Denouement
The steady monotone ping of the heart monitor, dull and dreary, it is the only sign he's still alive.
Still fighting.
"Dad!" I gasped, sputtering tears as I wailed. "Why?" More tears poured down my cheeks onto my royal blue arm sling. I stood abruptly from the plastic hospital chair, running my right hand through my shaggy coffee brown hair, pacing back and forth like a wild animal caged for the first time.
I paused, glancing over at the broken man, gauze wrapped head, coupled with an alarming amount of internal swelling and bleeding.
It was as if a red filter replaced my vision, I kicked over the pathetic excuse of a chair, then gripped the bed rail screaming, ignoring the viscous fluids dripping from my face, onto the bed.
"WHY?" I slammed my only functional fist onto the rail," WHAT IN THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU? YOU...YOU IDIOT!"
I glanced up at Dad's face to see blood pulsating out of every orifice, I stumbled back a step and looked at the monitor for answers, but I was handed a death sentence.
The monitor screamed for help; I'm not ready to let him go, the fight isn't supposed to be over. We are supposed to go home, alive and well.
I lunge for his hand," NO! NO! Dad, I'm so sorry. PLEASE COME BACK!" A firm hand on my shoulder, signaling it's over. With a hasty shove of the offending hand I turned back to my bloody father with hope a few well worded phrases will bring him back from the dead like in the movies.
"Dad, I need you. Please, god, please don't leave me."
This isn't a movie. No flash bulbs, no director to shout cut, no actors congratulating each other.
I open my eyes to a crowded hall, monochromatic blues and black, all avoiding my gaze as if I'm a carrier of the plague.
I too would avoid the sickly pale teen with eyes so empty and void of life; Stephan hawking would have to name it after himself. As I marched to Dad's coffin, people parted like the red sea, allowing me to be their crippled Moses, and lead as the pole barer. Dad's face was too disfigured, his skull crumbled and shifted like trying to hold bloody egg shell together, he had a closed viewing, though, I saw every event that caused his untimely demise.
The sky is clear, bright and sunny, the perfect weather, yet, it's as if god himself is mocking Dad, the sky isn't mourning the loss of MY father, the world is moving on like he never existed, like he didn't give his health and sanity for the preservation of this country.
Now I stand in silence before the freshly covered grave, staring at the granite headstone with Dad's name neatly engraved. Command Sergeant Major Jack Morrison, of the 198th infantry, United States Army.
I thought I could cry, but on this beautiful warm spring afternoon, I stood solemnly, unable to feel.
Numb.
The rain came later that week. The storm raged outside while I took comfort in the familiar setting of the physical therapist clinic, the nurse absent mindedly spoke while taking x-rays of my broken collar bone.
She stopped speaking, eyes widen to the size of dinner plates, and she dashed out of the room flashing a worried smile, that didn't ease my nerves.
I spent the next four days poked and pricked by different doctors with different specialties, until a woman by the name of Dr. Ziegler spoke firmly.
"It's cancer. The most we can hope for is a month." She awaited my reaction, preparing for a violent outburst of tears, anger, something; anything.
As silent as I've been since Dad died, I held Dr. Ziegler's gaze," What kind?'' The good doctor wrung her hands together," Well, it's a type of lung cancer, a very aggressive kind."
I banged my right fist against her redwood desk.
" THAT'S NOT WHAT I ASKED!" I moved from the leather chair to the side of the doctor's desk.
I closed my eyes and cleared my throat then spoke softly," I need to know what killed me. I have to know what exactly killed off my bloodline."
The wide eye doctor nodded," You have stage VI, Small Cell Lung Cancer. It's one of the least common, and the hardest to detect since it spreads rapidly in a short amount of time. More smokers tend to have this particular strain." Dr. Ziegler combed some greasy bleach blonde hair out of her ice blue eyes.
" Do you smoke?"
