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Empty, Hecate Hardbroom thought, the click of her heels echoing across the linoleum floor. Where the hospital’s hallways had once been teeming with energy, sometimes too much if you would have asked her before – healers and their scurrying protégés bustling about, visitors tapping their legs in nervous anticipation, the glimmer of messages zipping through the air, the steady hum of spells monitoring patient progress, and the pungent smells of bubbling potions – now there was only silence.
Hecate had mostly stayed on the sidelines. She had never had her hands elbow-deep in a person's chest or inserted a breathing tube, never stitched up any wounds or bandied about with a myriad of plasters and potions to reset a broken bone. But she would catch glimpses as she passed through the corridors to her modest office, and the air would crackle with the weight of life and death. A knife's edge of skill and chance.
No, Hecate had never held a life in her hands, but she had been responsible for thousands, in implemented policies and meticulous spreadsheets, annual budget reports and quarterly requisition forms for supplies. In what others might dismiss as tedious administration, Hecate reveled. She meditated on black-and-white numbers and letters, those mundane pieces of information that determined daily operations.
She reigned in the details, and for it, they called her, “The Machine.” It was a backhanded compliment if she had ever heard one and one that never failed to ruffle her feathers, the cavalier attitude with which they exchanged her humanity wholesale for a mechanical mind. Her oversight of productivity quotas and quality improvement initiatives did not give rise to many budding friendships, and her name provided an easy target for jokes.
“Introduce me to Hecate Softbroom any day,” she had overheard Dimity Drill grumble one afternoon in the break room, after the healer’s request for a last-minute holiday had been denied. It was a bitter allusion to an experiment gone wrong among the trainees, or so they had said, and the most vocal of her detractors had laughingly shared such horrifying descriptions of her crawling around the laboratory, erupting into giggles at the slightest provocation, and squealing delightedly at the prospect of anything “fun.” Wagging hips and salacious dance moves had been suggested. In short, hedonism had ruled the day, and every department had run amuck.
“Oh, come off it,” Pippa Pentangle quipped. Between hospice appointments, she poured herself a generous cup of coffee from the fresh pot, sighing contentedly at the hit of caffeine. “You wouldn’t want her any other way.”
While Hecate had had no lingering memories of the event, the sheer volume of complaints in the aftermath had been telling enough: staffing schedules disrupted, trainees aimlessly wandering the halls, subpar patient care. Foremost among them had been Pippa’s. Although not on-site that day, the blonde witch had been furious upon hearing the news. In fact, it had been one of the first times Hecate had ever seen the pleasant witch visibly upset.
“No, I wouldn’t,” Dimity begrudgingly agreed with wry fondness.
Pippa had firmly advocated for an immediate review of healer fundamentals, with particular attention to magical consent and the principle of doing no harm. Hecate had gladly relegated those disciplinary actions to Dimity, as one of the more senior staff. The less she was privy to the trainees in question, the better. But she had arrived early the next day to find the potions laboratory spotless and her rather lengthy morning checklist completed in full for the rest of the month.
“But,” Pippa mused, “I wouldn’t mind seeing Hecate with her hair down.”
“You missed it, Pentangle,” Dimity said with a knowing grin. “It was something to behold.”
The whole incident had been readily smoothed over, Hecate refusing to consider too intently the implications and brushing it off as a foolish accident or a misguided childish prank. If she made sure to always have jimson weed and frog gloop on hand for a quick antidote, she chalked it up to prudent precaution.
And so, the hospital had returned to its usual, unremarkable cadence, exactly as Hecate preferred. There had been days of sweat-covered brows from a battle well-won and days, where the heaviness felt crushing. But there had been a sense of sacred balance and perhaps a touch of arrogance, in their titles and talents, conflating degrees with wisdom, confusing advancements for security, and most of all, they had mistaken good luck as a guarantee of more of the same tomorrow. But Lady Luck is fickle, and when the tides of chance had turned against them, the floodgates had burst, for even magic had its limitations.
