Shay - Delphine AU | Part 23* (Rough Draft)
Could Shay and Delphine have been a thing in a different universe?
Prev: 1-5 (edited), 6-8, 9*, 10*, 11*, 12*, 13*, 14*, 15*, 16*, 17*, 18*, 19, 20*, 21*, 22*, 23*
Delphine wanted a cigarette. After the accident she'd kicked the habit--not out of considerations for her health or a newly minted gratitude to be alive, but because nursing a hip injury turned going out to buy a pack of cigarettes or toddling around to search for her misplaced lighter into cumbersome inconveniences that incited more pain than was assuaged. Painkillers had been more readily at hand in those days, anyway, and by the time she'd weaned off of those, she'd grown accustomed to not plumbing her pockets for a rolled slim. It was probably for the best. At the very least, on top of saving a few dollars, no longer smoking likely had spared her choice looks of gentle disapproval from Shay--maybe had even tipped the scales toward tolerance and given their friendship a chance.
But last night, lying in bed, the oblivion of unconsciousness elusive, thoughts circling the genetically encoded patent and the burden of knowledge, of secrets and obligations and divisions being drawn, Delphine would have liked a cigarette. Curled up in a chair beside the window. Or in bed, the lit end blazing briefly in the dark with each pull, the nicotine like a soothing hand running down her spine, quelling the nervous signals rushing thereabout. She would have liked one now, weary and muddled, jittery rather than rejuvenated from the caffeine in the espresso she'd ordered from a cafe just grinding the day's first batch of beans for the few zombie figures swaying around the pickup counter.
Smoking wasn't permitted in the care ward, however.
She doubted Jennifer would appreciate it.
If Jennifer could have exercised the cognitive faculties to notice.
Delphine rubbed at her eyes. A cigarette really did sound lovely.
She wasn't sure why she was here. She'd tipped out of bed at an hour nominally in the morning, casting aside the duvet and sheets in impotence and resignation, tired of chasing after sleep, and spilled herself into the shower, where she let the water run hot and long so that a murky, misty tiled otherworld enfolded her upon stepping out of the tub. She'd dressed, because what else was there to do, and, following that logic, had simply headed out into the impending day. Only there was nowhere really to go after wandering into a cafe, except into the DYAD, where the lonely stillness would have rendered her a phantom but for the security guard at the front who nodded in acknowledgement of her entrance. In the Old Wing the lab was quiescent and waiting. Cosima would likely not appear for hours yet. Delphine simply stood in the space for a time. Then she'd walked out and wended through the halls.
Jennifer's room was not quiet, despite the occupant's silence. Delphine sat dumped into the only available chair, the one she thought of as Greg's, squeezed into the shadows of the darkened room, and let the rhythm beat out by the monitors regulate the pace of her breathing.
If Jennifer were conscious, what might Delphine be doing instead? Would she and Jennifer be speaking? What would she tell Jennifer?
Maybe about her current patient, in the vaguest of terms. She could say that her new charge possessed traits that reminded her of Jennifer, maybe that they shared similar accents to her ear, what Delphine's recognition deemed generically American, even though the chosen topics of discourse Jennifer and her new patient touched on were vastly different. That, really, overall they were different people. No comparison necessary.
But better to discuss that than the common affliction shared between Jennifer and Cosima that Delphine couldn't have mentioned. Because Delphine could not have spoken about the stem cell line, that there was a plausible treatment being developed, not when it wasn't within Delphine's authority to extend the same to Jennifer.
Not when Delphine wasn't sure, if given the choice between testing implantation on Jennifer or Cosima, whom she would have chosen.
Delphine rubbed at her eyes.
When she stepped out of the room, she checked her phone for the time, considered, then sent a message to Shay: Let's do something this weekend.
An answer arrived within a minute.
From Shay [06:22]: Good morning. Thursday is barely starting and u r ready for the weekend?
To Shay [06:22]: Yes.
From Shay [06:23]: ;P
From Shay [06:23]: What do u want to do?
To Shay [06:23]: I don't know. Anything.
From Shay [06:24]: K. Think about it. U have time to come up with smthg.
Delphine flashed a feeble smile at the screen. She barely had the wherewithal to stand up straight, much less the mental capacity to think of possible weekend activities. A nurse bustled past. Delphine raised her head enough to catch a sideways glance. It was Gina, she of the gentle hands and the beloved dogs. Delphine caught her eye and said, "Hello. Will Greg be coming in later?"
Gina stopped, an odd look creasing her normally genial features. "Greg . . . hasn't been in for a while now, Dr. Cormier."
"What?" Delphine said, too tired to stop herself, maybe too tired to compute what was being said.
Gina shook her head. "Don't ask me, Dr. Cormier. I just know I haven't seen him."
Delphine stared at her in wordless incomprehension, for long enough that Gina eventually shrugged with a shake of her head and went on her way. Delphine stared after her, trying to understand.
Where was Greg?
*
The results of Cosima's blood analysis were in Delphine's inbox by eight. Delphine clutched them in hand as she sat in Aldous's office, in his chair as it stood unoccupied behind the desk, the back turned to the larger room so that she faced the windows, gazing out as she had numerous times before.
On this day the view didn't arrest her to the same degree as times before.
Aldous's arrival was the only disturbance of sound. Delphine tracked his progress by ear, his path coming around the desk, the stutter and abrupt stillness of his footsteps when into his line of sight she appeared, ensconced in the chair.
"Delphine," Aldous acknowledged. "You've seen the results?"
"Have you?" Delphine asked.
"We'll move to implantation," Aldous said by way of answer. "At the soonest, probably Monday or Tuesday. I'll see to the arrangements and let you know."
Delphine nodded. "Aldous." She swiveled the chair a few degrees to look at him. "Where's Greg?"
Aldous graced her with a raised eyebrow laced with incredulity. "Where do men who are overwhelmed by grand circumstances go?" He shook his head slightly. "Away. Greg cut his losses. He probably thought there was nothing left for him here."
Delphine sat expressionless, as much due to delayed response from lack of sleep as to general lack of understanding. "He . . . returned home? To the United States?"
"His business is his business," Aldous said lightly, with a hint of a shrug.
Delphine frowned in the slow churning of her thoughts. "Will you monitor him?"
Aldous smiled or smirked or maybe both. "What's there to monitor?" He gave the slightest shake of his head. "It doesn't matter. Greg isn't of interest to us and he wasn't looking after Jennifer. We are. Greg has no bearing on that." His eyes coolly assessed her. "Maintain focus, Delphine. Stick to the task at hand. Cosima is your subject."
