~~Young~~

Chapter Twenty

   “She can understand though, right?” Mary Rose nodded her head slowly, “then that’s all I need.”

   He shored himself up, reminding himself how important the answers were, and leaned over to place a hand on the girl’s shoulder. He barely repressed his shock feeling the delicate bones beneath that cloth. Too frail, she was far too frail, “Josephine, may I speak with you for a moment?”

   No revere this time, but there was no question in her nearly colorless gaze to his presence either when she turned to him. Yes, something was definitely out of sorts. She waited expectantly but Gage had to take pause at the drawn features of what should have been a lively face of youth.

   “I…I need you to show me your back,” he said carefully.

   And just as he had expected Mary Rose balked at that. Talk about inappropriate, a mature man asking a child to disrobe in front of him. But where Mary Rose scolded him for it, Josephine stood from her chair and tried to comfort the woman with the sounds from her mouth.

   She barely made it over Gage’s waist, a fourteen year old girl who wasn’t even four feet tall. It was all so wrong…

   The naïve might mistake some of those sounds to be syllables, but nothing was coherent, merely a mash of grunts and sounds. It wasn’t working. And when Josephine could see her efforts were futile she moved aside that wispy mouse brown hair and picked up her loose garment to expose her back, proving to Mary Rose that there was nothing wrong with the situation.

   And to Gage’s shock there were no scars there, none that were of the dismemberment of wings at least.

   Seeing the child’s calm demeanor at his request, and Gage’s horror over what he had been presented, Mary Rose once again felt the need to explain. As Josephine stood there she pointed out each defect marring the child’s skin. The scars from her multiple back surgeries to straighten her spine that allowed her not only to sit up straight, but to walk. There were two belts wrapped around her tiny frame. One was the battery for the internal heart monitor, working through her skin to shock her heart if need be back into life when it stuttered. Following its length Gage noticed a small tube protruding from her side, from between the ribs that showed in sharp relief under her thin skin. It was a feeding tube, Josephine’s only way to procure nutrition as her body rejected solid foods. The second strap belonged to a more permanent machine, an external pancreases Mary Rose called it, because Josephine’s had failed on her long ago. She was on the donor list, but donor organs went to those with healthy bodies, those who had a chance at life. It was obvious without saying it that Josephine had neither.

   “Yet still she fights,” Mary Rose spoke with a hint of hope in her voice, helping Josephine to right her shirt over the machinery hidden beneath it, “Every day is a battle for her and every day a victory when the next sunrise comes. She is an inspiration,” her voice hitched, “if this child can live every day to the fullest with all her difficulties then there is no reason for those of us who are healthy and able not to do the same.”

   Was that what Sera saw her as, as an example that nothing can be so bad to give up on life?

   He nodded to her not knowing what else to say. He didn’t think anything could affect him more than that sight, but then Josephine turned around as Mary Rose excused herself for a tissue. In her eyes was a pain so deep he knew no mortal soul could bare it. Inside that disabled body was the soul of an ageless creature. A creature saddened because she knew the truth, that it was her God, the God she loved and had devoted her life to that had trapped her in there. All because she chose this life over the one he had given her.

   Gage hated him all that much more for that.

   He spun around as that fat tear rolled down her cheek, “Could we get a minute alone,” he asked Mary Rose as he quickly hid the girl behind his back. He knew she would never agree to such a thing if she thought the girl was troubled.