WILLOW
Release

She shuffled dazedly into the waiting room like a creature astray, unsure where she belonged, if anywhere. No soothing paint hues of cool blue or pale mint or a whisper of indigo greeted her in this most distressing of places. There was simply white: featureless, institutional white as far as the eye could see. White walls. White chairs. White tables. White light thrown from the strip lights high overhead, casting a harsh, almost blinding glare on the colorless landscape and wilting humans below. This was not her first time journeying to this room to sit and worry, of course, yet she couldn't remember feeling quite so exhausted upon setting foot in here before. The lights were sucking the very life energy out of her. They were so, so very bright, making her feel as though she were lost in a white desert.

Squinting in the glare, her gaze roamed dejectedly over the seating arrangements available. There were plenty of chairs to choose from with so much of the outbreak having already taken its toll; there weren't many left to be anxiously awaiting news of ill loved ones. Each hard plastic seating selection looked as unwelcoming as the next. Had the designers possessed no hearts? Weren't things difficult enough for anyone having to pass the time here without their spines being pained, as well?

None of the handful of people nearest her even met her eye; they were all staring at the floor, mute with exhaustion and worry. She looked around the room again, casting her glance further afield, her breath coming shallow, paralyzed with indecision. Not that it mattered where she sat, really, except that, beginning only a few hours ago, suddenly everything seemed to matter.

"I'm drowning," she heard again, for the millionth time. She shook her head to dispel the memory, and that was when she heard something else, not in her head this time.

Bick. Back.

Thwock.

Bick. Back.

Thwock.

Reflexively, she turned towards the source of the sound. In a small alcove set off of the main room were more white walls, more white chairs, and someone she knew.

"Hey, Willow," Cole said nonchalantly as she approached, as though they often ran into each other in the infirmary's waiting area. In fact, she had not seen him since their Origins class had concluded some months ago, when young people's courses of study had begun diverging. The Globally 11 was a very big ship.

"Cole," she said stupidly, staring at him.

Her former classmate was slouched casually in one of the impossibly uncomfortable-looking white seats, tossing a blue rubber handball against the wall.

Bick. It bounced off of the wall.

Back. It bounced up from the floor.

Thwock. It landed soundly in his hand and was tossed again.

"So, who's dying?" he asked, taking his eyes off of the ball just long enough to give her a wry grin.

"What?" Everything in Willow's mind felt dull and murky. The sound of the ball's impacts against wall, floor, hand, wall, floor, hand, was soothing in a strange way; at least it erased the memory of those gasping, rattling breaths from her head.

Cole caught the ball again and held onto it now, turning to her. "Who are you here for?"

"Oh." Of course. "Hen."

"Ah, I'm sorry Willow. That's rough."

"She's all I have left," she whispered, almost to herself.

Cole resumed tossing the ball. "My brother's in there," he said, with a head toss in the direction of the squeaky swinging double doors Willow had seen her unconscious mother disappear through a short time ago. "He's all I've got left, too."

"Really?" Willow was having a hard time believing this. Cole seemed as if he were here for a haircut, perhaps, not waiting to hear if his sick brother would live.

"It is what it is." Bick. "Crying isn't going to kill that virus." Back. "No one in my family assumed any of us would survive the epidemic." Thwock. "So we've already said our goodbyes."

She blinked rapidly. Was that the answer to enduring sorrow, then, an answer she was now discovering far too late? Willow had already bid goodbye to one sister and one brother prior to the outbreak - Lotus had passed very young from illness and Heath from an accident in the factory - but the outbreak had taken away everyone else so far: Sage. Ash. Maple. Fern. Lily. Linden. Hazel. Everyone except Hen.

Willow herself had fallen ill as well, but her case of the upper respiratory virus sweeping through the cloistered population of the Globally had been unusually mild, and with her mother's devoted care, she had made it through. A lingering cough that was more irritating than harmful was all that now remained. But it was likely that Hen had caught the virus from her daughter, and though it had seemed self-evident to Willow that Hen's case would be just as survivable as her own had been, this had proved to be a false assumption. Hen had gone from sick to gravely endangered so abruptly that there had been no preparations. No goodbyes.

"I'm drowning."

Willow shook her head again and sat down beside Cole, all concerns about which chair would be "best" now forgotten. She watched him silently as he tossed the ball, over and over and over. There was nothing else to do. For her, Cole, and many others, the infirmary now was a white void into which one descended to await something, anything. Was the empty lingering better, the grasping for any last vestiges of hope? Or was it preferable to accept the bad news that seemed more and more inevitable, and be able to grieve and then move on?

Bick.

Back.

