Tory Shen stumbled through the door to his one-bedroom apartment, and in the same motion, dropped his duffel bag onto a worn welcome mat. The ensuing thud then prompted a reaction that ought to have trained this behaviour out of him long ago.
“Shh!” Esperance chided as she rushed toward him, her brow tied in a knot. “I only just managed to put Echo to sleep!”
“Sorry,” he grunted, though if he were honest, his evening shift on a highway in the pouring rain hadn’t exactly put him in a considerate mood.
As it turned out, he’d brought plenty of the foul weather home with him, as the tiny entryway to their tiny apartment soon flooded with mud and raindrops shed from his bag, helmet, suit, and boots. After taking longer than usual to strip down to his undershirt and briefs, he trudged into the kitchen, leaving his wife to clean up his mess. As he did, he made a beeline for the fridge and the bottle of Heineken contained therein.
“Don’t!” Esperance called, skirting the line between a whisper and a shout. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”
“Sure, we can talk,” Tory said, his hand frozen on the fridge handle, “but can’t we do that over beer?”
“I need you… sober for this.”
It was far from the first time he’d heard those words, but the weighted solemnity with which his wife spoke them gave Tory pause. He slid his hand off the fridge and resumed his trudge, this time toward the rickety IKEA dining table he’d lugged up from the communal dumpster not one week past.
As he sat, both he and the chair beneath him groaned. He looked up at Esperance and said, “What is it, angel-eyes?”
He knew it to be something of a cheap shot, but his rare use of the pet name had its intended effect. As Esperance slid over to join him at the table, she did so with a chagrined smile and a visible blush. And seeing her like this instantly hit Tory with a counter-punch.
Pet name though it might be, angel was the perfect epithet for his wife. Everything about her, from her understated beauty to her ceaseless patience to her intense connection with the kids… everything about her was angelic in the truest sense of the word—even the way she’d all but fallen from the sky the day they met.
Esperance Blackbird was everything Tory wished himself to be: a beacon of love and belonging—and a mirror that shone upon every wart of misery upon his person.
He couldn’t imagine a world without her. If she were ever to disappear from his life, he himself would cease to be. And even though Esperance would hate him for this (as he did himself), he knew this to be a fact without a shadow of a doubt.
But enough with getting drunk on his obsession with his wife. Right now, she needed him sober.
“Echo had another attack at school today,” Esperance said now, her smile already faded under the shadow of her anxieties, “a bad one. Had to take him to the ED, and they ran some more tests. I thought maybe he needed to be admitted again, but Dr Fernandez came around and said there’s nothing they could do for him at the hospital.”
“Those fuckers,” Tory spat. “What do we buy insurance for if they can’t even do their jobs, huh? There’s got to be millions of eight-year-old kids with asthma; what’s so special about Echo that’s got everyone so stumped?”
“Shh, Tory, please.” Esperance’s eyes drifted toward the closed door to their one bedroom, shared by the siblings on a bunkbed that was starting to get too cramped for Lotus. And Esperance had mentioned that their daughter recently had her… thing girls her age were known to have. So, it wouldn’t be long before she started clamouring for her own room. God, as if there weren’t already enough bullshit for Tory to—
“Tory, are you listening?”
“Hm? Yes, love. Something about asthma?”
“No.” Esperance sighed. “I said Dr Fernandez no longer thinks it’s asthma.”
“What? So he’d been misdiagnosed this whole time? Those fu—well, isn’t this good news then? Are we finally getting somewhere with this?”
“No.” Esperance sighed again, though not directed at her husband this time. “It’s not that he’s been misdiagnosed. It’s more that… there is no diagnosis.”
Tory fell silent, wondering if this was some kind of jargon he had neither the academic background nor the patience to parse. This was 2016. Surely, the big brains of the world had already learned and solved everything there was to know about life on this planet, let alone about the human body. About my son’s body…
“What do you mean there’s no diagnosis?” He finally managed, his voice strangely choked.
“They’ve run every test they can under the sun, Tory, and they haven’t identified a single trigger. The puffers do seem to help a bit, and he does respond to steroids in the ED, so it seems plausible that whatever this is shares a similar disease process as asthma, but as for the cause…
“They floated the possibility that it might be psychosomatic—like, this is all in his head, but that’s an old theory that’s long been debunked. Dr Fernandez also suggested we try DNA sequencing, like it could be a super rare genetic disease that no one knows about. But our insurance is never going to cover that, and it’s impossible to say if that would even help Echo…”
“So, what are you saying then?” Tory demanded, knowing full well his ire was ill-directed, yet unable to control himself. “After all the ED visits, the admissions—god, he must’ve seen every single specialist in that fucking hospital by now—they’re just gonna wash their hands of him? Are we just expected to wait around until an attack is bad enough to… to kill him?”
Esperance burst into tears then, and Tory immediately regretted his words. He instinctively reached across the table, laying a placating hand on her arm. She was cold to the touch, as though she too had been soaking in the rain not long ago.
