Alive

Nicci Sitkin

I felt alive a long long time ago, when kids played with jacks on the lawn before the suppers the scolding mothers prepared and the pipe-smoking papas presided over. But that was a long time ago. It’s all in bits and pieces now. A yellow dress. A little boy with big ears and wide brown eyes. An angel with a moustache but no wings. I don’t remember that much anymore.

Now I drift forever and then forever again on a current of nothingness. Just floating. There’s no color, and no light. But there’s no dark either, so I’m not scared. There’s just a low down buzzing, kind of like how a door feels when you’re leaning on it and the car’s moving really fast and you can feel it moving, but only a little bit at a time.

Sometimes I feel like I’m on top of an ocean, the biggest ocean there ever was. But not right now. Instead, I’m staring straight ahead, gripping my camera as tight as I can hold it. The frozen fountain’s beautiful, it really is. But it seems mean somehow. I remember hearing something about it from someone…but I didn’t know it would be cruel. I’m drifting into it–it’s trying to steal me–there’s not that much left to drift…

I can feel the camera drop. But I’m staring and staring and can’t stop staring. I’m falling into Before.

“Come in here this minute!”

I ignore her, and wrinkle my nose and try and taste a snowflake. All I get is water.

“I’m not kidding. Come in here right now”

No, no, NO! I don’t want Before. All I wanted was a little picture, a little picture for my little book. I put pictures in my little book, so I have something to remember. I look at the pages, and I try hard not to forget, else I’ll have no memories left. Of Before or After.

But that cruel, cruel fountain tried to trick me. It teased me with the scolding mamas and the presiding papas and the kids playing jacks on the lawn, and the little girl who didn’t listen when she was supposed to. And soon the snowflake will be a whisper too, like the yellow dress and the little boy with big ears and wide brown eyes and the angel with a moustache and no wings. And there’ll be even less of me, cause I’ll have forgotten that tiny bit and I’ve forgotten a lot of tiny bits.

I squeeze my eyes, and feel the buzzing. I sink into it, deeper and deeper. But still that fountain won’t leave me alone. The cold clearness follows me, and I can almost feel my cheeks turning red as I laugh and run behind a big oak tree.

But there’s no oak tree, and no voice calling after me. There’s not even my little camera. My little camera is only there when I’m somewhere, and I’m not somewhere very often. I drift forever and forever, but then for a moment I’ll be in a cave, or in a house with yellow walls and a big blue lamp. Or on a dark dark line with little lights hanging above it, like in a fairy kingdom. But there’s never anyone else there. Only me, and then I’m gone again.

Sometimes, in the nothingness, I feel like there’s a voice, but I can’t quite hear it. Sometimes I even think that there’s a touch too. I almost feel it-the shudder you get when someone puts their hand above your arm, but not on it. Like little sparks of heat and being popping from them to you. When that happens, I strain so hard I feel like I could break. I’m straining and crying and screaming out, but I can never reach, and the feeling that there could be a voice and a touch go away again, and I’m left, floating.

The most I’ve ever gotten is a beep.beep.beep. It’s the most solid thing there could be–solid, and strong, and pressing its intensity into you through all the layers of molasses nothingness. Sometimes I whisper it to myself, hoping that by saying it, I can make it appear. And then I’ll feel it, and I’ll be more solid too, and I’ll fill up with the sound and beep with it . Even if I can’t be always be me–there’s too many pieces gone–I can at least be the beep.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The machine blips plaintively every so often. It’s a little sound, but a glaring one, especially in this room. It used to be a pretty room, as the nurses remark every so often. Blue lines spiraled up aquamarine walls, golden seahorses and conch shell chariots waiting eagerly at the top. The heavy vase was always filled: daisies in spring, poppies in summer, and maple leaves in fall.. Sunlight streamed in through the little window, casting a soft glow on everything it touched. It had been a beautiful little room, all the nurses agree. But so sad. So very very sad.

There used to be visitors to the little room. They would sit and stare out the window, at the wall, at the pinched face on the pillow, but never at each other. Some would talk. Some would sing. Some would say nothing; would clench their fists and watch the veins bulge, and puncture half moons into their palms .Some would pretend nothing was wrong. These were the ones who took it the worst. They played their games, and made funny faces, and told funny jokes. Sometimes they even managed to make the others–the talkers, the singers, the hand clenchers–look at them. But every so often, the cheery ones would dare a glance at the pursed lips and spreading hair, and quickly retreat back into their ridiculous stories and hilarious remarks. These were the ones that came once, maybe even twice, and then never again. But even the singers, and the talkers, and the people with the half moons imprinted in their flesh ended up never coming again; their never-coming-agains just took longer to get to. And now no one came.

