Towards the Sun

Dedicated to Marthita

It was near dawn when Fayna arrived at her house. The door was wide open and she was afraid she was the victim of a robbery. She carefully removed her white loafers and crept inside. The porch light that she used to leave on when she returned at night allowed her to see inside and enter with more confidence. She realized that everything was in order and that nothing was missing. The young woman only noticed something strange: there was too much silence, she did not hear the clock in the room and she realized that it stopped working. Then she checked the rest of the clocks in the kitchen, in her bedroom and the loft. They all stopped at the same time: 3:58 AM.

She closed the doors and windows, turned off the lights and went to her room. All week she had had to do night duty at the hospital. She was very tired and her eyelids were closing. The little strength she had only allowed her to take off the doctor's gown and threw it on the floor. She realized that it was unusually torn, but she no longer wanted to think about it. She fell exhausted on the bed and drowsily remembered the activities of that day that had been the most difficult of all.

Many patients had arrived at the hospital. A boy with a bean stuck in his nose, accompanied by his hysterical mother who had to receive more attention than the son; a teenager who tried to commit suicide with sleeping pills and was saved thanks to the fact that, regretfully, he himself told his family what he did; and a butcher who lost a finger in the mincer. Finally, she remembered a woman who arrived seriously injured after a car accident. Then she fell asleep soundly.

When Fayna woke up, it was already noon. The first thing she did was stretch her entire body to loosen her muscles, while some of her bones thundered. That gave her relief. The only thing that bothered her was the dryness of her mouth that produced a bad taste and the smell of blood that she felt impregnated in her nostrils.

She got up slowly, undressed, tossed her white work clothes into the laundry hamper, and stepped into the shower. She felt her revive when the water wet her face and warmed her body. She got dressed in her comfortable pink sweatpants and the shirt she had recently bought at a garage sale. She put on the furry rabbit-eared slippers, a gift from a little patient, that she liked so much. She dried her hair and tied it back.

Fayna went to the kitchen and made coffee that gave off his favorite smell: that of home. She enjoyed the hot liquid flowing down her esophagus to her stomach. She took one of the blackberry cakes that she bought at the bakery where she took the opportunity to practice her French with the owner. She ate it in one bite and sucked on the whipped cream on her fingers.

She had the week off from work, so she would take advantage of it to do what she loved so much: creating sculptures molded in clay. As if she prepared a ritual, she placed the clay and tools on the garden table. She ordered the stoves by size and manufacturing material: first the wooden ones, then the metallic. She placed a thin board on which she knead the mud, with a bowl of water next. The artist thought of a thousand ideas for the sculpture, but she knew that her hands would disconnect from her mind and create whatever they wanted. The clay was sacred for Fayna because it came from the earth. It was like wheat fields freshly bathed in rain. She pleasantly saw how her hands freely molded surreal and whimsical shapes.

Hours passed until her body demanded food and she went to prepare a sandwich. On her way to the kitchen, she turned aside to see the clocks still stopped marking the same time. She thought of calling the watchmaker to have them checked or taking them herself the next day, but she considered that she would lose the valuable time she had to continue sculpting. "I don't have any plans, the clocks can wait," she thought. Without the ringing of her cell phone that she thought had forgotten in the hospital, everything remained almost deathly silent.

Fayna repeated the routine in the following days: she woke up, took a hot bath, drank coffee with a pastry, molded for hours, she ate something simple and slept pleased to see how the mud took shape. Time disappeared and she only perceived it in the evolution of the figure that she molded: a bird with outstretched wings ready to fly. On the sixth day, she had finished the sculpture.

She accommodated it inside the oven that she had made in the garden with refractory bricks for firing her pieces. She placed the logs and set them on fire. The process would last a couple of hours, so she took the opportunity to enter the house and have a glass of red wine to celebrate the culmination of her art. It had been days of hard creative work that produced a relaxing exhaustion, a spiritual well-being. She knew that those days were necessary to stop a little along the way, to rest and rejoice in what she loved to do, to regain energy and continue life. She only worried about one thing: when she looked at the silent clocks, she had the strange feeling that she wasn´t there.