Delphine schooled her features into what she hoped was neutrality. She lifted the papers she held in one hand in a simulacrum of a salute. "We'll be ready."
She lumbered out of his chair and left.
*
Delphine composed a concise, straightforward, but also sufficiently vague email to Cosima:
Lab results positive. Moving to implantation. Procedure will most likely be scheduled for early next week. -DC
She didn't have to send Cosima an email--she would be seeing Cosima later in the day, presumably--but she felt it better to inform Cosima immediately. She herself would have wanted to know as soon as the information were available.
It wasn't that Delphine needed Cosima to trust her, per se, but getting along well enough to work together respectfully, if not amicably, would be nice. She had a brief vision of Shay's presence seated in the corner of the lab forcing her and Cosima to play civil--Delphine almost laughed.
Aldous hadn't left her much to do in the way of preparation so Delphine spent some time taxing her mind trying to remember Greg's last name. The more she rooted about for it, she realized she couldn't recall ever seeing it or hearing it. She hesitated. Facebook wasn't a territory she frequented often. Networking was one thing, socializing another. She may have had little information on Greg, but she had a tidbit or two about Jennifer Fitzsimmons.
Delphine found Jennifer easily enough. That was about as far as she got. Nothing about Jennifer's profile was public. Delphine smiled to herself, albeit sadly. At least in something Jennifer had been able to maintain privacy.
But that left the mystery of Greg up in the air.
Just as Aldous wanted it.
*
At some point, not long after noon, Delphine curled up on the couch of the quiet lab and lost time. She woke to Cosima standing over her. Her heart leapt and her hand flew up to cover it. Cosima smirked.
"Sleeping on the job?" Cosima asked.
Delphine simply lay on the couch waiting for her heart to slow and her breath to calm. Wrestling back some grace and dignity, she swung her legs over the edge of the cushions to plant her feet upon the floor while pushing herself up into a sitting position. "What time is it?"
Her voice emerged cracking and husky.
Cosima's smirk deepened. "Around two."
"Ah, merde," Delphine muttered, covering her face with a hand. Sighing, she pushed back her hair. "Did you just get in?"
"Maybe I did, maybe I didn't," Cosima said blithely, eyes sparkling behind her glasses.
Clearing her throat and willing moisture over her dry tongue, Delphine remarked, "You weren't here before twelve."
"But I arrived just in time for this," Cosima said, holding up her phone. With the screen pointed toward her, Delphine discerned a picture of herself crammed onto the couch, head lolling, lips parted.
Delphine considered it. "Not my best angle."
Cosima swiped to the next picture. "I got a close up, too." She turned it back around to admire her photography skill. "Is there like a DYAD Facebook group? I think they might appreciate this." Her mouth pulled in contemplation. "Maybe Shay?"
Delphine rubbed at her neck, then her shoulder, which had cricked and cramped in the mold of unnatural angles, and wished Shay were there to rub out the discomfort. "She could use the smile, though it probably wouldn't be much of a remarkable sight to her."
Cosima twitched an eyebrow at her. "The sight of you unconscious is a familiar one to her?"
Delphine flashed an ambiguous smile. Cosima hadn't quite hit the mark, but over the course of their sessions Shay had seen far more of Delphine than simply her unconscious. Though there'd been that, too. And that time she'd passed out in Shay's apartment. Shay had also seen Delphine reduced to grandmotherly efforts of speed and movement.
Really, thinking about it, Shay had witnessed a number of Delphine's less than stellar moments. Aggregating a quick mental tally, Delphine wasn't sure they were equally matched in moments of self-exposure.
Her immediate thought was that this state of affairs needed to be rectified. Only her second thought was: Why put Shay through that?
Cosima's lips pursed in rumination. "Well, I'll keep these just in case."
"In case of what?" Delphine let herself ask, perhaps because she was groggy and still in the throes of grasping operational consciousness.
Cosima shrugged.
Delphine's third wish of the day--after, one, a cigarette and, two, a massage from Shay--was that Cosima weren't so eager or so effective to behave disconcertingly to express her opinion of DYAD's methods. By any rational measure, it was difficult to fault a victim of systematic violation of privacy, but it was grating to be the target of Cosima's antics. Maybe this was why Aldous communicated with Cosima through Delphine.
Cosima stowed her phone and gave Delphine another assessment. "Maybe you should have come into work late."
"It wouldn't have served any purpose," Delphine said.
With a flick of her chin, Cosima indicated the papers sitting on the couch where Delphine's loosening fingers had dropped them. "What were you looking at?"
Delphine hesitated, reaching over to lay her fingers upon the printed pages. "Articles on patent law." Cosima's jaw squared. Delphine shook her head. "Unfortunately I pursued studying medicine, not law. I'm not sure what to look for."
Cosima's stiff chin bobbed up and down. "Yeah, I had the same problem." Her head tilted in thought. "Maybe one of us is a lawyer. There has to be a pretty good chance of that."
Delphine stifled a laugh. "Yes, but versed in which law? Mexican? Norwegian? South African? The patent appears to have been written according to American standards, but even if it were legal according to laws of the United States, I wonder if it could apply to citizens of other countries."
"Things aren't citizens," Cosima pointed out. "The question is more like whether or not we're . . . subhuman. How much artificial DNA does it take to classify an organism into another category--a different, ownable species?" Cosima lifted an eyebrow. "What do you think?"
Delphine ran her tongue over her lips. "I can see an obvious argument against measuring by genetic percentage when the bulk of naturally occurring human DNA is already largely noncoding."
Cosima crossed her arms. "But if what Leekie said is true and these artificial sequences make us clones possible, they serve a biological function. They're critical to our existence. So to possess such DNA could probably be presented as having bearing. Big agro companies are already lobbying to be able to patent GMO seeds as proprietary property. If that goes through, why not extend that argument to other deliberately modified specimens? Wouldn't that be the obvious argument from any DYAD lawyer?"
Delphine nodded, grave. "I know. I had similar thoughts."
Cosima frowned. After a moment, she said, "Dude, that does not make me feel better."
"I'm sorry," Delphine offered sadly. "I told you, I studied medicine, not law."
Cosima's mouth pressed into a thin slash. "And there wasn't any good medical reading for you to pass the time with?"
"Did you get my email?" Delphine asked. "The lab results came back positive." She nodded, pushing herself to her feet to fetch the papers. "Your numbers are good, too. If they weren't, I would press Aldous to move faster, but we're still looking at next week."
She laid the papers out for Cosima to inspect. Cosima slowly made her way over to Delphine's side and stood quietly gazing down at the array, left arm wrapped around her middle, her other arm balanced atop the back of her wrist, fingers prodding at her lip. She turned to Delphine with an open expression. "So . . . you studied medicine but I didn't. I flirted with the idea, but it didn't mesh for me. Can you explain to me everything I'm looking at?"
