Parasite

“If he’s not, he can’t have it.”

“Never ‘it,’ never ‘it,’” Marya chided. “None of God’s creatures is an ‘it,’ even if they’re not a boy or a girl or a mammal or a pretty bird. Call them ‘he’ or she’ and be a little wrong, but never take away their individuality like that.”

“Sorry, Marya,” I said, and waved as I left the store. Tumbleweeds followed me to the door and sat there, staring at me through the glass with his tail wrapped around his legs, as I walked toward the hospital. Nathan would be waiting for me.

The nice thing about spending most of my remembered life in hospitals is that it’s become virtually impossible for them to make me uncomfortable. They’re more like home than home is. I’d been awake for almost a year before I realized that normal people aren’t supposed to find the smell of bleach and floor wax comforting. I walked through the main doors of the San Francisco City Hospital, made my way to the elevator, and pressed the button for Nathan’s floor. All business as usual.

A few orderlies nodded to me as I passed. I nodded back, and kept going. Nathan’s lunch hour was never as long as we wanted it to be, and I’d already spent too much time at the florist’s to spend more in being social. I looked down at the brown paper bag in my hand. It was worth it.

Nathan’s research assistant wasn’t at her desk when I reached the ninth floor. I kept walking until I came to Nathan’s office. The door was open. I stopped, knocking on the doorframe. He raised his head and smiled.

“Hey there,” he said. “Come on in, babe. I’ll be done with this in just a second.”

“Babe, darling… this is one of those days where I don’t get to have an actual name, isn’t it?” I crossed to the chair in front of his desk and sat, making sure to hold the bag where he could see it. “Doctor, I’ve got a pain.”

Nathan ignored my joking attempt at a come-on, eyes going to the bag. “Someone called you ‘darling’?” he asked, in a carefully casual tone. “Was that someone by any chance black-haired, wearing a leather belt, and originally from the Ukraine?”

“Funnily enough, that’s a very good description of that someone,” I said. “How did you guess?”

“Experience and greed,” he said, and held up a finger as he turned back to his screen. “Just let me finish this before I get distracted by trying to convince you to let me look inside that bag.”

“Paperwork?” I ventured.

“Oceans of it,” he said. “Sometimes I think that’s the downside of going green—you can’t look in and see how buried I am by measuring the piles on my desk. Now I look exactly the same whether I’m busy or not, and so people feel like they’re doing me a favor by giving me something to do. Some of them also—not you, you have a free pass at all times—feel like they’re allowed to intrude without asking whether I have time to deal with them.” He typed as he spoke, making quick notes on what had to be a seemingly endless succession of reports.

I quieted, settling in the chair and waiting for him to finish. He would answer if I talked to him—I knew that from previous attacks of unfiled paperwork—and so I didn’t need to verify it by bothering him. I’d have his undivided attention faster if I let him take care of work.

About five minutes slipped by in the sound of typing and the reassuring chill of the air conditioning. Finally, Nathan turned in his chair to face me across the desk, extending both hands in a palms-up “gimme” gesture.

“I beg you, be merciful, for I have just filed fifty-seven patient reports,” he said. “Let me see inside the bag of wonders.”

“I don’t know,” I began. “I mean, you did say that people kept interrupting you…”

“You are never an interruption, a distraction, or anything else of the sort,” he said, hands still outstretched. “Please. Be the most wonderful girlfriend in the world, and let me look inside the bag.”

“You’re lucky I’m soft-hearted,” I said, and passed the bag over to him.

Nathan placed the bag on his desk with proper reverence before reaching inside and pulling out the King Sundew. The light from his desk lamp glinted off the tiny beads of sticky sap coating its fronds, making them look like jewels. Nathan’s eyes lit up.

“You found a King Sundew,” he breathed. “Sal, it’s beautiful.”

“I bought a King Sundew,” I said. “Marya sold it to me.”

“You found Marya’s shop, something I hadn’t managed in eight years of working here. Ergo, you found the King Sundew, and you should get the credit. Let me give you the credit. Please.” Nathan stood, the sundew cradled lovingly in his hands. “This is an incredible plant. I mean, really remarkable.”

I smiled. “You like it?”

“I love it.” He paused. “And I’m being stupidly presumptuous again. Is this for me?”

My smile grew. I liked carnivorous plants as much as Nathan did—enough that I had a small terrarium filled with thriving flytraps and a few pitcher plants that were suitable for a gardener with more enthusiasm than actual skill. They were one of the things we’d bonded over. I’d come to meet him for lunch carrying a flytrap from Marya, and suddenly we had all these things to talk about. The walk we’d taken so I could show him Marya’s store was one of our first dates. He was a lot further along in our mutual hobby than I was; there was no way I could keep a King Sundew alive. And yet the fact that he even felt the need to ask somehow made the gift all that much sweeter to give.

“All yours,” I said. “I figured you needed a new friend to make up for the night you’d had. There’s a care sheet in the bag, if you need it.”

“Best girlfriend.” He stepped around the desk, pausing to bend and kiss me quickly on the lips before he crossed the office to the terrarium where he kept the majority of his sundews—the ones pretty enough to pass muster for work. There were no pitcher plants, since the administration frowned on keeping dead bugs in your office, even if they were in the process of being digested. There were no flytraps, either. Thanks to hundreds of horror movies, everyone knew that flytraps ate meat. But the sundews, with their bright colors and glittering leaves, were just fine—never mind that they were, in some ways, the most vicious killers of them all. An insect that got stuck to a sundew could live for hours before it died, being slowly digested the whole time.

Carefully, so as not to jostle the plant in his hand, Nathan removed the lid from the terrarium and shifted the heating lamps to the side. Then he moved a few pots around, all one-handed, before lowering the King Sundew lovingly into the center of the display. Its fronds were still clumped together from their time in the bag. He picked up a long skewer—the kind people use for barbecues—and used it to gently tease the sticky leaves apart. Then he replaced the lid on the terrarium and stepped back, looking proudly at his modified display.

“Beautiful,” he said, and turned to walk back to me, bending to pull me to my feet.

“Me or the sundew?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said, and kissed me.

Being kissed by Nathan was one of my favorite hobbies, and I was more than happy to stand, put my arms loosely around his neck, and kiss him enthusiastically back. We passed several pleasant minutes that way. Finally, Nathan pulled away, cheeks flushed and eyes a little overly bright behind his glasses.

“You are amazing, and I am starving,” he said. “Lunch?”

“Lunch,” I agreed. “Indian?”

Nathan grinned. “It’s like you read my mind. Let me get my coat.”

He left me in the office while he took care of the last few details required before he could leave the hospital. I walked over to the terrarium, bending to study the King Sundew. It was already relaxing into its new environment, fronds fully extending as it mapped out the limits of its space. It would have insects stuck to those leaves by the next morning, using the nutrients in their bodies to feed its own.

“You’re beautiful,” I murmured.

“Sal?” said Nathan, from the office doorway. “You ready?”

“I’m coming.” I straightened, smiling again. “Let’s eat.”

Nathan clicked the office lights off as he stepped out to the hall. The lights in the terrarium stayed on, casting a bloody red glow over everything. I grabbed my bag from the chair and followed him into the hall, leaving the silently growing plants behind.

The Indian restaurant we wound up in was half a mile from the hospital, tucked into one of those odd