The very building now seemed to sag with exhaustion, the walls almost heaving with the effort to stay upright.
Blame had been laid at her feet. Dimity had barged into her office one morning. Outraged, the healer had rattled off her demands. Supplies were running low, their stock of potions near depleted, staff were running ragged, and beds. How desperately they needed more beds.
Their weekly meeting interrupted, Ada Cackle had merely shaken her head. The Chief Healer repeated the facts they all sadly knew. Healing spells only worked on minor injuries. Soothing potions could help with the pain. But this illness, this illness was ravaging, and the situation with the beds was both not as and more dire than they could stomach.
Hecate had had no reply. There was little she could say, and the efficiencies inspired by sleepless nights could only do so much. The charges, by now, were long familiar to her, the same ones with which she charged herself, and she had found no defense.
At first, the cases had been few and far between. There had been small, local whispers of a traveling wizard felled by a mysterious disease, a coven stricken with sickness, then another. Stories trickled in from the outskirts, people hardly seen and scarcely counted, their lives a series of miseries upon miseries, or at least, that was the tale that was told. What was one more? And so it began, until it could be ignored no longer. But, of course, by then, it was far too late.
The nights had dragged on. The days had felt even longer as patient after patient had wasted away. Felicity Foxglove, a young witch just coming into her own, had been harassed, spit on by a grieving father hissing wild accusations until Hecate had disarmed him. A healing potion had staunched her wounds, but she had trembled for the remainder of her shift, flinching away whenever a stranger came near while adamantly refusing to leave her post.
Hecate herself had threatened to fire Enid Nightshade if she didn't vacate the premises. The overzealous trainee had been barely able to stand, taking on back-to-back shifts in clear violation of safety protocols to cover staff shortages, and only the threat of termination had driven home the message that this was not a recommendation. Enid had glowered mutinously. But thank the Goddess for Mildred Hubble. Hecate never thought she would see the day. Wrapping an arm around Enid’s shoulders, she had whispered gentle encouragements to get some rest and come back in the morning, and Enid had sagged against her. A quick nod to the most senior of her trainees brought forth Esmeralda Hallow, and as Hecate transferred away, Esme slid forward to support Enid’s other side, her offer to stay on call through the night silencing the exhausted young woman’s last feeble protests.
The more senior staff had not been so easy to corral. There had been Dimity spilling mounting frustrations at the vending machines after another disheartening loss. Hecate had dropped her head, slumping into the corner hidden from view. Amidst the soft thud of salt and empty calories, sugar and snacks that bore the semblance of sustenance, Hecate’s name was bitterly raised more than once. She understood. She was the face of incompetence, of callous intransigence, the wall against which Dimity banged her bleeding fists to no avail, and Hecate was willing to be that wall. Someone needed to be.
But where Hecate was resigned to grim realities, Pippa had uncomfortably come to her aid. “We’re doing everything we can.” Hecate had learned early on that the perky blonde had a nasty habit of interfering where help was neither needed nor wanted. The words were the thinnest of platitudes, the kind Hecate hated on principle, and they left a taste of dust in her mouth.
Dimity, however, was not a witch easily assuaged, and Hecate respected her all the more for it. Dimity scoffed, a dark look in the black woman’s eyes. She shook her head. “Not everything.”
Pippa’s weary eyes flicked up. Pippa had witnessed more loss than most, and the strain showed on her face. For a moment, her eyes narrowed against the glare in the glass, and Hecate felt exposed. But before she could react, Pippa’s gaze had already traveled back to the hunched over witch before her. Strong arms curled around Dimity. Sitting with people in their pain and grief and somehow providing a modicum of comfort felt like a different type of magic altogether, and Hecate transferred away to the haunting sound of broken sobs. She had never heard Dimity cry before.
