A Hopeless Step Forward

“No! I can’t- I won’t let you do this to yourself!”

She stared at him, some part of her brain vaguely wondering why he was so upset. They’d worked toward a cure their whole lives, hours spent in school, then university, then their lab. Every waking hour had been dedicated to finding a solution to a problem that could not be solved, and here he was, stopping her from taking the last little step. It was something so small, so insignificant, but Alec looked afraid. Terrified, even. But why? Death himself was knocking on her door, coming to reap what had evaded him for so long, what had hidden away in doctor’s offices and specialist’s labs, and he wanted her to stop? Freedom was so close. The cure was so close. 

Laura glanced around the room, strangely content. There were pictures and little sticky notes on the three square cork boards, each a memory or some sort of reminder. A glass of cold tea sat on Alec’s desk, right next to the beat-up coffee machine they shared. The tech, the furnishings, everything about this lab was shared between the two of them, although the cause was singular. A cure. That’s all she needed, that’s all he wanted. All her life, they’d been side-by-side, closer than anything. Which was strange, because now she had him locked on the other side of the wooden door, the ominous threat of both known and unknown clouding judgment. Experimental, he had said. Well, experimental was better than nothing. Infinitely better. She pushed the needle a bit deeper into the vein, reveling in the pure familiarity of the gesture all whilst keeping him occupied with a low voice.

“Why? My meds aren’t working anymore. It’s this or suffer, you heard what the surgeon said.”

“Laura, please! We’ll find something, okay? I promise we’ll find something!”

They both knew it was a lie. Nobody had found anything her whole life, and even that was dwindling. Her hands were a pale white and gloved with blue latex, every aspect of her form screaming ‘half-dead’. Still, the syringe didn’t shake in her grasp, the wheelchair’s leather and steel cradling her body like an old friend. Something in her knew that this wasn’t the way, that there was hope, as far-fetched as it might’ve sounded. Hope. The fleeting, crushing weight of hope hung around her neck like a hundred-pound weight, dragging her deeper and deeper into despair. The words 'nothing we can do’ blended with white coats and stethoscopes, medical tables and silver instruments swirling into a nightmare before her. Tubes snaked themselves up and around her throat, forcing air into hyperventilating lungs. Friends rushed to give her the medication her aching body cried out for, temporary relief found in each new needle that pierced her skin, each new pill that was washed down with stale water. A tear slid down her cheek, surprising her when it slipped down her chin and into her shirt, coming to rest just over her still-beating heart. Was that a sign? Perhaps. Alec had started beating on the locked door, his tearstained face shown only by the small window near the middle, the noise pulling her away from the distant fog that had swarmed her mind’s eye. His keys lay on the silver tray-like table next to her, another sharp edge gleaming in the fluorescent light. 

“Laura! Just- just wait a damn minute! Listen to me, we can find something. We can find something!”

“This is something.”

“We don’t know what it does, Laura. That could kill you!”

“If I go, I’m going on my own terms.”

He was sobbing openly now, begging for her to wait, begging for her to stop and realize what she was doing. But she knew. All her life, she’d been confined to sterile spaces and her stupid wheelchair, the outside world lurking just outside her vision. Surgery scars marked porcelain skin, veins accenting her corpse-like demeanor like print on china. Freedom was in her grasp, waiting just behind the needle. Alec’s hands clawed at the door, then beat at the glass, and he looked very much like a madman, what with his face contorted like that. A faraway feeling stirred, and she wanted almost to laugh, seeing as how the tables had turned so drastically. He was usually the calm one, always telling her to be rational while she screamed and threw things, crying out about the unfairness of it all. Now it was the reverse, the sun and moon’s orbit rudely interrupted and flipped inside-out.

“Please, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I know full well what I’m doing. I’m finding peace.”

An ugly, broken-sounding cry ripped from Alec’s throat, and he pressed his forehead against the little glass square of their lab’s door, his tears and face fogging it. Laura could see the vague outline of his lips forming words she couldn’t hear, his fist clenched tightly around the knob that wouldn’t move. In the kindest voice she could manage, she cleared her throat and spoke, mustering every ounce of courage left in her fragile being. 

“It’ll be alright, Al. You made it, it’ll work.”

As if filled with new fire, he began screaming nonsense and formulas at her, all the reasons why it wouldn’t work, the hand that had held her own so many times warped by the criss-cross pattern of the glass between them. Her thumb pressed down on the trigger, the serum he’d created rushing through her veins. A minute passed. He kept sobbing, kept pounding on the door. Another minute. Something in her seemed to tense, the drawstrings in her gut pulled taut by an invisible puppeteer. Alec screamed, and as the medication hit her heart, she realized that it was not freedom nor peace she was rushing into, but an unforgiving abyss, the darkness and rot of Death that she had feared for so long. Hope had brought her to the top of the cliff only to shove her off, a sneering traitor painted as a hero. With Alec’s scream escorting her to what awaited, Laura’s hand fell limp, the wheelchair sagging beneath dead weight.