The rain had stopped.

It never stopped before midnight.

I found myself thinking of how odd it was that we were still there, next to a dead body, despite how much we wanted to be far away from that reminder of what had just happened and how real death was. I guess it’s true that one does what needs to be done, and people are supposed to be accompanied when they are dying and when they’ve just died. I know all the legends about resentful ghosts aren’t true, but “nobody should be alone in death or in birth”, my grandma would’ve said. 

The water had entered the cave and would have been up to our ankles if Decklan 's telekinesis hadn't kept pushing it away from where we were sitting. Usually it was me who took care of those things, but now I could only think of the smell of blood that seemed to be everywhere. Maybe it was everywhere. Maybe, just maybe, it came from the dead body next to us. The sound of our breathing made the silence of the cave even more eerie, yet we didn’t feel spooked anymore.

Decklan was crying quietly on my shoulder. My eyes stung but I refused to imitate him.

“He was badly hurt, there was nothing we could do,” I said. It was the truth. “This will probably happen more again once we become doctors. It’s impossible to save everyone. And we don’t have the knowledge to challenge death yet, but still we did all we could.”

“We moved him,” Decklan sobbed. “You said that would kill him, and then we did it.”

That was also the truth.

“He was in pain,” I argued anyway. “He wanted to be off those… rocks, and we tried. He was bleeding a lot too; who knows how much of that mud was actually blood, and look at him: liver, lu—”

“All of it.”

“What?”

“The mud that was around the rocks, it was all blood.”

“That’s impossible, Decko.”

“I could feel it. Trust me, I know the difference… And you should too.”

“Yes, I know what you mean, but… That’s not how it works. It was too much and I’m sure blood is not that thick, or—”

“I know, but I’m sure it was. Now it’s different because of the flood, of course. Though he’s bleeding even now, which doesn’t make sense either, I know, but he IS! Like a curse.”

“What?” Obviously he was more affected by this than I thought.

“Yes! Like in the movies, when blood appears out of nowhere and the guy is dead, has been dead for ages, but you still can smell his blood. And… his heart— I know I’m just being childish, but I’m even imagining his heartbeat right now.”

I knew it as soon as he mentioned his heart the first time. But it took me a while to believe it.

“You are not!” I said. Only then I moved, so fast that he lost his balance and almost fell.

“I know is crazy but I can—”

I was already inspecting the inert body. “No, Decko. It’s not your imagination.”

It was weak and slow, but there was a steady beat in his chest. He was also breathing. I couldn’t see if it was noticeable, but I could feel the movement through the same invisible threads that allowed me to move things without touching or even seeing them.

I didn’t notice when my brother took my hand, but suddenly he was almost crushing it. “He’s… not dead?”

I went through the list of things that you are supposed to do in cases like this, but it felt absurd after all those hours of having him lying on the cold floor with my sweater covering his face.

Besides, my first aid knowledge didn’t cover these kinds of wounds. If I had been able to think clearly, I would probably have just let him be and run to the town and look for someone who actually knew what to do.

Instead I came up with what I thought was a smart idea. “You can distinguish between human tissue and… things that don’t belong there, like… little rocks and… dirt,” I told my brother. “You can pull that out, right?”

I knew he was capable of doing it, his telekinesis was that and maybe a bit more. But that didn’t mean he could actually do it in the current situation.

“You mean… to clean the wound?”

I nodded. He couldn’t see me in the dark but he either felt it or guessed. Either way he understood and whispered “sure.”

I took care of keeping the water away from us, and let him work for a second before yelling at him. “Wait!”

My brother let out a shriek and something cracked elsewhere in the cave. Immediately he calmed himself and whatever he had moved in his panic didn’t cause any trouble.

“What?” he asked, his voice still wary. “What did I do?”

“No. I… I’ve just remembered. Sometimes you can’t move what’s in a wound. It could be… I don’t know, keeping something in place. Stop.”

He cursed.

He cursed again.

“I can’t stop, Tal”, he confessed. 

“Why?”

“Because I already finished. I just pulled everything out and that is that. It was just too easy, because there was nothing in the way except—”

I was about to ask what it was, when he cursed again.

“Blood. Coagulated blood.” Another curse, and a sob. “We killed him again, didn’t I?”

“We did,” I assured, noticing how he had suddenly jumped to singular, taking all the blame for something that had been my idea. “And maybe not. Maybe we prevented an infection without causing any harm. Maybe it was all going to fail either way. And… in any case, we can’t change it. We need to go back to the town. Maybe we can sense something to find it now.”

“Uhm… okay, let me try to do that. I… I don’t think he should be alone.”

I accepted the suggestion and waited as he left.

The echo of his steps stopped and then I could hear him coming back.

“Just, uh… Tal, what exactly am I looking for?”

I felt the silly urge to laugh and say ‘the town’. Instead I explained that maybe with the water currents and the quiet of the night, our “sixth sense” could catch something from the town. I felt that he was nodding, but I offered to go instead.

“No, no. I get it. Besides now that you said that, I need to try it, just to know.”

This time his steps disappeared in the distance, and I was left to wait.

And to worry.

For hours.

He was back in the cave before sunrise, exuding disappointment. By then, the heartbeat of the man was as strong as mine and way calmer.

My brother and I were trying to decide our next course of action when our patient casually said: “You cleaned the wounds, didn’t you? That helped, I think. I should do that more often.”

Since he hadn't given any sign of being awake before that, we were stunned into silence for enough time for it to be uncomfortable.

Nevertheless, the man didn’t sound anything but curious when he talked again, this time moving to a sitting position. “How did you do that, though?”

We exchanged a look that wasn’t really a look because we still didn’t have enough light to understand the meaning.

Our shared silence must have triggered something in him, because his next words were careful, even if I didn’t notice at the time. Quite the opposite: he sounded too nonchalant for the circumstances.

“Who are you?”

“Decklan Molina,” my brother said automatically.

I was sure that wasn’t the question, but before I decided if I should just say my name too, the man was asking something else:

“Why are you here?”

I knew what to say now, but I didn’t have the time to form a word before the stranger talked again.

“Nobody knows I’m here,” he said, backing away from us. “Nobody but…” his voice turned into a hopeful whisper and he stopped moving. “Did she send you? Did she…?”

“Who?” I asked, while my brother said that no, we were just lost.

The stranger didn’t seem to have listened to anything more than the ‘no’ in Decklan’s answer. Through my sixth sense I felt the oddest thing I had ever felt in my life. The man was both relaxed and tense at the same time. The weariness in his shoulders, back, neck, and even his voice was that of a man who was finally resting after a tiring day, like mom when she returned from the factory. But his legs and arms were like compressed springs. His hands, flat against the floor, were carrying too much weight.

The duality felt familiar somehow.

“Why are you here?” he repeated.

“Because it was raining and we were lost,” my brother repeated, sounding as wary as I was puzzled. Even his subsequent rambling was too slow, plagued with pauses and a hint of caution, and I had no idea why. “Listen man, we found you because of a lucky coincidence, and we would let you be if we weren’t worried that you might still bleed to death. It would be awkward to have you dying after all the crazy ride of trying to save you.”

“Coincidence,” the stranger said, disappointed, and his muscles fully relaxed. “She didn’t send you.”

Not a second after, he tensed again like a man steeling himself for the rest of a terrible work shift. The tiredness never left, though.

“She… How could she…?” He held his chest, not where his obviously broken heart was but a little lower, where one of the wounds had been. “I didn’t… I… I thought we were friends… How could she do this to me?”

The stranger was alive enough to cry.