Summary: One day, she was gone, just like the wind…
She was a breath of fresh air in his bloodthirsty life. She was a constant, and now, she was gone and nothing would ever be the same again.
U-1146 didn’t know what to do.
One moment AE-3803 was there, smiling a soft, fragile smile from her wheelchair and the next moment, she was gone.
It wasn’t the first Pneumonococcal infection, certainly not…but it was the first infection where he had met her. She had been bright-eyed and cheerful and oh so innocent. She was so full of energy.
When they had parted ways that day, he hadn’t even heard her goodbye properly.
Because every moment with her was meant to be cherished.
She was not dead, not really.
Her clothes were still strewn around his marginating pool and he knew that the most prized possession of her uniform — her hat — was still tucked safely beneath his pillow.
Her wheel chair was lying in the corner and he could almost see her sitting on it, eating her junk of sugary snacks.
He had caught her quite easily as she flew down in the depths of the abrasion. She had been so light and lifting her up had not been tiresome at all.
Had that been one of the signs that she was falling sick?
How could he have been so self-absorbed and…and…foolish?
Why did she choose to go to the Spleen so soon? It wasn’t like that she was the only crippled Red Blood Cell out there…
Her senior was still alive, trying her best to transport oxygen and carbon dioxide with her wheelchair bound (dis)abilities.
Why did she have to go commit suicide?
Every Red Blood Cell was suffering; she had no right to end hers earlier!
He hadn’t been the fool. She was.
They were walking around, drinking barley tea when she fell down, spilling her drink all over the floor.
U-1146 was immediately by her side.
She smiled weakly. “I’m a dummy. Must have tripped…”
What if I devote the rest of my life to helping others. Then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?
What if I kicked her out of this world into another world? Would that have worked? Would smuggling her outside have worked?
He was getting lost in a maze of ‘what ifs’. He just wanted life returned to what it once was; laughter and smiles with AE-3803.
If only, if only, if only…
Guilt was gnawing at him.
He began bargaining with the pain itself and he was certain that he could do anything to not feel the pain of losing his best friend and ray of light.
He was a prisoner of the past, reduced to trying to negotiate his way out of loss.
“I want to see the outside today,” she said as she looked up towards the roof of the marginating pool from her fixed position on the wheelchair.
“The outside,” he echoed.
“Yeah. I know there’s things beyond this world we live in.”
“And how do you plan to see outside?”
It was a simple enough plan — take her to one of the thinnest capillaries.
For her sake, he was willing to go there.
He and his teammates were walking in absolute silence as they patrolled.
"You…all right?” U-2001 finally asked him.
“Of course you’re not. Sorry. Of course you’re not all right. You know what you should do? You should cry. Let go.”
U-1146 looked at him with dull eyes. “Of what?” he spoke after a moment.
“It was a terrible thing. Just a terrible, terrible thing,” U-2626 said.
“It was ordinary. Cells just kept walking with with their own businesses in mind. She was alive, and then she entered the Spleen and then she was dead and it was nothing. Like eating a bacteria.”
“She deserved better. And so did you.”
“I don’t deserve anything. Nobody deserves anything.”
They were in such a tiny space that he had to bend his back to fit in there. While he groaned in frustration, AE-3803 happily moved her wheelchair forward.
And then she saw blinding white light.
He was happy that she was happy.
She died the next day. Took her own life by entering the Spleen.
He couldn’t even catch her. What use were his two legs if he could not even catch a wheelchair bound girl?
Everyone was going to die and that was the sad truth. The body couldn’t function with all the Red Blood Cells being ill and disabled. That meant that he would die soon too.
For the time being though, living without her was going to be the new, permanent norm.
He kissed her gravestone and went off.
[First comes leukemia, then sickle cell anaemia. I am evil like that. Call me Dendrite.]
