It's rainy for a Tuesday, I think, as I watch my new white curtains dance slowly in the breeze coming through the open window. My coffee is gone, the mug cold in my hands, but I don't have the strength to move. Not yet, anyway.
I glance at the clock, ten minutes to four. The rain has been falling steadily since two, though, so I know I've been here too long, transfixed by the fluttering of cheap polyester. I regret buying them, I think, they don't match anything. Besides, white isn't my color. I only got them because she-
My hand slips, and the coffee mug strikes loudly against the table, and I can't stop myself from looking up, from letting the apology slip from my throat to hang heavy on the silence. The chair across from me is empty. Mitzi isn't there. She never will be again.
The doctors say it's only a matter of time now. "By the end of the week," the bald one said. I don't remember his name. He looked almost disinterested, as if her passing meant nothing to him, as if that were possible. I hate him, I think. He reminds me of Brian.
I bite my lip, and grind my cigarette into the overflowing ashtray, the anxiety building like a hot red tide in my chest. I want to be there, at the hospital. I need to be, but she was clear. "Mrs. A, for God's sake you haven't been home in days! Go home! I'll still be here when you get back. I'm not exactly going anywhere." she'd said, and she smiled that mischievous smile of hers, the smile that meant I couldn't be angry. "And Mrs. A? If I see you before 6:00 tomorrow, I'll have them throw you right out, swear to God I will." I had no choice, so I waited. I'm waiting.
She needs time alone, I guess. Of all people, I should understand that. I spent most of my life having time alone, but now it feels so suffocating, and I can't stand not being there for my only friend. The cheap little cat clock ticks away on the wall, its fat plastic tail wagging away the seconds. They're wasted, all of them. I've got such little time, such precious little, and I'm here, with only the rain for company, while Mitzi slips a little further from my grasp.
I kick myself a little. I'm being selfish, I know it, but these past few days have been hell. I can't keep my head straight, can't tell if I'm sad, or angry, or bitter... and it seems so unfair. It's been months, I know, but it feels so sudden, like it was only hours ago that we were in Flat 5, caught in Adam's trap. She'd been so strong then, like a goddess in human skin. I'd never seen anything so terrifying as her resolve that night.
I want to remember her like that, I think, and it the thought drives a dagger into my heart. After he'd been taken away, she'd... wilted. Like that passion that had sustained her for so long had just gone out, and she was collapsing under it at last. It was like she stopped fighting, and just embraced it, like there was nothing else for her to do here. Now the end was here, like I'd always known it would be, since I first saw her take off her wig, not even a year ago.
It's five thirty now, and I breathe a sigh of relief. It'll take me 'til six to get to the hospital anyway, and the bus is sure to be a little late from the rain. It's coming down hard now, but it could be raining fire for all I care. I grab my bag and head out.
The clock at the nurse's station reads 6:02. I smile a little. She had no excuse now. The nurses say nothing, but give me a little nod. They know why I'm here, and know I can find my way on my own. I knock slowly on her door, and push inside.
I keep expecting something different. I keep expecting to see her, in her boots and skirt, leaning over the edge of the bed, fiddling with her lockpicks, like she does when she thinks no one is looking. She isn't, though. Her skin is pale, and her face is gaunt, like a skeleton. Her eyes are sunken. Her lips are cracked. She's stopped wearing her wig, no point, she says, and I agree with her. Still, she smiles when I walk in, and she's so beautiful I can hardly stand it.
"Right on time, Mrs. Ashworth. I seriously thought I was gonna have to make the nurses bar the door." I can't help but laugh, and I sit on the edge of her bed. "I seriously doubt a few nurses could stop me. Plus I've used a crowbar before, Mitzi." Now it's her turn to chuckle, and then the silence falls, like it always does. I can't stand it, so I speak first.
"I hate the new curtains." I blurt out, and regret it. She rolls her eyes, but winces a bit at the end. "Mrs. A, they look fine. I told you it would be good to make some changes, get a fresh outlook, you know." I shrug, and look away, out the tiny window of her room and over the squat gray city. It's cruel, I think, to make her look at this. She's dying, for fuck's sake! She should have something nice to look at, at least... not this shithole of a town. She deserves more. She deserved so much more.
"It's all about perspective, you know? Think of them as a new start for your flat. A new start for you." she says, and I know what she means by it. I look back to her, catch her eyes for a moment, before she closes them slowly and begins to breathe deep. "Give them time. You'll learn to like them. Hell, it took you ages to like me, and I'm a person!" I laugh, and shake my head. "That's because you wear black all the time. You match the décor." She groans, and opens one eye a crack to look at me with mock exasperation. "Ugh, don't remind me." she says, tugging weakly at her hospital gown, just visible over the thin cotton sheets. "Toothpaste Green is so not my color."
