“I need to explain why I chose him,
instead of you.”
“Father, I'd rather spend this time
speaking of anything else.”
The father leans back into the rigid
plastic, and points. “Look how they hurry.”
“This is a place where haste can make
a difference.”
“In a minority of cases, sure, but
most outcomes are a long time in the making.”
He turns his head to the left,
observing his father in profile, “Like mine.”
“I didn't mean that.”
“After you started talking, you
realized it was where the thought was developing.”
“It's not you're fault. It's mine.”
“I don't want to talk about that
part.”
“I just want you to know...”
A siren blares and the father
leaps from his chair. He turns awkwardly on the spot,
searching for the source of the interruption, as if it means the end
of the world to him.
“Please sit down, you're making a
fool of yourself,” says the man, and he almost rises from his seat
to re-seat the other, but can't muster the energy.
A few people rush by, and the man peers
eagerly after them, as if he can glean some precious secret that will
alter his family's fate. When the commotion subsides he sits, and
tries to recapture his thoughts.
“I love you as much as your...”
“We say, I love you, like it's a
talisman offering protection...”
“And if I had known, I would have
acted differently...”
“But there is no aegis to hide
behind, no shelter against the impending storm...”
“I would have...
“Except you discovered one, but
you...”
“Inoculated another.” they finish
together.
After a moment of silence, one man says
to the other. “It was a strange, unexpected gift.”
“I think they should slow down,”
says the father looking up at the long fluorescent light bulbs
embedded in the ceiling. “If someone caused an accident, or only
hurt themselves, the operation of the machine would lose part of its
critical function, like if person loses the function of their liver.”
“And at this point, the timing is most inconsequential.”
“But the time we make out choices at is critical. On that particular day, I believed you were brave, that he was fragile. On any other day, a year later, my opinion and choice would have been altered.”
“Dad...” says the man, pleading in
his eyes.
“Even a second could have changed my
choice. Such a miraculous, hurried selection. It seemed like a
dream, an if I hesitated... and who can be blamed, when offered the
option to alleviate the suffering of one, who would dare not to
choose?”
The man, observing, his sadness
withdrawing, and hands firmly grasping the edges of his synthetic
seat, begins to vibrate, as his face works through a series of fierce
contortions. At last he thrusts himself upward like a volcanic
burst, and stares so vibrantly at the older man's hunched, squirming
figure, that the father ceases and slowly meets the confronting gaze.
“If you don't cease your story,
you'll never see me again,” he says through clenched teeth,
hesitant to yell surrounded by strangers doing their duty.
“Ah,” the father returns ruefully,
“the worst curse a parent can contemplate.”
A second, extended silence follows this
rebuttal, and it stretches until the two companions recognized a
change in time, as the light beyond the curtains dims, relative to
the light inside.
“I heard once,” begins the man, “a
story about Emily Dickinson.”
The other shifts, attempting to awaken
legs which sleep, and massaging shoulders which ache from stiffness.
“Critics used to think her seclusion
was a result of a shyness. Now they believe the seclusion was itself
the cause, not an effect of something else. My theory, she secluded
herself, and barely published, because she began to believe; what was
the purpose of interacting with corpses?”
The other fails to reply, and the man
prods.
“I have no evidence for my
hypothesis, except, she rarely published (and only early in her
life), she didn't often see others, and the themes of her extended
poetic collection.”
When no answer is forthcoming, he
continues, “Well, what do you think?”
“I thought you didn't want to talk
about it!”
“You're intentionally
misunderstanding. I didn't want to discuss you're fabled choice.
But my fate, I'm willing to contemplate.”
“Are you terrified?”
“I'm...” he begins, but restrains
his speech, as a nurse and two patients pass. One walks with a
shuffling gait, while the other clasps an IV stand, leaning on it as
if on a cane.
“I'm sorry,” the father says.
“You shouldn't be, replies the man,
wiping his eyes repeatedly and shivering. “There's only one
possible outcome for everyone. And don't speak of your choice. I
can't bear your guilt anymore.”
The father clutches the man, sharing a
mutual saturation.
“But regardless of my choice, that's
what a parent experiences. Whether the popular phrase is; no parent
should have to watch their child die, no mother should have to bury a
son, or no parent should have to bury their child, this phrase
expresses the guilt of awakening a being capable of realizing the
devastating horror of its infinitesimal temporary existence. Every
parent desires to die before their children, to escape liability. It
has little to do with the suffering of the child, because everyone
knows the child must eventually grow old and suffer. It reveals the
parent's desire to evade responsibility.”
Clasping, the father continued
speaking, when he realizes the other man can not.
“It is such a horrid idea, such a
barbaric concept, and yet I remember a scene from TV, I can't
remember which, where a father declares his gratefulness for the
premature and painless, accidental death of his daughter. She was
not cognizant of her doom, she did not suffer, and most crucially of
all, she did not yet have the ability to comprehend death. To live
and to die, without understanding either, or preparing for the
latter.”
Then the father falls quiet, for he
knows not what to say, what might hurt, or help, or harm, and silence
becomes easier than speech.
At last the son, exhausted of tears
speaks.
“I do not wish to cry...”
“It is alright to weep.”
“I cry for myself, and I cry for
succor, in the full knowledge, that no one can offer it to me. It is
like I am seeking to project my sorrow, in search of help, but there
is no one capable of lending it, no one outside the box of reality,
there is no doorway, no one who may enter and aid me.”
“I wish...”
“Life begins in a ditch, and it ends
in one, a muddy, worm filled hole in the ground, where we persist in
a second life which is shorter than the first!”
The clock strikes ten, and the last
stragglers of the day, those visiting patients in recovery, begin to
leave, and as they leave they witness two men clutching each other,
and hear the faint, strangled, sobbing repetition.
My poor boy,
My poor boy,
My poor boy,
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