Waiting for the Silence
I lie on my back because that's the only way I can. It's been two hours and I can feel my shoulder blades stiffly pressing into my ribcage like wings concaving back into my skin. My nose itches for no legitimate reason, other than because I can't scratch it, and my eyes burn from the intense lighting. There is nothing fascinating about the ceiling: it's all white paint and white lights and it gives me a headache. But I can't bring myself to look at anything else.
There's a boy in the bed next to me. He's brighter than the sunshine I remember from when I was a child and even more welcoming than those memories. I think he used to be blond before his illness took it away, in the same way I used to be happy before mine took that, and I have no doubt that he made a fine picture indeed.
He wasn't there when I awoke like a wild cat being dropped into a bath tub, and the longer I lie here, the gladder I am of it. He doesn't ask why I'm here, but with the padded cuffs resting on the bandages around my wrists branding me for what I am, I suspect he has a pretty good idea. Something like shame bites at my stomach and makes it impossible to look at him. Moisture stings my eyes more than the lighting does, but I take satisfaction in my pain, believing, as I do, that it's just a little of what I deserve, or perhaps savouring the reminder that I can still feel such things as discomfort.
I assume whoever thought about having us in the same room must have a sick sense of humour, or maybe some kind of twisted idea of poeticism. But here we are: a dying boy and a girl who wishes she was.
He was brought in just over an hour ago and has yet to stop talking, despite my apathy to anything other than the ceiling. I find myself not minding his chatter: it's welcoming and quickly becomes as familiar the memories of joy I thought I had forgotten. Every time I think he's run out of things to say he finds something new: family, friends, fears and hopes, nothing is insignificant or off limits.
They're just not sure. That's what he tells me after I'm sure he couldn't possibly have anything more to say. He tells me that his entire existence hangs in the balance of an operation in less than twelve hours that could go either way. Just as I'm certain at least one of us is about to start crying, he laughs.
"You know, the best thing about dying is you get all the free ice cream you want" he says,
"The worst is knowing that there's not really much else they can do for you."
I say nothing in return; after all, what can you say to a boy who knows he might die in less than twelve hours.
After three hours, my restraints are removed by a lady whose single most striking characteristic is just how nice she is. As though she wasn't content in herself unless everyone in the room has taken note of the shear wonder of her loveliness. As she removes the cuffs she reminds me that they were for my own safety and that how long they stay off was up to me. Her voice reminds me of scratchy, pink, woollen jumpers, that she no doubt wears and I find myself disliking almost everything about her. I am glad, however, to not be wearing the restraints as no sooner are they removed people are though the door.
They all trickle in behind a pretty girl with flowing black hair and fingers that were made to be intertwined with his.
Soon a small group forms around the boy in the bed next to mine, and for the first time since entering this place I am not utterly miserable. I am not miserable because the boy with eyes full of kept promises and smiles like a fire in winter is so loved. Even if their smiles hint at unsaid sadness and their eyes avoid the relentlessly beeping monitors, every person in the room looks at the boy like a small piece of heaven has been carved out and placed deep in his soul. It's everything he deserves. From the we're-sorry-you're-dying flowers to the arms that contort around his frame like ivy vines twisting around a tree's braches, it all whispers of unspeakable love.
I lie on my side so I don't have to see the weary hope in their eyes and imagine the stony disappointment in the eyes of anyone who might ever have cared to visit me. I curl into myself like a new fern leaf or a dying flower.
An hour later and I am surprised and more than a little concerned when he falls silent. We're alone again and it's clear he misses them almost as soon as they leave.
Then, for the first time, he asks me a question:
"Do you believe in angels?"
I want to swallow any honest reply I have. I want to wrap him in lambs' wool and marshmallows and all the sunshine he wants. I want to say that I met you, and right now that feels as close to believing as I've got in years, perhaps ever. But before I realise I don't have the heart to tell him I choke on my response.
"Not lately." I say.
I wait for him to hate me: it's what I've been doing since the beginning. But as time goes on and the sun dies behind the window ledge and is reborn as a white shinning orb, I realise that he doesn't know how.
He loves like a god who's just created Utopia- loves in the way a man who's just been pulled out of the darkness loves the feel of the sun at dawn. I recall the way he held on to the pretty girl almost an hour ago, the way he looked at her like he missed her even when she was tucked into the space below his chin, the way he greeted all his friends like a man who wasn't dying, and I almost wish he would hate me.
It's sometime later, when the darkness outside the window proclaims the night, and an attendant comes in to the room to ask why I'm not sleeping. I briefly wonder why he doesn't ask the boy, but then suppose the 'I'll rest when I'm dead' attitude of the boy has already made his position on the subject clear to all those who have met him.
I tell him I can't and he says that that's normal for people in new environments, but that I need to sleep if I want to get better. A part of me feels like laughing when I explain how it's not the new environment that stole my sleep, or that it went missing about two years ago and I'm still looking. As for wanting to get better… Well, sometimes it doesn't matter all that much what a person wants.
A doctor comes in soon after with the medication to take my dreams away.
A little while before the drugs sink me into the ocean of unconsciousness I look at the boy. I properly look at him for the first time and I see bruised veins and watery eyes. I see the tragedy written in the lipstick smudge she left on the corner of his mouth as he sits upright missing her and trying not to wonder how long he has left to miss her... or how long he has left to miss anything. I see him trying not to think about the oncoming tide, the long quiet.
"Are you scared?" My voice sounds broken even to my own ears, but as he looks blue skies into my green meadows, the piece of my soul that learnt The Sadness like passages in the holy book long ago whispers apologies into my heart.
"Where you?" he replies, not unkindly, and I contemplate the way it felt to pear into the vast inky-black.
I manage a watery smile before I say: "I've spent a long time being afraid. But in the end there was only silence."
His shaky smile is the last think I see before I'm dragged into unconsciousness like I've been thrown into a lake with rocks in my pockets.
He's not there when I wake up.
I'm not sure what happened, but I imagine a world where the boy with blond hair and sunshine smiles has checked out and is laughing with a whole world of friends and a pretty young woman and one, maybe two, smaller ones that look a bit like him and a bit like her.
I'm not sure if I'm alive in this fantasy, and it almost feels a bit like justice, seeing that I don't know if the boy who used to occupy the bed next to me is alive in this world.
The nice lady is wearing a pink woollen jumper that looks unbelievably scratchy when she comes in to tell me it's time for my psych evaluation. I don't ask her if the boy is dead or recovering someplace else. But when the psychiatrist asks, I tell her I'm no longer sure I want to die. It doesn't feel like a lie.
Two more hours, and when I leave through the doors of the place I didn't die in, a feather drifts past my face. It dances to the ground like it's caressing the check on an invisible lover, and as I look up at the sky it's all vast blue-gold. I don't often believe in angels, but as I step out into the world that never stopped moving even as my life was breaking, I find myself trusting in the smiles of a dying boy; and it feels close enough.
Author's Note: My first one-shot! I must admit it was harder than I thought, I hopped I would have this done in about a week- ended up take just under a month, but then I have been pretty busy. I'm glad I've done this though, I can often get caught up in large projects, so having something completed really motivated me to get everything together.
Thank you for reading and feel free to let me know what you think.
Chia