We talk for a while, but her voice is getting lower, softer. She's tired, and quietly presses the little button they gave her to dispense her pain medicine. She'd never say it, never want to show me, but she can't hide it. Her breathing slows, and I let silence retake the room. It lulls her to sleep before long, and I stand carefully, making my way to the little couch beside her bed. I've got nowhere better to be, and she can't kick me out if she's not awake.
The doctors come and go, and the sky goes dark. The rain is constant, though, and it patters softly against the glass. I'm glad it does. I hope it rains for a million years, so that daylight never comes, so that we can stay like this, in this moment, forever. So that I can stop counting the seconds, the wasted hours. I close my eyes, and I do my best, but time goes on. It doesn't wait for Cat Ladies.
It's gloomy for a Wednesday.
The rain has let up, but the clouds wrap the world like a burial shroud, and I sit in Mitzi's hospital room, watching her food get cold on the tray. She's not hungry, she says, and I know that's not a good sign. She doesn't tell me to leave, though. She doesn't say much of anything.
The doctor, the bald one, comes again. He pulls me outside, and gives me a fake look of sympathy. Dr. Baxter, his nametag says. I want to rip it off and throw it off the building, but I hold myself back. "Mrs. Ashworth, have you made suitable... arrangements for her?" I know what I'm feeling now. It's anger.
I don't remember what I say, but the nurses are staring, and the blood is pounding hard in my ears. He steps back and mumbles some sort of apology, scuttling off like a roach. She doesn't want a funeral. She told me as much.
"Why the fuck would I want a funeral? Bunch of people I barely know, standing around, feeling sorry for me, like I'm their own personal sob story? No, thanks very much. You're the only one left I'd even want to come anyway."
I come back into her room, but she's still asleep. I sit on the couch again, and pretend to read some trashy romance I bought from the hospital commissary. I can't focus on the words, though. I keep looking over the page, to make sure she's still there. To remind myself that this isn't just some fucked up dream.
Night falls, and I've given up pretending. I look at her, and just feel empty. My stomach twists itself in knots, and I think of all the things I should be saying to her, all the things I need to let her know before... before the end. I don't notice her wake until she speaks, and I jump a little.
"Don't look at me like that, Mrs. A." she says, and she looks like she's about to cry. "Don't... you fucking look at me like that." I see her face harden as she tries to mask her tears with anger. I can't speak, and she continues, her voice cracking. "Don't look at me like I'm some beautiful tragedy... like I'm a pathetic little husk. I don't want anyone pitying me... least of all you." Her words are labored, she's struggling to keep herself together. "I just... want you to be like you always have been. Treat me like you... you always have. I don't want to... be reminded. I just want to slip out... like Jack did."
She can't stop herself. I don't want her to. I cross over to her, and put my arms around her as gently as I can while she cries. She's been strong for so long, she's been through hell and back... She's earned every one of these tears. They fall softly against the sheets, and we hold each other as tightly as we dare. Between her sobs, she speaks to me again. "I need some time alone, Mrs. Ashworth... can you come back tomorrow...? Any time is fine."
I nod, wordless, and stand. She stops me with a hand, gentle on my wrist. "In... the drawer, in my room. There's a picture of Jack..." she trails off, and I smile reassuringly at her, though I know it doesn't reach my eyes. "I'll... bring it when I come tomorrow, yeah?" She looks like a child, and sinks back into her tears. I leave her be.
My flat is cold. I've left the window open, and the curtains look like ghosts in the half-light. I'm going to take them back to the shop, I tell myself. I don't need them here, intruding, insisting, with their brightness, on my attention. I want to slip away. I go to the kitchen and snatch the bottle of wine I'd bought a week ago from the shelf, pouring myself a glass. I down it quickly, and pour another, and don't realize until the bottom of the second glass that hot tears have streaked my face red.
I can't take it.
I toss the glass against the wall, and watch the shards scatter across the dingy linoleum of my kitchen. My breath is coming fast, and I turn and run from the room, down the hall, and into Mitzi's bedroom. I scream, once, then twice, and I don't give a fuck who hears me. It's torture, it's agony, and I collapse onto the bed, sobbing like a girl into my pillow, like I did when mother died, so long ago.
