|I am Erik| he finger-spells the name exactly the way she had first given it to him. That's the best proof he has.

It crushes him to see her shaking like that, and to see his love's body shaking like that, too. He wants to put his arms around her for comfort but... he doesn't know if that would truly be a comfort to her right now.

To answer her question, he spells the current date out slowly, and then does the math for her too. (But this writer is bad with numbers so we'll pretend it's the right date without saying what it is.)

|I'm so sorry, Chris. I wish it were different|