The cat

The guy in the bed next to his groaned and emitted a strange sound. It didn’t sound right, but he couldn’t turn to check what was the matter with him. Any movement resulted in pain in different parts of his body. He didn’t know exactly where he was hurt, and apart from the pain, he wanted badly to turn to his side or to rearrange his pillow. His back was sore, the sheets felt uncomfortable against his body. The guy next to him gagged and started spitting out something foul. A stench overpowered the hospital’s odour of bleach, bathroom, medication and sickness. He sighed and a painful cry escaped his lips before he could stop it. The excruciating pain meant that most probably, some of his ribs were broken. The pain was so sharp, that he didn’t dare inhale, but he knew that he had to do it sooner or later. There is no escape from the reflexes of survival. He wished the blindingly pain had been enough to dislodge the darkness in his chest. It didn’t. He took a cautious, shallow breath. The stench overwhelmed him again, but there was no detour. He had to breathe, all living beings were programmed to preserve life. He tried to take in as little as possible of the stench and avoid another stab of pain.

He turned his eyes around. It was bright, blindingly bright. In Athens it’s always bright but there, in the hospital room, it was not just the sun. The hospital lights were to blame for this brightness, their sterile glare left no shadows behind. There was no escaping the lights. No retreating in the shadows. The wall opposite his bed was flaked and stained. It needed a new coat of paint. A brown chair, placed haphazardly in front of the wall, stood there as a worn-out relic, serving dutifully its purpose with quiet inevitability, leaving a dirty mark on the wall. It would soon be occupied by either his mother or his aunt, most probably his aunt. The darkness in his chest stirred at the thought.

In the meantime, nurses had surrounded his gagging neighbour. He had an abscess in his mouth and as it turned out, the foulness he was spitting out was pus. The fuss made him dizzy. He wondered, if hospitals were intentionally made uncomfortable and overwhelming, a punishment for those who dared to be unwell. He wanted to be somewhere else, but he didn't know where and he couldn't move, so he couldn't leave. There was no escape from the hospital. There was no escape from his battered body. The nurses had finished attending to his neighbour, who was panting, somewhat relieved. It was his turn now.

“Did you decide to start talking, sweetheart?” Her mouth was contorted to a shape that contradicted her smooth, honeyed tone. He stared at her begrudgingly, as if she was to blame for everything. He disliked her fuchsia lipstick. It accentuated the downturned arc of her mouth he already found unsettling. “I know you can hear me, son. We need you to respond, so we can assess your condition properly. After an accident, it’s crucial for us to know if all your functions are intact.” He kept staring at her plump pink face silently. Her narrow forehead was greasy and her small eyes were squinting, trying to decipher the mystery in front of them. A scream was rising from the darkness of his soul, never breaking free. He released his middle finger from his clenched fist which was resting on the bedcovers. He hoped she would see it. She didn’t. The pretentious tone in her voice and her condescending eyes enraged him. She sighted in resignation and left the room. He didn’t have anything against her, but for some reason, they all made him furious.

Just then he heard a familiar sound coming from the hall. He couldn’t distinguish what she was saying, he could only hear the torrential melody of her voice filled with anxiousness. He could guess what she was saying. The boy, my nephew, how is he, oh God, where is he, how’s he doing, he is a good kid, always cautious, I can’t understand what happened, did he tell you, I need to see his attending doctor right now, have you tried this, Have you tested that, no, You should. Now! Yes, right now. It’s my boy we are talking about! I've practically raised this kid. What do you mean he is not talking, I’ll make him talk. It was unmistakeably his aunt Maria. There is no escape from aunt Maria. She would interrogate him, regardless of his state. There was no point in resisting. That’s what aunt Maria does. She bulldozes feelings, hints, sensitivities and establishes her own order. She means well, she does, and she is nice, she is, and he loves her, he does, no doubt about it, but her assertiveness can be challenging. She never argues or changes her opinion. He thought about closing his eyes and pretend he was asleep to postpone the inevitable confrontation. The rising agitation in her voice made his heart race and the darkness closed around him once more. He tried to sigh again, forgetting how he was punished the last time he tried the same thing. Another painful cry escaped his lips. Automatically he heard her screaming.

“Yanni! That’s my boy! Nurse! Come quick! What happened? Oh! For God’s sake! Hurry up! Is he alright? Hurry now! He’s in pain! Look at his face!” The room was full again. The nurses fussed over his body, exchanging professional terms and moving with purposeful precision, measuring, adjusting, testing the IV bags with expert hands, while aunt Maria screamed orders and spread panic. Aunty was always like that. She always unleashed a deluge of advice, of love and subtle manipulation and drowned everything in it, especially in case of emergency, and this was an emergency, for her at least. There’s no talking back, no space for wishes or opinions, no room for resistance, no opportunity to respond. Aunt Maria always knows best. No one stands a chance against her. It’s futile to resist. Maria is a force of nature despite her tiny frame. He felt exhausted and the darkness took him over once more. He jerked begrudgingly his arm out of a nurse’s grip and grunted. “I’m almost done, my boy. I’m adjusting your pain meds. Hang in there.” He scoffed angrily and surrendered stoically to their care. He was exhausted and wanted to sleep, but now aunty was there. There’s no escaping aunty.

