this weird catch in your voice whenever you're trying to hide something from me."

"How—?"

"You're my sister. Sisters know these things, and I know you're trying to distract me," Anna interrupted, her tone softening. Defeated by her logic, Elsa told her what happened at the SFIT Showcase in fits and starts.

"I'm coming over, Elsa," Anna declared. "No buts. You need me right now."

Elsa did not respond. She tightened her grip on her phone and raised a hand to her heart, her fingers curling into a loose fist as she closed her eyes. She thanked God that Anna was there for her to be her anchor while Tadashi was at the hospital receiving treatment for his burns.

She had felt cautious relief wash over her when three months passed by and nothing drastic had happened—Tadashi had been unsurprisingly subdued, but he slowly regained his cheer as he underwent skin grafting and physical therapy. Tadashi was in excellent physical shape that he did not have a hard time with therapy as she dreaded. Still, Elsa's instincts had warned her that something might happen, pushing her to research about the psychological effects of burns. As it turned out, effects such as post traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety, or a combination of the three would not manifest until some months later, between three to six months, or in some cases, after a year. Elsa had braced herself for such a thing, and from what Hiro told her, it was starting to show.

Besides worrying about Tadashi, his ordeal triggered memories of her own parents, who had died in a plane crash somewhere in the Alps, which left her with recurring nightmares.

"Elsa. Elsa! Wake up, you're having a nightmare!" An urgent voice broke through her screams. Something shook her which jarred her back to consciousness. She blinked a few times, registering someone's death grip on her forearm and ice encrusting the walls of her room. "Wha—?" she said, her voice raw and befuddled. "What—? Anna? What's going on?"

Her sister sighed and ran a hand through her snarled copper locks. "You were having a nightmare," she explained.

Elsa scrubbed her hands over her face, trying to keep the memory of the nightmare at bay. "I thought I was done with those," she muttered. She could feel Anna's gaze on her, but she stubbornly refused to meet it, keeping hers on her lap.