Marking Time
By Laura Schiller
Based on: The Matched Trilogy
Copyright: Ally Condie
Prompt 27: Railroad Pocket Watch
Six months ago, Bram would have been thrilled to have a pocket watch like this, a gleaming golden case that snaps shut exactly like Cassia's compact. He would have given it to her to keep in her Banquet box, safe and secret. It would have almost made up for losing Grandfather's watch.
Today, he couldn't care less.
The watch is just a thing he took from his dead father's pocket, some trade item he never had the chance to deliver. Bram tries not to think about those glazed brown eyes, the buzzing of insects, the smell that took him weeks to ignore. He tries not to think of the watch as anything but a watch, a tool he uses to mark time by: time in the fields, identifying bodies; time volunteering at the medical center; time eating, sleeping and keeping clean which, as the Officials would say, he has streamlined for optimal efficiency. But most of all, he marks time with his mother.
First Grandfather died. Then Cassia left them all behind for a boy she hardly knew. Now his Papa is gone as well, she's all he has left.
Every second his Mama's pulse beats in her thin white wrist, every minute she keeps on breathing, every hour he sits by her bed and whispers to her about the flowers they will plant next spring, is one more moment he can carry on.