Chapter Text
fatin’s pov:
Three weeks after she had been rescued from the bunker, Fatin had started getting intense stomach pains. She brushed it off as anxiety, a physical manifestation of the residual stress that lingered within her from the island. It would turn out that she had appendicitis. She would need surgery. Her doctor had been great about reassuring her that this was a routine surgery, and there was little chance of something going wrong. She had briefly wondered if having an organ surgically removed from her body would affect the rest of her life. Fatin vaguely remembered her surgeon telling her that the appendix was a vestigial organ. If she had paid attention in Biology during her freshman year, she would’ve known that term already. Would’ve known that the appendix was something that every human had, but it didn’t actually serve a purpose anymore. Humans just hadn’t evolved enough to be without them. Fatin had felt reassured when the doctor told her that.
***
The rescue was a blur for all of them. All the girls has distinct memories of the island, the bunker, and then of getting home. But the events between being in their bunker rooms and then landing in LAX airport were foggy, at best. Fatin remembers deboarding the plane, all the girls taking a collective sigh of relief when they stepped foot onto solid land again.
No one was brave enough to say it aloud, but they were all glad that they didn’t experience a plane crash part two. The bone-crushing grips on each other’s hands went unspoken. The girls acted like it was normal when Shelby disappeared down the aisle to go to the bathroom and was gone for thirty minutes. Acted like it was normal when she came back bare-faced and red-eyed. None of the girls commented on Leah, whose eyes didn’t leave the window next to her for the entire duration of their flight. Fatin kept it together, of course, leaving her hand to rest on Leah’s right thigh while watching a crappy spy movie on the little screen in front of her. After the deboarding, all the girls except her and Leah had to catch connecting flights. Fatin and Leah could’ve flown closer to their homes in the Bay, but their parents were so keen to see them that it was decided that they’d drive back home after meeting up with their parents in Los Angeles. Fatin felt sadness welling up inside of her as she said that final goodbye to the rest of the girls, but she had steeled herself and turned away after giving each of her friends one last hug.
To say that being home was weird would be understating it. Fatin’s mother could barely let her breathe in the first weeks. Always offering something to eat, or something to do. Every morning at breakfast there was a spread on the table: eggs, turkey bacon, oatmeal, pancakes, and almost every fruit imaginable. Fatin rarely ever ate breakfast, though, and would often grab a yogurt from the fridge, never touching anything on the table. Her brother’s tried to give her some space, but they begged her to play Mario Kart with them a few times a day. The only thing that felt normal was her relationship, or lack thereof, with her dad. Just like right before the island, he seemed pretty content on just ignoring her. Passing the peas to her silently at the dinner table, leaving the kitchen anytime she walked in. But now, his actions no longer stung. She had been stranded on a deserted island for god’s sake, a little silent treatment could never hurt her again.
Another weird thing that turned out to be a change for the better, was how often she started seeing Leah. Being in a relationship with Leah in the bunker felt normal and good. But coming back to their hometown which they had previously shared without ever crossing paths, was sort of strange. She knew so much about Leah, but had never seen her bedroom. The blue comforter, the art on the walls, the record player in the corner with a bunch of records stacked next to it haphazardly. Fatin realized Leah knew little of Fatin’s home life either, besides the big things like her relationship with her parents. The first time Leah was over at the Jadmani house, Leah ran her hand down the neck of Fatin’s cello, her fingers collecting a small layer of dust on them. Leah’s eyes grew three sizes when she saw Fatin’s extensive closet. But overtime, they both settled into their shared routines. And they both got used to their heavily intertwined lives again.
The first few weeks of being home, before Fatin and Leah were forced to go back to school, were spent spending almost every hour of the day together. The only time the girls weren’t in each other’s presence was when they were at their mandatory therapy sessions, which Fatin despised.
