Zika's Arc

Chapter 37 of 1

The medicine worked. Day by day, Dems's skin lost its gray. She could sit up. She could eat. Then she could walk to the door and look out at the cul-de-sac. Zika stayed the whole time. She held Dems's hand through the worst nights. Now the worst was over. But Zika carried one loose thread. She had left George with an open wound. She could not build a real life on a half-finished truth. So she asked Dems to come with her. "There's a man a street over," Zika said. "I hid at his house when you were sick. He deserves to hear it from both of us." Dems tightened her fingers around Zika's. "You want me there?" "I want everything out in the open," Zika said. "No more corners." They walked to George's door together. Zika knocked. George opened it in the afternoon sun, a huge man with a white beard and dark glasses. He looked from Zika to Dems and back. His jaw tightened. "I told you not to come back," he said. "I brought her so you'd see the whole thing," Zika said. "You gave me the medicine. It saved her. That was you." She reached back and Dems stepped up beside her. Dems was steady on her feet now, color in her face. "This is the woman I chose," Zika said. "I ran to you because choosing her scared me. That was wrong. You should know it was never about you being less." George pulled off his sunglasses. His eyes were tired. For a moment nobody spoke. Neighbors passed on the street behind them. A woman with a stroller slowed to watch. Zika did not lower her voice or move to the shadows. She let the strangers see her stand between the two people who mattered. Dems spoke then. "She almost lost herself running," she said. "Your medicine gave her back to me. Thank you." She held out her hand. George looked at it a long time. Then he took it. His grip was gentle for such a large man. "You made your choice," George said to Zika. "I can see it now. Go live it." He stepped back into his doorway. "Both of you. Out where people can see. That's how you know it's real." Zika and Dems walked home in the open light. Zika did not check for watchers. She did not shrink. She held Dems's hand across the whole cul-de-sac, past four houses and staring faces, all the way to their own door. For the first time, she stood beside her partner in public with nothing hidden and nothing owed. Inside, Dems pressed a palm to her own belly, then to Zika's. "We're really doing this," she said. Zika nodded. The running was done. But a new question sat in her chest now. She was a program in a world someone else controlled. How could she promise a child a future she did not yet own? Later that night they went back to George's, and shared a public meal. Both women thought George was a generous host, if a little rough around the edges.