A frisson of surprise lanced through Delphine. They'd gone over analyses of Cosima's blood tests before, but Cosima hadn't expressed any unfamiliarity with the specifics. After a moment, a smile, soft and a little relieved, touched Delphine's lips.
"Yes, of course."
*
Cosima suggested Delphine "cut out early" but Delphine shook her head. A brief reconsideration prompted Delphine to instead ask, "Would you like the lab to yourself?"
Cosima shrugged. "I was thinking you could use some shut eye."
"Thank you," Delphine said slowly, trying to gauge and trying to stop herself from gauging the consideration Cosima was extending. "The nap helped. And hopefully I will sleep much better tonight."
Cosima nodded, to Delphine's powers of detection seemingly indifferent. The moment passed and with it Delphine's sense of equilibrium. She and Cosima seemed always to teeter, now up, now down, and where the scales balanced in any given moment was hard to determine. Maybe they had inched toward better terms. Maybe this was a momentary ceasefire, like the breaks soldiers in their trenches honored on holidays.
They worked quietly in the late parts of the day, absorbed in their own projects. Cosima leafed through the articles on patent law that Delphine had been browsing earlier. Delphine browsed the medical profiles of other clone subjects in an idle fashion, an exercise in attempting to see if anything would jump out to her sluggish mind. Nearing the time Delphine would usually pack up, her mind wandered back to the morning.
"Cosima," Delphine broached the relative quiet cautiously, "may I ask you something about your previous monitor?"
Cosima, on the couch with her legs pulled up beneath her, lifted her head. Wariness and curiosity mingled in an uncomfortable mix. "Yeah?"
"Have you spoken to her or . . . know of her whereabouts since?"
"Why, you want to contact her and compare notes or get some pointers?" Cosima's eyes narrowed. "Shouldn't you have that information already?"
Delphine shook her head. "I was just wondering."
Cosima cocked her head. "Why?"
Delphine shook her head again.
Cosima's scrutiny zeroed in on Delphine. "Why are you asking me and not Leekie?" One corner of her mouth pulled up. "Are you embarrassed to ask him?" Her expression turned more cynical. "Or maybe you think he'll lie to you?" Her eyes raked Delphine's face. "Or maybe you're just afraid?" The frivolity fled Cosima's features. "What are you afraid of, Dr. Cormier?"
Delphine didn't flinch away. "I don't know."
But she had a suspicion and maybe what she feared was having Cosima confirm it.
*
This time a message presaged any knocks on Shay's door.
From Delphine [7:15]: May I come in?
To Delphine [7:15]: Right now? Sure.
"Hey," Shay greeted Delphine at the door a few minutes later. "Did you come over to announce our weekend plans?"
The slight smile on Delphine's face stiffened and faded incrementally. "I forgot about that." The smile recovered some vigor. "No, I drove Cosima home. Hello."
"You know that you don't need an excuse or an explanation to drop by, right?" Shay asked as Delphine leaned toward her. Shay automatically turned her head to receive a kiss upon first one, then the other cheek.
"I know," Delphine said as she pulled back and maneuvered inside, "but I don't want to be an inconvenience or catch you at a bad time."
Delphine said it without emphasis or inflection, but Shay felt caught between guilt, appreciation, self-consciousness, and a slice of irritation. She summoned a smile to cover up the emotional morass. "You can always go up to Cosima's."
Delphine turned grim. "That would probably be the least productive course of action."
Shay shook her head, partly at herself. She knew she shouldn't tease. But she also knew that making sense of the two had yet to bear any fruit in the landscape Shay could make out. "Do you want something to eat or drink?"
Delphine shed bag and coat at the coat stand. "Are you having anything?"
"Sure, I'll join you if you're having something. "
"Do you still have the whiskey?"
"Do I still have the whiskey?" Shay echoed, incredulous. "Do you imagine me taking a tipple of it every now and again?"
"Tipple?" Delphine repeated, head canting, caught on the hook of confusion.
"A drink. Add it to your vocabulary," Shay teased. "You want it on the rocks or straight up?"
"Ice, please."
Delphine sat down at the table, lowering herself with a circumspection and languish that Shay parsed in a glance. Shay joined her with a tumbler of whiskey and a glass of pinot grigio for herself.
"You okay?" Shay asked. "Is your hip bothering you?"
Delphine smiled with a tired self-deprecation. "I slept in a bad position. My body is making me pay for it."
"Do you want to go for a walk?" Shay asked.
"What?" Delphine asked.
"Do you want to go for a walk and stretch out?" Shay clarified.
"In this weather?" Delphine asked.
"We have coats," Shay said. "The result of years of human ingenuity and--" Shay smiled. "--science. You can fortify yourself with a few sips of that, too."
On cue Delphine sipped at her whiskey, eyeing Shay speculatively. Putting down her drink, she asked, "Would you really go for a walk right now?"
"I wouldn't have suggested it otherwise."
Delphine's eyes narrowed in consideration, but in time she shook her head. "If it were earlier, perhaps. I'll just have to endure the consequences of my poor choices."
"The other option," Shay pointed out, "is to stay inside and stretch."
"You mean do yoga," Delphine said.
"We could work up to that," Shay agreed with a smile.
Delphine shook her head chidingly.
Letting her off the hook, Shay changed the topic. "Any ideas for this weekend?"
"I'll think of something," Delphine reassured her. With a fingertip she wiped away a gathering drop of condensation on the exterior of the glass. "Shay, do you stay in touch with your exes?"
Shay responded with her mind's first association: "Did an ex of yours appear today?"
Delphine smiled, a reflex of surprise, but with amusement lighting her eyes. "No. I don't really stay in touch with my exes. It seems mutual."
"Okay," Shay said slowly, "just trying to see where this is coming from."
"I'm not thinking about my exes," Delphine supplied.
"You're thinking of my exes?" Shay asked with uncertainty.
Delphine laughed, clearly startled. "No, I'm thinking about your relationship with your exes." Shay's expression must have contorted into an interesting display because Delphine tried to amend, "I mean that I'm not curious about who your exes are, but what kind of relationship you maintain with them now." She tracked Shay's reaction. "This is not sounding any better, is it?"
"No, not really," Shay confirmed. She twirled her glass of wine by its base. "To answer your question, though, I keep in touch with some of my exes. It just depends. Sometimes the relationship was already transitioning into something more like a friendship by the end anyway."
"So you talk with them? Know where they are? What they are up to?" Delphine asked.