Absorbed in her thoughts and relaxed with the wine, she fell asleep without realizing that the fire grew so high that the furnace was about to explode. The suffocating smoke woke up her violently. She ran to the kitchen to get the fire extinguisher, but in front of the flames the valve of the equipment jammed and in few seconds the furnace exploded. The clay bird broke into thousand pieces and Fayna flew pirouetting in the air until she fell several feet away. Her head bounced off the floor and she was thrown, unconscious.

When she opened her eyes, she recognized the roof of the hospital. She lay on a bed tubed with oxygen and her two arms had syringes stuck with probes that supplied her with serum and medicine. Fayna heard the rhythm of his heart on the EKG when she suddenly got scared: a round female face was looking at her in total surprise.

"Dr. Smith, come on, Dr. Miller is awake!" - she yelled with a squeaky voice.

Suddenly many eyes were looking at her as if they were witnessing a miracle. Some gleamed with happiness, others splashed tears, and several had incredulous looks.

“Please, nurses, step aside! I need space to review her”. –said that male voice that Fayna recognized as her colleague and friend.

All of the besieging eyes quickly vanished. The doctor began to feel the veins in her wrists, to listen to her heart with the stethoscope, to raise her eyelids to observe her pupils with a lamp, to see the cardiac registry, to check the circulation of the serum, until finally he sighed with relief.

“My dear friend, we thought we would lose you! We have been so worried about losing one of our colleagues for the past six days. We were very sad to see you hurt. All the medical staff have been devoted to you. We all love you! ” ´-said Smith excited.

Fayna just looked at him.

"But tell me my dear Dr. Miller, do you remember what happened to you?" –asked her colleague.

She was about to reply that she perfectly remembered the explosion of the wood oven while she was firing her sculpture, but before she could do it, Smith spoke:

“It was a very difficult week on watch for everyone. You left very tired and with only a few streets to arrive home, you fell asleep at the wheel during the traffic red light. When green turned, a drunkard came at full speed from behind and hit you, and your car crashed into a tree. Your airbag opened and although it constricted your chest and caused slight damage to your lungs, it saved you. Your vehicle started to fire, but the paramedics opened the roof to get you out on time. I was still at the hospital because I had to take care of a teenager who had tried to commit suicide, a blessed luck that allowed me to receive you when you arrived almost dying. After six days you have come back to life.” –said Dr. Smith, and he continued:

“The police have been searching your house. They only reported a small disorder in the garden, some tools and bricks scattered on the ground. It seemed a little strange to them, but they attribute it to the strong gales of these days. So everything is fine my friend."

Dr. Smith stroked Fayna's cheek and headed out of the room, but, under the threshold of the door, he stopped and returned with her.

“By the way, when you arrived at the hospital and I received you, I was struck by the fact that you were wearing your wristwatch. Despite the thunderous accident you suffered, the garment was intact: the strap hadn´t damaged, not even the glass on the dial smashed. Only the clock stopped and that is how we knew the exact time of the accident. I decided to keep it myself in hopes to hand it you personally. My wish is now grant! ”- said the doctor, placing it carefully on Fayna´s wrist.

The clock read 3.58 AM.

Alone, she calmly recharged on her left side to gaze out the window at the sky. Suddenly she shuddered completely! She saw a bird soar through the horizon shaking ashes to reveal her beautiful plumage. It was a phoenix, her phoenix! The same that according to Greek mythology dies in a show of flames and regenerates from the ashes. The phoenix flew and Fayna's lungs filled with air, and while the amazing bird discovered her fiery plumage, the woman's body turned hot and spread her wings. The phoenix disappeared towards the sun.

Finally Fayna fell asleep calmly... tic toc., tic toc.