Thwock.

Minutes, hours, days passed - who could count? - and Willow withered in the suffocating, blinding white.

Then, suddenly: the squeaking of the doors.

The stilled population of the waiting room started at the abrupt new sound. One of the young nurses, much of his face covered by a sanitary mask, emerged and cast his glance about the waiting room as every face turned away, no one wishing to make eye contact, no one wanting to be the one for which this nurse was looking. He wasn't rushing, nor were there any creases at the corners of his dark eyes betraying a hidden smile: a smile born of relief to be able to bestow some joyful news upon one of the haggard waiting room residents. That could only mean one thing. The young man looked around the room, and all present seemed to be holding their breath. Willow, glancing briefly at him, swallowed and suppressed an urge to melt into the floor.

The ball landed in Cole's left hand and was not tossed again. He and Willow exchanged furtive, sideways glances with one another. "Maybe me," he mouthed to her.

"Maybe me," she mouthed back, stealing another look over her shoulder at the nurse.

He was facing the other corner of the room, but then, perhaps because her small movement had drawn his notice, he suddenly locked eyes with Willow, and once he had done so, he did not look throughout the room any further.

Cole, the ball in his hand, the chairs, and the white all around her melted away as Willow, struck dumb into paralysis, observed the nurse walking resolutely towards her. It was as though she and he were the only two entities in the entire galaxy. All else was lost.

An eternity later, the nurse stood before her. "Willow," he said softly. "I'm very sorry. We did everything we could."

There was a long, silent pause as Willow struggled to comprehend the meaning of these simple statements.

The nurse held out a rubber-gloved hand. There was a small blue pill in his palm, shiny like a gem. "Only if you'd like. It will help you endure the shock by allowing you to rest comfortably for the next few nights."

"I'm drowning," Hen's voice came then, so loud that it smothered the sight of the glittering blue pill, the sensation of Cole's sympathetic hand alighting upon her shoulder, the blinding white in every direction, the crush of her lungs suddenly ceasing to function.

"No, thank you," she heard herself saying from many, many miles away. "When shall I meet you at the doors?"

The nurse was eyeing her with grave concern, but replied, "Two hours." He held his hand out to her again. "Are you sure? It's helped a lot of the colony these past few months."

"Willow, hang on a second," Cole said as she stood rigidly, miraculously maintaining her balance as everything around her crumbled to pieces.

She did not answer either of them but instead began walking purposefully towards the door to leave the infirmary. Some of the hunched people still waiting finally looked up to observe her departure, their faces drawn and eyes saddened at the news of the loss of yet another shipmate.

Her vision seemed to be revealing to her only a long, white tunnel as she made her way to the exit door. She did not see the sympathetic faces, and did not seem to see anything really at all until she emerged into one of the Globally's many warren-like hallways. The door closed silently behind her and she stood for a moment, noticing how much of an improvement the air in this hall was compared to the waiting room. No clinical stench of antiseptics, nor miasma of the dying, reached her here.

She didn't know how long she stood there, just breathing, in, out, in, out, appreciating this simple yet nourishing and life-giving act. So many now on the ship could not, but while she yet lived, she could not bear to take it for granted ever again.

"I'm drowning." These had been her mother's last words, spoken only through an exhale before she began coughing so violently she had vomited blood, then lost consciousness. What did that feel like, to drown when you were nowhere near water? For your lungs to be so filled with fluid you were unable to breathe? Willow could not bear to think of how much Hen must have suffered.

She could not bear to think much about anything, right now.

"Coming through!" someone barked from further down the hall, and Willow only just barely sidestepped a stretcher being pushed with remarkable speed past her towards the infirmary, a wailing little girl running as fast as she could after it in its wake.

Willow watched the door after it swung shut behind them for some moments, her heart pounding. Within the space of a millisecond, a sob was born deep inside her chest, and pushed upwards immediately, yearning to burst out of her.

"No," she whispered, and, fiercely holding her breath, she dashed off down the hall as though Death itself were pursuing her.

-.-.-.-

"I thought I might find you here."

Willow looked up. She hadn't even realized someone was approaching, she'd been so lost in a dull haze of grief. Cole was standing several steps down on the staircase a few feet to her left, his face shadowed by the dim lighting. Above, the stars whizzing past, visible through the heavily-fortified skylight, were pale.

She was seated near the sturdy entrance door to the Globally's huge feed storage room, a room that had been sealed off as a result of disuse a very long time ago. She'd heard that the animals of the ship had once been stabled nearby, but had never seen those facilities, nor the storage room itself. All of the animals had died out long before she'd been born. The hallways, stairs, and walkways leading to this particular door were, for all intents and purposes, a dead end, and therefore not frequently traveled, and so it had become a place she came sometimes when she wanted to be alone.

