It’ll Wait

It isn’t beautiful or light or silent, like the quacks always say it is. Whoever said it’s like being carried on angel’s wings has never seen the monster that lingers now in the shadows around the boy.

The lines and hollows of its ugliness stand out starkly in the thickening dusk, and it’s enough to make a superhero shiver. Its dripping jaw is slick with the remnants of a recent meal, stretched into a rictus of a grin that hovers gruesomely above its distended belly. Lumps push and roll against its insides, like unborn puppies looking for an exit. Its short fur is stained and sour-smelling, leaving a dark smear on the edge of the bed from where it watches the tiny figure. There’s no telling what it is, but it sure as hell doesn’t look like an angel.

The pale blond protectress holds herself between them, wielding bags of morphine and saline and a cup of colorful, potent capsules. She senses malignant hunger in the air, and fears her valiant show of medical weaponry only serves to stave off the inevitable. She refuses to weep, only curling her body closer to her defenseless ward.

Under her soft embrace, the sleeper shifts and sighs in his cloudy slumber. Her eyes rake his swollen baby face for signs of wakefulness, for any awareness of this dirty, grasping creature. She is relieved to find nothing but the same shallow furrow between his brows, a dent that appeared two years ago and has occasionally lessened but never vanished. She drags one cool fingertip along the crease, trying for the thousandth time to smooth it away. In the silence, she listens to her heart hammer out the seconds between what is now and whatever’s coming next. She considers bargaining for a few more beats, maybe a few million, but can’t think of anything she hasn’t already offered. Nearly bereft of hope, she doesn’t look at the hunkering specter on the dinosaur-print quilt, but it pushes against her peripheral vision until she can’t see anything else. It smells like vomit.

She exhales deeply, hugging herself against the sudden outbreak of goose bumps rippling along her skin. Again her eyes flick to the sleeping bundle, automatically surveying his posture with a practiced eye. There has been no change in the last twenty seconds, but she knows it needs far less time than that to finish its work. She has been on her guard so long she can’t remember what it’s like to watch anything other than shadows. For a moment she lets the weariness sweep over her, every muscle drooping under the collected weight of twenty-three months on guard, but it is only a moment. This is no time to falter. She is all that stands between the ravaged sleeper and the sleepless ravager. Only she can make it sit and stay.

Can’t she? An icy shock bursts over her insides like an overturned cup of fountain soda. What if her valiant struggle never mattered? What if some other hand holds the scruff of the drooling beast, letting it closer by degrees until a predetermined moment at which nothing she can say or do or inject will buy another heartbeat? The bite of bile stings her throat. It can’t be. She will not let their long battle be for nothing.

Clinging to the thought, she smoothes the covers again, passing her hand over a cartoon tyrannosaurus rex, then a brontosaurus, finally resting it on the pointy orange wings of a grinning pterodactyl. Her gaze drops to her hand, and she splays her fingers to cover the reptilian bird’s mocking smile, her third finger glinting blue-white in the night light. She lets her sodden mind tumble backward almost three weeks to that sunny afternoon, picturing her little soldier in his snappy three-piece suit, flashing his toothy smile at a gentle prompt from the man behind the camera. The photo captured their twin grins, her bare arms wrapped around him as he leaned back on her satin-covered lap, her red-and-white bouquet nearly obscuring his tired little body. He had fought so hard to stay awake, pushing up his heavy eyelids as first a slice of wedding cake, then a little dark-haired, dark-eyed porcelain beauty intruded on his fading consciousness. The cake had been ignored, but he’d leaned down from his mother’s arms and reached for his friend in a tender gesture the photographer had missed. It doesn’t matter. She remembers it perfectly.

Her hand slips over his and she wills into his frail limbs the remembered wellspring of love with which the union of his new family had been blessed. She calls up the tender whispers of the first dance, the gentle kindness of almost-strangers, and the lush, constant sweetness of being surrounded by loved ones who wished them well. She presses these warm memories through her fingers until he stirs restlessly, drawing his hand away. She stares at the blue veins bulging against the white tape that fastens the IV line to his hand. Slowly, remorselessly, fresh understanding cracks across her brooding heart.

She has already given him all he needs. It doesn’t matter how much more she has inside her, how much she is willing to pass on to him. His time is full. There is no room for any more heartbeats.

Pressing her lips together into a thin, pale line, she pokes tentatively at the inside of her head as if it is a sleeping giant. An unexpected riot of ghostly images tumbles out at her like shoes from an overstuffed closet, somersaulting across the desperate orderliness of her thoughts. In the chaos she sees all the things she has been afraid to know about his life, his suffering and her loss. She sees their pain, not shared and throbbing as she had always felt it to be, but separate and sharp. Her mouth fills with salt; the taste of blood or tears or sweat. Her chest compresses with a heavy punch, and her head roars. As she claps her hands to her ears and gulps at the air, it is only months of practice that keep her terrified cries tucked well back in her throat.

Dropping her hands into her lap, she presses her wet eyelids closed and waits until her breath becomes once again a soft and rhythmic whisper. Then gently, methodically, she scoops up the fallen pieces, hurls them back into the darkness, and pushes the door closed. With her back to the panting shadows, she lays her hand across the damp forehead of her sleeping son and settles in to wait.

Little soldier man, may your passing be gentle and your mother be strong. Now and always, you are loved.

Because I post here, I don’t really have anything to post here. I might try someday anyway. . I don’t accept notes, but that doesn’t mean you can’t comment.