Hecate reappeared in the eerie darkness of the sterile laboratory, assaulted by the weak acidic scent of disinfectant. The faces of the Great Wizard and his advisors swam to the surface of her mind, expressionless and implacable. Scattered parchments, displaying numbers and figures, were spread across the table, statistical analyses that condensed grief and failed systems into pure data. There was a chasmic divide between sympathy and empathy, and nowhere had that divide felt more unsurpassable than in that room as thousands were afflicted outside their walls. Braziers flickered on at the sweep of her hand, flames chasing the images away, and in the stillness, Hecate felt a sense of calm settle over her. With a flick of her wrist, she conjured her checklist and perused their potions stores. She was partway through her daily tally when she caught movement in her periphery.
A figure emerged from the shadows, and Hecate smothered a shriek.
“Here.” Pippa had held out a granola bar. “You need to eat too.” Hecate had hesitated before reaching for the proffered bar, and their hands had brushed lightly in the exchange, eliciting a shiver down Hecate’s spine. It had only been a few short weeks ago that those fingers had been inside of Hecate, plunging and twisting, as gasping moans escaped her lips.
Today, there was no figure emerging from the shadows. She was alone.
Along the vacant hall, a door stood quietly ajar. The bed was laid with crisp linens, the room sterilized and prepared for the next patient, who might need it. The recriminations had felt easier to manage than the sympathies of well-meaning colleagues. Beside the bed, a solitary stiff-backed chair sat unoccupied. She could still remember the aching in her bones from hours sat in that chair, her mother’s wheezes rasping in the background as she slipped in and out of consciousness.
Her mother had fallen ill with the first wave of illness. It had been chaos then. People being struck down left and right without reason, without cause, the young and the old, the healthy and the vulnerable. The hospital had been in an uproar. Their best minds had been put to the task, hours dedicated to brewing and recalibrating healing potions, but none had been effective. At least not at first. And each day, the counts had ticked higher. Her mother had been struggling with her health for some time, ailing but stable, so it had felt less like a shock and more one, continuous, slowly drawn-out collapse when her mother had contracted the illness. Hecate had already had her hospital bag packed: her knitting needles, her books, her mother’s cooling cloth, her mother’s comfortable socks. And so, her mother had been admitted, in a flurry but a somewhat familiar one, and Hecate had settled into her chair and her routines, elongating that sturdy chair when she needed to nod off for a few hours each night and shortening it each morning before heading into the office. This time, though, her decline had been rapid.
Snoring awake one evening, she had been startled to see Pippa standing by her mother’s bedside, her form outlined in the dim candlelight, a terry cooling cloth in her hand as her mother shivered in her own sweat. Blinking the bleary sleep out of her eyes, Hecate could only stare with mute gratitude.
Pippa seemed to understand all the same. “It’s my job, Hecate.”
But they both knew it was not. Hecate had made sure of it, had reorganized the schedules herself to better divvy the load and had removed this room from the rotation altogether. Her mother had not been awake for days, and Hecate could tend to herself well enough. She had seen the lines around Pippa’s eyes, the slight frazzle to her usually immaculate hair, the heaviness in her shoulders, the sag of her steps when she thought she was alone. It was too much for one person, one thinly staffed department to handle. This gentle ushering into the unknown beyond. It was painful work at the best of times, and these were not the best of times.
Gone was the intimacy of walking families through the process, of listening to patients’ fears, regrets, joys, dreams, wonderings of what comes next. Time was not on their side. Consciousness was not on their side, and the possibility of infection enforced the most isolating of measures for even the most close-knit of families. Visits were a game of roulette that hospital policy strictly forbade. Hecate’s visits to see her mother were unsanctioned, lonely, undertaken in the dead of night when only a select few roamed the halls, people Hecate trusted to turn a blind eye, to pass over a closed door, to disregard rumpled blankets stashed away in a little used closet.
Pippa shouldn’t have been here. Not in this room.
“Thank you,” Hecate had croaked, her throat rough with disuse.
“You’re welcome,” Pippa had murmured back, her gaze once more resting on her mother, as Hecate had drifted back off to sleep.
