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“Friend Grace, question?”
Rocky’s melodious voice is quiet, uncertain.
He probably can’t tell if I’m awake or asleep.
And, honestly, neither can I. The hallucinations and psychosis are almost impossible for me to decipher from reality. Rocky might not even be here at all.
Just in case, I offer a weak hum. Just in case Rocky is here. Just in case I’m not dead.
Am I dead?
“Friend Grace,” Rocky says again, but it isn’t a question this time. Just a statement.
These are the only certainties I have access to anymore. That I am Grace, and that I am Rocky’s friend.
He is my friend too.
My best friend.
Maybe the only real one I’ve ever had.
It takes me too long to register that I’m crying, face damp and cold with relentless tears. I’ll miss Rocky more than anything, I think. I should tell him that. What his friendship has meant to me all these years.
What it means to me now.
As I die.
Slowly.
Painfully.
My body absolutely refuses to give up just yet. Like it knows I’ve beaten the odds so many times that it shouldn’t be hunger that finally takes my life. Mentally, I’ve relinquished any fragile hope I’d had. Starvation is taking its toll. It hurts worse than I thought it would even in my worst imaginings. From a scientific standpoint, I know what’s happening to me, what my body is desperately trying to do. Doesn’t make me feel better though.
Science used to make me feel better.
A lifetime ago.
“Friend Grace.” A beat of silence. Then a low sound I don’t recognize as a word before he continues,“Look at me, question?”
I have my back turned to the transparent barrier between us. Or what would be between us if he is even here. Rocky doesn’t need me to look at him to see me, not with the way he sees the world around him. The only reason he’d want me to look at him is for my own benefit. For my vision. For my weak, bleary eyes.
“Can’t,” I whisper. “Can’t move.”
“You can,” Rocky insists. “You must.”
“Why?”
“You will not die, Friend Grace.”
It doesn’t answer my question. I take a long, slow inhale. “Don’t think we’ve got a say, buddy.”
“Look. Please.”
I shake my head, squeeze my eyes shut. Tears run down my face. But with a gusting sob, I find the strength to roll to my back and turn my head. Hallucination or not, Rocky is standing there. “Good, good, good.”
“Rocky,” I say, throat so tight it hurts to get my voice out. But the pain is nothing compared to my body literally consuming itself, so I persevere. “Need to tell you…”
“No talk, just listen,” Rocky interrupts me.
I’m pretty sure it’s rude to interrupt a dying person in any culture.
“We have solution,” Rocky says. “You will not starve. You will not eat taumoeba anymore. Good, good, good!”
I blink at him.
This is a hallucination, a cruel vision conjured up by desperately scrabbling hope. The mirage of a dying man seeing an oasis in an endless, empty desert. I begin to sob anew. I can’t even find the strength to raise my hands and cover my face as it contorts to accommodate my fear and grief and pain. Such unbearable, unbearable pain.
“You are leaking because happy, question?”
“Not real,” I choke out, “Not real, not real, not real–”
“Is real! Is real, friend Grace!”
I hate this. I hate this more than when Stratt visits my bedside and reminds me that I was and am and always will be a coward. I hate this more than when I wake up on the Hail Mary again and again, alone with corpses and with no clue how to save Earth. I hate this more than when I see my home planet freezing over and my children begging for the help I failed to give them.
I cry and sob because somehow it is worse to have foundationless hope than to just give up and die.
Because I am dying. I must be. I have to. This can’t go on forever. I’m going to die, and my last sight of my best friend in the galaxy isn’t even real.
Rocky’s familiar chorded voice calls to me frantically, but I cry and shake my head and wail until there’s nothing but silence and darkness left.
**
I open my eyes.
“Awake, question?”
My vision is gauzy as I stare blankly at the ceiling above me. It takes me a moment to register that something feels different. I feel different. Not just mentally, but physically. I can’t even begin to pinpoint what exactly is different. It’s a muted change, fragile and tentative. But it’s there. Like the chasm of death is yawning behind me now. I’m facing away instead of gazing down into its inky, black maw, but I can still feel its cold breath on the back of my neck.
“You are awake, question?” Rocky’s voice is insistent, impatient.
And… Scared? Maybe?
I turn my head. My muscles hurt a lot. But it doesn’t feel impossible, it doesn’t feel like the last bit of movement I’ll ever make. And there is Rocky, just as I last remember seeing him. That last memory aches like a physical pulse at the back of my brain. “I’m not dead,” I tell him.
“Said you would not die,” Rocky tells me.
I nod mutely.
Some small part of me wonders if this is another hallucination, another cruel joke; however, there is a realness to the dregs of pain that coat every part of me. There is a clarity to my mind that hasn’t been there in so, so long.
“Thank you,” I breathe.
“No need thank,” Rocky tells me. “Grace save Erid. Erid save Grace.”
I know I should ask what they did, how they solved the problem. But I can’t bring myself to ask just yet. I trust Rocky. My one constant, my last friend in the galaxy. “You’re a good, good, good friend, Rocky.”
Rocky shifts shyly. “You are good, good, good friend, Grace.”
I swallow once, twice.
“You leaking because happy, question?”
“Yeah, yeah, I am.”
END