"Sometimes," Shay said. "With a few I'm still close. Facebook helps in that you don't even have to talk with someone to know what they're up to." She licked her lips. "Why exes specifically?"
Delphine hesitated. "It came up."
"With Cosima?" Shay said, a little surprised at the notion. She didn't imagine Cosima was shy or taciturn about her sexuality, but the idea that she'd shared that with Delphine did throw Shay for a loop. It seemed intimate for two people determine to put nothing less than a Bering land bridge between them.
"No," Delphine said, eyes on the tumbler. "I was looking at the case of a previous patient I had." Her eyes flickered up to Shay and whatever she saw made her ask, "What?"
Shay took a deep breath. "I don't know if you realize it, but I try very hard not to ask you too many questions. And right now I have like a million questions."
"Yeah?" Delphine asked, adjusting on the seat, her tone taken aback. "Like what?"
"Like . . . was this previous patient an ex of yours?" Shay asked.
Delphine smiled faintly. "No."
"Okay," Shay managed in a drawn out drawl, "so what in the world about this patient made you think of exes?"
Delphine's lips pursed. "I heard that her partner left her. He used to always come with her to her appointments and they seemed so . . . devoted. Hearing about their separation . . . was sad. I wondered if . . ." Delphine tilted her head. "I wondered if a relationship like that could just end. Without . . . repercussions."
"You mean like material repercussions or emotional ones? Like lingering feelings?"
Delphine nodded slowly.
"Breakups can be hard," Shay said, knowing it sounded obvious and trite. She regarded her friend. "Some people need a clean break, others settle into different arrangements."
"Yes," Delphine agreed softly. She met Shay's eyes. "Do you worry about the welfare of your exes?"
"In a general way, yeah, sure," Shay said.
Delphine tapped the glass with a fingernail, sending off a sharp ping. "I don't really think about my exes."
"Clean break," Shay reiterated.
Sorrow tugged at Delphine's mouth.
"Why did you look sad just now?" Shay asked softly.
Delphine brought the tumbler to her lips, ice cubes shifting in soft clinks, and sipped. "It's hard to think that my former patient's illness didn't have something to do with their separation."
Shay's mouth thinned into a line. "Yeah. It's--it's probably tough."
Delphine caught the stutter. She looked at Shay with that unnerving clinical assessment.
Shay bit at her lower lip. "Did she get better?"
"No," Delphine murmured. "Not yet."
Shay nodded. "Maybe it became too much for him." Delphine ducked her head. Shay felt a rush of tenderness for her friend. "Is that why you were wondering if I keep tabs on my exes?"
Delphine's lips pressed into a slash of consternation. "I wonder if he worries about her, yes. Or maybe . . . maybe he can't."
"Can't?" Shay asked.
Delphine raised her eyes to Shay's. "I'm not sure what I'm saying." Her gaze lingered, seeming to search for something. To Shay's surprise, a smile unfurled across her lips. "How are you?"
"What?" Shay said in a near gasp at the abrupt pivot.
"I feel like I haven't asked you that in a while," Delphine said. "How is work? Any luck with, um, Sapphire?"
Shay exhaled a curt laugh. "Everything's fine. And, no, no luck on that front. I decided to take a break from searching. It was getting a little depressing."
The final word snagged Delphine's ear with a little jerk. "And that's . . . okay?"
Shay smiled. "Yeah? I haven't really noticed one way or another. Especially lately. You and Cosima have kept me busy."
"Is that okay?" Delphine asked, with greater uncertainty. "That we've . . . kept you busy?"
"I'd let you know if it wasn't," Shay said.
"I worry that you wouldn't," Delphine countered in a soft, but frank tone, eyes careful upon Shay.
They studied one another, their relationship a foundation beneath their feet turned jelly and elastic. Shay always felt Delphine perceived more than she let on. What Delphine ascertained was a question of depth, not probability, and Shay had become accustomed to the opacity of Delphine's thoughts. She had little practice with how to dance with a thought tossed into the open.
"Come on," Shay said in an attempt at levity, "haven't I closed the door on your face before?"
"Yes," Delphine breathed. "Once." She gave the tumbler a spin between her fingers. "You say you want to ask me a lot of questions, but sometimes I feel it's difficult to ask you even the simplest ones."
Shay measured her breaths, unprepared for the tightening of her stomach, the acceleration of her heart. "What do you mean?"
Delphine swiped a slash through the condensation. "If I ask how you are doing, you almost always say that you are fine or okay, and I wonder if that's true--or if you say that because it's the socially constructed polite answer and it's the path of least resistance." Delphine nudged the tumbler so that it caught the light at a different angle. "But then I think: If one day you said you weren't fine, what would I do? How could I help you? Could I help you? And I see that you make it easy for both of us.
"But," Delphine continued, volume bleeding from the projection of her voice, "when an issue is troubling me, I find myself coming to you. You don't need to ask for me to talk. I know you will listen. But I can't ask you to do the same with me." Her eyebrows pinched toward one another. "I'm not sure you need to."
"Your life seems way more stressful than mine," Shay allowed.
"That doesn't mean I should burden you," Delphine said.
"You don't burden me," Shay said. "To unburden yourself doesn't necessarily mean you burden someone else. I don't feel like I have to solve your problems. I mean, I have questions, yeah, but really all I do is listen."
Hesitation pulled at Delphine's mouth, but she merely shook her head. "I worry about you, too, you know."
Shay clamped down on the objection that leapt reflexively to her tongue. Because she repeatedly told Delphine not to worry. Because this conversation was something different between them. Delphine was saying something different, but exactly what Shay couldn't pinpoint, only able to recognize how it sent a flutter along her nerves.
"I'm doing okay, Delphine," Shay said, laughing a little to inject lightness. "Really. I'm actually planning to hold you to very high standards for whatever you decide we're going to do this weekend."
Delphine regarded her wordlessly with that cool gaze of hers. At its conclusion a little smile peeked out. "Okay. I will do my best to rise to the challenge."
"No pressure," Shay teased, letting the familiar rhythms relax her nerves.
Delphine raised her tumbler. "Here's hoping it will be my most stressful decision until then. Santé."
Delphine smiled when Shay touched her wine glass to the tumbler. They both took healthy sips and, as if to shake off the gravity the turn in their conversation had exerted, threw out possible activities for a weekend venture.
Delphine criticized, chided, and chuckled on cue, but Shay found herself thinking that sometimes Delphine's smile didn't touch her eyes. Maybe it was her imagination, running overly sensitive. Or maybe Delphine was simply tired and taxed, as she could be in recent months. Maybe Delphine had other things on her mind.
Maybe. Hopefully.