Hecate stopped at the last room on the right. She pushed the door open and was greeted by a steady hum. The scans showed no signs of change, displaying the same ebb and flow as they had the past two weeks, the same numbers from a couple hours ago. She brushed away damp wisps of lank, blonde hair. She squeezed out a cloth from the water-filled basin, dabbing at pale cheeks, a protruding collarbone. Pippa lay still on the white sheets, her brow furrowed in discomfort and her mouth twisted into a pained grimace.
Others visited, she knew. The sheets were always freshly changed, her potions routinely administered, newly cut flowers adorning the simple vase on her bedside table, a shower spell cast, but never in Hecate’s presence. Her visits were always private, uninterrupted, as if the rotating staff made a point to be extra solicitous. She supposed they thought they were dating.
Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Months of circling one another, sidelong glances, curious smiles, and one fiery stand-off at a staff meeting around time allocations for patient care.
“That’s not fair,” the blonde had huffed, bristling at the newly imposed regulations.
“Fair?” Hecate echoed incredulously. Surely, the woman could not be this naïve, but the blonde stared at her expectantly, as if awaiting a response. Hecate said scornfully, “Life has never been fair to me. Why should it be different for anyone else?”
Pippa’s reply was chastening, her voice even and her gaze incisive. “Maybe life isn’t fair, but I do hope that doesn’t mean that we ever lose sight of opportunities to be kind.”
Those months had culminated in Pippa, a tremulous smile on her lips, asking her out on a date. Hecate had stammered, somehow stringing together a coherent reply. She could hardly remember what she had said. She had anxiously gotten dressed, transferred to the restaurant, and Pippa had shyly stood up to greet her, gorgeous in a beautiful pink dress.
The date had been an unmitigated disaster.
The conversation had been stilted. After such anticipation, Pippa had fumbled for topics to discuss, and Hecate had not been much better. There had been tense laughter and awkward pauses, differences in opinion abruptly abandoned to forestall a foreseeable argument. Hecate had pushed vegetables around her plate, her stomach twisted in knots, and even Pippa had only given the vaunted dessert menu a cursory glance.
When Pippa had suggested flying her home on her broom, Hecate had been at a loss to formulate how to politely decline. The subsequent flight had been quiet, Pippa murmuring to see if she was comfortable and Hecate mumbling back in the affirmative, and then she had been leaning into Pippa’s warmth, her arms tightly clasped around her middle and her cheek laying against the soft skin of her back. At the door, a tentative goodbye had turned into lips crashing together, and then they had been stumbling to her bedroom.
Clothes had been hastily discarded, roaming hands tracing every bared patch of skin. Hecate had nipped and teased at Pippa’s breasts, placing hot, open-mouthed kisses along her neck, down her stomach, across the inside of her thighs. Pippa had pleaded her name, hands fisting into her loose hair to bring her closer and closer until all Hecate could breathe was Pippa. Pippa’s scent engulfed her senses, her taste coating her lips and her every nerve buzzing for more.
Breathless, Pippa had pulled her up towards her. Slick with sweat and wet kisses, she had pressed their lips together, first hungrily and then reverently. She had slid along Hecate’s body, her skilled fingers exploring Hecate’s folds as her brown eyes had searched hers, seeking out her pleasure points. Her groans were met with more determined swirling and stroking until Hecate was whimpering for release, again and again and again, and all the while, Pippa had held her, as if unwilling to let her go. Pippa had fallen asleep in her arms, tousled and languorous, and the next morning, Hecate had … avoided her.
In the harsh light of day, it had all seemed a horrible mistake. She had made no effort to call and taken every precaution to minimize any serendipitous meetings in the hallways. Hecate had steadfastly kept to her office, and Pippa’s confused glances had slowly shifted into stoic acceptance. And then there had been no time for tawdry office romances or lesbian angst. There had been no time for any of it.