“Shh, baby, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. We’ll find a way. Like we always have. Whatever it takes for our boy.”
“Do you mean it?” Esperance choked out in between sobs.
“Of course, baby.”
His wife reached for a tissue and blew her nose, perhaps a tad louder than Tory’s duffel bag had been earlier. He watched her face—red, puffy, and runny—and despite the seriousness of their conversation, he felt the powerful desire to grab and kiss her right there and then. Everything about Esperance was angelic, even in—especially in—her most vulnerable moments.
“Do you remember what I said before?” She eventually managed.
“About what, baby?”
“About Echo’s illness having something to do with me.”
Tory let go of her arm, immediately sinking back into his chair. He let out a sigh that seemed to dissipate his elevated mood. He tried to keep his tone even as he said, “Not this again, baby. The best doctors in the city can’t figure out what’s wrong with him, and you want me to believe your… fantasy theory?”
“Maybe because none of the doctors can figure it out…” Esperance held firm. “We need to give my theory more weight.”
Tory sighed again, longer and shakier than the last. He thought their previous chat about this very topic had shut down his wife’s fantasies for good. It was all a coincidence, he’d tried to tell her.
Just because you had the same illness… and that same illness went away the moment you fell pregnant with Echo… doesn’t mean jack shit. The logic was admittedly there, but one that was predicated on pure fantasy (a fantasy he didn’t abide by—couldn’t abide by). And yet, when it came to Esperance Blackbird, Tory knew better than anyone that fantasy was within the realm of possibility.
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He sighed a third time, this time to brace himself. He said, “So… what if your theory is correct, hm? What is there to be done about it?”
“If the sickness did come from me,” Esperance began, and Tory could tell right away that she’d already given this more than ample thought, “then maybe I could take it back. I could… bring it with me… back to the other side.”
“No, baby…” It was Tory now who felt on the verge of tears. “Please. There’s got to be another way.”
“Something happened to me when I crossed over, Tory.” Esperance forged ahead, her voice too shaking again. “Something inside and around me shifted, never to be put right again… unless I went back. I was always a ticking time bomb; it’s just… Echo took the bomb from me when he came into this world. Because he—”
Esperance buried her face in her hands again, shaking. She choked out, “Because he’s such a sweet boy. My angel boy. He must’ve known his mom was suffering and just wanted to help. Because that’s just the kind of boy he is. You know this, Tory!”
Tory jumped up off his seat, rushed to his wife’s side, and squeezed her in a desperate embrace. He too was fully sobbing now, and even as he whispered “no, no, no, no…” in Esperance’s ear, he too knew that she was right.
It didn’t make sense. None of this did. But his wife was an angel that fell from the heavens… and his son had come to remind her that her time in the mortal realm was up.
“Take me back to the Currum Hills,” she whispered, “back to where it all started.”
“No.” Tory sobbed.
“Please, Tory. I need to do this. If you won’t help me, I’ll do it myself.”
“No!”
“Mom? Dad?”
The couple turned in unison toward the bedroom door. Tory quickly let go of his wife, then tried and failed to wipe clean the tears and snot on his own face.
Echo Shen stood inside the frame of the door, rubbing his eyes with one hand and holding a tattered stuffed toy in the other.
It was the one Tory had won at a fair years ago. He’d somehow managed to hit a bullseye on that occasion, and had his pick of the prizes on display, but Echo had insisted on the smallest of them all: a helmeted teddy bear dressed up in an exaggerated biker’s costume.
“Were we too loud, my man?” Tory said, somehow keeping the tremor out of his voice. “Sorry about that, buddy. Go back to sleep.”
“Are you crying, Dad?”
“Me? No… it’s just the rain, buddy. Can’t you hear it raining outside? Now, be a good man and—”
Tory lost his words, for at that moment, Echo—half-shuttered eyes and all—trotted over to his side. He carefully laid the teddy bear on the kitchen floor, and wrapped Tory’s legs in the boniest of embraces.
“What’s this, buddy?” Tory leaned down to return the gesture, as a crack returned to his voice.
“I’m giving you a hug.”
“What’s the occasion, big man?”
“Whenever I cry, mom or Lotus gives me a hug, and I feel better. So, I’m giving you a hug, Dad.”
Tory bent and picked Echo up off the floor (far too light for his age). And he buried his face in his son’s too-skinny tummy and held him tight. As he did, he fought against the fresh flood of tears that threatened to burst his chest open. He fought down the silent scream of condemnation against the cruelty that at once divided and fused his two worlds.
After Echo went back to sleep, the couple returned to the kitchen table and talked. There were more tears, to be sure, but there also was an unspoken conspiracy to talk only of the happy days—in which Tory had featured far more prominently than he’d given himself credit for. And after they were done (never done) talking, Esperance slipped into the bedroom to kiss the kids goodbye.