Maybe Shay could have asked. But, for once, Shay didn't care much to know the answer.
//
Next
Prev: 1-5 (edited), 6-8, 9*, 10*, 11*, 12*, 13*, 14*, 15*, 16*, 17*, 18*, 19, 20*, 21*, 22*, 23*
Delphine wanted a cigarette. After the accident she'd kicked the habit--not out of considerations for her health or a newly minted gratitude to be alive, but because nursing a hip injury turned going out to buy a pack of cigarettes or toddling around to search for her misplaced lighter into cumbersome inconveniences that incited more pain than was assuaged. Painkillers had been more readily at hand in those days, anyway, and by the time she'd weaned off of those, she'd grown accustomed to not plumbing her pockets for a rolled slim. It was probably for the best. At the very least, on top of saving a few dollars, no longer smoking likely had spared her choice looks of gentle disapproval from Shay--maybe had even tipped the scales toward tolerance and given their friendship a chance.
But last night, lying in bed, the oblivion of unconsciousness elusive, thoughts circling the genetically encoded patent and the burden of knowledge, of secrets and obligations and divisions being drawn, Delphine would have liked a cigarette. Curled up in a chair beside the window. Or in bed, the lit end blazing briefly in the dark with each pull, the nicotine like a soothing hand running down her spine, quelling the nervous signals rushing thereabout. She would have liked one now, weary and muddled, jittery rather than rejuvenated from the caffeine in the espresso she'd ordered from a cafe just grinding the day's first batch of beans for the few zombie figures swaying around the pickup counter.
Smoking wasn't permitted in the care ward, however.
She doubted Jennifer would appreciate it.
If Jennifer could have exercised the cognitive faculties to notice.
Delphine rubbed at her eyes. A cigarette really did sound lovely.
She wasn't sure why she was here. She'd tipped out of bed at an hour nominally in the morning, casting aside the duvet and sheets in impotence and resignation, tired of chasing after sleep, and spilled herself into the shower, where she let the water run hot and long so that a murky, misty tiled otherworld enfolded her upon stepping out of the tub. She'd dressed, because what else was there to do, and, following that logic, had simply headed out into the impending day. Only there was nowhere really to go after wandering into a cafe, except into the DYAD, where the lonely stillness would have rendered her a phantom but for the security guard at the front who nodded in acknowledgement of her entrance. In the Old Wing the lab was quiescent and waiting. Cosima would likely not appear for hours yet. Delphine simply stood in the space for a time. Then she'd walked out and wended through the halls.
Jennifer's room was not quiet, despite the occupant's silence. Delphine sat dumped into the only available chair, the one she thought of as Greg's, squeezed into the shadows of the darkened room, and let the rhythm beat out by the monitors regulate the pace of her breathing.
If Jennifer were conscious, what might Delphine be doing instead? Would she and Jennifer be speaking? What would she tell Jennifer?
Maybe about her current patient, in the vaguest of terms. She could say that her new charge possessed traits that reminded her of Jennifer, maybe that they shared similar accents to her ear, what Delphine's recognition deemed generically American, even though the chosen topics of discourse Jennifer and her new patient touched on were vastly different. That, really, overall they were different people. No comparison necessary.
But better to discuss that than the common affliction shared between Jennifer and Cosima that Delphine couldn't have mentioned. Because Delphine could not have spoken about the stem cell line, that there was a plausible treatment being developed, not when it wasn't within Delphine's authority to extend the same to Jennifer.
Not when Delphine wasn't sure, if given the choice between testing implantation on Jennifer or Cosima, whom she would have chosen.
Delphine rubbed at her eyes.
When she stepped out of the room, she checked her phone for the time, considered, then sent a message to Shay: Let's do something this weekend.
An answer arrived within a minute.
From Shay [06:22]: Good morning. Thursday is barely starting and u r ready for the weekend?
To Shay [06:22]: Yes.
From Shay [06:23]: ;P
From Shay [06:23]: What do u want to do?
To Shay [06:23]: I don't know. Anything.
From Shay [06:24]: K. Think about it. U have time to come up with smthg.
Delphine flashed a feeble smile at the screen. She barely had the wherewithal to stand up straight, much less the mental capacity to think of possible weekend activities. A nurse bustled past. Delphine raised her head enough to catch a sideways glance. It was Gina, she of the gentle hands and the beloved dogs. Delphine caught her eye and said, "Hello. Will Greg be coming in later?"
Gina stopped, an odd look creasing her normally genial features. "Greg . . . hasn't been in for a while now, Dr. Cormier."
"What?" Delphine said, too tired to stop herself, maybe too tired to compute what was being said.
Gina shook her head. "Don't ask me, Dr. Cormier. I just know I haven't seen him."
Delphine stared at her in wordless incomprehension, for long enough that Gina eventually shrugged with a shake of her head and went on her way. Delphine stared after her, trying to understand.
Where was Greg?
*
The results of Cosima's blood analysis were in Delphine's inbox by eight. Delphine clutched them in hand as she sat in Aldous's office, in his chair as it stood unoccupied behind the desk, the back turned to the larger room so that she faced the windows, gazing out as she had numerous times before.
On this day the view didn't arrest her to the same degree as times before.
Aldous's arrival was the only disturbance of sound. Delphine tracked his progress by ear, his path coming around the desk, the stutter and abrupt stillness of his footsteps when into his line of sight she appeared, ensconced in the chair.
"Delphine," Aldous acknowledged. "You've seen the results?"
"Have you?" Delphine asked.
"We'll move to implantation," Aldous said by way of answer. "At the soonest, probably Monday or Tuesday. I'll see to the arrangements and let you know."
Delphine nodded. "Aldous." She swiveled the chair a few degrees to look at him. "Where's Greg?"
Aldous graced her with a raised eyebrow laced with incredulity. "Where do men who are overwhelmed by grand circumstances go?" He shook his head slightly. "Away. Greg cut his losses. He probably thought there was nothing left for him here."
Delphine sat expressionless, as much due to delayed response from lack of sleep as to general lack of understanding. "He . . . returned home? To the United States?"
"His business is his business," Aldous said lightly, with a hint of a shrug.
Delphine frowned in the slow churning of her thoughts. "Will you monitor him?"
Aldous smiled or smirked or maybe both. "What's there to monitor?" He gave the slightest shake of his head. "It doesn't matter. Greg isn't of interest to us and he wasn't looking after Jennifer. We are. Greg has no bearing on that." His eyes coolly assessed her. "Maintain focus, Delphine. Stick to the task at hand. Cosima is your subject."
Delphine schooled her features into what she hoped was neutrality. She lifted the papers she held in one hand in a simulacrum of a salute. "We'll be ready."