The corridors had been overflowing with patients, every one desperate for a cure that had not come. Batches of potions were brewed in their laboratory. Hecate had pored over literature until her eyes blurred with fatigue. Ancient tomes were dusted off, their contents scoured for any mention of inexplicable maladies. Nothing was glossed over, every harebrained idea distilled for any ounce of insight. A couple months in, hopes for a cure were postponed in lieu of a protective charm that might stem the tide. Her team of potioneers had been optimistic, weeks of experiments culminating in their most promising formula yet, an elixir that had demonstrated the potential to convey a meaningful level of protective immunity. There had been cautious celebration.
Later that month, her mother had passed in her sleep. Hecate had woken up, the hum of the healing charm disconcertingly quiet, and her mother’s body cold to the touch. She hoped it had been painless. She knew it had been quick.
She transferred her papers, holing herself up in a restricted wing of the hospital to continue her work undisturbed. Preparations had to be made, and the hospital still required her attention. She had no one she could rely on to fulfill her piling duties, and their neglect was unthinkable.
She heard the swish of the automatic doors before she saw her.
“This wing is closed.” Hecate glanced up at the interloper, and Pippa’s gaze met hers, a mix of relief and consternation in her eyes.
“You’re here.”
She supposed she was. Her corporeality confirmed, Hecate waited. For a request, for an emergency, anything to explain the woman’s presence. “Did you need something?”
The blonde appeared to have no intention of leaving anytime soon. She sat down beside Hecate, her hand gently resting on her shoulder. “You’re who I needed.”
And then she tasted salt, tears dripping from the tip of her chin like a leaky fountain as she fought for breath. Pippa’s magic tingled around her, and in it, she could feel an entreaty. Nodding jerkily in tacit permission, Hecate felt her body dissolve, the nonexistence a welcome reprieve. She rematerialized in the familiar confines of her flat, tendrils of pink energy instinctively casting an impenetrable sound barrier upon the walls, and Hecate screamed.
She screamed for what felt like hours. Sometimes, Pippa would join her, her own timbre of anguish jarring and dissonant against her own. Other times, she seemed scarcely there, disjointing into a comforting hand, rubbing soothing circles on her back. A hot cup of lemon and honey tea, bitter green leaves seeping in steaming water, a touch of slippery elm for the pain. Her throat was parched, her eyes puffy and dry. Her body felt an arid wasteland, her legs long given out beneath her as she sank into the carpeted floor.
Unseen hands wiped her face clean, guided her into her dressing gown, and tucked her into bed. Hecate grasped the departing arm with one clawing hand, and the bed shifted with a new weight, Pippa’s solid body coiling tightly around her. In the morning, Pippa had snuck out with a kiss to her temple and a whispered apology, “I have to go,” and Hecate had succumbed to sleep once more.
When she had returned to work three days later, Pippa had been admitted.
“Why wasn’t I informed?” Hecate snarled. Her magic sparked outwards in search of Pippa’s like an animal unleashed, thrashing unseen through crowded corridors, and Ada recoiled at the harsh rebuke.
“We had it under control,” Ada said calmly, appealing to her reason. “I didn’t want to disturb you---”
But Hecate had no patience for reason. “Where?” she barked, spinning, scanning for any trace of the blonde.
“The South Wing ---” Hecate hardly heard Ada’s last words as she whirled away, finding the open door in that detestable corridor whose acquaintance she would rather forget. She found herself barging in, startling the staff inside. At the sight of Pippa, moaning and convulsing in horrible spasms, struggling for breath, the anger she had tended, that rumbling thunder, that crackling fury, was doused in an instant, and she stumbled back.
Seeing Pippa that way, helpless and in pain, felt like more than she could bear. She was her light in the darkness, one of those blinking lights that drove one insane, but even that had been snatched away. And the darkness felt cold and unceasing.
That had been four months ago. Since then, Hecate’s visits had toggled between anger and despair. It felt a farce. What was the point of having a hospice worker when she was incapacitated during a crisis? The absurdity of the present circumstances offended her. Under Hecate's oversight, the hospital’s brightest potioneers and healers had finally managed to concoct a potent enough charm to protect the healthy, but its effects seemed limited on the already afflicted. The inpatient wings had slowly emptied, but Pippa had remained. While others had celebrated, Pippa had refused to wake, stubbornly comatose. She wanted to rail at Pippa, to yell and shove her up against the wall and test their combustive tempers.