Today, she dangled her legs over the side of the walkway, rested her arms and chin on one of the railing's horizontal crossbars, and absently watched over the goings-on two floors below, where the entrance to the botanic garden was located. There was not much to enjoy or appreciate in the botanic garden these days, as quite a number of plant species had simply died off, stubbornly resisting the cultivation efforts of even the most skilled Scientists, Botanists, and Farmers of the ship. But still the colonists came, to appreciate what flora remained, and to experience, it was said, air that was cleaner and fresher than anywhere else on board.

Willow fancied she could smell some of that sweet air even from all the way up here.

"Can I join you?" Cole asked, coming up the last few steps to stand beside her.

"Sure," Willow croaked, her voice thick from having been choking down sobs for the last hour.

Cole sat down on the industrial metal flooring beside her with a sigh, letting his legs dangle over the side of the walkway, too. He swung them back and forth idly for a few moments. At length, he said, "Your mom was really nice, Willow. She was a good teacher and a good person, too."

Willow nodded, the tears clustering hot in her eyes again, and said nothing. She didn't trust her voice to speak.

"I come up here too, sometimes," Cole said. He was gazing across the empty space between their walkway and a vast wall about forty feet away, painted a reddish-orange and latticed with various pipes and cables. "I guess my secret hiding spot wasn't as secret as I thought. It's a really, really big ship, and there aren't all that many of us left nowadays, but do you ever get the feeling that you just need to get away from...everything?"

"Because you feel like you can't breathe," she whispered.

Hen's voice came to her again, but now warbly, more distant than before: "I'm drowning."

"Exactly. I just feel like, the sooner we get to Incognitus, the better. Supposed to be in the next few years, right? This is no way for people to live. Even with everything the planners thought of, all the ways they tried to keep us comfortable and happy, this is no way for people to live."

Willow, as she so often did, pondered Earth just then. On Earth, where humans had the ability to move about freely, swim in oceans, breathe clean air that all the plants and trees had created, would everything have been different? Would the respiratory virus kill as many people there as it had here? Or would there have been good and effective medicine, available in far greater quantities than the Globally's aged fabrication systems could churn out, that would have saved lives? The mere idea of some alternate existence, where her siblings and Hen were still alive, made Willow intake her breath sharply. It was simply too tantalizing a possibility, but her reveries were swiftly interrupted by the eruption of a coughing fit.

"You okay?" Cole asked, when she had finally stopped. "I still have that cough, too."

"I wish it would go away," she said fiercely, almost to herself. "Why did the virus kill almost my entire family, but not me? Why couldn't they have had the weak version that I got? Then they'd all be...be here coughing...with..." She swallowed hard and swiped the back of her hand impatiently across her eyes to stop the fresh surge of tears that threatened to spill out. "Why am I even here?" she continued, spitting out her words like bullets. "What's the point of living? I wish it had taken me, too; then I wouldn't have to be in this big, stupid, flying...cage without them, all alone!" It was a terrible thing to say, but the worst part was, it was true. Her very continued existence felt irrelevant. She panted from this uncharacteristic outburst, coughed once, and stared at the wall opposite, struggling to quell the anger and shame brimming over in her chest.

"So don't waste it," Cole said.

Willow blinked for a moment, then turned to him. "What? Waste what?"

"What the universe gave you," he replied with a sweep of his arm, encompassing nothing yet seeming to indicate everything. Willow kept blinking uncomprehendingly at him, and so he added with a half-smile, "The reason you're alive."

Was he poking fun? "And what reason would that be?" she queried icily.

Cole laughed, taking no offense at her tone. "I don't know, Willow, but that's just it! We don't know what's going to happen. We don't know what your future holds. Don't you see? Whatever the reason was that the virus spared you - if there even was a reason at all - you've been given something that, unfortunately, your family was not. It's up to you to do something with that gift. To make it count."

Willow rested her chin on her arms again as she considered her former classmate's words. A light, fresh whorl of air from the gardens far below reached her again, and she breathed it in deeply. As she did, she thought once more of what her loved ones would never again experience, and how absurdly infinitesimal the odds had been that she was still here to be doing so.

Luck. A gift, from the universe.

Cole was right.

"Why do you think you've been spared?" she asked.

"Spared thus far, anyway." He grinned at her. "But let's be real: we wouldn't make it the last few bazillion miles to Incognitus without killing each other unless I were here to make sure we laughed instead of cried." He straightened, intoning theatrically, "It is my most sacred calling, you see."

