Chapter six – Saal
The nights were longer in recovery.
Not because of the pain—though that still lingered, coiling in and out of my body like slow, silent waves. No, pain had become something familiar now. Predictable. Manageable. It wasn't the sharp kind anymore. Just a dull throb that settled into my bones like it belonged there. Like it had always been waiting for the right moment to move in and unpack its things.
What made the nights unbearable wasn't that ache.
It was the silence.
Ibtisam hadn't texted me in two days. Forty-eight hours. Two sunrises. Two sunsets. Two eternities stacked on top of each other. Not a single message. Not even a voice note, which was usually her preferred way of communication—dry sarcasm delivered with that oddly melodic voice of hers, that careless lilt at the end of her sentences like she didn't care if you understood her or not.
I stared at my phone for what felt like the hundredth time that hour, its smooth curves now so familiar I could sketch them in my sleep. Bright screen. Black wallpaper. A picture of nothing. Blankness pretending to be aesthetic. But really, it just looked like loneliness trying to stay cool.
A perfect metaphor for her silence.
I couldn't stand being inside any longer. The hospital walls were too white. Too clean. Too still. They made everything inside me louder. So I asked the nurse to wheel me out to the courtyard—a habit now. The cold helped. It reminded me I was alive, even if my muscles still trembled from the simplest movements.
Out there, under the open sky, the air had teeth. It bit gently, but it woke me up. The lights in the hospital garden blinked sporadically, as if the world was still going on just fine without me. As if no one noticed I was missing from it.
Above me, the moon hung low, carving its soft, smug smile across the dark. Mocking. Or maybe comforting. I couldn't tell anymore.
She had gone quiet since the rooftop. Since the night she broke open right beside me and I let her. Since the moment I felt her lean on me not just physically, but emotionally—for a breath, for a heartbeat, like she finally believed I could hold the weight.
I didn't want to push her.
But I needed to know she hadn't disappeared.
I unlocked my phone. Opened our chat. Scrolled back until the screen almost blurred. Her last message still sat there, timestamped, static, untouched:
"Don't get used to me being soft."
And mine, bold beneath it:
"Don't get used to me leaving you alone."
Neither of us had replied. Both of us had meant it.
I hovered my thumb over the keyboard. Typed:
"You breathing?"
Paused.
Deleted it.
Typed again:
"Just checking on you."
Backspaced. Deleted.
Everything felt wrong. Too much. Too little. Not enough to reach her.
I sighed, shut the screen, and leaned my head back against the wheelchair. The ache in my neck flared. My shoulder blades protested. Still, I sat there, letting the silence fold over me like a heavy blanket.
She was retreating.
I'd known she would, eventually. I'd known it from the first day we met, from the way she avoided soft things like they could rot her from the inside. Ibtisam didn't know how to stay. She never promised she would.
Still, I fell for her anyway.
I reached into the blanket draped over my lap and pulled out my notebook. A small, worn thing with dog-eared corners and smudges from fingers that trembled too much to grip a pen sometimes. My cousin brought it last week, thinking I'd need something to distract me. He didn't realize it would become the only place I could still speak when my throat stayed locked.
I opened to a fresh page. The night pressed against my spine, patient. Waiting.
"She talks like fire. Walks like glass. Looks like silence. But when she breathes, the world holds still."
I stared at the words.
Then I wrote, slower this time:
"She'll leave. Maybe not on purpose. Maybe not soon. But when she does, something in me will go too."
I slammed the notebook shut before I could read it again. Before I could hate myself for believing in something so fragile.
The sliding doors behind me whooshed open. A soft hiss. Then footsteps. Not rushed. Not hesitant either. Careful. Familiar.
I didn't turn around. Not immediately. But my fingers tightened around the edge of the wheelchair. My heart made a small, painful jump.
Her shadow stretched over my lap before she did.
Ibtisam.
She looked different. Not messy. Not unkempt. But something in her was off. Her posture. Her stillness. Her eyes ringed with something darker than exhaustion. Guilt. Pain. A kind of fatigue that doesn't come from lack of sleep, but from carrying things alone too long.
She didn't say anything. Just lowered herself onto the bench beside me like her body remembered how, but her mind was somewhere else entirely.
The silence returned. But this time, it wasn't cold. It was thick. Full of words we hadn't yet dared to say.
I waited.
Then:
"I almost used again."
The words landed between us like a stone in water.
I didn't look at her. Not right away.
"Did you?"
"No."
The relief wasn't explosive. It didn't come in a rush. It was quieter than that. Just a breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding finally slipping out.
"Why not?" I asked.
She exhaled. Her voice was small.
"You said not to disappear."
We sat like that for what could have been minutes or hours. Just breathing. Letting the dark settle around us like it had something sacred to protect.
Then she whispered,
"What would you do if I did, though? If I disappeared?"
I turned to her finally. Her face looked older in the moonlight. Not in age, but in weight.
"Wait."
She blinked, looked away.
"You don't have to wait forever."
"I won't have to. You'll come back. You always do."
She laughed, but it broke halfway through. The sound cracked in the middle, like her chest couldn't carry it all the way out.
She wiped at her eyes, pretending it didn't matter. Like she always did.
"I'm scared, Saal."
"I know."
"It feels like I'm standing on a ledge, and if I move, I'll fall."
"Then stay still," I said softly, "I'll stand with you."
Her hand brushed mine on the armrest. Just barely. Like a question.
Then slowly, her fingers cur
led around mine. Warm. Fragile. Real.
And for the first time in weeks, the night didn't feel like a threat.
It felt like a promise.