Patients needed her.
Hecate needed her.
She ached one moment and closed off with almost dispassionate detachment the next. But every day, she came, redoing the tasks she could, re-checking the tasks she couldn’t, and when there was nothing left to do, she would open the drawer, pull out her needles and her skeins of unseemly pink yarn, and knit. It occupied her hands. Better that than tearing the hospital room to shreds with lashing rage.
She sent another wave of healing magic into the blonde’s listless body. The air was dense with weaving strands of magic as she poured more and more of her power into the chant. Her arms trembled from the exertion, her chest heaving from the pressure. Dimity had caught her once, alarmed by the flickering lights, the smell of burning smoke. Forcibly lowering Hecate’s shaky hands, Dimity had chastised her most severely. “This won’t help, Hecate. You need to conserve your strength.”
She had not asked for what. If there was even a chance – and Dimity had not been able to deny it definitively. “Not likely” was not “no.” – then Hecate would give. And when spent, she would knit. Her hands restless and her mind scattered, the blanket was rife with dropped stitches. Over the months, a scarf had become thick socks, then a chunky sweater, finally a blanket. The drawer held an embarrassing wardrobe of pink. Few were fit to wear in public, and Hecate cringed at how she would possibly explain them all, the unabashed sentimentality. But that, Pippa’s eyebrows quirking with amusement, her lips twitching to restrain a fond smile, was a problem she would gladly face.
And for hours, she would talk. About nothing, about everything. About her frustrations, about Pippa’s appalling productivity reports, the mini catastrophes wrought by none other than one Mildred Hubble. She would wax about the weather forecast and read aloud the saccharine cards that decorated the blonde’s room. Pippa received countless get-well cards, from her family, her many friends, affectionate colleagues, and the surviving loved ones of patients, who had passed on, and Hecate had promised to read them to her, although not without comment. Her editorializing became particularly acerbic when reciting those sent by the blonde’s doting admirers. Over-the-top flower bouquets that always wilted with surprising rapidity and effusive declarations of love, often curtly paraphrased, and somehow finding their way to the bin. Hecate did her best.
On quiet nights, when the flames were little more than embers, her moods would often turn nostalgic.
“Do you remember when we met? You had just been hired by the Great Wizard, and you sauntered into the break room. I know you don’t think you sauntered, but you did. In that outlandish pink dress. I mistook you for a visitor and walked you all the way to the reception desk before you bothered to correct me.” Hecate had fumed for days, burning at the humiliation.
You barely let me get a word in edgewise. She could almost hear Pippa laughingly protest. And I appreciated the tour. Even more so---.
“Please don’t say ‘the view,’” Hecate groaned.
Can you blame a girl? Pippa would wink, and at Hecate’s sputtering, Pippa would relent. I was going to say, the company.
“Why must you always wear pink?” Hecate would sigh exasperatedly. If Pippa had only worn the traditional healers’ uniform, Hecate would often assert, but hospice, on this point, Pippa had been adamant, had opted for less clinical garb. Something softer. Gentler. More inviting.
She would remember their squabbling.
“A little professionalism would go a long way, Ms. Pentangle,” she had chided when Pippa had strolled in late to a staff meeting, several others straggling in behind her without remark. The next day, Pippa had arrived at work, dressed almost entirely in black with only the slightest accent of pink in her belt, her blonde hair braided into an elaborate bun that bore a striking resemblance to Hecate’s own coiffure. She had raised her eyes in challenge, and Hecate’s lips had thinned with the displeasure of being mocked. “A word, Ms. Pentangle.”
The private rebuke had somehow devolved into a passionate snog, and when they finally parted, panting, their clothes disheveled and their faces aflush with indignation and lust, curiosity had glimmered in Pippa’s eyes. Hecate supposed hers had flashed with fear. Pippa had shown up the next morning, outfitted in her usual pink attire, and to this day, Hecate could not say “Ms. Pentangle” without a surge of heat reddening her cheeks.
