Last Ride of the day

From Bed 19 of the palliative ward, Mr Smith rose.

He flicked the stray strands off his forehead. Still a mess, he thought as he felt his unkempt hair. Then he brushed himself over, patting a joint here and there and rubbing a few muscles.

No pain.

The hideous swell in his legs were gone, so was, hopefully, that blasted tumor gnawing happily on his spine.

Smith did not believe in miracle.

It would have been heaven, if not for his hair – right down scandalous for a distinguished gentleman like himself. Offensive, because anything not impeccable was offensive. He couldn’t looked in a mirror.

Suspected problem 1: he was dead.

Suspected problem 2: he was lost.

Because it surely wasn’t his ward. It looked the same –two arrays of yellowish white sheets over metal frame beds, frayed blue curtains knotted and hung between flat pillow and rusty cabinets of two drawers, where housed the wardmates’ meagre belongings. The hospital had tried, but it was lagging behind in time and finance, just as he was.

Before his morphine assisted sleep, the ward was half-full. Now there wasn’t a single soul in it. He couldn’t imagine his lovely wardmates all kicked the proverbial buckets one night and the nursing staff carousing on a strike. If it was the later, he would say a shame he wasn’t part of it. He felt betrayed, left out, left alone. Then he laughed at his stupidity.

For him, all problems were suspected until the paparazzi slammed a without-a-doubt-clear-as-hell -he-hated-high-definition-picture on the newspaper. Bloody hell. It would be a disaster if tomorrow’s headline read “Disgraced ex-politician delirious and dying.”

Yes – dying. His entire being screamed at this injustice. But proud as he was, this time there was no denying. The last giveaway was the eerie golden glow on the floor, twisting and undulating, faded away and only to blossomed moment again. Ouroboros.

Problems confirmed. Solution -solutions pending.

The ward looked almost foreign to him, an image or concept only existing in the strangest novels and movies. He suspected it still wasn’t the whole truth of this place- what he saw was a fragment of the reality which his mind could comprehend.

It was just human nature to miss what was passing right behind his eyes.

He had been found unconscious, at the loo- such a shame, and before that he had no thought for dying. Through the weight loss had started months ago, the malaise even longer. And he saw it in their eyes – the few family and friends who had come to visit, out of sense of pity, moral obligation or schadenfreude. We told you so, they all said, silently.

He wandered off for help, feeling silly and small in his hospital gown. It didn’t take him long.

Smith could have fallen onto his knees and wept.

For there, hunching over the corner of the nursing station, was Dr –what’s his name?

The Orange glow of the desk lamp caught the side of his face, casting him in grotesque shadows alien to human eye- the ferryman from legend. On the swirling chair he curled, small as a child, shriveled as an old man. As if he could sense Smith, the doctor looked up and stood.

Yet the mystique air was shattered immediately. Smith had trouble remembering the doctor’s face before because there was absolutely nothing special about it. It was like someone had put all faces in the world in one giant blender, switched it on, and pasted the result on the newborn that would grow up to be his doctor. Or if he had to explain to an alien what a human looked like, he would show him a photo of his doctor. Even now, his face struck him once again with its extraordinary ordinariness. The remarkable face spread into a gentle smile and spoke.

‘Good evening. Mister. I mean, what a good night it is for a talk.’

‘About what?’ and Smith asked, feeling first amused then like a fool. He swallowed. ‘Where am I?’

‘Nowhere. A Cul-de-sac. A beginning.’

‘Am I dead?’

‘Not yet. Soon.’

He felt many things at once. Anger, jealousy, hatred –towards the nameless doctor, a stranger in the prime of his life, who stood there smiling a smile that shown not joy but infinite sorrow. One who had everything in his grasp, who stood before one who had lost everything, and who knew the both notions. Smith felt humiliated in his presence.

He had lost– Before the MRI caught the greyish mass in his liver, before he fainted in the loo, before he picked up his bottle of alcohol. He was destined to loss since the day he born. Don’t down play it. Don’t say you understand when you are still breathing. It was death, for everyone’s sake. He remembered his football coach slapping on his back, told him with the conviction in his eyes that next time they would win. He remembered his wife, kissing him on the cheek as he stepped off the stage. He had lost the election.

This time there was no condolence.

The intrinsic failure of medicine. Man are mortal.

He wrinkled his nose in disgust, like old men always did, smelling the scent of their own decaying body.

Despite what he had denied, Smith wanted to be pitied. He was dead, if anyone deserved pity in the world it would be him. A line-up for pity and he ought to be in the first place, standing on his tiptoe, waiting for the pity to be bestowed. He wanted to be comforted like a child, nestled close with a warm presence under the blanket, and had someone whispered in his ear that the worst would soon be over. It was unrealistic. It was childish. But who cared. Who was to judge? Smith unclenched his fists, and in a jolt, startled at their strength.

‘Can’t you do anything about that? You’re the doctor.’ His voice broke- an ugly beast, wounded and snarling. He could be kneeling on the ground, he could be strangling and shaking his doctor- and he would not have known himself. He felt nothing until the doctor gave his answer. And the world collapsed.

‘I wish I could.’

‘Then what can you do for me?’

