In the dark, comfortless morning

The patient sat in silence, staring down at his dangling shoes. His wife leafed through a fashion magazine that she had brought from the waiting room. After the interminable delay, the doctor came in, a laptop tucked under his arm. He perused the patient’s medical record, jotting notes on a piece of paper while he tapped and clicked the keyboard with his other hand.

Finally, he looked up and spoke, offhandedly.

= It’s been eighteen months since your last checkup. Everything OK?

The patient shrugged. The doctor looked at the woman.

= So, whats up with him?

The woman put down the magazine, tears already formed in her eyes.

= He’s not working, he’s not eating. Nothing seems to interest him. He sits and stares straight through me.

= Still smoking pot?

= He’s been arrested twice this year.

= Don’t forget to tell him that I totalled your car when I was drunk, too…

The doctor grimaced at his laptop.

= Oh. Let me make a note of that. Totalled wife’s car in drunk driving accident. Has not lost ability to speak. Injuries?

= No. He ran straight into a wall going forty five miles an hour and walked away unharmed.

The doctor got up and began to probe the patient's internal organs.

= Parents still living?

= His father, yes. His mother passed away last summer.

= Didn’t I treat her for the flu once,?

= Yeah.

=Very lovely woman, your mother. That was many years ago. Did she decide to stay on in Texas?

= She moved back to LA after my son started preschool.

= Cause of death?

= Lung cancer.

= Do you smoke?

= Just the green ones.

=OK. Good. No tobacco. Did you get a chance to spend much time with her?

The patient hadn’t spent enough time with her before she'd died but now he spent all of his time with her memory. She’d been given less than six months after they discovered the cancer had spread to her liver. But She held on, cheerfully at first, then growing more frightened and weary for two more gruesome years. His sister's harsh voice wouldn't let up.

= God damn you, Pete. God damn you all to Hell…



When he made the journey back to that little house he'd always blamed on his parents, he wanted to turn around forthwith, re-enter the traffic line and return to LAX. There slumped before him in his mother's favourite chair, a pale, withered toothless hag raving at ghosts that only she could see.

He retreated quickly to the kitchen to calm himself, found some beer in the fridge and stayed ast the table, smoking his nephew’s weed until well after the others had gone to bed. Surrounded by silence he began to feel that there would be no solace. He began to cry softly but stopped himself and looked around sheepishly, once he realised that the empty kitchen didn't care.

Gathering strength, he bumped his way along the narrow wall into the living room, and kneeled down before the gasping apparition of his mother. She was still slumping in her chair, which had been her world, in front of the TV, which had been her universe, and had provided her a facsimile of what those closest to her had never given.

He hugged her clumsily, for as long as he could endure knelt down on the floor before her. A low moaning sound rumbled into the room, insistent and full.

He recognised the funeral dirge outwardly but stopped listening when she tilted her head ever so slightly, in response to the song. He wished he to quell the vibrating inside his diaphragm and evaporate into the silent darkened void, but there was no use. Did she hear him now? He proffered his guttural offering, but there would be no grace.

When he could take the strain no longer he shifted his weight forward and clutched his mother as if he were still a little boy and she were still his totality.

She stirred and he brushed his against her face. He thought her cheek felt wet. He rubbed his fingers together than placed them to his lips. They were dry.

= I’m sorry, mom. For everything. I’m so, so sorry.

He didn't actually speak those words but imagined them, for the low pitched rumbling sound had re-entered the house, gaining some urgency as he rocked back and forth to comfort himself. After awhile he stopped, leaned back and looked at his mother for the last time. He hugged her to him then whispered into her ear.

= Let’s go now, mom. It’s time to go. Everybody is waiting for us back home.

And, just like that, she departed, leaving him all alone in the dark, comfortless morning.