During their darkest days, Pippa would come to her for refuge. The first time Pippa had stolen into her office, slipping in and closing the door shut behind her, Hecate had been baffled. Pippa had been trembling against the doorframe, her eyes closed tightly as if warding off some dreaded omen, and Hecate had hesitantly stood. Crossing the floor, she had taken Pippa silently in her arms, and for a few precious moments, they had simply breathed as one, slow and steady. When Pippa’s breaths had evened, she had vanished the swelling from around her eyes, retouched her makeup, and with a wave of her hand, transferred away.
While no words had been spoken, no understanding reached, beginning that afternoon, every few days, without warning, Pippa would appear in her office. At the first sign of pink sleeves, of blonde hair, of Pippa’s magic, Hecate would rise to her feet on instinct, and for a few seconds, they would stand together, gaining strength in each other’s embrace. Then Pippa would swiftly open the door and leave, exiting as abruptly as she had entered. She would carry on to meet with her next patient, to call her next family, and Hecate would return to her seat at her desk. She would craft her reports. She would study the latest findings. She would prepare her remarks for the next meeting, and she would wait. And for a while, that had been enough.
Hecate whispered into the stillness, “What would you have said if I had asked to try again?” Here, Hecate’s imagination failed her. The words faded into the quiet, only a hum to remind her that she was not alone, not yet, and as night fell, that quandary followed her into a restless slumber.
When she awoke, it was to the sound of hacking coughs. Hecate was up in an instant and rushing over to the bed. Brown eyes fluttered open, panicked, and Hecate rushed to fill a glass of water from the jug nearby. She brought it up to the blonde’s chapped lips. Pippa drank greedily, choking on the liquid. “Slowly,” Hecate instructed, her heart racing. Pippa was awake.
Pippa’s pace slowed, and the blonde wearily closed her eyes. Pippa opened her mouth as if to speak, and instead, gasping coughs wracked her fragile body. Pippa was alive.
“Pippa,” Hecate caressed a pallid cheek. “Pippa, don’t try to speak.”
Ever stubborn, the blonde swallowed hard and rasped, “Spring … it reminds ….” She took a shallow breath. “Me of spring.”
Hecate looked on in horror. The woman was delirious. “Don’t worry, Pippa,” she reassured, her voice breaking. “I’ll call someone. We’re going to get you help.” Immediately, a spray of magic flitted away. Ada would know what to do. In the meantime, Hecate clasped Pippa’s hand firmly in both of her own. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Pippa blinked open her eyes with effort. “Pink … it ….” Hecate’s eyes welled with tears, remembering her offhanded question from hours before. The sheer nonsense of it. Why must you always wear pink. “Leaves … an impression.” The woman was brash and incorrigible.
Pippa was here.
Hecate stared awestruck. “Yes,” Pippa whispered, still struggling to catch her breath. What would you have said. “Hecate.” Lucid brown eyes met hers as Pippa attempted a weak smile. Her lips trembled at the edges, and it was the most beautiful thing Hecate had ever seen. What would you have said if I had asked. It was the question that had haunted her. The question she would murmur in that illusive space between waking and sleep.
When the hum had kept her up nights.
When she imagined the time they could have had.
I have to go, Pippa had whispered, a feather kiss brushed against her temple.
If she had only reached out a hand and pulled Pippa close instead. No, stay. Stay with me. Please. Please.
She felt the slightest of pressure against her hands, Pippa’s fingers curling infinitesimally. “It … was ….”
What would you have said if I had asked to try again.
“Always yes.”
A sob burst forth from Hecate’s chest. It was ugly and loud and wet with relief. She nodded, “Okay.” Tears rolled down her cheeks. Hecate did not bother to wipe them away. They felt earned, cleansing, cathartic. She touched her lips to Pippa’s knuckles, to the corner of her lips, to her forehead. “Okay, then that’s what we’ll do.” And for the first time, in a long time, it was enough. It was more than enough.