John

“Why did you do that?”

My chest hurts. I stare down at my shaking hands. I don’t recognize them as being my hands. It’s like, by some supernatural occurrence, someone or something cut off my wrinkled regular-sized hands and replaced them with a pair of odd, amorphous dwarf hands. They are particularly small and unshaped and they seem to be disintegrating before my very eyes.

The blood pounds in my ears. What did he say? There’s a persistent buzz in my ears and I can’t tell where it’s coming from. One second, it seems to be coming from inside my brain, but the next, it seems to form in the upper right corner of the sterile white room, then spread at an alarming speed and engulf me, him and the whole hospital room. What did he say? Did he even say something?

“Why did you do that?”

He did say something. His voice is faint and uneven, as if he’s speaking through a throatful of tightly packed phlegm. My feet tingle. That’s a funny sensation. I look down at my feet. I try to move my left foot. It doesn’t move. Why doesn’t it move? I try to move my right foot, but it seems to have a mind of its own as well. My heart starts thudding in my chest. Why can’t I move my feet? For an instant, I can’t move any part of my body, no matter how small. Not even a finger or a toe.

My eyes grow round as my breath pace fastens. With a sudden need to fight for my life, I gather the whole strength I possess in all my muscles. My left foot twitches violently. Okay, good. I now focus all my strength on my right foot. This one has always been slower. It moves as well. Good. They’re still my feet.

My body doesn’t want to listen to me right now and I’ve got a feeling that’s not because of the illness. Only his words keep echoing in my ears, strangely muffed by the constant buzz.

“Why did you do that?”

“I was scared.”

My voice comes out hoarse and raspy. It’s not feminine at all, but I don’t think he cares anymore.

“Scared of what?”

I am not in the best condition and his questions are strenuous for me. I expected this interrogation, it is something I prepared for, but I feel exhausted.

I don’t know what to say.

“Of me? You were scared of me?”

Not really. Though somehow, I definetly was. The lines are so fine in life and a single situation can be perceived and understood in so many ways. Was I scared of him? It’s an overstatement. But I was scared of certain parts of him. I was scared that maybe, one day, when in contact with certain life circumstances, those certain parts of him would create an undesirable reaction that would have a malign effect on my life. On our lives. So yes, if I put it this way, I was scared of him.

“No. Of course not.”

“Then?”

There are so many things to be told and so little time. We don’t have enough time.

Oh, no. I start having a headache. I hate that. I would rather have literally anything else in my body hurt rather than my head. I can’t stand headaches. My chest still hurts.

“That was a bad time for us. You know it.”

He’s silent. I think he does know it. He doesn’t understand it completely now - maybe he never will - and he definetly doesn’t accept it, but I think there is a tiny part of him that knows what I’m talking about.

“Yes, but… This would have changed everything. I would’ve changed if I’d known.”

“This is why I didn’t tell you.”

Why was something else needed for him to change?

He takes a few steps backwards. One, two, three, four. He stands still, his back flat against the door. The remaining strength in his old, wobbly legs runs out. He whooshes down to a sitting position. He watches his own trembling hands. I wonder if his hands are still wrinkled and regular-sized or they have been replaced by a pair of amorphous dwarf hands as well.

“How old were we?”

“37.”

He muffles a cry. He covers his mouth with his right hand and a stream of tears bursts almost instantly on his cheeks.

“Why did you do that?” he asked again.

“You had cheated on me.”

He’s silent again. He knows it’s the truth. Maybe he even understands a little bit better now. No, I don’t think that, forget it. I don’t think he does. But maybe he will someday. I’ll be long gone by then, but I like to think that he will understand someday, before old age will take him as well.

His right hand moves toward his left chest pocket.

“You can’t smoke in here,” I tell him before he can even pull the pack out. His right hand returns defeated on his right knee.

