Page 61 of A Boy Called Lovesong

The tires gave a screech and the horn of an oncoming car blared at us.

“Jesus, Cybil. Hang in there.”

I grabbed the emergency brake with my free hand and yanked it as hard as I could.

The pickup slid onto the shoulder of the road and skidded to a halt.

“Cybil! Fuck! What’s happening?”

She grunted again in pain, then in short breaths she managed to say, “Aspirin. The glove compartment.”

I yanked open the glove compartment, rummaged past maps and an old half drunk bottle of water, and found a bottle of aspirin. My hands were shaking with adrenalin as I got the lid off and poured three or four aspirins into my palm.

Cybil grabbed them all and shoved them into her mouth.

I snatched the warm bottle of water out of the glove compartment and she washed down the pills.

“What can I do? What do I need to do?” I asked urgently. “I’m taking you to a hospital.”

I unbuckled my safety belt, ready to switch seats with her, but Cybil held an arm across my chest to stop me.

“No. Wait.” Her voice was croaky, but firm. “Just… Just give the pills a minute to kick in.”

“You could be dead by then.”

“Just give me a second,” she snapped.

The short bursts of breath turned to longer chuffs of air…

Then deep breaths…

And slowly Cybil straightened herself back up, blinking like her vision was returning to her.

“Are you…” My words were quiet. Timid. Wary.

“Gonna die?” she asked, trying to finish my sentence.

“No! I was going to ask, are you okay?”

She puffed out a few more breaths then inhaled deeply. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m okay.”

“You say that now, but I still wanna take you to a hospital.”

“We’re not going to a hospital,” she said sternly. “My father had a heart attack and went to a hospital. They were supposed to fix him, but he never came home. He just left me alone to look after the general store and the cotton deliveries. And look after them I will. No matter what, ya hear?”

I paused a moment, distant thunder rolling through the sky like a rogue wave crashing on a faraway shore. “I’m sorry,” I said eventually. I swallowed and added, “My partner died. It feels like a lifetime ago now… and yet, at the same time, it was only yesterday.”

Cybil’s breathing slowed down completely, her chest rising and falling in a soft, steady rhythm. “I remember the way he taught me to stack the shelves, fastest moving items at the top and bottom, hard to sell stuff in the middle, right at eye level. That seemed like yesterday too.”

I smiled. “I remember how he would close the lid to the piano every night after playing, saying ‘shhh, time to sleep’ as though the damn Steinway was a baby. That seemed like yesterday too.”

“My dad used to braid my hair… and what a shitty job he did of it. It drove me crazy as a kid, but if he did it now, I wouldn’t care one iota.”

“Joel used to sleep with socks on in the winter and still try to warm his feet on mine, rubbing those damn itchy woolen socks on me. I couldn’t stand it. But I’d give anything to feel those old socks snuggled between my feet now.”

Cybil laughed. Then a sadness came over her. “My dad went all too soon.”

I sucked in a breath and had to hold it a moment. “So did Joel.”

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