Doctors start to come in and out of the house.  Ava remains stubbornly by Keol’s side every moment that they’re in there, and no one bothers to try and tell her that she can’t.  Nua and I don’t see Miss Lilly at all anymore.  She seems to stay in her room and her office, not doing anything to console her daughter or help her son-in-law.  

I watch over the banister of the third floor one day as Bayan lugs a machine up the staircase, about a week after Keol fell.  I recognize it from the one time I’ve been to a hospital, when I was young to visit my father.  It’s the thing that keeps track of heart rate and things like that, and they hook it up to Keol the same day.  

But there’s really nothing else they’re doing.  They aren’t comfortable giving him any new medication, even though he was taking Ava’s before.  She asks them what’s wrong with him, if they can give him an x-ray, if they can do surgery, if they can do anything more than just leaving him in bed, but they refuse.  They’re Miss Lilly’s doctors; there’s nothing more we can do, either.  

I feel bad for her.  All she’s doing all day is watching Keol get worse and worse.  He spends most of his time asleep, a sheen of sweat covering his skin, and Ava uses a wet towel to keep him cool, constantly monitoring his vitals.  She makes him eat, but Nua reports back to me that more often than not he vomits it up less than an hour later.  

Cold and achy, he said.  Not the same as Ava.  Ava is sick, too, but not like this.  Ava’s sickness is in her lungs, and she takes medicine to control it, and it’s working at least enough, because she only coughs occasionally, rarely with blood, and still managed to get a pack of cigarettes down a day before Keol stole her lighter.  She had to get a new one, and still doesn’t know where he put her first one.  But he was shaky and tired, cold and achy.  He coughed a lot, too, but it never seemed like a lung thing until the blood came.  But we don’t know what it is, and the doctors won’t tell us.  Maybe they don’t know, either.  Maybe they just didn’t look.  

Nua and I see him sometimes, when the doctors aren’t there.  Bayan brings Miss Ava her laptop and she curls up next to him in the small bed and they watch their shows.  

As the days go on, Nua and I join them in there.  Miss Lilly is not too concerned about Bayan not keeping her house pretty anymore and lets him sit with Ava as well.  On some days Keol is better than others; he sits up during the day and calls me an idiot more than twice.  Ava only smiles and then apologizes.  I don’t mind.  I’d rather him be saying it than nothing at all.  

One day we’re in there while a doctor is as well.  She ignores me and Nua sitting on the rug, Bayan in a chair next to Miss Ava who sits at Keol’s side.  She just fiddles with the machine and gives Keol something to drink.  He takes it.  He looks paler than usual.  Ava’s sitting almost on top of him on the tiny bed, typing on her laptop, and Keol is looking at it, but he can’t read it.  It would be nice to know how to read right now.  I spent a lot of my days here lying around anyway, reading.  

Ava looks nice, though.  She has a meeting this afternoon, one she actually has to be there in person for.  Keol didn’t let her put this one off too, he insisted that she go, so she’s all dressed up, makeup on nice, and her blonde hair bounces, the tips only just brushing her shoulders.  It looks nice with the streaks of brown in it.  I wonder what Penny’s hair looks like.  

Ava leaves after Bayan brings me and Nua lunch.  I lie down on the floor, stretching, and Bayan collects our trays, not saying anything.  The doctor leaves after him.  Nua has a book with him, but he’s not reading; he’s just staring at Keol on the bed.  

After a moment, he notices.  He’s sitting up, holding his glass of water in both shaking hands.  It’s just the three of us, for the first time in a long time, and finally he says in a hoarse voice, “Can you read that?”

Nua looks shocked, and looks at the book in his lap.  “To you?”

Keol nods, not looking at me.  

“Sure,” says Nua with a slight grin.  “But I don’t think you’d like it very much.  Let me grab another one.”

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

And suddenly he’s up and out of the room, and I look at Keol.  He glances at me.  “What?”

“Does he know?”

“Know what?”

I don’t answer.  Nua comes back with a huge book of fairy tales under his arm.  

I look at him.  He grins at me, and then sits next to Keol’s bed, leaning against it like how they used to sit outside by the fountain, and starts to read.  

He has a good voice for it.  I lie back down and just listen, closing my eyes.  I’m almost lulled to sleep, until I hear a noise in the doorway.  Nua doesn’t seem to notice it, and Keol is engrossed in the story with his eyes closed as well, but I sit up just in time to see Miss Lilly leaving the doorway.  

