Cetus and Chimera - Part III
In Part II, Matthew and David went to a party at their friend Nina’s apartment. The next morning, Matthew went to the beach alone and got a bit curious about his piece of coral.
Hector’s coral grows steadily. According to the orthopedic surgeons, his bones aren’t healing at the expected rate. The doctors have contacted my superiors, and I must meet with the representative of the new facility that’ll house Hector. I’ve read the emails, looked up the specially outfitted tank they’ll keep him in. I know what coral farms look like, and I’ve been granted full access. I don’t look at the rep in the face when they arrive. It shouldn’t surprise me. I had suggested this backup as an option when the coral first started growing, but I hoped we’d never have to use it, that he would remain here instead.
“It’s not a farm,” says the rep. “We’ve taken a similar concept and have created a unique accommodation for the patient.”
I don’t want to admit that maybe they’re right, that maybe the temperature-controlled water will help heal Hector’s body. It’s how they’re able to grow coral faster to replant them in new environments. We’re all in the room, Hector, doctors, the rep. Everyone’s fucking ecstatic. I look at Hector; he pales like bone. I have little choice but to nod and reassure him this is his best chance. When everyone leaves, I sit near him and drag the tub over close to the bed.
I dip the large sponge in seawater and bathe Hector, who shrugs off his robe for me to soak his back. Scars line his shoulders like undersea currents, and some tips of branches are blanched and brittle. His body seems to absorb water the moment the sponge touches it.
“I kept telling myself I couldn’t wait to get out of here,” says Hector. “But that doesn’t seem like it’s gonna happen.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “I’ll make sure you do.”
“Can you get the other side of my back, please?”
He sighs, and as I move the sponge across his back and feel his chest expand with each deep breath, I imagine I’m one of the doctors listening to his insides, examining the sounds of his body. He relaxes his shoulders, stretches his neck side to side. This isn’t the first time I bathe him. It wasn’t until a few times after we’d fallen into this routine that a nurse saw us. She said nothing and I said nothing because I’m no one to tell anyone how to do their job, and maybe she thought the same. Instead, she nodded and turned around, and for that I was grateful. Now, I touch the skin of his back and the ridges of his shoulders. I wonder—this knowing of another body more than I should. When the door opens with a knock, I expect it’s another nurse or one of the doctors and not David holding a small vase of flowers from the gift shop.
“The nurses pointed me over here,” he says.
“Are you David?” says Hector.
“You’re Hector.”
David looks at him in a concoction of awe and repulsion. It is brief. His face coagulates into professional composure. David excuses himself, and I follow him out the door. We walk into an empty waiting room on the same floor.
“I wish you would have told me you were coming,” I say. “They’re moving him out of here. It’s been a day.”
“More work then?”
“The coral was my idea, you know that. I’m the best chance he’s got.”
“I was hoping to take you to lunch.” He looks around, goes to the soda machine and swipes his card for a Diet Coke.
I wait until he sits down and looks at me. I stuff my hands in my pockets—I still carry Hector’s coral with me, and I push it, its center hollowing.
“So, he’s dying?” says David.
“We don’t know.”
“But if he’s dying, there’s nothing you can do. Leave that to the doctors.”
“Are you serious?”
“What? This is real life. This is science. People die every day.”
“Fuck you,” I say.
“It’s true.”
“You should go back to your computer and your stars.”
“I came for you.”
“You’ve got such a nice way of saying it.”
He follows me out of the room and says, “I’ll see you at home,” and we walk in opposite directions.
*****
By the end of the week, Hector is moved to the new facility equipped with endless supplies, seawater and strong sunlight. The coral has started to spread down his body toward his hip. He walks with a slight limp, like he bruised his toe against a door. Tanks of warm, temperature-controlled water line the room. Hector will soak regularly in these to promote coral health. The facility is just as much for me as it is for him. I’ve got access to powerful software, tools, near everything I’d need to continue research. People with money move fast when it benefits them. A rotation of doctors, nurses, and I transfer him in and out of a pool, which is supposed to promote healthy coral via salinity, filters, and stable temperature. His color improves within days, the coral takes on a silvery sheen, pink, red, and green tips when it catches the light at certain angles, an aqueous aurora. As I thought, he adjusts to eating only plant-based foods. He prefers leafy things.