Fatin had explained it to her therapist, Carmen, a million times by now. She didn’t feel any specific type of way about the island. In some ways, Fatin felt like the island had lived up to its original promise of being a retreat. Although she couldn’t say she did much relaxing towards the end of their island stay, Fatin knew for a fact that the island changed her. She made seven friendships that she knew would last the rest of her life. She realized that she could in fact go some time without an orgasm. Maybe not fifty days ever again, but forty-eight hours seemed doable now. She had realized that she was someone who was reliable. Really reliable, even. Of course, she had nightmares and had fell into a bit of a codependent relationship with Leah after the island. And she had a bad habit of worrying about Leah, and that habit of worrying bordered on obsession, really. But she never mentioned any of that to Carmen, or anyone. Fatin prided herself in her ability to build a nearly impenetrable barricade around anything that resembled an emotion. Anytime she felt a tear start to prick her eye, she ended her session with Carmen early and pulled it together before she even left the large office building. And maybe it wasn’t healthy, but it worked for her.
Fatin spent a lot of time talking to Carmen about Leah. Leah was easy to talk about, Fatin liked Leah. A lot. She probably even loved her, although she never voiced that thought aloud. Leah had said it to her shortly after they got home after the experiment, but Fatin wasn’t sure if what she felt was really love. Wasn’t sure if she really knew what love was. To Fatin, love was like an organ. Love, a hidden away organ inside of everyone that has performs a specific function. In people like Leah, love was a vital part of their survival. Its constant beating, pulsing, thrumming a gentle and necessary reminder of what it is to be alive. In people like Fatin, love felt out of place. The pulsations felt unnatural and unwelcome, and Fatin had to resist the urge to claw love right from her body. To set it, and herself, free. Like her appendix, Fatin wondered if love was a vestigial organ. Something that everyone should’ve grown out of a long time ago. Something that everyone had anyway.
Fatin danced around the love word in therapy. She was sure Carmen could see right through her, but Fatin just didn’t want to have to explain her flightiness and unwillingness to commit to a relationship to Leah. Too much to unpack there. Instead, Fatin talked about how Leah made her feel. How she loved when she was laying in Leah’s bed, watching her girlfriend reading a book at the desk. How she felt more exposed laying there in a long t-shirt that skimmed her mid-thighs than she ever did hooking up with random guys every night before the island. How she would flit her eyes between Leah and the ceiling, because she didn’t care about her phone when she was around her girlfriend, but she was also scared to be caught staring for too long. On a day when she was feeling particularly open, Fatin even explained to Carmen how around Leah she felt like her ribs were cages, holding back a dozen songbird confessions that always felt too big to be released in the moment. Or ever. Only Leah would have Fatin using cringey metaphors like that. And as much as Fatin pretended to hate it, acted like the ways Leah's nerdiness had rubbed off on her horrified her, Fatin loved it. And she tried to take note of every way Leah changed her.
Most of the time, these sessions with Carmen felt like enough. Fatin avoided talking about the island and instead talked about all the good parts of her and Leah’s relationship. Effectively avoided talking about her inability to tell Leah that she loves her too. Effectively avoided talking about certain memories from the island that played themselves on a loop in her mind. And effectively kept up the walls she so carefully built around herself and her heart.
***
It happened slowly at first. And then eventually, like most things, it happened all at once. Fatin stopped seeing Carmen after her mandatory two months of therapy were up. She hated therapy, and if she really thought about why she hated it, Fatin would’ve realized it was because Carmen was always right. Carmen had told her that everything was going to catch up to her. But never mind that. Leah kept going to therapy. Kept seeing some guy named Kevin twice a week for a while, until she felt stable enough to start going once a week. And Fatin was happy for Leah. Leah seemed more grounded than ever. The panic attacks in the middle of the school day kept happening. The ones where Leah would text Fatin a simple wave emoji and Fatin would meet her girlfriend in the girl’s bathroom on the second floor in the science wing without a second thought. But they started becoming less and less frequent. The nightmares kept happening. Fatin and Leah would switch off comforting each other whenever the other was plagued by a night terror. But eventually, Leah stopped having many of those, too. And Fatin became embarrassed by the way she continued to startle at two a.m. every night, waking them both up. Became embarrassed by the way Leah would wrap her in a tight hug and guide Fatin’s head to her chest. Leah’s heartbeat always brought her back to reality, but she hated feeling this needy. So Fatin trained herself to shake less violently, she started taking the medicine the doctor prescribed her ages ago to help with the nightmares. Anything to prevent Leah from becoming the worrier in their relationship. Anything at all.
