Now she can’t help but laugh, an entire, full laugh. The sound is respite and relief from hospitals and physical therapy, sombre spaces where no one enjoys themselves. I wish I had the ability to freeze her every laugh and smile, no matter how small, and file them away in my memory for ever. If watching her so much as breathe drives my emotions for her an inch, then hearing her laugh drives them forward a thousand miles. I want her to let herself feel, want her to realize that this is so much to me, but I hate myself for that. I don’t want to make her do anything or think anything.
Her laugh stops abruptly, forming a short gasp. Her eyes open in shock as they meet mine, and then as they travel down to the table.
‘Darien.’
I look down just as she does, and I gasp the same gasp as she has. ‘Oh … wow.’
My hand, across the table, grips hers, my thumb brushing her knuckles.
Across the table.
‘Holycrap. Shantal!’ I squeeze her hand in mine, look up at her and grin like a happy-go-lucky idiot. ‘Shantal, you’re seeing this, right?’
‘I’m seeing every second of it,’ she smiles at me. It’s a much more welcome emotion than the tears.
There’s even a layer of something new beneath the simple smile: pride.
Shantal Mangal is proud of me, and in that instant, it doesn’t matter how horrific this recovery will be. I’d do it all to see that look on her face again and again.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Shantal
Day after day, even when we travel to Singapore, Celina and I devote extra time to getting Darien back to a steering wheel. Celina runs him through the crucial motions he needs to be able to pilot the car: pull, push, extend, bend, pronate and supinate. I modify the sim set-up that we bring with us so that the steering weight is turned down significantly, and screw around with the program till I end up with something gentler than the beast that is the modded Heidelberg Hybridge Ring. It’s not exactly where I saw this system going, but the flexibility of the set-up is unbelievable. Even with Darien’s injury, we think the sim will be able to fully accommodate and re-learn with him. The brilliance of it all has cost me multiple sleepless nights and taken the team hours of video calls to perfect tweaks, but it’s going to be worth it. I know it will be.
The only issue is that I have no idea if Darien will ever so much as touch the sim set-up we’ve prepared. He’s struggling. I wonder if his reaching out and taking my hand that night,what felt to me like a miracle, was only a fluke, but I know I cannot afford to think like that. Not when this season hangs in the balance for Darien. I watch the frustration creep into his face in the form of a grimace, when he’s on the verge of tears trying to lift a weight or do something as simple as grip the handle of the rowing machine. Things that were so easy for him mere weeks ago, and now take much more than a modicum of effort to even begin doing.
And so at the end of the week, closing in on the first race that Darien won’t partake in, I decide that for many reasons, it’s time for us to take a break.
‘You should come to Chinatown with me,’ I tell Darien on Friday morning, as we walk down the hall outside the hotel gym.
‘Chinatown?’ Darien cocks his head at me like I’ve lost a handful of screws. I’m almost thankful for the return of some of his sass. ‘You gonna drive twenty minutes through race day traffic just for fun?’
‘Don’t question it. I want you to get out of this place for a minute. Not to mention I have business to take care of.’
He just stops walking and gives me an even more sceptical look. ‘In thetraffic?’
I roll my eyes. ‘Will you go?’
Dramatically, he gives me a massive roll of his eyes, although he’s smiling. ‘Fine.’
True to his word, Darien joins me for the drive out from the hotel and through the city, one we endeavour in my small grey company sedan. ‘What are we looking for, exactly?’
‘A temple.’ I scrunch my nose in concentration, glancing over at the GPS. ‘Where the hell is this place?’
He cuts his eyes my way as we get further into the streets, farenough that my car is starting to putter anxiously from the stop and start of the traffic jams. ‘Let’s start by asking if it exists.’
It does. A sign pops up off to our right side:Sri Mariamman Temple, first in English, and below in another language that looks like it might be Tamil. I hang a quick turn down the narrow alley leading in.
We almost immediately end up in a tiny parking area before what looks like a piece of architecture out of a history book. The base of the building itself looks fairly discreet, until you get a look at the massive pyramid-like spire on the top. An array of coloured carvings of figures – so realistic you have to do a double take – forms the spire, with similar figures all around the border of the roof: gods and sacred animals. Gold pillars rise from the very top of the spire, glimmering in the sunlight. It’s different from the fewmandirsI’d seen, but extremely beautiful.
I stop the car. ‘You can wait or come,’ I offer Darien. ‘I just wanted you to get away from the stress for a day. Have you been to a Hindu temple before?’
Now he shakes his head no. ‘Never. Why?’
‘Do you want to?’
He looks up at the carvings, takes in the massive spire with an air of curiosity. ‘Sure.’
