Ruminations in a Side Room

With a compassionate glance, the nurse held open the door, and Juliette stepped past her into the room. She heard the door close behind and the tapping of hard shoes fading as the nurse walked away.

Juliette surveyed the room; her eyes darted around, not looking at the person closeted away in the bed, but at anything else, anything not him.

Her throat caught with the near arrival of a sob. She couldn’t look at him, or be with him, not just yet. She didn’t trust herself. She knew she would break down, and even in his unconscious state, she didn’t want to upset him, to sit by his side with great guttural heaves and gasps and tears.

She tiptoed across the small room to the window. It was nearly dusk, and the lights were beginning to shine out from the other buildings she could see; buildings whose purpose was varied and unknown, their ugly rooftops full of square metal shapes and steaming vents.

She could see into some of the rooms, those that were lit and unshuttered, each room a vignette, a private play of joy or tragedy. She suspected, though, in truth, it would rarely be that; those peaks of emotion would be just a brief moment, a culmination of the seemingly never-ending daily tedium of waiting for a life to recover or a life to dissipate. She watched those she could see playing this out – doctors, nurses, patients – talking earnestly, laughing, reading, eating, or staring silently through the window like her.

She stared up at the deep indigo sky and the dark shapes floating slowly by, high enough to be tinged red by a sun no longer visible to those wedded to the ground.

She wondered if she would see any souls leak from the buildings and ascend into the clouds, the drab, grey rooftops their last view of this world. In a perfect world, hospitals would have roof gardens; an idyl, lush and green, a riot of colours and scents, a microcosm of the paradise for which they were predestined. Perhaps also, there should be sages, mystics, priests patrolling them, on hand to give counsel and guidance to all those floating past. She imagined the ethereal forms queuing up to speak to their chosen spirit guide, beseeching them as to their final destination, that with their deeds placed on a scale, surely the good would outweigh the bad.

She flicked her eyes towards the bed and the clutter that surrounded it; machines on trollies, machines attached to the wall, bags of fluid on thin stands, all from which dangled a multitude of pipes, tubes and wires, some connected to him, some not. They stood over him like over-eager sentinels waiting for something calamitous to happen. One of the machines emitted an intermittent beep, perhaps to remind them he was still alive, but perhaps also to assure him.

The room jostled for attention; it overwhelmed with the hum of machines and the lights and the heat. There was too much of everything; too much noise, too much light, too much heat. It was as if he was just an accessory. She recognised the truth now; it was the room that would survive and would always be here; it was the one that would outlive all those who came and went.

At last, she looked at him; her dearest treasure, her prize, her Isaac; a gift of immeasurable worth plucked from the myriad of souls to be hers. His eyes were closed, his face pale under the lights, his expression peaceful.

She walked over to him and sat on the hard plastic chair - the type of chair that meant you weren’t to stay long - and leant forward. She inspected each detail of his face, committing to memory the curves and hollows that joined the chin to the lips, the lips to the nose, the nose to the eyes; the eyes she longed for him to open; the eyes that connected him to her.

She couldn’t tell at first if he was breathing, but if she concentrated, there was the imperceptible rise and fall of the bed cover. Each new breath that came was another tiny fragment of life; each one brought the promise of another, each breath a reaffirmation. She also knew that each breath was his last, until after a gap, another breath came, then that would be the last, each breath mocking her; Is this the one? Or this? She wanted to be told precisely which breath was his last; the machine should tell her ‘This is the last’, so she would know, so she could be in that moment with him, so she could share with full awareness the last thing he ever did, and hold him so he was not alone. She didn’t want to wait in the gap between breaths, for the next, for the breath that would never come.

A nurse walked in, checked the monitors, put the back of her hand against his forehead, smiled and left, unknowing of the trigger just pulled, the starting gun fired.

The feeling came then. Low down at first, an ominous swell heralding the creation of a giant wave. She caught her breath as it built, the great heave travelling up through her core, compressing her lungs so she could breathe in no further. It coursed through her and onwards, towards her throat, and the sob that had lodged there when she had first entered. Then with a final heave of her diaphragm, it erupted and engulfed her. She reached into her coat for the bundle of tissues she had prepared for this moment and staggered over to the window.

She gripped the window sill and stood there sobbing and gasping, and in between, trying to catch her breath. Time after time bringing up the sodden tissue to her chin and mouth and eyes, wiping away at the tears and snot with alternate hands. Where did all this fluid come from; was there a giant reservoir hidden somewhere in the face, unknown to science, its emptying only triggered by the impending loss of something or someone so greatly loved?

It left as quickly as it had come, and after a few disjointed gasps, she sagged down with her arms on the sill as a mussiness clouded her head, and a strange euphoria came; an elation not of joy, but from the ending of an anguish over which she had no control, and the dread that it would go on forever.

She went back to the chair and studied her Isaac again; in contrast to her emotional deluge, he seemed unchanged and at peace. She got out her phone and selected the song they were listening to when she had last seen his eyes sparkling with life. She played it as she did on every visit, and this time a tear came.

She saw it form in the corner of his eye, and instinctively she reached into her pocket for a tissue. She didn’t want to dab the tear yet; it was still gaining in size. She watched it spill over his eyelid and begin to trickle down his cheek, sometimes pausing then jerking back into motion, the movement of the tear against the stillness of the body a sign of continued life. She watched it as it descended slowly through the stubble, past the edge of his ear, and, as it threatened to disappear behind the line of his chin onto his neck, she leant forward and caught it with her tissue. Carefully, she soaked up any remaining traces by dabbing gently with the tissue as she traced its journey back up to the tear ducts from where it had sprung.

She cradled the tissue in her hands; this was his gift to her, his DNA, a few shed cells, and she would keep them forever.

Perhaps in fifty years’ time, someone would be able to take his DNA and make her a new Isaac; though would they be the same Isaac if they had not suffered the same path through life with its pleasures and hardships; would they just be a blank and soulless version with nothing to offer but his likeness? Perhaps his first conscious form would be as a baby, or a toddler. Who would the foster parents be?

“Not me? Surely?” she whispered to herself.

She grimaced as she tried to imagine what it would be like to be a foster mother to her boyfriend’s reincarnation. What would happen when they reached their teens and started fancying girls, or boys; would she have to compete with them for his affection? Would he even want her – an ancient and unattractive version of her?

Without the warning she craved, there was a change in the machines; their displays somehow different, their lights more red. The beeping machine now had a different tune; faster and louder, with a subtle shrillness. She could see two nurses coming down the corridor, their gait somewhere between a walk and a run, faces fixed in habitual repetition of this event.

This time she just wept silently within, staring at his beautiful face, one hand held flat against the warmth of his cheek, and as the nurses came bustling into the room, her other searched for his and squeezed it as tightly as she could, willing him to breathe one more breath, a breath that would be followed by another, and another, and another.

By Peter Jonathan

From: United Kingdom

Twitter: wistfulcricket

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