Open Heart {Under Revision}

Chapter 37- Before Every Destination

For some reason, I again found myself in a semi-dark confined place but this time, there was a furnace burning behind me and I was sitting on top of it. My body felt super, super heavy as if every bone became titanium. I grinned, imagining father trying to break every one of them and failing to do so.

Then there were sharp cut voices barking orders in Portuguese and I crinkled my face, trying to understand some of them. Someone was looking for us? Two tourists who were searching for frugs-eh? What an absurd assumption! We were doctors, of course we dealt twith real frugs-ah, gruds...no drugs. Yeah. Trugs...damn, drugs, right?

Anyway, I wanted to get comfy in that cushy furnace and snooze, hence I shifted my body closer until a steel wall backed me.

"Charlotte. Stop moving." a hoarse voice objected.

I cocked my head, peering until Dr. Ramsey's million afterimages coalesced into a single focus. "Hey, Dr. Ramsey. You are alive."

He opened his mouth for a tongue-lashing at my imprudent twaddle but then his forehead creased in concern. "Why didn't you tell me that the drugs were already showing its effect, Charlotte? I asked you—damn, you are a doctor. You know better."

"Doctor?" I giggled, snaking my hand around his neck. Damn. So good. "I don't want to be a doctor. Why doctor...I want to discover. Anyway...where are we?"

"In an incinerating chute." he informed. The colourburst had subsided into a single supernatural phenomenon of garnishing Dr. Ramsey in pounds of gold and red. Pretty.

My fingers reached forward until they tangled in his hair. "Your selections are always in fire, isn't it?"

"They came in out of nowhere. I had to pick you up and hide. We need that last sample and then duck out." Dr. Ramsey had gone really still like stone below me as I wiggled for a better angle to receive every kernel of his enflaming sensation. And then rested my head on his chest.

I droned out voices of eager gang-members and focused my existence on Dr. Ramsey. Who cared about them when I was with the man I loved? The world could go fuck itself in hellish constrains because my pandemonium was only this person.

Every breathe Dr. Ramsey took, no matter how controlled they were sent searing shivers down to my cellular levels. His presence seemed to propagate my apoptosis and I'd no regrets. Why I would even when my heart finally won before my telomeres could end? For years, I've wondered how it'd be like to learn about medicine from him but never had I thought he would be so different from everyone else. I never expected that response would come not as respect from mind but as an allegiance of that beating organ in my chest cavity which had stopped once but lived altogether again. To find Dr. Ramsey. To know him. To feel him. To love him.

Detached and floaty, I wanted to do nothing but keep flying until end of world and time—listening to a man's breaths and his heart.

Then a hand hesitantly touched my head as if scared of what it might lead to and pushed misshapen strands from my face, tucking them behind my ear. Another hand held me in a lock of death, so strong that prying it would need equivalent energy to extinguish our sun. I snuggled up against that strong grip, trying to feel more of him. Goody good.

"I'm sorry, Dr. Ramsey." I found myself saying and closed my eyes, preening into those warm fingers.

Dr. Ramsey sounded confused. "Why are you sorry?"

"I spoiled your plans. I soiled your air."

"You did nothing such, Charlotte." he exhaled loudly. "In fact...I'm glad you came."