I flicked my eyes up. “Magnus.”
21
“I got a patient,” Doctor Death said. “This dumb shit head of a guy who tried to make himself some girl’s Soulmate. I don’t know why. He’s crazy. Soulless.” She blew out smoke. “Most of us are nuts. Anyway,shewasn’t Soulless, she had a Soulmate, but he killed her Soulmate and tried to connect himself with her. Anyway, it didn’t work, of course. His heart wasn’t beating as it should. But, as always, hers beat again after the death of her Soulmate so that she could find her next Soulmate. And when she found her next Soulmate? The guy killed him too! Ha!” Doctor Death landed into a coughing fit from laughing too hard. “This Soulless guy kept going around, killing off all her Soulmates, doing his best to stop her from connecting to anyone but him. I think he ended up killing a dozen people. Anyway,” she cleared her throat, “eventually, get this shit, theydidend up connecting. Funny how that happens.” She crossed her legs and leaned back in her chair. “It makes you wonder, doesn't it? Maybe connections don’t have to be with strangers. Maybe it can happen environmentally. Who knows why people are destined for certain people? Whoops, my patient died.”
She got off her wheely chair and strode over to the next bed/table and checked the pulse on her other patient. After determining that they had died, Doctor Death clicked her fingers, and her guards cleared the table.
I pressed my fingers over my own pulse.
Flat. Dull.
A languid thump here and there.
I tumbled through an ocean of too many emotions, each one a drop, filling me up as if I were about to explode with water.
There was one thought that hindered all the rest: Magnus.
“Why would my brother do this to me?” I prodded the wound on my arm, making it sting. I needed to feel it. I needed to feel anything.
I searched through all the doors of my childhood and adulthood, peeling back the layers of memories with my older brother, attempting to find an answer.
There was no reason Magnus would try to stop me from connecting.
He loved me.
I paused.
Did he?
I wasn’t quite sure what love was.
I could not cry, I could not feel… and love was a feeling. Did I even know what love was? And if I did not, did I really know what Magnus thought of me?
“You guys are pretty rich, aren’t you?” Doctor Death asked.
“I suppose, compared to most.”
“And your parents died when you were kids?”
“So?”
“Inheritances go into trusts until you’re old enough and there’s always a condition when you get it, for example, at what age you get the money. What is the condition on yours?”
“I get my inheritance when I connect with my Soulmate—oh freckles.”
She laughed. “He’s a smart guy.”
I buried my face in my hands. I did not want to be here right now. I just wanted to sink into the earth, cover myself with dirt and stay there.
“Doctor,” one of her guards interrupted. “You got a patient out here who’s lost his arm—”
“Tell him to go away.” She waved dismissively.
“But Doc, he’s bleeding out.”
“This conversation is way too interesting to leave.” She turned back to me, stroking her chin. “What do you think he’ll spend all the money on? He a carguy? He sounds like a car guy. He’ll probably cry on TV when you’re dead, and the next day he’ll buy a Lambo. Green, I’m guessing. You think green?”
I threw up.