I shook my head," No, I'm only sixteen, it's illegal." My voice trailed off mid-sentence, a realization struck me like a brick to the back of the head. I thought of every time pop puffed a cigarette, all of the times I emptied out an ashtray for Dad. Gabriel used to say he always felt closest to Dad when he sat on the balcony and smoked like they were teenagers, it was the only time he would talk about Dad, who was overseas; until the loneness took his life, with a cigarette between his fingers.
Dad.
I finally convinced Dad to check himself into a clinic for his PTSD; we took the long way to the mental institution so he could enjoy the final moments alone with me. Half way through his cigarette, he tossed it out the window," You know what? I used to smoke with your father when we were younger. In Afghan, I would bum smokes off of the other guys so I could hold on to those precious moments of peace that I had with Gabriel." He shook his head," Now that he's gone, every time I light one, I feel like I'm trapped there. If I close my eyes, I'm in the foxhole with my back firmly pressed against my dead battle buddy. God, Ana…" He trailed off with tears in his eyes; I've never see Dad cry.
His head snapped up and he slammed on the breaks, swerving out of the way, causing the small Jeep to flip twice." Dad! DAD!" Screamed, my left arm mangled between metal. I could see Dad frantically trying to kick the back window out with a Beretta M9 pistol firmly in his grasp," It's okay Ana, I can save us." I could hear his voice waver.
Glass shatter coupled with Dad's rough grip pulling me from the shrapnel strangling my left arm like a metallic boa constrictor.
Concerned citizens rush over, wanting to aid us, but Dad is screaming, waving his pistol," Get back!" His hands flowing with blood shook with fear and despair. As sudden as Dad waved his pistol, his demeanor changed to someone who wasn't my father; a shudder tore through my body. I've never felt fear like this.
Dad flicked the safety off, he then turned to me with a smirk and tears streaming down his cheeks," Tell Jesse, Dad is proud of you. I'm sorry."
Maroon painted my face, dripping to my clothes, as I watch an older version of myself slump to the asphalt.
Time itself stopped, I rush to Dad trying to cradle his shattered skull together; it was like trying hold the yoke inside a broken shell. Dad's head crumbled and sloshed in return.
In the intersection of the street is a light brown grocery bag being gently careless by the wind.
Snow; It fell in thick bountiful sheets all week. Gripping Dad's combat jacket to my thin body, I stroll through the white covered park, the orange ball that usually occupies the sky is gone, replaced with jet black and white Christmas lights strewn together.
I stray from the path and collapse on an area of undisturbed virgin, white snow, perfectly adjacent to the midnight sky; not one cloud insight. A genital breeze careless my thin, bleeding, cracked lips. A labored rasp echoes through the empty park, followed by an onslaught of aggressive coughs ravishing my malnutrition body like the deadly cancer, that's turning my cells into toxic mush. My hands are colored much like that faithful day months ago, now it's my turn to expire. I can feel it.
Lying on my back in the downy fluffy partials of snow, I look at the heavenly spotlights above; depicting ancient stories of heroes and wrathful gods. I remember Gabriel and I laying on the roof during the summer time, telling me the stories of the constellations, not all had a happy ending but all were equally entertaining as the one before.
A yellow arrow leaped across Orion's belt in a brilliant display of equal beauty and speed, it was as if the hunter himself had been impaled.
This will be the first and the very last shooting star I'll ever get to experience, I know it's a grim thought, but it is true.
They say if you wish upon a shooting star your wish will come true, maybe I would be spared one last departing wish, a cosmic departing gift. Maybe this isn't the end after all, maybe this is a short, tragic interlude not a denouement, there has to be more to the story than this!
At least one more act, please, I don't want to have a Shakespeare ending, I want an end without pain, family huddled by my deathbed, and a grand finale that meant something.
I smiled, inhaling more blood than oxygen, the magnificent shooting star almost out of view, my chest tightened as the drowning began, but the wish still needs to said. I wish…
"I wish…"