Her daughter doesn’t come back until later that evening.  Bayan has rejoined us, and Keol is asleep, curled up on his side.  She kicks her heels off by the bed, kisses him on the forehead, and pours herself a drink from the bottle she’s been keeping in here.  She sits down on the ground next to Nua.  “Fairy tales?”

“He likes the ones with the dragons,” answers Nua with a grin.  Ava smiles slightly.  The machine by Keol’s bedside makes a noise.  

I look at Bayan, who’s looking at Ava.  She exhales, standing straight up, and a doctor comes into the room.  Another follows, and Nua and I stand as well.  Ava takes a step towards the bed.  “What’s happening?”

“Please,” says one of the doctors, holding her arm out.  Ava tries to move towards Keol, but Bayan takes her wrist.  She tries to shake him off.  He pulls her back.  

The machine is making noises.  The doctors are talking in low hushed whispers, and I can feel something in my stomach twisting.  I can see it reflected in Nua’s face as well, and there’s premature anguish in Ava’s eyes.  I don’t want to see it there, she doesn’t deserve it, Keol doesn’t deserve it, what is the machine telling the doctors?

They’re touching him, shaking him, fiddling with the buttons.  Ava is crying now.  Bayan pulls her away and shoves her into Nua, who grabs onto her arm to keep her from going back to bedside.  She shakes it, trying to wrench herself free, and says, “Let go!”

He shakes his head, his face paling as he stares at Keol on the bed.  Tears are running down Ava’s face, but as the monitor beeps more and more and more she struggles less and less and less, until finally, the line that had been jumping up and down to the beat of his heart falls flat and she goes completely still.  

And she breaks free from Nua’s grasp, or he lets her go.  She goes to Keol’s side, then rests her forehead on his hand, and from where I’m standing I can see her face crumple.  Then she stands up and throws her glass at the wall where it shatters, and storms out of the room.  

Nua and I both jump with the crash and hear her feet pounding up the stairs.  The doctors glare at us, but Nua hardly notices, and we follow her up to her bedroom.  Her door slams shut as soon as we make it to the top of the staircase, but Nua still goes towards it.  Even from just standing in the hallway I can hear things slamming around.  “Jesus,” I say softly.  

Nua swallows but doesn’t say anything, and slides down to sit on the ground, leaning against the door.  “What do we do?”

“I dunno,” I say, shrugging, and Nua winces as a loud bang comes from behind Ava’s door.  Nua looks at me.  “Really don’t think we should let her alone.”

“No,” I say quietly, and he says softly, “Go see if they need help.”

They don’t.  I meet Bayan in the second floor hallway.  The door is closed.  He tells me the doctors don’t want to be bothered; they have things they need to do.  I ask him what just happened in there.  He looks at me and says, “Master Aber.”

“Bayan.”

He hesitates, and then confirms.  “Master Keol is dead.  They certified it a moment ago.”

I stare at him, and then I turn and go down to the backyard.  

I sit with my feet in the pool, like Nua does.  Keol did flips off the diving board.  I wonder how long it took him to learn that.  Ava said he landed on his back the first time he tried; his back was bright red for days.  I kissed her in this pool.  She kissed him in this pool.  

And the fountain, where we, Ava’s boys, we used to sit out here.  Keol always lay on top of the stone wall around the fountain, his elbow over his eyes against the sun.  Nua sat next to him, on the ground, his nose always in a book.  Ava sat next to him on the wall.  I trace my fingers over it, walking towards the back, where Ava kissed me, and then he did as well, and then they kissed each other.  

The flower garden.  Oh, this garden.  Who is it for?  Her first prominent, her brother, her dead second husband?  Oh, god, he’s dead.  Keol is dead.  Bayan told me.  Do I believe it?  Ava believes it.  Ava’s locked herself in her room right now with no one, all alone, because I am down here and Nua is waiting and Bayan is stoically awaiting orders.  And Miss Lilly doesn’t care.  And Keol is dead.  

I never wanted him to die.  He was coming around to me, I think.  I wonder what it would’ve been like if he hadn’t gotten sick.  He was happy here.  He deserved so much more.  He didn’t deserve to die.  He deserved to live the rest of his life with the woman that he so obviously loved.  But I will never see him again across the table during a horrible family dinner and he will never lie down next to Ava with his head in her lap, he will never watch her shows with her and she will never paint his fingernails black again.  Keol was as constant as Ava for me; always there, always better than Miss Lilly.  I trusted him.  I liked him and I think he liked me too, even if he didn’t want to admit it.  And even if he didn’t want to admit it, he loved Ava and Ava loved him, and now she’s just stuck with us.  

Keol is dead.