The doctor didn’t smiled, yet his eyes glinted and through which he shone with his entire being a quiet conviction. So sincere was his expression that Smith couldn’t help but think – Yes. He can save me…

‘I can walk with you.’

And even with this answer, with the implication that literally they were walking to his death, Smith, touched in his soul, felt strangely at ease. Where the shambles of his life were, now he saw promise of a new start. It seemed like magic, manipulation of emotion. But the doctor merely showed him another facet of his situation –he had gotten what he desperately wanted before- an end to the illness.

Smith turned to where his doctor pointed. And there, where the ward’s entrance once was, was a road, materialized just beyond glass door, stretching into a stairway that swirled up through the ceiling into a sky ablaze with golden clouds. He couldn’t see where it ended.

‘There, that is the end. You cross and -’ The doctor trailed off and brushed like a boy.

‘What?’

‘I don’t know.’ A sheepish smile and the doctor broke his gaze. It struck him that the doctor, despite his knowledge on life, and surprisingly afterlife, didn’t know all.

‘A pity.’ It was all he could say, for himself, for the doctor who had tried to help, for the others.

A light flared in the other man’s eyes and Smith could feel his doctor-ly instinct kicked in – to reassure, to deny their incompetence. It was what politicians and doctors had in common – they turned bad news into good news, or tried to.

But Smith shrugged off the misery and gave the good doctor a pat on the back. Like a man escaping from the wreck of a car he made, seeing his fortune of just being alive. No big deal, he thought.

They stood in companionable silence. And when he had gathered himself, he took his last ride.

‘Let’s go.’

The doctor took his hand, and in all the awkwardness possible when two grown man held hands, they walked without hurry. His hand was warm.

They reached the road, seemingly floating upon a lake of gold. Smith took in the view. Made of old English bricks, the road was reminiscent of the brick red road of his home town, where he used to stand, against the setting sun, waiting for father to come home. He felt the urge to bend down and feel the weeds, springing through the cracks, let their green filled his fingers, certain that they would smell fresh as they used to.

He took his first step upwards.

He wished his father was here, and his mother. One passed away when he was intoxicated in his work and one was bed-bound. He wished he hadn’t been the disappointment.

He wished his wife was here –wished she hadn’t left him. It was all his fault.

And the child, his son. He was sorry.

He wished they were here, walking the last part of his life with him instead of this doctor. To forgive and reconcile. To be forgiven and make amends. Now this…It wasn’t enough, but hadn’t he been giving inadequate promises? To his family, voters…he would have to make do with it. He couldn’t have everything he wanted.

He took another step. The doctor nodded.

He felt free, untethered, with each breathe he felt himself open up, become lighter, younger. Corners of his lips gently tugged up, he looked back to the past. His courage, his mind, his strength. Unfortunate coincidence, his arrogance, his downfall. The child, the secret indulgence turned scandal, the rise and fall of his SPR. Party. And pretentious he would be if he said he didn’t feel any hatred towards the child. But like the morphine drip he had so desired to rip off his arm, it was there for a reason he couldn’t have chosen otherwise. Likewise, those that damned him had also given him the chance to the throne. He always told doctors and nurses, with more amusement than resentment, that he could have been the president. And now at the end of his life, there was a tender presence by his side, walking along the hospital corridor to the veil, sprouting nonsense about life and afterlife. Wasn’t it quite wonderful?

Gathering memories in his hands, he tied up the thread and brought an end to his life.

There was no burden now. His tumor, his comeuppance. It wasn’t Dante-ish perfect fit for his sin. It wasn’t enough, for what he had harmed was infinite and his tumor was finite, but it did ease his guilt. He thought, we believed in divine punishment not from indoctrination, but from our own mundane guilt.

As if hearing his thought, his doctor’s lip twitched in a sly smile.

He could hear the merry noise of children, laughter of forgotten friends. Fire cracked on hearth, beer can clanged and book pages fluttered, beckoning him onwards.

There was a shadow of unhappy memories, a rim of darkness at the corner of his vision, but it was neither closing in nor retreating. There was no perfection in life, even at its last moment. He couldn’t have everything he wanted. Sometimes, he simply had to believe.

They stopped in front of adoor of a light mahogany, the wood looked so soft that, he still believed, he could trace along its moulding and left a dent in it. Miles of clouds were below them, drifting in serene idleness. Through the familiar beveled glass, he could see the old furniture of his first owned house in their sketchy silhouettes. At rural Camarthen, collared by a vast of forest, his garden led to an unnamed lake that shone like silvery scales. They sat on rocking chairs, wind nipping on their bare feet. His wife joked that they were like old couples. He hummed and turned. The sun lit her face in brilliance and he was filled to the brim with a love as powerful as the day they first met.

‘Any last words or favor?’

‘No’. He told his doctor. He was contented. Full of joy and memories. There was nothing he would want. He forgot the meaning of want.

He was ready.

They said their farewell, like two friends after a movie, heading separate ways.

And outside the window, dawn was breaking through the morning mist. The golden gaze shrouding the ward grew paler and paler, until there was not a trace left. 

AN: I am aware and sorry for my limited insight on a matter as difficult as death. This piece is partly inspired by Being Mortal by Atul Gawande. Not a native speaker, any advice on improving the writing is much appreciated.