Page 46 of The Glass Empire
"A degenerative neurological condition. The kind that eats you from the inside out. They gave her six months. She lasted eight."
I stopped. The words were harder than I'd expected. They stuck in my throat like bones.
"I was eight years old. Nathan was twelve. We watched her lose herself piece by piece. First her memory—she'd call me by my father's name, or by names I didn't recognize. Then her speech—she'd try to say something and the words would come out wrong, jumbled, like a radio tuned to the wrong station. Then her body. She couldn't walk. Couldn't feed herself. Couldn't do anything but lie in bed and stare at the ceiling and wait."
My hands were shaking. I put them between my knees to still them.
"The night she died, I was sitting with her. Nathan had fallen asleep in the chair across the room. My father was... somewhere. On the phone, probably. Handling something. And my mother opened her eyes—really opened them, for the first time in weeks—and she looked at me. And she said my name. 'Gabriel.' Clear as anything. Like she'd never been sick at all."
I closed my eyes. I could still hear it. The sound of her voice. The way it cracked on the second syllable.
"I held her hand. And she died. Right there, while I was holding her hand. And I couldn't do anything. I was eight years old, and I'd spent eight months watching her die, and I couldn't do a single thing to stop it."
"Gabriel..." Monika's voice was soft, aching.
"I swore that day that I would become a doctor. That I would learn everything there was to know about the human body, about disease, about the ways that things break and theways they can be fixed. I swore that no one else would have to watch someone they love die like that. Not if I could help it."
I opened my eyes. She was crying. Tears slid down her cheeks, silent and steady, and she didn't wipe them away.
"That's why you want to be a doctor," she said.
"That's why."
She reached for me then. Not tentative, not careful. She took my face in her hands and held me, her thumbs wiping away tears I hadn't realized I'd shed.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm so sorry, Gabriel."
"It wasn't your fault."
"No. But I'm sorry anyway. I'm sorry you had to go through that. I'm sorry you were alone."
"I'm not alone now."
She kissed me.
It was different from the first time. In the garden, under the snow, the kiss had been soft—hesitant, almost, like we were both afraid of breaking something. This kiss was not soft. This kiss was hungry, desperate, the kind of kiss that came from a place of shared grief and understanding and the terrible, wonderful knowledge that someone else had seen the worst parts of you and hadn't run away.
I pulled her closer. She came willingly, her body pressing against mine, her hands tangling in my hair. The wicker chair creaked beneath us, and I didn't care. I didn't care if the whole mansion heard. I didn't care if my father walked in and saw.
I wanted her. I had wanted her since the first night I saw her through the diner window, and the wanting had only grown, spreading through me like a fever.
"Monika," I said against her mouth. "Monika."
"Gabriel." Her voice was breathless. "The glass—"
I stood up, pulling her with me, and walked her backward until her shoulders pressed against the glass wall of thegreenhouse. The orchids trembled behind her, their petals brushing against her hair. The light was fading now, the sunset giving way to twilight, and the world beyond the glass was turning blue.
I kissed her again. Harder. Needier. My hands moved without permission—one on her hip, one on her waist, fingers digging into the soft fabric of her sweater. She made a sound against my mouth, a small gasp that sent blood rushing to places I was trying very hard not to think about.
"Can I—" I pulled back just far enough to look at her face. Her lips were swollen, her cheeks flushed, her eyes dark. "Can I touch you?"
She didn't ask where. She didn't pretend to misunderstand.
"Yes," she said.
My hands shook as I fumbled with the button of her jeans. The denim was stiff, the button stubborn, and I couldn't get it open. I couldn't. My fingers were useless, trembling, betraying me the way they always did when I wanted something too much.
"Here." She covered my hands with hers, stilling them. "Slow. Like this."