It was a Thursday night and Fatin and Leah were in Leah’s room. They had been sleeping, and Leah still was, but Fatin had been awoken by yet another nightmare. This one was the typical nightmare; the one where Leah takes all the benzos they had in the medical kit on the island. Except this time, the girls don’t find Leah in time. Fatin is the one to find her girlfriend’s body. And the moment she looks into Leah’s normally lively blue eyes, Fatin knows that she’s gone. And then the screaming starts.
Fatin carefully extracted herself from Leah’s arms. She quietly padded over to Leah’s ensuite bathroom and locked the door behind her. She didn’t even bother turning the light on, she didn’t want to face her reflection in the mirror when she was like this. Her brain was telling her to scream. Scream. Scream. But no scream came. And as she hyperventilated on the bathroom floor and tried to shake the image of Leah’s lifeless eyes from her mind, Fatin even thought she might cry. But no tears came. She hated feeling like this. Powerless, vulnerable. Fragile. She imagined this was what being a newborn was like. Just a small sack of bones and muscles, reliant on someone else to keep it warm. Fatin had once asked her mother what she had been like as a baby, and her mother told her that she was just as fiery in her first hours as she would grow up to be. Fatin always heard mothers say that to their children. But she had a hard time seeing how a baby had a personality right out of the womb. But her mom insisted that Fatin was blazing from the start. Some girls aren’t born, her mother had said, they burst. And now, Fatin thinks she understood what her mom meant by that. Surely, Fatin was about to burst again soon.
Once Fatin felt that she was calm and collected enough to go back to bed, she did just that. When she joined her girlfriend under the covers, she couldn’t help but stare at Leah’s peaceful form. A lot of emotions went through Fatin’s mind. Adoration, love. Eventually a pang of jealousy. Fatin felt awful for the eventual pang of jealousy that always popped up when she was around Leah lately. It didn't feel right to be jealous of Leah’s current state of mental wellbeing. She knew how much her girlfriend had worked for it. How much Leah had truly fought for any semblance of peace in her current life. But Fatin knew that she didn’t really feel jealous, jealousy was just the easier emotion to feel. That was something Carmen had said to her a lot. Carmen had been quick to point out to Fatin when she was taking the easy way out, which was a lot, according to her former therapist. Fatin wasn't jealous. Jealousy was just the easier pill to swallow. No, Fatin felt useless. And she had been feeling that way for a while, if she was being honest with herself. The feeling first came up shortly after they had been rescued. When all the girls had gotten home and physically returned to the places and people they had been longing for for months, Fatin often wondered if there was still a piece for her in this new puzzle. But when she realized Leah still needed her after the rescue, Fatin latched onto that. She dedicated every waking moment of her day to that role. Every thought she had was about Leah. Worrying about Leah, planning some elaborate surprise to bring a quick smile to Leah’s face. She poured herself into her girlfriend’s wellbeing. But now that Leah’s wellbeing didn’t rely solely on Fatin, Fatin was left without a purpose. And the thoughts of how to help Leah were not as distracting as they were before. And Fatin didn’t like the new thoughts that took their place.
Fatin vaguely remembered her Philosophy teacher during sophomore year telling her class that when a tree falls in the forest when no one is around, it doesn’t make a sound. It doesn’t matter if the tree fell or not, her teacher had explained, if no one was there to perceive the event. Fatin didn’t really get it at the time. She thought it was more a question of the definition of sound, rather than a question of whether things continue to exist if people are not there to observe them. Regardless, she felt she now understood the age old question. Somewhere between now and being rescued from the bunker, Fatin felt that she had become something like the tree in question. Did she really exist if no one around her could perceive her? If she screamed, would she even make a sound? She tried not to ponder it for too long.