Forgetting Sylva

Flutter

Small fingers on my arm wake me. Hesitant and fluttering, like wings against my skin.

I blink open my eyes, and blink again to clear the haze from my vision. I am still curled in the warmth of Lance's arms, but Tatiana is now awake, her face centimetres from mine. I blink, startled, and then smile at the animated expression on her face.

"Sylva!" she says. She is so excited, her voice is almost a squeal, but she is being quiet for her brother. I don't move because I don't want to wake him, and I am comfortable, and this is the perfect position for me to look at Tiana from. My legs curled up beneath me; Lance's arms around me; my neck curved so that my head rests beneath the hollow of his throat, towards his shoulder.

"Hello lovely, and how long have you been awake?" I ask her. She grips the rail on her bed and leans back a little, settling down on her knees.

"Not a very long time, but more than a bit," she says, and my smile grows a little. "Did Lance tell you? My heart stopped moving. But the nurse did this." She puts her hand over her heart and mimes thumping it against her chest. "And then they brought a machine, and I woke up. Mitch said that I'm special, because it doesn't work for everybody."

Who is Mitch? I think. And I see the subtle rise of bruises beneath her hospital gown, just over her chest, showing above the neckline of the fabric as she moves. I think about the pain of having life pumped back into my body and she is so small and young and the bruises and her heart and why does this hurt so much? Why is my heart stronger than hers? What did I do to deserve it? My head hurts from all of the thoughts inside of it, and the complex pain of the notion of her heart stopping.

She leans back in towards me, and lowers her whisper conspiratorially. "Mitch says that I'm very lucky I came back, and I asked him where I went. And he told me he didn't know. But aren't grownups meant to know these things, Sylva?"

I take a small breath, but I cannot force my smile to stay. "No one can know everything, lovely."

"Not even grownups?" She tilts her head to the side, and her bright green bandana shifts. Absently, she rights it, still watching me.

"Not even grownups," I agree.

She frowns, hard, in the way that only children do when they're thinking about something fiercely. After a moment of thought, her face clears. She smiles at me, widely, contradicting her appearance. She does not look sick when she smiles; she looks alive, and bright, and young, and a little smug. "I think I know more than Mitch," she says, "because I know where I went. Mrs. Abernathy says that when we die, we go to heaven. And I only died a little bit. But I think I was there, for a second."

For a moment, I wonder who Mrs. Abernathy is. And then I realise what she said, and my breath catches in my throat, and I realise that Lance's arms are stiff around me, his body tense; he is awake. He wakes much quicker than me; I am still half asleep, registering everything a moment after she says it, like I am one of my father's computers and I am processing so many commands that I have not yet been able to catch up with the newest ones being issued.

"Why do you think they didn't want me? The angels?" she asks.

I open my mouth, and then I close it. And then I open it again, and I force the words to come out. "You weren't ready yet, lovely."

"Why aren't I ready? Mrs. Abernathy says that heaven is full of everything we want, and I want fairies and a castle made of clouds. And my unicorn." She picks up the creature and hugs it close, as if someone is about to snatch it away. I don't know what to tell her. I don't know what to tell a child who thinks she is ready to die, when I am just beginning to realise that I am not.