No one visited the little room, and remarked on the fading paint and the decals dusty with age and peeling back around the edges. No one smelled the flowers or stroked the leaves, and the nurses took the vase to oncology. No one opened the window, so it stayed shut, and it really didn’t matter when the high rise was built across the street. By that time, the sunlight had stopped streaming; instead, it crept between the slats of the blinds, lazy, sullen, and sulfurous in color.

Only doctors came into that room. The nurses found it impossibly sad, the med students uninteresting, and the candy stripers, not worth their red and white leggings and inspiring smiles. The doctors liked it though. They would step in after, or even sometimes during, their rounds, and quietly close the door. They would stand and look out into the room. Their glance would pass over the walls and the chairs and the little beige box that beeped every so often, and finally come to rest on the starched and sterile linens of the bed. Some made the motions of checking the chart, but most just stood silently, and reached for the thin white wrist, counting the pulse, and checking she was alive. It was the least they could do, that little personal touch, to make up for all they couldn’t.

Anne was a beautiful little girl when she was first brought in, all slim cheeks and shiny hair. She almost looked like she was heading to a party, to a horse and balloons and too much cake, save for the fact that her lips were tinged blue (and not by icing) and her body was roughly the temperature of an ice cube. Doctors stabbed, and prodded, and rubbed and injected, while nurses tucked and smoothed and antiseptisized. But Anne did nothing. Her little brother had stood, clutching the back of his father’s knees, watching her and not making a sound. Her father had made enough sound for the both of them, and ten others beside. Blustering and yelling, he had craned over the doctor’s shoulders, fiercely punctuating his words with shaking hands and sharp jerks of his head.

Dr. Dalhot–the lead physician– had stopped his ministrations, and said in his soft doctor’s voice “I’m sorry, sir. There’s no more we can do.”

It was then that Anne did something.

Her eyes flickered open, for the briefest second. And that was all. But it was enough. They had rushed her down white hallways into rooms full of tubes and monitors and machines. They prodded some more. When nothing happened, they promised it would. She just needed time. They moved her to the little blue room–it was the best, the very best, they agreed, just the right thing for a scared little girl to wake up to. But she didn’t. She lay there. Her family came, her anxious mother and broken father, and her younger brother who became the sort of man who collects bottlecaps by the side of the road. They all came to the room. But Anne never did.

Her hair grew longer and it was cut. Her face thinned, and the nurses commented on how adult she was becoming. Her skin became pale, no matter how much sun fell into it. Her bedsores turned raw with the weight of her ever slighter body, and had to be washed. That slight body somehow grew, but slowly, ever so slowly. And still, she did not come.

The little blue room had lost its charm, and the little girl had lost her years. And now no one but doctors seeking peace and forgiveness for all theirs errors and sins–really, one and the same–came to visit Anne. Most of the time it was just her and the little beige box.

Dr. Dalhot felt bad for it, for taking away her box. It was silly, indeed, to feel remorse more for a box than for a life. But then, what life was she leading? What life had she led? She had come to them a child, and now she was a woman, with no pains, gains, or loves to mark her passage. There was nothing and no one for her; indeed there was no her, just a living set of tissues oxygenated, hydrated and fed through a complex set of machinery. At least, that is what he tried to tell himself. He had been there, in the beginning, and here he was, in the end.

He had missed seeing her blue eyes flash open–he imagined it must have been a sight, like a sudden shock of sky after a storm–and somehow felt bitterly cheated. He had religiously guarded her upon admittance, pacing the hall with a bleached white coat and crisp hair, sure she would prove to be his medical miracle. He had visited her weekly as he practiced appendectomies and monthly as he had taught them to young acolytes. Even as his crisp black beard had turned grey, and his sharp black moustache a soft white, he had still visited Anne. He felt he knew her, or knew who she could have been. Now, she would be nothing. Even those oxygenated, hydrated and fed tissues would soon be nothing.

