I finally fell deep asleep on the plane. My legs were numb when I took my seat, and my eyelids were heavy, and, even though I tried to fight unconsciousness, afraid that, after having been deprived of sleep for so long, my body would decide not to wake up again, I was profoundly asleep in less than ten seconds. I woke up to Lindsay caressing my face, telling me we had to get off.

The terminal at Charles de Gaulle still seemed like part of my dream. What was I doing in another country? I wouldn't be able to help people there. I didn't have any resources. I had been a coward.

As we walked through the "Nothing to declare" aisle, I couldn't help but wish I hadn't elected that aisle sincerely. I wanted to have something to declare. But they hadn't let me follow my path. However, would I have brought the material, if they hadn't opposed?

We had to take three taxis. I rode with mum, dad and Lindsay. David, Hugh, Lucy and Africa took the next one, and Luke and Alex were last. I had never traveled with so many people. It almost seemed like I was taking England with me. It would be impossible to disconnect, and impossible to keep doing what I needed to do. Although I was angry because of that, and I tried to keep angry just to be fair to the people that were desperate because of me, deep down I felt comfortably safe and insanely lucky for having all of them with me.

In the ride to the city centre, I closed my eyes again, but I didn't manage to fall back asleep. The previous night kept playing in my head. My cheek itched from the woman's slap.

Luke had agreed to come with me unexpectedly fast. The instant he had said yes, and had loosened his arms, I had truly believed I loved him. He was, again, the companion I had had during the first part of the adventure.

We had been silent as he drove down M40. I had looked at him sideways, and each of the glances had added confusion to my mental scheme. It was inevitable to feel love when I looked at that face. Taking his flaws into account, realizing we wouldn't be happy together, was easy when he was away, but, when he was beside me, all the drawbacks faded, and all that was left was the connection that fooled us into believing we would find love over and over again if we stayed united.

The road was dark, and unusually empty. Luke had turned on the long distance lights. I had thought of the first time we had seen each other, of the moment he had stopped looking through that microscope and had looked at me. I had remembered how I already loved him then, even if that was crazy and immature. But maybe real love was always silly and immature, like jumping into the sea from the edge of the Brighton pier, and we just stopped doing it when we turned a certain age, when we started thinking about it logically.

The taxi was already approaching La Defense. It took a turn, and I caught sight of the Eiffel Tower.

Did the woman that had slapped me at the Oncology department really want to die? I still didn't get if that opinion was just a political point of view, if it was just related to the exclusivity of the treatment, or if people actually felt their finite life had been disrupted when another possibility had arrived.

Luke had been the one to take the lead when we had stolen more material. It had been difficult to walk through the aisles filled with the demonstrator's sleeping's bags. Some of them were actually sleeping while we sneak through. Others were gathering at the waiting areas, shouting things like: "We want to live while our soul lives, we don't want to be genetically modified robots".

Luke had held my hand as we had taken the stairs to the second floor. There, the outlook was completely different. People were quiet, looked to both sides all the time, and matched the pace of the doctors that casually walked through to ask them about where to make an appointment for the treatment. The doctors all pointed to the bright posters on the wall, which advertised the treatment like it was a party at the coolest club in town.

A woman around forty, with a messy bun, had drawn my attention. She was very pregnant, had a hand on her belly, and held a child's hand with the other. My muscles had contracted at the sight of her. Why was she out in the open, showing her pregnancy? She wouldn't be able to decide whether her baby lived or not. They would take her to gynecology, and remove him from her the moment they saw her. She didn't look like she perceived how vulnerable she was.

I had squeezed Luke's hand, and said we should help her. He had shaken his head. I had insisted, crunching his hand, and walking towards the woman, clumsily dragging him forward too. The woman was walking away, and Luke kept screaming at me, but I had felt like my ears were plugged, and had heard nothing but "laboratory".

The corridors were full of activity, and the image before my eyes changed like the picture in a kaleidoscope: fast, and blending everything together. The woman had disappeared between two doctors that were stressfully swapping clinical history books. "Great, we lost her!", I had shouted at Luke, simultaneously realizing I wouldn't even have known how to help the woman.

Luke's words had been echoing in my mind all the way to the laboratory, eventually becoming more and more judicious: "You can't save everyone, but you can save yourself". Perhaps, after all, I didn't have another choice. Perhaps I was the one that was not brave, because I couldn't live without making sure I had attended every matter, every need around me; perhaps the brave ones faced that life didn't really offer that possibility.

But I doubted that. Bravery couldn't happen to be so damn egoistical.

