Order of the Iris

Lindsey likes to talk in code. She sets the vase of irises down onto the overbed table. The mushroom cloud of purples block my view of the hospital room except for the visitor space on my right where an anaemic-pink armchair sags against the wall. She takes a seat on the edge of the cushion. A nurse attends to her routine of adjusting the pipes, tubes, and bleepers that keep me fed, watered, and alive. Soon it will be just Lindsey and me. 

‘Your brother’s a fighter, he is’ I watch the brunette nurse from my paralysed perspective; her smile is comforting, stretching into her crinkled eyes. ‘Really inspirational chap, isn’t he? Read all about him in the papers’ She looks over the irises to my sister. I blink twice, trying to catch her attention with my eyes, her hand extends across my chest to twist the vase around. ‘That’s better’ No it’s not. 

‘Like a saint’ Lindsey takes my lifeless hand in her cold one and copies the nurse’s smile in her own bland, unsatisfying type of way. 

‘Aww’ The nurse is pretty but not when she’s acting. She doesn’t need to act, I’m a witness too. ‘Well, I better be leaving the pair of you to it then’ A nod to Lindsey, a wary look to my slack face and she exits the room, leaving me in the awful company of my sister. 

The door suctions shut and the room becomes a tomb of silence. I blink, wait. An anxious click from the heart monitor pings in my ears. Lindsey swallows her nuclear smile, my mechanised lungs labour to drag a breath into my body. A thin whistle sounds as it exhales for me. I want to throw my hands at her but my muscles are frozen stiff. The way she looks at me, grey eyes filled with half pity, half envy. They slink over the collection of ‘get well soon’ cards on the dresser, the tubes, and back to my elastic face. Livid with the signs of care in the room. Why are they not at all directed at her? There is a sick itch eating away at my sister like a parasite extracting sweet jealous nectar. 

‘Not so handsome now with those burns, are you?’ We make eye contact. A memory of her white face in the black plumes of house fire smoke assaults my mind; the aftershock of a scream, dad’s limp arm aflame on the floorboards. Bitch. 

She takes out a cigarette and a lighter like a Bond villain, ‘You mind?’ I blink twice, Yes. Could she get more pathetic?

‘Perfect’ A grin.

She adjusts the blinds to the glass overlooking the hallway then moves to the window. I look at the irises again. Didn’t Van Gogh paint the same ones in his asylum? A gust of springtime air cools my face; an indirect, unknowingly granted gift. Lindsey returns to her seat.

‘You missed their funeral, not much to bury though’ 

She flicks the lighter. A searing pang of hatred lights my throat ablaze, I feel my face grow hot again. I wish my pain was a noxious gas that would leak from my pores and poison her, make her skin blister and eyes melt from her sockets. 

The flame dies and her cigarette is still unlit, drooping from her lips. She takes my hand again and this time positions the lighter in my fist so that I’m holding it with her support. With my thumb, she forces me to light it. She puffs, my hand drops over the side of the bed, the toasted scent of fresh nicotine floats over my head. How I want to pull out these tubes and suffocate her with them. 

‘Cheers… I brought your favourite’ She motions to the vase. 

These are mothers favourites, not mine. She would’ve been celebrating her 60th in twelve days. They are too bright and sickly as if the petals were moulded from cheap fondant. Sweet enough to choke me. Irises, springtime, April. A month of pastels and plastic things. I think of cheap yellow chicks on dry cake and hollow eggs. The irises are the senile colours that old women wear; jaundice yellows and purpura purples, insipid pinks and vapid blues. 

My eyes follow hers, she flicks her cigarette and kicks the ash away. Her foot catches on something and there's a rustle as she picks the item up. It’s a newspaper, a blown-up image of my college portrait takes centre stage on the cover. The title reads ‘House Fire Leaves Model Son with Life-Threatening Burns’. Like looking into a mirror that shows you a better, dated version of yourself I’m reminded of how much I’d taken for granted. Lindsey throws the paper to the corner of the room, she scoffs. What could she possibly be mad at? She broke the boy in the newspaper that she resented, now she’s jealous that he’s broken and still made the front page. I know to which frequency the machine of her mind operates. Her fuel is envy and greed, then greased with an indulgence of self-pity. 

‘Don’t you want to scream, hit me?’ Finally got something right. 

She takes the last drag from her cigarette and looks over me once again, ‘God, you were always such an attention seeker…’ Her eyes light up with something ferocious and she moves forward, stubbing out the butt on my arm. She looks for a reaction, there is none. I don’t dare shut my eyes. I still feel it, every pinch.

‘You don’t feel a thing do you?’ I blink, yes I do. ‘The doctors are wrong, you’re a complete vegetable’ 

I feel a sense of accomplishment. Despite being locked away behind the prison bars of my skin I can still control what Lindsey knows and doesn’t know about my condition. 

‘You’ve never been so easy to talk to… I enjoyed this, let’s do it again’ 

She collects her coat from the floor and leaves the room with a bounce of satisfaction in her step. I stare at the irises, the irises stare back at me. Locked-in and rattling my cage of bones, I am bristling and alive inside. I have something I never had before; a master's key to my sister’s thoughts. Every locked room and hidden attic of her brain is free to explore as long as she returns, let’s do it again. I won't be paralysed forever and when I walk again, I promise to return the favour. I will make it my goal, precise, an ordered plan, no loose ends. A perfect conclusion to a putrefying plotline. Done for mum and dad; once for her, twice for him, thrice for the order of the iris.