She lumbered out of his chair and left.
*
Delphine composed a concise, straightforward, but also sufficiently vague email to Cosima:
Lab results positive. Moving to implantation. Procedure will most likely be scheduled for early next week. -DC
She didn't have to send Cosima an email--she would be seeing Cosima later in the day, presumably--but she felt it better to inform Cosima immediately. She herself would have wanted to know as soon as the information were available.
It wasn't that Delphine needed Cosima to trust her, per se, but getting along well enough to work together respectfully, if not amicably, would be nice. She had a brief vision of Shay's presence seated in the corner of the lab forcing her and Cosima to play civil--Delphine almost laughed.
Aldous hadn't left her much to do in the way of preparation so Delphine spent some time taxing her mind trying to remember Greg's last name. The more she rooted about for it, she realized she couldn't recall ever seeing it or hearing it. She hesitated. Facebook wasn't a territory she frequented often. Networking was one thing, socializing another. She may have had little information on Greg, but she had a tidbit or two about Jennifer Fitzsimmons.
Delphine found Jennifer easily enough. That was about as far as she got. Nothing about Jennifer's profile was public. Delphine smiled to herself, albeit sadly. At least in something Jennifer had been able to maintain privacy.
But that left the mystery of Greg up in the air.
Just as Aldous wanted it.
*
At some point, not long after noon, Delphine curled up on the couch of the quiet lab and lost time. She woke to Cosima standing over her. Her heart leapt and her hand flew up to cover it. Cosima smirked.
"Sleeping on the job?" Cosima asked.
Delphine simply lay on the couch waiting for her heart to slow and her breath to calm. Wrestling back some grace and dignity, she swung her legs over the edge of the cushions to plant her feet upon the floor while pushing herself up into a sitting position. "What time is it?"
Her voice emerged cracking and husky.
Cosima's smirk deepened. "Around two."
"Ah, merde," Delphine muttered, covering her face with a hand. Sighing, she pushed back her hair. "Did you just get in?"
"Maybe I did, maybe I didn't," Cosima said blithely, eyes sparkling behind her glasses.
Clearing her throat and willing moisture over her dry tongue, Delphine remarked, "You weren't here before twelve."
"But I arrived just in time for this," Cosima said, holding up her phone. With the screen pointed toward her, Delphine discerned a picture of herself crammed onto the couch, head lolling, lips parted.
Delphine considered it. "Not my best angle."
Cosima swiped to the next picture. "I got a close up, too." She turned it back around to admire her photography skill. "Is there like a DYAD Facebook group? I think they might appreciate this." Her mouth pulled in contemplation. "Maybe Shay?"
Delphine rubbed at her neck, then her shoulder, which had cricked and cramped in the mold of unnatural angles, and wished Shay were there to rub out the discomfort. "She could use the smile, though it probably wouldn't be much of a remarkable sight to her."
Cosima twitched an eyebrow at her. "The sight of you unconscious is a familiar one to her?"
Delphine flashed an ambiguous smile. Cosima hadn't quite hit the mark, but over the course of their sessions Shay had seen far more of Delphine than simply her unconscious. Though there'd been that, too. And that time she'd passed out in Shay's apartment. Shay had also seen Delphine reduced to grandmotherly efforts of speed and movement.
Really, thinking about it, Shay had witnessed a number of Delphine's less than stellar moments. Aggregating a quick mental tally, Delphine wasn't sure they were equally matched in moments of self-exposure.
Her immediate thought was that this state of affairs needed to be rectified. Only her second thought was: Why put Shay through that?
Cosima's lips pursed in rumination. "Well, I'll keep these just in case."
"In case of what?" Delphine let herself ask, perhaps because she was groggy and still in the throes of grasping operational consciousness.
Cosima shrugged.
Delphine's third wish of the day--after, one, a cigarette and, two, a massage from Shay--was that Cosima weren't so eager or so effective to behave disconcertingly to express her opinion of DYAD's methods. By any rational measure, it was difficult to fault a victim of systematic violation of privacy, but it was grating to be the target of Cosima's antics. Maybe this was why Aldous communicated with Cosima through Delphine.
Cosima stowed her phone and gave Delphine another assessment. "Maybe you should have come into work late."
"It wouldn't have served any purpose," Delphine said.
With a flick of her chin, Cosima indicated the papers sitting on the couch where Delphine's loosening fingers had dropped them. "What were you looking at?"
Delphine hesitated, reaching over to lay her fingers upon the printed pages. "Articles on patent law." Cosima's jaw squared. Delphine shook her head. "Unfortunately I pursued studying medicine, not law. I'm not sure what to look for."
Cosima's stiff chin bobbed up and down. "Yeah, I had the same problem." Her head tilted in thought. "Maybe one of us is a lawyer. There has to be a pretty good chance of that."
Delphine stifled a laugh. "Yes, but versed in which law? Mexican? Norwegian? South African? The patent appears to have been written according to American standards, but even if it were legal according to laws of the United States, I wonder if it could apply to citizens of other countries."
"Things aren't citizens," Cosima pointed out. "The question is more like whether or not we're . . . subhuman. How much artificial DNA does it take to classify an organism into another category--a different, ownable species?" Cosima lifted an eyebrow. "What do you think?"
Delphine ran her tongue over her lips. "I can see an obvious argument against measuring by genetic percentage when the bulk of naturally occurring human DNA is already largely noncoding."
Cosima crossed her arms. "But if what Leekie said is true and these artificial sequences make us clones possible, they serve a biological function. They're critical to our existence. So to possess such DNA could probably be presented as having bearing. Big agro companies are already lobbying to be able to patent GMO seeds as proprietary property. If that goes through, why not extend that argument to other deliberately modified specimens? Wouldn't that be the obvious argument from any DYAD lawyer?"
Delphine nodded, grave. "I know. I had similar thoughts."
Cosima frowned. After a moment, she said, "Dude, that does not make me feel better."
"I'm sorry," Delphine offered sadly. "I told you, I studied medicine, not law."
Cosima's mouth pressed into a thin slash. "And there wasn't any good medical reading for you to pass the time with?"
"Did you get my email?" Delphine asked. "The lab results came back positive." She nodded, pushing herself to her feet to fetch the papers. "Your numbers are good, too. If they weren't, I would press Aldous to move faster, but we're still looking at next week."
She laid the papers out for Cosima to inspect. Cosima slowly made her way over to Delphine's side and stood quietly gazing down at the array, left arm wrapped around her middle, her other arm balanced atop the back of her wrist, fingers prodding at her lip. She turned to Delphine with an open expression. "So . . . you studied medicine but I didn't. I flirted with the idea, but it didn't mesh for me. Can you explain to me everything I'm looking at?"