The taxi followed the road along the Seine until we got to Pont de l'Alma. The Eiffel Tower looked imposing now that we were so close to it. I couldn't see the top even if I craned my head as much as I could. We turned to the left, and arrived at Avenue Montaigne.

Opposite to New York, Paris was exactly like I had seen it on films. It was almost hard to agree with its beauty, because it was very expectable and hackneyed, but I couldn't do otherwise. The red geraniums at the balconies of the Plaza looked like impressionist dots painted by Monet on top of a classical Parisian building.

We got out of the taxi, and the exquisitely dressed men at the front of the hotel took our luggage and opened the black metal and crystal doors for us. Their attention made me feel self-conscious. It seemed wrong, and almost insulting. They probably suspected everyone that came to that hotel was already immortal. Maybe some of them had felt the anxiety of having everything they wanted around them all the time, and not being able to reach it, even before the treatment, but now, the sensation of being at the other side of the invisible wall had to be unbearable.

At the entrance hall, the beige marble floor and marble columns, the red roses decorating each of them, the big paintings, and the red suede armchairs didn't catch my attention. In my mind, I was still running out of the hospital behind Luke, with our bags empty and my heart empty too.

"We should have taken them! We should have taken them!" I had screamed at him as we kept running along the Thames to the car. I could only compare the way I was crying then to the way I had cried the first nights after he had left me in New York. I had literally cried my soul out, furiously trying to flood the world and end the misery that was spreading through it. I had felt utterly, ridiculously impotent.

"She already slapped you! Don't you think she was going to hand us over if she did that?". I remembered her eyes. They looked angry, not sad, so I had assumed she was a demonstrator.

Hugh had booked three rooms, and we distributed in the same way we had organized ourselves for the taxis. I was relieved, because I had thought David and Luke, or David and Alex might end up in the same room. Room. Room was the way I called them, but it definitely wasn't the correct name.

Ours was a two hundred square meter suite on the eighth floor. When we opened the door, I choked.

"It's bigger than our house." I muttered.

"Holly cow." dad added.

Lindsay walked forward, and gasped loudly from what seemed the other end of a palace. I walked to her. The Eiffel tower was ours, behind an enormous window that reached from the floor almost to the roof, and was decorated with a vintage looking, carved golden frame. In front of the window was a black table with a fuchsia-rose centerpiece, a Dom Pérignon champagne bottle, and four glasses.

"Hugh did mention he thought Tessa deserved something nice." mum said, as she dropped herself on the light lilac suede armchair.

"Something nice?" dad said, mocking her. "We are getting out of here. Now. I don't want to sleep surrounded by the heads of the Camorra, or run into kidnapped virgins being carried to the sheikh in the next room. No, thank you."

I looked to my left. There were two brown suede sofas on top of a coral Persian carpet, decorated with an assortment of silky cushions. There were roses over every crystal table. And there was Grand Piano at the other side of the living room. I almost collapsed.

"How much does this cost?" Lindsay asked, wide-eyed.

No one answered her. Maybe because I felt like I was dreaming, my eyelids started to feel heavy. I yawned.

"Go get some sleep, Tess." mum said, caressing my leg.

I looked at dad, silently asking him if we were really going to leave. But he nodded, walked to me, and kissed my forehead. The tiredness I must transmit horrified me, if it was enough to make dad agree immediately to stay in what he considered the capital of corruption and abuse.

I found a room, walked to the bed, took off a red velvet cushion and the white and beige satin cover, and fell onto it.

When I woke up, it was dark. That disconcerted me at first; then, I realized someone had pulled down the shades. I walked to the living room. It must still be early in the afternoon, because the sun was up, and I could still admire the Eiffel Tower through the window. I noticed a door on the other side of the living room, and realized it led to a balcony.

It was cool outside, but I spent a while there, cherishing the view. Dad was partly right, staying at a luxury hotel was overrated and strangely uneasy, but, how could anyone not want it, deep down? How could we not feel enamored of a suite from which we could see that? Beauty and exclusiveness were consistently toxic, and unreachable, and majestic, and all-conquering. We could try to devalue them, to deny them, but they always caught us, and trapped us in their glorious shine.

But beauty was not always exclusive and overprized. I thought of the Brighton Pier, of dark pink sunsets sitting on the edge. I couldn't come up with anything more beautiful. That memory broke the spell of the Eiffel Tower, and I walked back into the room.

"David just called." mum said.

What did you think of this chapter? What do you think will happen next? Let me know in the comments! I would love to get some feedback from you! I will upload the following chapter tomorrow, at 22h30 UK-time :)