Her eyes narrowed, as if maybe she heard thoughts left unspoken. “It wasn’t his fault. Or yours. You were just doing your job. No.” She put a hand to her forehead, the gesture at once emphasizing her fragility and underscoring her strength. “You were doing the right thing. I would never wish for someone to be stuck there, not if there was a chance of you getting them free. You saved those women before. You saved me.”
Her unbending belief in him threatened to undo him. “If I had been there in time… If I had known...” He’d been too late, but like a miracle, she stood before him, patiently waiting for his answer. “I saw what they did to you and how you couldn’t sleep, refused to eat.”
The bright sheen of tears covered her eyes, but still she went on. “I would be dead now if not for you.”
“That’s right,” he said, willing to lay everything out if she’d only understand. “You’re alive now because of me. You asked me…you begged me to let you die. To help you do it while you were trapped in that hospital room, but I couldn’t. That was my raid, my responsibility, and you were targeted as a result of that. I wanted to be a fucking savior, and I was willing to let you suffer to accomplish it.”
His voice was hoarse by the time he finished. The words flayed him in a way that months of self-enforced exile and backbreaking physical labor never had. The guilt taunted him. She had been out there, alive and suffering.
Then Tiffany was standing in front of him, her cheeks wet with tears, but her eyes focused. “I’m glad you didn’t help me do that,” she said fiercely. “I am better. Not completely and probably I never will be, but I’m alive. I’m free. Maybe I had my weak moments, but I’m even more grateful now that you were there to keep me from letting them win.”
She took his hands, her touch warm and soothing. “You did the right thing.”
The crack in his guilt wound its way through his body, just that small sliver allowing him to see light again, to imagine a future. She was so strong to have survived, to have escaped. Strong enough to come and break him out of his own self-imposed prison. He was the one in awe. He looked down at their linked hands and gently squeezed. Thank you.
THE END