The Girl in The Green Scarf

F i f t e e n

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SEBASTIAN/HAMSA

"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed."

―Carl Jung

"You are bleeding," I say, glancing sideways at Hamsa.

At some point of the drive she switched to sit in the passenger seat beside me since the back seat was all covered with glass.

Her gaze is directed outside at the sky, her head rests on the window and her chin on her palm. I notice the blood trickling down her wrist, making maps and rivers down her arm. It must have slit with the glass shattered by the bullets.

She looks at the blood on her arm and then turns to me absentmindedly and I can tell a bloody wrist is the least of her worries right now. We are finally free but somehow I think, to her, that's not a complete relief. After all she did just lose a friend and watch her traitor uncle get killed by her previously-enemy-recently-half-ally cellmate. I don't know what to say, after all there aren't any decent ways to say 'sorry I shot your uncle, but the freak was about to kill us'.

I'm not even sure I want to say anything, I mean I shouldn't care. I don't care.

"It doesn't hurt," she says dully.

"You should probably wrap it with a cloth to stop the bleeding."

"I don't think I'll bleed to death if I don't."

"You won't but you'll faint on me and I'm not really an expert on saving lives," I say scrunching my eyebrows together.

"I would beg to differ, you seem to save mine over and over again," she says, a hint of gratitude in her tone. "In one night you saved me twice."

"Well, I owed you. Now my debt is paid, so no need to go all 'thank you for saving my life' on me," I say suddenly feeling uncomfortable. I don't like exchanging any kind of personal gratitude with anyone, especially not with a Muslim girl. Even if I'm technically telling her I no longer feel that way, I'm still mentioning that I previously had. I'm not even making sense to myself anymore.

"Still... thank you," she says giving me a slight smile that I try to return but fail.

"Yeah, whatever."

She looks back out the window, ending the brief conversation. And I in turn fix my gaze on the road ahead of me.

※※※

I divert my attention back out the window, returning to my trance. My eyes are on the mob of trees we are passing on the way, but I'm not really looking, my mind as blurry as the woods on my right. I can't bring myself to focus on anything or even think straight, because I know if I do―think of what happened today and take it all in, I'm going to break down. And the last thing I want right now, is for that to happen in front of Sebastian.

What is important now is that we managed to make it out of that place. What I left behind should be irrelevant at the moment, it has to stay locked away in a corner until I'm capable of handling it.

The pain in my wrist is dull, but I know Sebastian is right; I have to clean the wound before it inflames. I turn to look at him, his shoulders are tense, his face creased with worry and his hands are clasping the steering wheel so hard that the color is gone from them.

Beyond him, the window looks out on the beach. In any other time I'd say I'm enchanted by the view, how the water reflects the sun rays beautifully, and the surface sparkle with different hues and colors. But right now it brings me more pain; for me the sea has always been connected to Uncle Yusuf, since he was always there, or at least I thought he was. I blink away the moisture building up in my eyes and try to think of something else as I rub my temples to muster pleasant thoughts.