Right now, this exact moment, I don’t know why, I remember that I first fell in love with his right hand. His right hand and his eyes. We were both 21. We were at the bar near the college we both attended and I don’t know about him, but I’d surely had one too many glasses of whiskey. Or two. Or five. I don’t remember exactly, it was a long time ago. I was studying choreography and my physical form was slackening. I’d already had two surgeries on my right knee and another one was on the way. Everyday I was in pain and not only in dancing class. There were days when I could barely get up from bed and go to the toilet. And there were days when I felt like a star when I stepped on stage. The problem was that when I woke up in the morning, I could never know in which category that particular day would fall. And that was terrifying. And infuriating. I was only 21 years old, I didn’t know to do anything other than dancing, yet I was forced to wonder whether I’d be able to dance the next day or my career would reach its end before even starting. So I drank. A lot, sometimes. This is how I met him. I’d seen him a couple of times in the schoolyard. I didn’t like him. He was studying to become a theatre director. I never liked those. They are too smug. That’s what I told him when he offered to pay for my one-millionth glass of whiskey. He laughed and paid for it anyway. Later that night, when the fingers on his right hand were squeezing the hard-rock flesh on my left upper thigh and his lustful green eyes were staring into mine, I knew that I was falling in love.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” I blurt out. I sometimes find myself doing that - speaking without thinking first. Sometimes, my heart takes over my mind, my lips and the muscles of my tongue (strongest muscle in the body my ass!) and I find myself speaking. “I was doing everything for you. I was doing all your paperwork, I was making all your phone calls, I was keeping in touch with your whole team, wherever you worked. I was talking to the theatre managers and the sponsors for you. When I gave up dancing because of my health issues, I swore to always work for you and to help you become a great director, in any way I could… I was cooking for you, I was doing your laundry… I was a loving wife. You shouldn’t have done that.”

He doesn’t say a word. It’s not the first time we’re having this conversation. I know that. But maybe the fact that I’m dying will make it weigh more this time.

“When did you do it?”

“One day, I told you I was going to visit my sister in Santa Monica. I was actually at Elle’s, across the street.”

Another muffled cry. Another rain of tears. He stands up and slides toward the open window. He stays there for what seems like hours. It’s probably just a couple of minutes.

A dozen needles dance their away across my forehead. This damned headache! I close my eyes and rub my temples. This buzz is terrible. Where does it actually come from?

When I glance toward him, I notice the orange-filtered cigarette in the corner of his wizened lips. Maybe not the old age will take him, but a lung cancer after all. That’d make two of us.

“You can’t smoke in here.”

“I’m not going to light it.” His voice is harsh and imperious.

I open my mouth to speak, but no word comes out. A claw grabs my neck and my chest. My vision disfigures, as if I’m looking through a fish-eye lens. I feel like smashing the door open and running away, but I can’t even get up from this bed by myself. And my right knee hurts. Why the hell does that damned knee hurt, out of all my body parts?

“Forgive me, John.”

He stays there, staring on the window. His pale lips crawl into a grotty half-smile.

“Did you ever forgive me?” he asks after another few minutes which to me seem like hours of silence. “Did you ever forgive me… Elaine?”

It’s the first time I don’t like hearing my name swirling out of his lips. It sounds unpleasant.

Now I’m silent for a long time.

“No.”

His grisly smirk sluggishly metamorphoses into a hideous laugh. His right hand clings to the left side of his chest.

That is one beautiful right hand.

It seems like ages of agonizing laughter. He puts on his coat and, wiping a tear from the corner of his right eye, he scans the room. His gaze not even once lands on me. He storms to the lower left corner of the room and grabs his black leather briefcase.

I feel a tear forming in my left eye, but I refuse to let it go.

He kicks a chair with his right foot. The chair falls on the floor with a loud thump. He’s always been a fiery man. This is part of why I fell in love with him.

He opens the door. I hear it. I refuse to look at him. I’m afraid I might cry. And in no way I’m leaving this world crying. There is another moment of sickening silence.

“How were you going to name him? Did you think about that?” he asks hoarsely.

The claw in my chest is still here. I open my mouth to speak, but I only cough. My chest hurts the most when I cough. God dammit, can’t it be over already?

“John.”

A snort.

“Don’t go.”

Then silence.

He shuts the door. Maybe I will cry after all.