“Tea?” Psylocke offered.
Isaac just nodded.
“I just... I don’t know what to do,” he said. “Why... I mean... she... the... how... damn it why won’t she wake up? I pray. I pray every day. I pray with every breath and she... she...”
Isaac started crying. Psylocke pushed the mug of tea in front of him and put her arm around his shoulders.
“I promise you Ike, she is going to wake up. Babsie’s a fighter and, let’s face it, if she were going to die any time soon, it would not be because a coma. Too boring.”
Isaac had to let out a laugh at that particular comment.
“If I were Babsie,” Psylocke went on, “I would want something a little more dramatic. Or even noble. But not boring like dying in her sleep. Well, unless y’know, she’s an old lady. Of course that would be typical don’t you think? For the rest of her life there isn’t any circumstance dramatic enough for her to die in, so she dies of old age. But thirty-five is not old age. So there’s no way she’d left a pathetic little coma kill her.”
“You don’t think the circumstances leading up to it are dramatic enough?” he asked bitterly. “I mean, someone only tried to kill her.”
“Nah. If she thought that was dramatic enough she would have died then and there. Besides, she’d know how hard this would be for you, so if she was gonna die, she would have done it already and saved you the pain.”
Isaac sniffed and blinked away the last of his tears.
“Thanks,” he said to her, picking up his mug and sipping the tea inside.
“You’re welcome.”
Psylocke went back to cleaning up the kitchen then and Isaac stared into his tea. Who knows how long he had been doing that but when he went to have another sip at long last, it was cold. He got up to put it in the sink, barely noticing that Psylocke had left, and started trudging up the stairs to his room.
As he walked, he noticed someone.
“Babsie?” he asked.
Before anyone knew what he was doing – not even Isaac – he had wrapped his arms around the woman and kissed her passionately before she pushed him away.
“Isaac, I’m Psylocke,” she informed him, he hands on his shoulders.
“Oh, Psy, I’m sorry... I thought... I thought...”
Isaac stared, his eyes echoing his despair. Psylocke sighed and drew him into a hug.
“Don’t worry about it Ike. But I don’t think I should stay here any more.”
“What? No, please, don’t let me be the -”
“Ike, it’s not just this, okay? Do you know what Myst called me the other day? She called me ‘Mum’, and I... I mean... I think I just... I look too much like her Isaac. I think it’s better for all of us if I go back to Australia. And you should get yourself a housemaid. Two even.”
“Servants? But I – Psy please don’t leave.”
“You talk to Taylor and Zac, Ike. They’ll agree with me, you’ll see. It’s better this way. Besides, I... I am not a replacement for Babsie, Ike. I can be an Aunt and a sister-in-law to this family, but I cannot be mother nor wife. I’m sorry Isaac.”
On that, Psylocke turned on her heal and fled to her room. In the morning Isaac would find that she had booked her ticket, packed and left that very night.