Echo returned the gesture in his sleep, murmuring something from a half-remembered dream. Lotus turned her back, loath to give up even one sliver of her hours of bliss before the doldrums of a new day.
Tory watched from the doorframe and shook his head. After 13 years of knowing his daughter, and as much as he loved her, he could never bring himself to like her. It would’ve been a cop-out to say that was because she reminded him too much of himself, and yet, when it came to Tory Shen, cop-outs were a way of life.
Esperance leaned against the bunkbed and watched her sleeping children for some time. Then, she tiptoed out of the room and shut the door.
***
They found Esperance’s Chakram in the same place where they’d left it, nestled within a swath of undergrowth on the side of Asensio Road, halfway up the Currum Hills.
Even for two people, it was difficult and muddy work to hack through the weeds and haul out the metallic beast. But once they did, Tory saw right away that Esperance’s plan may yet work—and his heart sank anew.
Far more remarkable than the fact that no one else had found the damn thing in 15 years was its pristine condition, after—well, 15 years of neglect and exposure to the elements. The Chakram was, quite literally, an object out of place and out of time, having had all these years to marinate in solitude, yet never taking root upon a foreign soil.
Kirin Alpha, for the people of Esperance’s world liked to name their individual Chakrams, gleamed black against the rainy night, all but fusing with the surrounding darkness and tempest. A quick inspection by Esperance confirmed that it was still in perfect working order, with the mysterious substance it used as fuel having retained its form and potency for a decade and more.
Tory remembered his wife telling him that, at the time when she crossed over, Kirin Alpha had been the absolute state of the art in her world, meticulously designed and lovingly crafted by a man called Leter Gambit, her father’s best friend. As Tory admired its sleek curves and sheer power, he felt, not for the first time, a pang of yearning for this strange world full of motorcycle nuts, which included a father-in-law he’d never meet.
The couple then rode further up the Currum Hills, back to the place where it all began. They rode side by side, Esperance on her Chakram and Tory on his Suzuki Hayabusa.
Soon they came upon a bend in the road, flanked on either side by run-off areas, one of which overlooked the cliffs and the city lights that stretched below. Here, Esperance pulled over, and motioned for Tory to dismount.
They then embraced for the last time, both doffing their helmets to taste each other’s sweetness, drenched with a heaping dollop of rain. When it was finally time to break apart, Tory said simply,
“Burn that rubber.”
And Esperance did, zooming full throttle into the storm. As Tory watched, the wind suddenly shifted, creating a visible vacuum around his wife and her Chakram where no rain could touch them—where wheels spun faster than the speed of memories.
And then, she was gone.
Tory stood alone at the run-off area that doubled as a lookout point, his eyes pointed not to the city lights below but to the rainswept space where the love of his life had ridden moments ago. Then he resumed his trudge, back toward his own bike, back to his kids waiting at home.
With a flash of lightning, Tory’s world went up in flames.
He looked around in a wild panic, as his vision filled with the boiling crimson of a roaring inferno. Had a tree been struck down by lightning? But even then, how could anything catch fire in this weather?
Then his burnt retinas fell upon a figure amidst the chaos. For Esperance and her Chakram had materialized again, now a stark shadow against the heart of the fire.
“ESPER!”
Tory screamed as he broke into a sprint. Even as he ran, his wife’s figure slumped against the frame of her Chakram. And as he broke through veils of scorching steam to reach her, she collapsed onto the road, with Kirin Alpha tumbling down and onto her.
Tory moved without thinking, without a shred of awareness of his own skin blistering and melting under the heat. He held onto Esperance’s limp body as he pulled Kirin Alpha upright, and he mounted it himself, one hand on the throttle and the other cradling his love.
Flames soon gave way to pelting rain as he sped away, back the way they’d come. The Chakram, that unknowable fusion of metal and magic, fed lustily off Tory’s singular desire, driving him ever toward and past new velocities.
At some point, he became aware of a faint voice breathing into his singed neck. It was Esperance, trying to tell him something in a gurgling whisper.
“Don’t speak, Esper!” Tory yelled, tears and rain sizzling against the heat of his skin. “You’ll be alright! I’m going to get help!”
But his already melting eyes were blinded further by a harsh beam of light, and his crumbling senses filled with the rumbling bellow of an oncoming vehicle. Metal crunched against metal, and two limp figures flew into the night.
***
Sirens echoed in the unfeeling distance as Tory Shen squeezed out the last of his strength to crawl along flooded asphalt. He reached, one last time, and wrapped his fingers around Esperance’s. She was cold to the touch, as though she too had been soaking in the rain not long ago.
“We’re going to be okay,” he thought he’d said, but if truth be told, he could no longer tell the difference between words and raindrops.
But he believed it nonetheless, with a conviction that far outgrew anything he’d managed to build in his short miserable life. We’re going to be okay.
For Tory Shen knew that, across the yawning chasm of promises and regrets, two worlds beat with one heart.