What was he doing here, now? He’d said he was going to Calgary for his cousin’s wedding, then coming to Toronto to visit, but that wasn’t until the twenty-fifth. Or was it the twenty-first?
Good grief, what date was it today anyway? What day?
She couldn’t remember. Funny how, when you had nothing to do or to concentrate on, the days ran one into the other.
Obviously, she’d totally lost track of time.
Mina tried to sit up, was caught in the folds of the quilt and, in her eagerness to rise, put both hands down on the cushion beneath her and heaved.
Pain shot like jagged shards of glass up her arm from the nerve endings in her stump, making her fall, cursing, back onto the couch, dropping the phone as she went.
It was over a year since the accident, but she still forgot. Still tried to use her hand.
Still, somewhere deep inside, apparently hadn’t accepted her left hand was gone.
And each reminder made her heart stop for an instant, denial washing through her, as strong as it had been the day she woke up in the hospital and learned about the amputation.
She couldn’t find the phone, was still gasping from the pain, cradling her left arm against her chest with her right hand.
But it was Kiah, and she couldn’t let him leave.
He was her oldest and very best friend in the world.
She hadn’t seen him in person for five years.
Frantically kicking her feet, she freed herself from the quilt. Her cell phone was set up to unlock the downstairs door, but she’d never mastered the art of using it efficiently with one hand. So she tumbled off the couch and ran to the panel beside the front door to hit the intercom button.
“Kiah. Kiah, are you still there?”
There was a pause and, for a sickening moment, she thought he’d gone. Then his voice, deep and melodic, its island rhythm hardly distorted by the intercom, came through.
“Of course I’m still here, girl. You can’t get rid of me so easy.”
Knees weak, she leaned against the wall, a smile breaking over her face, silly tears once more filling her eyes.
“Thank goodness. Come on up.”
As she buzzed him in, she was suddenly aware of the state of her apartment. The unwashed cups, an old pizza box and wadded-up tissues littering the coffee table. The crumpled quilt, half on, half off the couch.
It was a mess, and she wasn’t in any better shape, now that she thought about it.
When last had she even bathed, much less washed her hair? She’d been wearing the same shapeless sweatpants and sweatshirt for at least two days. For a brief instant shame racked her, but it wasn’t strong enough to do more than mute her overwhelming joy and excitement.
After all, it was Kiah.
Pulling open her front door, she stepped halfway out into the corridor, her heart pounding as she stared down the hallway toward the elevators. Finding herself jigging from one foot to the other like an overexuberant child brought a bubble of laughter, but it stuck in her throat, burning, instead of breaking free. Emotions too numerous to recognize swamped her, rushing through her system in first hot and then cold waves.
When the ping of the elevator sounded from around the corner, Mina’s world seemed to stop for an instant, and then resume in agonizing slow motion. It felt like a year before a shadow fell on the carpet; another eon passed before Kiah stepped around the corner and came toward her.
Bundled up to the hilt, as was only to be expected for someone who’d come from a tropical island into the Canadian winter, he was unzipping his parka as he walked. Through the haze of delight misting her eyes, Mina took note of the changes in him since the last time they’d been together. He looked older. New lines at the corners of his eyes, some gray salting the hair at his temples. But his smile as beautiful as ever: white teeth gleaming against his dark skin, the little dimple on his left cheek winking.
Just seeing him made something deep inside her shift, loosen, unravel. Where before she’d been lost in a fog, suddenly everything was in sharp, clear focus. Illuminated brighter than she’d expected. Dazzlingly so.
“Oh, Kiah!” she cried, as he got close enough to envelop her in a huge bear hug. “I’ve missed you so much!”
And, to her surprise and consternation, she burst into tears.
Kiah picked Mina up and carried her into the apartment, glad she had her face buried in his shoulder so she couldn’t see the shock on his face, in his eyes.
This wasn’t his Mina. More like a shadow of his friend.
The old Mina was always neatly put together, no matter the occasion. Even at the beach, or wearing jeans and a T-shirt, she gave off an air of tidy confidence. Not now, though. Wearing shapeless clothes, with stringy hair and a face sallower than it should be, even allowing for winter pallor, she’d been almost unrecognizable when he came around the corner. And when he hugged her, he realized she’d lost so much weight it felt as though she’d snap in two should his arms tighten too much.
Then there was the fact she was sobbing pitifully. In the more than twenty years since they’d met, he could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen her cry, and even on those occasions, it was nothing like this. She hated to cry, and always exerted Herculean effort to curtail the tears, indulging for a brief moment before getting herself back under control. Right now, she seemingly had lost every ounce of control she possessed, and it was kind of freaking him out.
Yet, growing up surrounded by women, Kiah knew what not to say to a sobbing female. So he sat down on the sofa and, pulling Mina’s frail form close, repeated over and over, “I got you, sweet girl. Kiah’s got you.”
His heart ached