“What happened. My love? Oh! Come here, let me give you a kiss! My poor dear boy! Things could have been way worse, my love! How did the accident happen? The nurses told me you are not talking. Won’t you talk, or can’t you, baby? Which is it? Oh, this room needs some fresh air. I’ll open the window. There you are. The doctor told me that apart from some stitches and bruises, some broken ribs and a broken collarbone and a concussion, you are fine. My dear boy! My sweet boy! Look at you! You have no idea how much you scared us! I’m so relieved that you’re safe. God must have protected you, blessed be His name.”

He wanted to answer something like leave God out of this or God has nothing to do with me, but she threw her tiny body on him and he grunted again in pain. He longed for some privacy, for some peace and loneliness, some time to cope with the darkness, or be swept away by it, but he was stuck. There’s no escape from the hospital. His heart was thudding in his chest against his sore ribs, a tenacious glimpse of hope in a broken prison. That’s what a heart has been programmed to do. Beat life and hope.

His neighbour was snoring. He had to confront aunty. There’s no escape from aunty. Aunty means well, but sheis too much, especially here, especially today. She kept on hugging him oblivious of his discomfort and pain. Aunty was like that. He stifled a sigh and rolled his eyes. There was no point in trying to break free. The meds had started taking effect. He took a deeper breath trying in vain to find relief from the darknessbut the IV only cured the pain of his body but the darkness was there to stay. It had been there for some time. At last aunty let him go, approached the lone, desolate chair, drew it near, and took her seat. She grabbed his hand and squeezed it, her kind face was tense with worry. There was this wrinkle between her eyebrows that appeared every time she was worried. Her hand was soft. He knew this hand very well. His whole life her hands were there for him. They held his hand on the way to school, they ruffled lovingly his hair, they wiped his tears, they encouraged him and supported him, they cooked his meals, they ironed his clothes, they hugged him, they made his bed, they cared for his depressed mother, these hands, fragile like a sparrow but surprisingly capable and strong.

“What happened, baby? Please talk to me.” He resisted the impulse to pull his hand back, her touch made him feel exposed. It took everything he had to fight back tears. The darkness. Maybe she sensed something, because she let his hand go. “We’ll need to wash these curls, my love. Maybe it’s time you cut them off altogether. This isn’t the look for a proper young man like yourself. Only vagabonds wear their hair down to the middle of their backs.” He kept his lips stubbornly closed and kept staring at the ceiling while his aunt was stroking lightly his hair. His long hair had always been a point of friction between them, one of the few things on which he held his ground,and that was a blow below the belt, but that’s how aunty was.

“Why won’t you talk to me, baby?”

“I’m tired” he whispered. It had escaped his lips just like that. She turned to him surprised.

“Yanni! Thank God! Oh, you can’t imagine how scared we were! We thought that there’s something wrong with you, you know, with your brain. Oh, this is a relief now! Thank God! So, tell me, baby, what happened? How did you crash? The police is asking questions.”

“Did… did I hurt anyone?”

“No, baby. Only yourself. Do you remember what happened?”

He looked outside the window. The gentle autumn wind was blowing playfully. The cypress trees were standing outside his window, proud and solemn and alive. They usually stand at cemeteries. Two magpies were flying around. Life. Exhausting, throbbing life. There’s no escape from life. He found life’s resilience astounding and exhausting. His aunt’s eyes were expecting an answer. The wrinkle between her eyes made it evident. The magpies flashed the blue spot under their wings as they glided through the air. The darkness overtook him once again. He felt an urge to shoot them down and pluck their feathers with his bare hands. He felt an urge to burn down the cypresses. He felt an urge to release a primal cry.

“Baby? Do you remember what happened?” Her eyebrows had moved higher. The space between her eyes and her eyebrows was uncommonly wide. She kept her eyes half closed most of the time, which made the gap appear even larger. It was a look of entitlement and confidence, one that had always left him in awe. Sometimes, especially when he was a child he thought that her eyebrows were trying to reach her hair. From the effort, tiny wrinkles formed at the ends of her eyebrows, tracing their movement.

“Am I in trouble?”

“No, my love. We are all glad you are alive.” He thought he saw tears in her eyes, but he couldn’t turn his head to examine her better.

“Won’t you tell me now what happened? Please, my love!”

“There was a cat.” he said hesitantly.

“A cat? You tried to avoid a cat?”

“Yeah.”

“You tried to avoid it and lost control and crashed on the pole?”

“Yeah.”

“There was a man, a witness, who said you just... He didn't mention anything about a cat.” His eyed wandered in the room. He couldn’t find anything to hang onto. He looked fleetingly at his aunt and then fixated his eyes to the ceiling. She was looking at him with love and something else he couldn’t place, expecting an answer, the gap between her eyes and her eyebrows was not that big because for once her eyes were wide open, pleading, expecting, hoping. Her fingers were sank in his mattress as if she was hanging on a raft for dear life. She was a good woman. She had ran to him in this moment of need. Was it need? For him it was nothing. For her it was everything. She had run to him without makeup, without her elegant clothes, clinging to his bed, her eyes fixed on his sealed lips, with a concern he had never seen before.

“Baby, are you sure there isn’t something you...” She stopped and looked at him even more intensely. He could not bear her look so he kept staring at the ceiling. There was no escape from aunt Maria. Her eyes were looking deep inside him and she could definitely see the darkness. He knew what she was thinking. He closed his eyes to briefly avoid the light, her gaze, her love. She sighted.

“You’re tired, baby. I’ll let you rest.” This was not like her. She never ceased talking, arguing, insisting, winning, but it didn’t matter. There was no escape and of course nor was there a cat.