A frisson of surprise lanced through Delphine. They'd gone over analyses of Cosima's blood tests before, but Cosima hadn't expressed any unfamiliarity with the specifics. After a moment, a smile, soft and a little relieved, touched Delphine's lips.
"Yes, of course."
*
Cosima suggested Delphine "cut out early" but Delphine shook her head. A brief reconsideration prompted Delphine to instead ask, "Would you like the lab to yourself?"
Cosima shrugged. "I was thinking you could use some shut eye."
"Thank you," Delphine said slowly, trying to gauge and trying to stop herself from gauging the consideration Cosima was extending. "The nap helped. And hopefully I will sleep much better tonight."
Cosima nodded, to Delphine's powers of detection seemingly indifferent. The moment passed and with it Delphine's sense of equilibrium. She and Cosima seemed always to teeter, now up, now down, and where the scales balanced in any given moment was hard to determine. Maybe they had inched toward better terms. Maybe this was a momentary ceasefire, like the breaks soldiers in their trenches honored on holidays.
They worked quietly in the late parts of the day, absorbed in their own projects. Cosima leafed through the articles on patent law that Delphine had been browsing earlier. Delphine browsed the medical profiles of other clone subjects in an idle fashion, an exercise in attempting to see if anything would jump out to her sluggish mind. Nearing the time Delphine would usually pack up, her mind wandered back to the morning.
"Cosima," Delphine broached the relative quiet cautiously, "may I ask you something about your previous monitor?"
Cosima, on the couch with her legs pulled up beneath her, lifted her head. Wariness and curiosity mingled in an uncomfortable mix. "Yeah?"
"Have you spoken to her or . . . know of her whereabouts since?"
"Why, you want to contact her and compare notes or get some pointers?" Cosima's eyes narrowed. "Shouldn't you have that information already?"
Delphine shook her head. "I was just wondering."
Cosima cocked her head. "Why?"
Delphine shook her head again.
Cosima's scrutiny zeroed in on Delphine. "Why are you asking me and not Leekie?" One corner of her mouth pulled up. "Are you embarrassed to ask him?" Her expression turned more cynical. "Or maybe you think he'll lie to you?" Her eyes raked Delphine's face. "Or maybe you're just afraid?" The frivolity fled Cosima's features. "What are you afraid of, Dr. Cormier?"
Delphine didn't flinch away. "I don't know."
But she had a suspicion and maybe what she feared was having Cosima confirm it.
*
This time a message presaged any knocks on Shay's door.
From Delphine [7:15]: May I come in?
To Delphine [7:15]: Right now? Sure.
"Hey," Shay greeted Delphine at the door a few minutes later. "Did you come over to announce our weekend plans?"
The slight smile on Delphine's face stiffened and faded incrementally. "I forgot about that." The smile recovered some vigor. "No, I drove Cosima home. Hello."
"You know that you don't need an excuse or an explanation to drop by, right?" Shay asked as Delphine leaned toward her. Shay automatically turned her head to receive a kiss upon first one, then the other cheek.
"I know," Delphine said as she pulled back and maneuvered inside, "but I don't want to be an inconvenience or catch you at a bad time."
Delphine said it without emphasis or inflection, but Shay felt caught between guilt, appreciation, self-consciousness, and a slice of irritation. She summoned a smile to cover up the emotional morass. "You can always go up to Cosima's."
Delphine turned grim. "That would probably be the least productive course of action."
Shay shook her head, partly at herself. She knew she shouldn't tease. But she also knew that making sense of the two had yet to bear any fruit in the landscape Shay could make out. "Do you want something to eat or drink?"
Delphine shed bag and coat at the coat stand. "Are you having anything?"
"Sure, I'll join you if you're having something. "
"Do you still have the whiskey?"
"Do I still have the whiskey?" Shay echoed, incredulous. "Do you imagine me taking a tipple of it every now and again?"
"Tipple?" Delphine repeated, head canting, caught on the hook of confusion.
"A drink. Add it to your vocabulary," Shay teased. "You want it on the rocks or straight up?"
"Ice, please."
Delphine sat down at the table, lowering herself with a circumspection and languish that Shay parsed in a glance. Shay joined her with a tumbler of whiskey and a glass of pinot grigio for herself.
"You okay?" Shay asked. "Is your hip bothering you?"
Delphine smiled with a tired self-deprecation. "I slept in a bad position. My body is making me pay for it."
"Do you want to go for a walk?" Shay asked.
"What?" Delphine asked.
"Do you want to go for a walk and stretch out?" Shay clarified.
"In this weather?" Delphine asked.
"We have coats," Shay said. "The result of years of human ingenuity and--" Shay smiled. "--science. You can fortify yourself with a few sips of that, too."
On cue Delphine sipped at her whiskey, eyeing Shay speculatively. Putting down her drink, she asked, "Would you really go for a walk right now?"
"I wouldn't have suggested it otherwise."
Delphine's eyes narrowed in consideration, but in time she shook her head. "If it were earlier, perhaps. I'll just have to endure the consequences of my poor choices."
"The other option," Shay pointed out, "is to stay inside and stretch."
"You mean do yoga," Delphine said.
"We could work up to that," Shay agreed with a smile.
Delphine shook her head chidingly.
Letting her off the hook, Shay changed the topic. "Any ideas for this weekend?"
"I'll think of something," Delphine reassured her. With a fingertip she wiped away a gathering drop of condensation on the exterior of the glass. "Shay, do you stay in touch with your exes?"
Shay responded with her mind's first association: "Did an ex of yours appear today?"
Delphine smiled, a reflex of surprise, but with amusement lighting her eyes. "No. I don't really stay in touch with my exes. It seems mutual."
"Okay," Shay said slowly, "just trying to see where this is coming from."
"I'm not thinking about my exes," Delphine supplied.
"You're thinking of my exes?" Shay asked with uncertainty.
Delphine laughed, clearly startled. "No, I'm thinking about your relationship with your exes." Shay's expression must have contorted into an interesting display because Delphine tried to amend, "I mean that I'm not curious about who your exes are, but what kind of relationship you maintain with them now." She tracked Shay's reaction. "This is not sounding any better, is it?"
"No, not really," Shay confirmed. She twirled her glass of wine by its base. "To answer your question, though, I keep in touch with some of my exes. It just depends. Sometimes the relationship was already transitioning into something more like a friendship by the end anyway."
"So you talk with them? Know where they are? What they are up to?" Delphine asked.
"Sometimes," Shay said. "With a few I'm still close. Facebook helps in that you don't even have to talk with someone to know what they're up to." She licked her lips. "Why exes specifically?"
