The Last Thread
The bell is my line. I grab it as it rings, a thread of sanity wrapped in bass. Each toll tells my body, “Wake! Wake! Live!”. The pain recedes from agony to unbearable and finally a dull throbbing.
When it is done, I can stand. Slowly my stiff hands and knees re-learn gravity. My mother is in the corner, seizing lightly. There is drool, urine and other fluids running from her body into the grate between us. She whimpers.
Two hours and fifty-seven minutes left in my day.
I shower.
I eat a slice of pie that my mother made for me. Her note says we need eggs, that she loved me. She tells me of the ways she spent her night.
I take a bucket and wash my mother. She is keening now, eyes wide and unseeing. Her thin body racked with deep tremors. I brush her hair and tell her I am going to see Anne-Marie today. She hasn’t seen her daughter, granddaughter, or the sun in two years.
Two hours and twelve minutes to go.
I walk outside. The sky is crisp with dawn colors and morning air. I cannot hear my mother’s keening – it is thought inconsiderate to leave your pain room uninsulated. I walk stiffly past deserted townhouses.
I see a couple in a park frantically making love, their face emotionless. Sharp slaps of skin are their only sounds. At the edge of the park I see a man watching them, a silver knife tucked close to his chest. His is face a rictus of indecision as the couple came to a climax.
I wondered if he planned to join or kill them?. I wondered if he knew.
I skirted the park, the boundary marked in red paint and yellow frowning faces. These areas were reserved for ones who lived their final hours without consequence of tomorrow. Sex and death to fill the hours.
The man with the knife waved slowly and watched me.
I stopped in the town’s only remaining store. New, glitzy and out of place, three levels of free merchandise, bought and paid for with humanity’s guilt. Sorry about the pain. Sorry about the crippling seizures. Sorry about the three hours of living a day. Sorry, sorry, sorry – here are things to make your life a little more comfortable. Thanks for the cure, signed Humanity.
One hour, thirty-two minutes of life to live.
I pick out a doll. Her hair is glossy and thick, curling up past the knees. I grab a pink brush and red ribbon.
At the hospital I watch Anne-Marie through glass. She is playing quietly with a toy, holding it listlessly. Her hair is braided neatly in rows with red and orange beads. On the other side of her head is a large bald patch.
I grip my brush.
Who braided your hair? Who took hours and lovingly brushed and parted and plaited?
Who held you while I was laying on a stained plastic floor, praying for death, and the only thread was you… was you my Anne-Marie.
I breathe. Once, twice, until she looks up. My heart flutters but I smile. Her eyes slide past me, back down to the toy.
I feel someone behind me.
“The last operation was only three days ago. I’m optimistic we were able to remove all the effected parts of the brain. There is a good possibility of full recovery.”
My Anne-Marie, she doesn’t know me. My baby.
The doctor cleared her throat. “There was, as expected, some memory loss from the procedure. She lost a large portion of her brain, but with one so young, she should become fully functional.” I felt her shift behind me. “She really is a sweet little girl. We were lucky to find a working cure for the affected children.”
I don’t turn around. I can’t. Was it you, who touched her like she was yours?
“I really think is time to talk about the possibility of adoption, once again. She shouldn’t have to live… she shouldn’t have to live here.”
I don’t turn, I don’t speak. I am empty- a thread undone, held by nothing.
Thirty seven minutes.
The doctor touches me hesitantly. In her eyes, lay the Guilt – the guilt I see in all the volunteers that flocked our town – the guilt, the sorrow, the shame. Yes, but the relief, oh the relief is there, as bright as hope. Grateful that their town, their city was not the one chosen to create the cure.
I sign papers.
Slowly, surely, I walk away.
My baby.
I walk home.
My love.
Nine minutes left.
I disrobe, put on the brown tunic embedded with my medical information, date of birth, percentage of infection.
I sit next to my mother, who I have not seen outside this room in two years.
“I saw Anne-Marie today, Mama. She’s cured.” Mama’s cries lower a bit, I know she hears me.
“She doesn’t remember us…me. The cure took that, too.”
“Mama. Mama, tomorrow…” I kiss her cheeks as the keening rises, tremors deepening, ”Tomorrow I am going for a walk in the park.”
The bell starts ringing again. Deep solemn rings to wake the living. The shivers of pain start at the base of my spine, working it’s way outward. They thrum with the resonance of the Bells.
I lay down as the tremors take me. My head staring at the trailing tears from my mother’s opened eyes. Her body is shaking with intensity.
The bell rings one final time.
Anne-Marie, I love you.
