The Nail

A large two-winged door with round windows opens and a man walks through it. He is wearing a green surgical hat and a mask over his face. Only the eyes remain visible to us. Those heavy, tired, black eyes. A green robe floats behind him wrapping around the entire hallway as it seems. He looks like a superhero. Or a villain. It all depends on what he has to say to us. I made my peace with it that he's the villain. Those eyes cannot in any way bring good news. 

It was around two o'clock after midnight. Almost half an hour as I started jabbing at my nail. It was in one of those moments when you think about things that could happen and what that which could happen would do to your life that I noticed that little violent act. Everything would change, I thought to myself. Nothing would ever be the same anymore. And that was not one of those clichés taken out from novels and movies. It was an absolute truth. That was the moment I noticed the crack on the top of my right hand’s thumbnail.

Nothing will ever be the same, I thought.

***

Earlier that evening I heard something like a yelp or a moan from the other room. A prolonged swooshing noise followed, it was like an endless wisp of wind flew through the house. And then, just for a moment, silence. House felt under unbearable pressure covered with it. I was waiting for the moment when the walls would finally crack and all of the concrete and brick and wood will collapse over me and engulf me whole. 

Finally, another moan and a thud. Someone fell. 

I was lying in my room. Listening. I knew something bad happened. I felt unbearable heat rushing toward my cheeks, ears and eyes. All the way from my feet, across my thighs and stomach, all the way up. There was no way I could blink. I just stared at the darkness and listened. I heard footsteps. Hurried, slurred speech. Someone crying. I still couldn’t move. I was paralysed. Like when an earthquake happens and you just lie there, helpless and motionless, as if all the power and will has been sucked up from your body. I was scared. I heard someone telling to someone to go and wake me up. That snapped me out of it. I was up and ready for it. The door of my room opened and my sister’s silhouette appeared on the doorstep. She just uttered, „Mother fell.“

With the same heat that cooked my body from within I stood there. I was waiting for something. Another lunge maybe, to keep me going. And then a thought hit me making my legs feel like they belong to someone else’s body. If that was IT – nothing will ever be the same again. 

Father didn't want us to wait for the ambulance. We got dressed and went to the hospital. When we arrived, they asked us what had happened. We explained what we knew. They put her on one of those white beds with wheels and took her somewhere. We've been told to wait. 

The moment they took her from my father’s hands and moved her onto the sliding bed, I noticed her body. For the first time in my life, I truly paid attention to it. It was just a body. Just a mass of muscles and bones and nerve endings. It was dead. Lifeless. It looked as if the soul was not part of it anymore. The hand took an age to fall over the brim of the bed. And then they disappeared behind two-winged door with round windows. 

As time slowly dragged on, more and more I chipped away my thumb-nail. The first layer is surprisingly easy to shed. You need to scratch just a bit harder with the tip of another finger. Whichever you find works best. For me, it was the index finger. When you have a hole that’s been bit into, it is easy to spread its radius. And then I started going up and down, up and down. Then up again, down again. In a few minutes, I had my first furrow. 

It's funny how there is no feeling when you touch a nail. It is like you are touching plastic or wax. Something in-between. As if the nail is not a part of you until you start to scratch it. 

There, by the side of the nail, was a cuticle. I focused on it watching at a two-winged door with rounded windows. 

I was thinking about what was happening behind it. I was thinking about the fight that has been fought over there. Who is going to win? Will things ever be the same again? And when I say things, I mean practical stuff. The likes of – who would make lunch every day? Who would vacuum the house? Who would dust and clean everything that needs to be cleaned? What needs to be cleaned anyway? Will our house become one of those spaces filled with a thick heavy air of neglect? Will it have grey walls and dust-filled corners? Never-ending cobwebs? Who would go to the grocery store? What would we even buy? Do we, who would stay on, even know anything about any of those things? 

I tackle that cuticle with more and more intensity. At a moment in which an avalanche of thoughts breaks apart, I realize that part of my skin is sliding off my finger and hangs. It holds itself on a single hair of skin. I play with it for a while. It makes me calmer. I twist that part as I'm trying to see how long can it bear me pulling it until it breaks off completely. 

I'm looking at a two-winged door with rounded windows. Time feels like it is standing still. No movement. Nothing. As if we all stopped existing. My sister is looking at her feet. Didn't move a muscle since we arrived. Father is over there, by the water cooler, his eyes are closed, arms crossed. He is breathing slowly. I wonder how can he be so calm. But then again, he was always like that. From the outside at least. I bet on the inside he is raging with melted magma just waiting to pour from any of the openings on his body. That is why his eyes are shut I guess.  

Nobody moved since they told us we have to wait. 

Once, I remember as a cuticle feels like it is at its breaking point, my mother told me how she misses talking to me. We talk every day, I tell her. No, not like that, she said. She misses real conversations. About important stuff. About me and my life. How am I doing and what is going on with my life. She said then I was like a ghost. Just walking through the house and seldom speaking. She said, even when we do talk, I never look her in the eyes. She wondered why. What could possibly be so shameful and unbearable to spit out without being able to look into another one’s eyes. 

Nothing I could bring myself to utter at that moment would make any sense. So I stayed silent. Again. And now I can't stop thinking about it. About the fact that we say so many important things to someone who is nothing to us, and how we hide so much from someone who sleeps in a room next to ours. I'm sitting there and thinking how much I have to say. And now maybe I will never be able to. 

Now it is a matter of life and death with me and the nail. Just as it is behind the door, I figure. Part of the skin I was pulling earlier took off ages ago. It was another life, it seems. It has already decomposed on the hospital floor. With my index finger, I cut deeper and deeper into the thumbnail. It is not that solid anymore. Tissue has become soft and easier to penetrate for some time now. A slow heat is spreading across my fingers. All of the time I can't bring myself to look away from the door wondering how much time has passed since we arrived. It must be at least two lifetimes. Or maybe a single second hasn't passed yet. The liquid heat of our burning sun comes back to inhabit my body once more and I dig through the thicket with such hurry and commitment. 

And then - large two-winged door with round windows open and a man walks through it. He is wearing a green surgical hat and a mask over his face. Only the eyes remain visible to us. Those heavy, tired, black eyes. A green robe floats behind him wrapping around the entire hallway, as it seems. He looks like a superhero. Or a villain. It all depends on what he has to say to us. I made my peace with it that he's the villain. Those eyes cannot in any way bring good news. This is it, I'm thinking to myself, nothing will ever be the same again. As he approaches all I can do is to dig the tip of my index finger the deepest that I can into my thumb-nail and wonder, if nothing ever again is the same – at what temperature is the laundry being done?

The doctor is there, in front of us. He removes the mask. The other half of his face is revealed. The one that carries the truth. All of time and space is vibrating. Waiting. Nothing moves for a fraction. And then life keeps on going. It is what it is. Nothing will ever be the same. Fear starts to build up inside me. Nothing will ever be the same echoes between my bones. We're all silent. The doctor is looking at my right hand. I can't hear him, but I think he's asking – What have you done?

It was at that point I looked at the place where once lay a nail. All I can see is flesh and blood.

It was at that point started to hurt.