Delphine hesitated. "It came up."
"With Cosima?" Shay said, a little surprised at the notion. She didn't imagine Cosima was shy or taciturn about her sexuality, but the idea that she'd shared that with Delphine did throw Shay for a loop. It seemed intimate for two people determine to put nothing less than a Bering land bridge between them.
"No," Delphine said, eyes on the tumbler. "I was looking at the case of a previous patient I had." Her eyes flickered up to Shay and whatever she saw made her ask, "What?"
Shay took a deep breath. "I don't know if you realize it, but I try very hard not to ask you too many questions. And right now I have like a million questions."
"Yeah?" Delphine asked, adjusting on the seat, her tone taken aback. "Like what?"
"Like . . . was this previous patient an ex of yours?" Shay asked.
Delphine smiled faintly. "No."
"Okay," Shay managed in a drawn out drawl, "so what in the world about this patient made you think of exes?"
Delphine's lips pursed. "I heard that her partner left her. He used to always come with her to her appointments and they seemed so . . . devoted. Hearing about their separation . . . was sad. I wondered if . . ." Delphine tilted her head. "I wondered if a relationship like that could just end. Without . . . repercussions."
"You mean like material repercussions or emotional ones? Like lingering feelings?"
Delphine nodded slowly.
"Breakups can be hard," Shay said, knowing it sounded obvious and trite. She regarded her friend. "Some people need a clean break, others settle into different arrangements."
"Yes," Delphine agreed softly. She met Shay's eyes. "Do you worry about the welfare of your exes?"
"In a general way, yeah, sure," Shay said.
Delphine tapped the glass with a fingernail, sending off a sharp ping. "I don't really think about my exes."
"Clean break," Shay reiterated.
Sorrow tugged at Delphine's mouth.
"Why did you look sad just now?" Shay asked softly.
Delphine brought the tumbler to her lips, ice cubes shifting in soft clinks, and sipped. "It's hard to think that my former patient's illness didn't have something to do with their separation."
Shay's mouth thinned into a line. "Yeah. It's--it's probably tough."
Delphine caught the stutter. She looked at Shay with that unnerving clinical assessment.
Shay bit at her lower lip. "Did she get better?"
"No," Delphine murmured. "Not yet."
Shay nodded. "Maybe it became too much for him." Delphine ducked her head. Shay felt a rush of tenderness for her friend. "Is that why you were wondering if I keep tabs on my exes?"
Delphine's lips pressed into a slash of consternation. "I wonder if he worries about her, yes. Or maybe . . . maybe he can't."
"Can't?" Shay asked.
Delphine raised her eyes to Shay's. "I'm not sure what I'm saying." Her gaze lingered, seeming to search for something. To Shay's surprise, a smile unfurled across her lips. "How are you?"
"What?" Shay said in a near gasp at the abrupt pivot.
"I feel like I haven't asked you that in a while," Delphine said. "How is work? Any luck with, um, Sapphire?"
Shay exhaled a curt laugh. "Everything's fine. And, no, no luck on that front. I decided to take a break from searching. It was getting a little depressing."
The final word snagged Delphine's ear with a little jerk. "And that's . . . okay?"
Shay smiled. "Yeah? I haven't really noticed one way or another. Especially lately. You and Cosima have kept me busy."
"Is that okay?" Delphine asked, with greater uncertainty. "That we've . . . kept you busy?"
"I'd let you know if it wasn't," Shay said.
"I worry that you wouldn't," Delphine countered in a soft, but frank tone, eyes careful upon Shay.
They studied one another, their relationship a foundation beneath their feet turned jelly and elastic. Shay always felt Delphine perceived more than she let on. What Delphine ascertained was a question of depth, not probability, and Shay had become accustomed to the opacity of Delphine's thoughts. She had little practice with how to dance with a thought tossed into the open.
"Come on," Shay said in an attempt at levity, "haven't I closed the door on your face before?"
"Yes," Delphine breathed. "Once." She gave the tumbler a spin between her fingers. "You say you want to ask me a lot of questions, but sometimes I feel it's difficult to ask you even the simplest ones."
Shay measured her breaths, unprepared for the tightening of her stomach, the acceleration of her heart. "What do you mean?"
Delphine swiped a slash through the condensation. "If I ask how you are doing, you almost always say that you are fine or okay, and I wonder if that's true--or if you say that because it's the socially constructed polite answer and it's the path of least resistance." Delphine nudged the tumbler so that it caught the light at a different angle. "But then I think: If one day you said you weren't fine, what would I do? How could I help you? Could I help you? And I see that you make it easy for both of us.
"But," Delphine continued, volume bleeding from the projection of her voice, "when an issue is troubling me, I find myself coming to you. You don't need to ask for me to talk. I know you will listen. But I can't ask you to do the same with me." Her eyebrows pinched toward one another. "I'm not sure you need to."
"Your life seems way more stressful than mine," Shay allowed.
"That doesn't mean I should burden you," Delphine said.
"You don't burden me," Shay said. "To unburden yourself doesn't necessarily mean you burden someone else. I don't feel like I have to solve your problems. I mean, I have questions, yeah, but really all I do is listen."
Hesitation pulled at Delphine's mouth, but she merely shook her head. "I worry about you, too, you know."
Shay clamped down on the objection that leapt reflexively to her tongue. Because she repeatedly told Delphine not to worry. Because this conversation was something different between them. Delphine was saying something different, but exactly what Shay couldn't pinpoint, only able to recognize how it sent a flutter along her nerves.
"I'm doing okay, Delphine," Shay said, laughing a little to inject lightness. "Really. I'm actually planning to hold you to very high standards for whatever you decide we're going to do this weekend."
Delphine regarded her wordlessly with that cool gaze of hers. At its conclusion a little smile peeked out. "Okay. I will do my best to rise to the challenge."
"No pressure," Shay teased, letting the familiar rhythms relax her nerves.
Delphine raised her tumbler. "Here's hoping it will be my most stressful decision until then. Santé."
Delphine smiled when Shay touched her wine glass to the tumbler. They both took healthy sips and, as if to shake off the gravity the turn in their conversation had exerted, threw out possible activities for a weekend venture.
Delphine criticized, chided, and chuckled on cue, but Shay found herself thinking that sometimes Delphine's smile didn't touch her eyes. Maybe it was her imagination, running overly sensitive. Or maybe Delphine was simply tired and taxed, as she could be in recent months. Maybe Delphine had other things on her mind.
Maybe. Hopefully.
Maybe Shay could have asked. But, for once, Shay didn't care much to know the answer.
//
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