Free Be in the Real by Denise Mathew Page A

had sliced a part of her away. Though she had no idea what part had been removed from her body, she felt it all the same. An ache that couldn’t be healed.  
    She scanned through her memories, searching for the exact moment when it had shifted, when Norm had become part of her reality, but she couldn’t find it. Trillian would have told her that there is no measure of a heart and its ability to love, or the moment that it chooses to love. To Kaila, Trillian’s notions sounded so very stupid. Because a heart couldn’t love, it beat a rhythm, delivered blood through arteries and veins, through the whole body, regulated blood pressure, sped up or slowed down accordingly, but it couldn’t love. It was a muscle, a muscle couldn’t love, it didn’t have a consciousness, it didn’t decide to beat, it worked from the electrical impulses of the body.  
    Normally all these rational thoughts and explanations would have brought comfort to Kaila, but right then they only brought anger, bubbling and hot. In that moment love was like a meaningless word written all around her, and all she wanted to do was pull out its heart and know that it was real. But she knew it wasn’t, because how could something exist that had no measure. Where was the science behind it? Was it the need to nurture like a mother did with its baby or…
    “Hi.”  
    Kaila startled at the sound of the voice that to her ears was unfamiliar. She swiveled her body, until her eyes came to rest on the man standing just a few feet away from her. He wore loose fitting cotton pants with an elastic waist and a matching V-neck, short-sleeved shirt. His attire resembled hospital scrubs, but unlike the greens and sometimes blues, these yellow Wildwind standard issue clothes told of a newly acquired patient, one who hadn’t been granted the luxury of wearing his own clothes yet. She didn’t need to see this person’s wardrobe to know that he was new, because who other than a newbie would deign to interrupt her when she was in work mode.
    “Hi, I’m Derrick,” the man said, stretching out a hand to Kaila as if he had a right to, as if he had no idea that one touch could activate something that might well land her back in the White Room. A place that she had no intention of returning to ever again.
    “I don’t care who you are, only that you are in my personal space, and I want you to leave now,” she said.  
    There was an edge in her tone that said she was trying to maintain her calm, she didn’t want to allow this intrusion to goad her into something bad. The White Room was still too fresh in her memory.
    Kaila took her first real look at this person, who somehow believed he had supremacy in Wildwind and over her. He was of Asian descent with thick black hair that was cut in what some might consider a stylish way, with a small flip at the front while the rest of his head had been sheared until the hair stood porcupine straight. His face was shaved smooth, yet a dark shadow highlighted where his beard might have grown. His eyes were black-brown, his nose neither thin, nor wide, falling precisely in the middle and was above a pair of rosebud pink lips that seemed a little too cute for a male. He wasn’t classically handsome, yet there was something appealing about him that Kaila couldn’t quite put her finger on. But none of that mattered because he was clogging up her space, stepping into an area that was hers alone.
    “Leave now,” she said again, getting to her feet.  
    His height matched hers almost exactly, so their eyes were directly across from one another. Kaila glared at him, willing him to whither and disappear from her sight. He stood stationary, as though he had every right to be there.
    A crooked smiled quirked at his lips, and he ran a slender-fingered hand over the top of is prickly hair. He seemed more amused than affronted or even scared, which surprised Kaila, one or both of those reactions had been what she had predicted, and she was good