AUGUST 14, 2020 / ELMHURST HOSPITAL CENTER

"How's it feel, champ? Want to get up and try it out?" Kelvin asked the eleven-year old in the hospital bed.

Chelsea, the young patient, was born with a congenital disorder that made the nerves in her lower legs increasingly more painful as she got older. She opted to have both feet amputated, and when her parents reached out to Delrov Technologies through their sponsorship programme, they were more than happy to look after her prosthetic needs.

Chelsea slid gingerly out of the bed, supported by two crutches and the careful attentions of her doctor, her parents, her older brother, Kelvin, Ryanel and Asher himself. The small day-lit room was quite at capacity.

Kelvin and Chelsea's doctor were in conversation with Chelsea about her future with prosthetic feet. She was an animated, bright kid — Asher could already tell from the staunch way she'd made her own choices. Kelvin, as a biomedical engineer, and the doctor teamed up to relay the maintenance side of things, physiotherapy and care.

When Chelsea successfully bore her own weight with minimal help from the crutches, smiling proudly at her family, her mother burst into tears.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you!" she cried at Asher and Ryanel. 

She pulled Asher into a fierce hug, which — considering Asher's height and her lack thereof — forced him to stoop over and awkwardly pat the woman's back. "I don't know what we would have done without you three — and your fantastic company. You've helped us do right by Chels."

"You're welcome," Asher replied warmly. "It's just what we endeavour to do for our community."

Ryanel rounded up everyone in the room for the obligatory publicity photo, his Canon in hand and its strap around his neck. Asher had always thought he looked less like an engineer and more like an artist, though especially so in that moment.

The occupants of the room crowded together around the bed, where Chelsea had re-positioned herself.

"Three, two, one, cheese!" Ryanel counted down, before the flash went off and stored on film the new beginning that was unfurling in the room.

__________

While Kelvin was finishing his relay of information to Chelsea and her family inside the room, Ryanel and Asher waited on some metal bleachers against a wall.

The hospital was bustling around them, but Asher was, for some reason, hyper-aware of the man sitting next to him.

Even as announcements were broadcast through the PA systems and nurses strolled past with trainers that squeaked on the linoleum, Asher felt insulated against everything outside of a meter radius. Within that radius, however, it was a special kind of hell. 

Had you ever known the deepest depths of a person that was now only attainable at the surface?

He heard the faint rustling sounds of Ryanel's jeans as he bounced his knee up and down — a bad habit of his, whenever his mind was unoccupied. When he dared allow his eyes — previously trained on the blue flecks within the eggshell-coloured flooring — to drift left, he noticed Ryanel had gotten new shoes. Then, looking higher, Asher saw that his forearms had tanned considerably over the summer.

Which was a normal and annual occurrence, considering his Filipino heritage, but Asher had always spent his summers with Ryanel. The process was usually gradual. This year Asher was presented with the very end of it. The final result, and none of the memories.

Asher was asking the question that had played on his mind before he could stop himself. "You're thinking of doing post-graduate study?"

Ryanel glanced to his right, his eyes expressive only at the surface (that is to say, Asher really couldn't tell what his once-best friend was thinking).

"Just thinking. Haven't decided yet. Who told you?"

"Kerrish. But it shouldn't have been him."

"Huh." Ryanel feigned confusion, but he and Asher both knew that he knew what his behaviour was doing to their friendship. It was just that the latter cared deeply and wanted to fight it, and the former . . . simply didn't.

Ryanel didn't seem inclined to speak again.

"Where were you thinking of applying to?"

"Don't really know. Maybe Europe."

Asher's eyebrows shot up in surprise, before he schooled his face back into nonchalance. "That'd be cool."

"Yep."

Ryanel pulled out his phone and made no effort to hide the fact that he was scrolling through social media.

"When are you thinking of going? D-Tech is going to have to find a new CEO again—"

"—and I should put my life on hold because of that?" Ryanel mumbled dryly, not even looking at Asher. He knew how to bring the conversation to a quick end.

"God, what is up with you? You avoid all the group meetups that I'm at, you brush off my messages and now you don't even deem me worthy of supporting, let alone speaking to?"

"So you're pissy that I have a life outside of watching you ride circles in the mud?" Ryanel scoffed lightly, but even his indignation didn't reach his eyes. He turned back to his Twitter feed.
"Nice to know."

"It would be nice if you at least saw one race. You know, because friends make effort for each others' endeavours — and you can't say I haven't done that for you this year."

Ryanel rolled his eyes, but didn't argue. Because he couldn't. Asher was right; he'd bought a crap-ton of Ryanel's niece's ballet school's raffle tickets and attended countless engineering society mixers when guest counts were low. 

"What's it going to take for you to support me?"

"—I do support you," Ryanel excused emotionlessly. "I wish you nothing but the very best luck—"

"—for you to show up?" Asher clarified heatedly. "I can get a seat reserved for you with your fucking name on it, and pay an usher to wait for you at the gate and guide you to the box so you don't say you got lost, and hire an Uber to drive you to the arena so you don't say your car broke down. Then all you would have to do, to be a good fucking friend, is open your goddamn door and walk down the driveway. Or will you call me after the race and say, sorry, I tripped?"

"Why are you so angry?"

Asher knew he was angry, and probably so did everyone else in the corridor, but he couldn't help it. His best friend was slipping away from him. He tried being nice about it, but all that had gotten him was radio silence and broken promises.

"Why are you so cold?" he retorted. "Huh?"

Ryanel averted his eyes. Asher recalled few moments in his life where he had felt so helpless — of course, some clear memories of hospitals and gauze jumped out — but this time was different. Could one even rehab a dying friendship? Especially if one party was strangling it?

"Be honest this one time and then you can fuck off to Europe and get your masters. I'll even take over as CEO again. Just tell me why you're being like this."

"Why did your dad never watch you race?" Ryanel murmured quietly.

Asher huffed in frustration. It didn't seem like Ryanel was taking the offer. "He actually came to the—

"Before this year. He hated the idea. Why did he fight you every step of the way?" Ryanel matched Asher's heated gaze with one of his own. Something about it made Asher snap his mouth shut and listen. Maybe it was the fact that he saw depth there, finally, instead of nothing.

"Because he couldn't bear the idea of something happening to you. If you get hurt, I get hurt. I get hurt." 

That look in his eye was familiar. It reminded him of something he'd seen — no, not seen. Something he'd felt in the past.

And he was starting to understand.

"You love me."

"I love you."

"You don't want to see me get hurt."

"No. Seeing you hurts me."

"Tallulah and I broke up," Asher blurted.

"What?"

"Three weeks ago. In some fancy restaurant in Arizona."

"So you still love her," Ryanel said calmly. "Two years of feelings don't go down the drain that quickly."

"Then ten years of friendships shouldn't either. I love you, too, never mind how I do. I always will."

"Yeah, I love you, but I don't know if I want to anymore."

"What do you mean? Why?"

"You— you never stop. Your life is high risk and high reward and always full of ups and downs. You get hurt, I get hurt. And not just physically. It's exhausting being pit crew for someone like you." Ryanel's expression was pleading, yearning for relief from his attachments. 

Asher wondered, if given the choice, if he would remove Ryanel's feelings for him to restore their friendship. He wasn't sure. A part of him wanted—

"Then don't be pit crew. You can walk away from my personal dramas whenever you want — and no-one will call you a bad friend for it. I don't need you in my life all the time —"

You lie.

"—but just promise you'll always come back."