Willow allowed herself a tiny smile in response.

"Anyway, I'll let you be for now. You should probably go down to the doors soon. It's almost time."

"Yeah," she said faintly, staring off at nothing.

Cole bonked his right shoulder into her left. "I know it feels like you're really alone right now, but you're not. We're all going through this, and we're all here for each other. Don't forget that." He stood. "We'll all be brave together, okay?"

"Okay," she echoed.

"See you around, Willow. Take care of yourself." Cole trotted down the stairs lightly, as though his only living family member weren't maybe dying, as though he hadn't a care in the world. Willow watched him go, then put her chin back down on her arms with a heavy sigh. Sweet drafts of air caressed her from below, flowing around and past her like a river seeking the sea.

-.-.-.-

"Today we gather to send off Henrietta. A phenomenal teacher, who spent years passing down to our young people our most treasured heritage as Earthlings: our past, and our planet's past, as we who have never set foot upon it are able to understand it. A wonderful daughter, sister, and mother, who was loved, and passed that love on to all who knew her. We thank her for her life, and for all that she has given us."

On the councilwoman droned, reciting rapturous platitudes that could apply to nearly anyone, and probably had been scarcely personalized at all, so sudden had been Hen's passing. Willow wasn't really listening; she stood erect, hands clasped in front of her, unblinking eyes riveted to her mother's colorless face.

When the councilwoman had finally concluded her eulogy, she nodded to Willow, who stepped forward to the stretcher upon which Hen lay. There were only a few moments left for them to be together; soon, the stretcher would be rolled past the first of the three great metal bilge doors into the inner chamber, then past the second door to the outer chamber. There, the stretcher would be secured to the floor and the two doors sealed. Moments later, the outer chamber would be depressurized and the final bilge door opened, allowing Hen's body to float from the stretcher and be borne gently off into infinity.

Willow placed both her hands on her mother's cheeks. The skin there was cool but not cold. "I'm sorry," was all she could think of to say. Sorry for not being a better daughter, sorry for not treasuring every second they had had together, sorry for somehow transmitting the virus and killing her. The latter hadn't been her choice, but it was her fault, anyway. Hen's face was calm and serene in death; no trace remained of the horrifying contortions Willow had seen as her mother struggled for breath. She feared that that was an image that would haunt her forever instead of the countless memories she had from before the illness, when Hen had been alive and well. Willow studied Hen's face single-mindedly now, fighting to memorize every feature, every contour, because peacefully passed was a better memory to keep in her mind's eye than drowning alive.

A hand alighted on Willow's shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. From far away: "It's time now, my dear."

A sob again threatened to burst from Willow, and again she quelled it, swallowing it hard, pushing the pain away. "Goodbye, Hen," she managed to whisper, nearly choking on all this unexpressed sorrow.

She turned and walked away from the doors, the other mourners, the stretcher, her mother, and began walking up the metal stairs out of the bilge, tears pouring silently down her cheeks. Behind her, she heard the first of the two doors drawing open and Hen's stretcher being rolled forward.

Willow walked, and some blank period of time passed, filled with shadows and distant voices that were maybe talking to her, maybe weren't, but it didn't matter because Willow couldn't understand a single word, anyway. Through this murky world, her feet pursued their own ends with no conscious input from her mind.

She was not, therefore, surprised when she found herself once again on the quiet catwalk outside the sealed feed storage room. Somewhere far in the Globally's wake now, Hen's drowned body was floating peacefully in that boundless dark. How could Willow possibly go on, when she had lost everyone?

A gift, Cole had said. She'd been given a gift.

She looked down to the botanic garden entrance, two floors below. What plants remained in the garden selflessly gave and gave their fresh, pure, life-sustaining air, and all the colonists had to do was breathe it in. She hadn't realized, in fact, until this very moment, that she'd been holding her breath. She closed her eyes and took one long, slow inhale, feeling the air's cool presence pass through her nostrils, her throat, to her needful lungs.

To breathe, to really breathe, was to live, and suddenly, all she wanted was to live, live and see what this strange, heartbreaking gift from the universe would bring her.

Willow opened her eyes and gazed upward, to the numberless stars, and exhaled.

-.-.-.-

Author's Note: I post this final chapter mid-March 2020, in the midst of a worldwide coronavirus pandemic. In my final round of edits before uploading, a good deal of Willow's tale struck frighteningly close to home for me. It is my hope that soon, stories of infections and deaths from uncontrollable viruses return to the realm of fiction.

Thank you for the gift of your time and attention, dear reader, and may you and your loved ones remain healthy and safe.