Dr. Dalhot sighed one more time, and listened again to the beep.beep.beep.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

I can tell that there’s something beyond the nothingness, pushing its way towards me. Its not the voices, or the touch I can’t feel, but something else. I hope it stays. It would be nice not to try and remember. In the time of the presiding papas and scolding mamas and the little boy with the wide brown eyes, I remembered. But I don’t like remembering Before, because the nothingness gobbles up Before, stealing it all, and changing it into buzzing. I’m scared I’ll be the buzzing, all gobbled up, and there’ll be no more of me. At least I won’t float away. There’ll be no floating. No pieces to find and hide away, not thinking of, to keep them safe. No nothing.

But my little camera, it comes to me, and then I have the After, a whole After full of somewheres that shine like jewels against the velvet nowhere , and I don’t have to waste the Before. Beyond the fairy lights and cunning fountains, there’s white tugboats and green trees and something that smells of salt and metal. I go, and I look, and I capture everything, and keep it safe, so I can have memories. Sometimes I feel the After falling away into pieces too, and then I think hard, oh so hard, on my little book when I’m drifting , and then it’s there, and I can look at my After, and dream about all the somewheres.

The best somewhere is a wash of blue, rising above me. It ripples and curves, running upwards, slowly and sweetly, calling to be touched and stroked. But there’s no touching here, and so I fall back, sinking down again. But I remember the blue, I do, and even without the little book . I’m a vessel for the beep, empty and hungry for it. But the blue seeps into me like warmth in the night, making me glow myself. I pulse into the nothingness, and it backs away, temporarily scared by the glimmer. I can always find the blue, just like the girl in the yellow dress, and the little boy, and the…the….

I can’t find it, I can’t find it, I can’t find it. I’ve lost, I’ve lost, I’ve lost it. I can’t fin it, I can’t find it, I can’t find it. What is it? What is it. What is it? It was something here. It was here. It was here something. Can’t I find it? Find it Cant I, I can’t find it. It’s something , It’s something , It’s something, I’ve lost it, how could I have lost it? I’ve lost something. But I’ve always had it. I know. Know I, I did. I had. Since Before. Since the end of Before and after the beginning, no, beginning of the After. I had it, I had it. It. It’s gone.

I’m falling into particles harmonizing and humming with the nothingness. No, no. I’m different. I’m me. I’m, I’m presiding, and scolding, and running away. And tugboats and ice. And ice? Ice. Ice and snowflakes and running away. And I’m blue. The blue. I can always find the blue; it’s a river rushing backwards and upwards, dragging me from the buzz. Into the blue, into the blue. I leap, lift away, undissolved. I’m free, and I’m me, and not even the nothing can have me.

Beep.beep.beep

Had her eyes flickered? He thought he had seen a twitch beneath the delicate wrinkles of hereyelids, and the thought of those sky-after-a-storm eyes opening made his old heart tremble. Had Anne responded? Was she in there, really in there? Was his Anne in there, alive?

His fingers slid up to her neck, soft, cool, and trembling. One. Two. Three. Four. Her pulse was strong and regular. Much more so than his. Sweat pooled where the arms of his coat had so crisply met the body that morning, and Dr. Dalhot was reminded of his internship days, when the slightest cry or clumsy push of a needle sent him into paroxysms of fumbling and apologizing, his perpetually damp lab coat an unfortunate testament to these bouts.

He stared at the smooth oval face, so pure in its blankness, and his hand wavered before coming to rest on her shoulder.

“Anne? Anne? Can you hear me?”

He waited a moment, but no fleeting expression or sigh disturbed the painful serenity of her face.

“Anne, if you can hear me. Move your head. Or twitch your fingers. You don’t have to speak.”

Still no response. He felt the disappointment rip through him, sharp at first, and then dull, settling into the base of his stomach and stretching outwards. He tried one more time.

“Anne, if you can hear me, open your eyes. Just open your eyes.”

She lay on the bed, undisturbed and unmoving in her checked hospital gown. Dr. Dalhot dropped limp fingers from her shoulder, and turned away. Anne was not alive, and had not been for years. That would not change, even for the secret dreams of a silly old man. He stared into the ruined glory of the little room, and the words escaped his lips, a soft moan, before he realized he had thought them, and before he had time to quash them.

“Goodbye Anne. I so wanted to see you smile.”

Shaking his head at his own sentimentality, Dr. Dalhot leaned into the hallway and called for a nurse.