It wasn't fair. To finally have a friend, to finally open up, and then to lose her so fucking soon. I hated this world for this, and if there was a God, I hated him too. Hated him like Brian, and Dr. Baxter, and the Queen of Maggots, and Glioblastoma, and myself. I could hear the hall clock from there. Ticking. Ticking. A cruel reminder, a constant reminder. I stood in a rage and burst out of the room, tearing the plastic effigy from the wall, gripping it so tight it cracked.
"SHUT. THE FUCK. UP!" I scream, and throw it across the room. It smashes to bits against my piano, gouging the wood paneling on the side, but I don't care. I don't suspect I ever will.
I woke late the next morning, my whole body aching. I rose slowly, and I found myself in Mitzi's room. Shame overtook me as I stared down at the tear soaked pillow, the bunched sheets and scattered boxes. I'd lost control. I had to keep myself together. For her sake.
I didn't bother changing clothes, or anything of the sort. I had to be there for her, like she asked, like she needed. I quickly made my way to her nightstand and found the picture she'd asked after. She looked so different in it. So happy, with Jack, smiling, by her side. This is what she needed. Normalcy. An unremarkable ending. I had to be willing to give that to her. There would be time to grieve... after.
I arrived at the hospital at 11:15, picture safe in my bag. The morning was so quiet, so still and cold. She'd been fond of days like this. They were beautiful, she'd said, when you looked past the ugliness, and saw what others didn't see. I tried to agree with her, but I don't think I ever saw them quite the same as she did.
When arrived at the nurses' station, I knew. The way they looked at me, the way they didn't speak. I tried to run for the room, but Dr. Baxter quickly came to stop me.
"Mrs. Ashworth, I'm so sorry, we tried to call you, but it was so late, you didn't answer..."
She went in her sleep, they said. Best way to go. They said she hadn't felt any pain at the end. Said she was lucky to have made it so long, that she was an inspiration. She was so much more. No one on this earth ever fought so hard, for so little. I didn't want her to be their inspiration. I just wanted them to remember her. I wanted the world to know what it had lost in Mitzi Hunt, and weep with me for a million years.
She was buried on a Thursday. No funeral. No viewing. She was dressed in her skirt and sweater, like she wanted. Her lockpicks were in her pocket. The picture of Jack across her heart. Mitzi Hunt, beloved friend, the bravest person I would ever know, was gone.
I don't remember leaving the gravesite. I don't remember coming home. I don't even remember falling into bed. All I remember is the way my leaden heart tore into my chest, and how I knew that nothing, nothing, would ever feel right again, without her.
The darkness married with the silence, and settled over the flat like a waiting monster, and I suffocated in my sorrow beneath it. Teacup came to visit, as if he knew. He laid next to me, as if to share my burden, and he drew close as I cried, until I sank beneath myself, and sleep claimed me at last.
That night, I dreamed I was weightless, suspended in the infinite dark, the tiniest speck of disparity in a vast and endless void. I felt formless, empty, as if I were nothing more than a ghost, as insubstantial as air. As if in surrender, I gave myself to the slow drift of some stygian tide, and felt myself borne along through the unbroken silence, deep as Death. I thought upon my life, of my childhood, of Eric, of my suicide, and of Mitzi. I was so caught up, I almost didn't notice the soft glow that enkindled the distant horizon. Slowly, I felt myself drawn closer to it, and as I came closer, it grew brighter and brighter, until the black was white.
I strained my eyes against the glare, blind and deaf and helpless before it... but soon I heard a voice. As my eyes adjusted, I saw a form step from the radiance, moving with unearthly grace. I knew that smile at once.
Mitzi stood before me, as full of life as I'd ever seen, her eyes sparkling with such beauty that I could scarcely look on her. "I knew you'd worry, Mrs. A, so I asked if I could see you." she said softly, and her hand found my shoulder. "I... wanted to say thank you. For everything you've done."
I went to speak, but she shook her head softly, pulling me close into a gentle hug. "Don't worry, Mrs. Ashworth. I'll look after her for you, until you catch up." I could not dare to hope, but as she pulled away, she nodded softly, and gestured toward the heart of the light, where the faint silhouette of another woman stood timidly against the glow. Her eyes were emerald green.
I called to her, but no sound left my throat. With a final smile, Mitzi turned away for the last time, and walked off after her, and the light faded again into the dark.
I woke up softly, Teacup still sleeping at my side. I strained my eyes against the dark to see the faintest rays of morning light creeping through the window, where the last breath of night was brushing against the curtains, like a whisper in the dark, speaking the words I could not say.
"Goodbye. I'll see you soon."