REMARKABLE

46

It was two days later that Armineh summoned the courage to look at him when he was transferred into a room from the ICU with fewer needles poked into his arm and slightly better in appearance. She had stayed with him when he'd been falling in and out of consciousness, then. She stayed beside him with brutal anger simmering in her veins as he yelled out his frustrations, suffering through the withdrawal symptoms of binge drinking.

Yahya Firas blinked his eyes as he tried to regain some focus of his surroundings and groaned, again. He was much better than he had been three days, ago.

"No, no. I won't be coming to the office. Email the report, yeah?" Armineh spoke in the phone pressed to her ear, tucked in the crook of her neck as she walked to the room from the cafeteria with a cup of coffee in her hand and her laptop tucked under her arm.

Armineh stopped in her track when she found him, awake and sitting in bed. The nurse squeezed the fluid bag before leaving the room with a soft smile on her lips. The light honed his sharp cheekbones and the protruding collar bones, a sliver of his chest hair visible from the round collar of his hospital gown.

"I got to go, Saline. Why don't I call you back, yeah?" Armineh cut the call even before Saline could say anything.

Armineh suppressed the urge to yell at him, "You're awake."

She willed herself to calm the rush of rage she felt when he lifted his head to look at her, "So, no salaam or how are you feeling?" Yahya Firas said, his lips curled into a hesitant smile, trying to diffuse the tension in the room.

"You have the nerve to ask that of me?"Yahya Firas looked away from her as she stood glaring at him at the foot of his bed with her arms crossed on her chest.

"You tried to kill yourself," She reminded him and she wasn't gentle. Yahya Firas heard the deliverance of betrayal, it was without an ounce of sympathy," If I may ask, why? After all this time, why?"

"I did," Yahya Firas gathered his breath, "Forgive me."

"Is that all? You won't even try to deny the allegation?-" Armineh shook her head, disappointment filling her,"-Except it isn't an allegation because you accept that you did," Armineh took a deep breath, her heart thundering in her ribcage, "You beat that guy and it triggered all this, didn't it? The dark memories, the knawing guilt, and raw anger? Would you mind if I blamed myself for it? You know, people have told me to not stay too late and If I hadn't stayed late, it wouldn't-"

Yahya Firas, cut in, guiltily, "I will mind, Armineh."

"Do you blame me?"

"Armineh..."

Armineh blinked the unshed tears in her eyes, "It is because of me, isn't it? You have only gotten worse while I have been living with you. You wrote it in those papers, you last overdosed when you were nineteen and it's twelve years, later that you did it, again while I am with you. Tell me, will you try it, again? I know, you won't know for sure but you must feel something. There must be something. Something that could indicate-"

"Do you think I should divorce you?" Yahya Firas clenched his jaw hard, looking away from her.

"Yes, I will talk to baba and he won't force you into this, again. He won't force you to do anything against your will. Five years speak for themselves, Yahya Firas. Look at us, "She gestured to Yahya Firas, "Look at you. There's no improvement. Zero progress. What's the use?"

"And if I don't, will you break us?"

"For you. To save you," Armineh spoke without missing a beat, almost as if she had decided, already.