I stay with Hector, and sometimes we talk late into the night. Once, before I pack my things for the day, I make a final inspection of his arm and decide to remove the most brittle bits of coral to study, but Hector moves, and my scalpel grazes his arm, a shallow cut, thankfully, though still bleeding, blood bright. I am quick to clean the wound then wash my hands.
“Don’t you know the story about how coral was made?” asks Hector.
“Tell me.”
Hector says that after Perseus killed the sea monster with Medusa’s head and saved Andromeda, he set the head down to wash his hands. The blood from the head touched seaweed and turned it into coral.
“And what about the sea monster?” I ask.
“Taken by the gods and put up in the stars.”
“Of course,” I say. Sometimes, beautiful things are born of blood.
More often when I get home, David isn’t there. He doesn’t send me messages to let me know otherwise. Or, he’s asleep on the bed, the couch, whichever he can get to first. We’re careful about not waking each other, though we do without meaning to. I know David means well, and while he settles back into sleep, I stay awake, trying to count his breaths like sheep. Late at night, his phone will light up with messages. I don’t want to be the crazy boyfriend and think of what could be happening. I wonder if I’m imagining that he smells of cologne I don’t recognize. We don’t bring up our schedules, and we don’t wake each other in the morning. We become two bodies orbiting around an invisible center neither of us wants to uncover.
Our agreement when we moved in together: whoever woke up first made coffee, and this hasn’t held. I can’t tell when he’ll do it and there are mornings I do the same, sometimes opting for watery drive-thru coffee and asking for extra sugar, always surprising myself with the last grainy pull. Sometimes, like tonight, I find coffee brewed in the facility’s kitchen, usually some shitty American, so I do without. Instead, I make it myself on late nights, and Hector asks for a café con leche uncertain how his body will respond but expecting major discomfort. I serve him one anyway.
“You must be so lucky,” he says. “I bet you and David must make these for each other every morning.”
“Not in a while,” I say, passing him a steaming mug. “It’s complicated.”
My hand shimmers where his fingers touch my skin, streaks of salt and stardust.
“I’m sorry. Do you want to talk about it?”
“Don’t worry about it. I appreciate you asking, though.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah, it’s just like—it’s not like it used to be. We don’t talk about it.”
“So talk about it,” says Hector. “Pretend I’m David.”
“I don’t know if I could.”
“Just try it. Tell me, David, why you’re upset.”
“He—you. He doesn’t talk to me, not in the way he used to. There’s this silence in the apartment like an empty highway at night. And you seem so distant, you know? You don’t touch me like you used to. We don’t spend time together. You’re always at work.”
“You’re always at work too, especially lately.”
“That’s different,” I say. “I’m taking care of someone.”
“You’re supposed to take care of me, too.” Hector’s red-rimmed eyes shard against the light. I’m so close to his face, the refraction of his tears is blinding.
“I do care. I care so much I can’t sleep at night. I care so much that I lie.”
It doesn’t strike me until I say it. I’ve been refusing to say it. If I keep quiet about it, don’t let myself think it, it couldn’t be true, but that’s bullshit, and we know it. All of us. I sit on the chair next to Hector’s bed, my shoulders shaking, and I cry in ragged breaths. This is my moment of fragility.
Hector takes me in his arms. I shouldn’t be the one being held, but my tenuous shell has broken. I want his coral to puncture me until I bleed into something good.
To be continued…
Christopher R. Alonso was born and raised in Miami, FL. He has worked as an indie bookseller and is a graduate of the NEOMFA program. His work has appeared in Catapult, Strange Horizons, and Fireside Fiction, among others. His writing has received support from Juniper Summer Writing Institute, the Miami Writers Institute, and the Periplus Fellowship. He was awarded Tin House's 2022 First Book Summer Residency. He is querying a novel.
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