Thu, 19 May 2005

shabu-gomi 01 04
I told myself I wouldn’t do it. Not for the guilt of it, not for the fear that I would not be able to stop, not for the nervous dread of the things I might do once I did it, but because I was just relearning how to write, to put word after word, and if the past were any indicator, doing this would push too hard, a blur of fingers and keys, endless pages of unreadable speed text. I would have to start again at nothing, and it could be another half-year of staring at the screen, dead inside, waiting to start. What you don’t know, what you cannot possibly understand unless you have been the same, is that it isn’t the quality of the words, it’s the feeling that got me started, the effortless rush of it, page after page, an open channel. It has been so hard, these pathetic therapy-paragraphs, these fumblings, working out the mechanics, and maybe if I could just feel it again, just once, it would come back to me forever, and I would stop feeling so bad all the time. Maybe. I told myself I wouldn’t do it, but I did it anyway.

The sons stood by the bedside and watched their mother struggle for breath, the scraps left of her heart pushing at her paper-thin skin. She hadn’t spoken in six years, and the family waited for change, searched for extreme cures, some miracle breakthrough to open the door to her, hidden behind the white wall of her coma. They listened for the slightest clue in her breath as they talked to her in habitual comforts, more confessional than they had ever been when she spoke and walked and lived. There was nothing of her but silence, silence and emptied hope and this shell which waited to end. Today was the day, the DNR day, the day the machines shut down. They stood by the bedside and expected, they didn’t know what, some movement signifying her transfer, nothing painful, just a shudder. They would never have known the moment, were it not for the cardiac beep losing its cadence, extended into drone. She had always been small, even when the brothers were just boys, but this was the smallest of her, looking back as the doctor escorted them from the room, so small they knew she couldn’t hear them as they said goodbye.

The three doctors waited to be sure the sons had left the floor, going to tell the family and make arrangements, the body to be delivered to the mortuary in three hours. The tallest of the doctors felt the hum of his pager on his hip and knew it was clear. The doors were locked and the second surgeon, the one who smelled of lilac, turned the machine from play to monitor, and the beat of the mother’s heart returned to the screen, the beep returned to the room. The third surgeon, who was without any identifying characteristics whatsoever, brought the knives and the recording device beside the bed. It was not possible for any of the surgeons to intone the calls, and so a recording was used, tested years back for gramatical and tonal accuracy. This process was difficult enough without potentially flawed calls. The mother was injected with more painkiller than was necessary, enough that it would kill her, in time, but she would not live that long. The surgeons had been given pardon by certain agents of the transfer to revitalize the dead, to put the breath and light back into the body, to perform miracles of tissue and blood. To do this, the revitalization technicians had informed the surgeons, others must take the place of the rerisen, as there are balances beyond simple comprehension, and specific methods for such exchanges. This is what the knives are for, the calls, the sacrifice of those who should be dead so that others may live. The surgeon who smells of lilac picks up the first blace, and feels it vibrate in her hand as it centers over what remains of the mother’s heart. The calls, a high-pitched squeal of a voice spoken through inhalation, creates a heat in the body, a light coming from the skin, and the tall surgeon lifts his blade above the heart, and the call becomes a drone, harmonics hung in the air, and the surgeon who cannot be identified lifts its blade and holds it over the mother’s heart. The mother is, and a moment later is not. Something pulls the light from the room, and the flourescent light returns, but the rest of it is gone, taken to the transfer. The surgeon who cannot be identified removes the knives and takes them to be cleaned and stored, and the surgeon who smells of lilac cleans and closes the wounds, and the tall surgeon replaced the tape recorder and other equipment. He has done this the fewest times, and perhaps is still nervous, still uncomfortable, and perhaps it is that discomfort which causes him to realize someone else is in the room, and he turns, and sees the glint of a camera lens through a hole bored in the wall, a glint replaced by darkness as the camera is swallowed into the wall. Something has gone horribly wrong, and the tall surgeon pulls air deep into his lungs and makes the call, the other call, the call all the butcher-surgeons can make, the call of distress.
(12:25.05.19.2005) [/scrytch] #