8

Outside I felt disoriented, but I didn’t stop running.

Away from the hospital.

Toward the street.

It may have been fear of Professor K that sent my shoes moving and my eyes scanning for the nearest bus station, but it was the energy of love that fuelled me to keep going.

It was exhilarating! Cars whizzed by. I looked left, right.

Repeating her words in my head over and over.

I found a bus station.

I waited.

I hopped on a bus, then another, then checked my watch like she’d checked hers.

The way her expression had changed right after–

Yes, it was: disappointment!

She was disappointed that she had to leave, had to run.

I was running, too.

Down familiar campus paths to the Social Sciences building, all while reviewing the Battle of the Atlantic in my head, whose details mixed with her details, until she was the supply ships and I was the convoy, and the U-boats were her yellow shoes, and as I burst through the auditorium doors:

“Mister Oliver,” Professor K. said. “Late as usual.”

7

The tears dried. My hurt turned to panic.

I slid off the bed, wobbled and dove for my book bag, pawing at the insides like a raccoon.

Until:

My hands felt my phone, and I pulled it out, and I saw that the battery wasn’t dead.

I turned it on.

My fingers shook as they navigated to the address book.

Perhaps?

I sorted by alphabet.

Maybe?

P.

Yes!

My heart stopped hurting, stopped panicking– and leapt!

I bit my teeth together just in case…

My heart settled.

POWDER.

There was no telephone number, but there was an email address.

And a note:

“If you ever find this and feel like there’s nobody, remember that there’s me. Drop me a line.”

I pulled the phone to my chest. I hugged it. I pretended I was hugging her.

Then my phone buzzed.

An alert flashed.

HI301 PRESENTATION TODAY
HI301 PRESENTATION TODAY
HI301 PRESENTATION TODAY

I slung the book bag over my shoulder and ran outside.

6

My heart contracted.

This, I imagined, is how black holes are formed.

The pressure was almost unbearable.

The pressure was pain.

Was I having a heart attack?

I clutched my chest and tried to breathe: in, out, in, out…

It wasn’t a heart attack. It wasn’t physical at all.

Except that everything is physical.

This girl, whom I didn’t know and whom I had barely seen:

The thought that I’d never see her again:

It physically hurt!

I rolled onto my side and closed my eyes and felt the tears growing fat in my eyes and my voice becoming hoarse.

I’d never felt this.

I’d never felt anything like this.

I hated it. It was irrational. It was stupid. I hated both irrationality and stupidity and…

God damn!

It’s just an after-effect of the accident, I told myself. “You’re a lucky young man,” the doctor had said.

But I didn’t feel lucky.

But I knew it wasn’t an after-effect.

I cried.

5

It was an unusual name.

Unusually, she blended in with the pale white and sterile green hospital room surroundings like a chameleon.

A chameleon in yellow shoes pointed toes inward.

Behind, metal surgical instruments glistened. My book bag sat beside them.

Her mouth became a soft pink shape.

“I already know your name,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind that I saw it on your student ID card.”

My name was shamefully plain.

I shook my head.

I saw her blurry as she said, “Now that you’re awake, you can call your family.”

We said simultaneously:

“I don’t–” / “I’m sure, they’re worri–”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you for everything,” I said.

“You really have…?”

“Nobody.”

I was hoping she would offer me the chance to see her again.

I was expecting a further conversation.

Surely she felt it, too!

Instead she glanced at her watch, smiled and said, “I’m glad you’re up. I have to run. I’m late.”

The door closed, hurting my heart.

4

“You’re a lucky young man,” the doctor said.

Strange. At the beginning of every day of my life, I felt increasingly the opposite: unlucky, unhappy.

He leaned over me.

“Alive, with no broken bones. With nothing, except bruising and a few scrapes.”

I considered thanking him.

“And,” he said, “this lovely young lady to marry you. Every day she’s been here to look in and check how you are doing.”

Every day?

How long had I been in the hospital?

The girl blushed and looked down at her feet. She was wearing yellow shoes.

“What day is it?” I asked.

“Thursday.”

The last I remembered was a Monday evening in the rain.

“It’s not uncommon,” the doctor said, “to forget, to lose one’s sense of time. What’s most important is that you’re whole.”

Every day?

After the doctor left, the girl looked up again.

“You’ve come here every day?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Powder,” she said.

3

“It’s OK,” she said. “You don’t have to talk.”

I wanted to. I couldn’t.

The sentences my mind constructed stuck in my throat like burrs.

With my mouth open and silent, I watched her blink and her hair slide across her cheek.

Finally, I managed one word:

“Why?”

“I found you. In the street, after the car had–

I remembered:

Bright, flashing, light.

Screeching.

Pain.

Becoming wetness.

And my hand touching the wetness, and seeing that the wetness was red rather than rain, and my mouth tasting liquid rust…

“I called the ambulance and when it came I didn’t want to leave you alone.

“I went through your phone.

“I didn’t know who to call. There was nobody.

“So I lied. I said I was your fiancee.”

She bit her lower lip. Mine felt thicker than it should have been.

A doctor walked in.

2

I don’t know if I believe in God.

I want to.

I woke up in a hospital bed, staring at a face out of focus:

The most beautiful face I’d ever seen:

Her face.

“Hey,” she said. “You’re up.”

Her lips were the colour of fresh, gentle swelling.

She smiled.

She came into greater focus. Green eyes highlighted by sharply angled, thin blonde hair.

My head throbbed.

Hers cocked to the side.

Why was I here? I didn’t remember.

“How do you feel?”

I felt: I know I don’t believe in love at first sight.

I felt that what I knew was wrong.

I felt that I believed.

In love.

1

In the beginning there was rain.

My evening class was over, and I stepped into it.

The drops hit my hair.

I hadn’t brought my umbrella.

It must have been raining for hours, because the streets shone wet.

The asphalt was a canvas of reflected city lights.

I stomped on them and through puddles on my twenty minute walk home to my apartment.

I pretended I didn’t care that all that awaited me there was loneliness.

I passed a couple.

Two people under one umbrella, dry and laughing.

His arm wrapped around her waist.

My waist was empty. I was not dry. I must have still been looking at them, wondering whether I was fated to be alone forever, when–