Scout on Terminal Illnesses/ Four Shots

 

    The sound of simmering bacon and eggs could never leave my memory. It was a reminder of the life I had, that I could never get back. But over time the sizzling turned into snickers, the snickers into laughs, and the laughs into screams. There were other sounds I remember from those mornings that have turned and warped into people of their own. They’re a group of friends in my head that all combine into one single moment, one single memory. The most significant one, the best friend, would be the sound of her flipping her hair over her shoulders as she reads the newspaper. Or her laughter when I couldn’t stop staring at her. The importance of these moments turns into anger in myself; how I squandered my time trying to forget what would leave me anyway.

                        “Back again? It’s been a while.” The bartender who thinks he knows the inner workings of my heart speaks again. It gives me all the more reason to drink. He could be right, but a bar is the last place I would take advice from anyone. A man with a job like that knows that ignorant people like me won’t listen, but he oversteps to satisfy his conscience. As if trying to make us redeem ourselves will change the fact that he hands us the drinks that drive us into our own self-loathing. But I entertain him, like a dance to who can outlive their hatred.

                        “Yes, it has, but I couldn’t help myself today.” He sighs and turns around, already pouring what he knows I’ll ask for. Four shots of the strongest legal desensitizer. One, two, three, and-.

                        “Where’s the last one?” I ask. The dance becomes a bit more intense.

                        “Three should be enough to get you where you want to be, right?”

I sigh and check my wallet. It would be better if I didn’t spend so much on drinks, anyway. I might as well admit defeat and let him spin on his own, even if it means watching him assure himself that he is, in fact, a ‘good person’. I drowned in the bliss of holding the chilly glasses and throwing the poison down my throat. Three shots were enough for me to stumble off the stool. However, I did see something different. I’d never noticed the peeling paint on the walls, or how quiet it was after everyone drank. The creaking of the stools and broken chairs almost filled the void of what I remember being a loud party or celebration. There couldn’t have ever been anything to celebrate, what with their eyes being so dark and empty as they sat there lighting their wallets. Was this how others saw me when I sat here despising the bartender? I left before I could notice anything else. I would rather come back a few days later pretending I didn’t know how it was in there. I’ll work overtime for that last shot.

            Those three shots felt more like poison than usual. I shouldn’t have listened to the bartender, but it was true that I couldn’t afford to go back as often. I had spent all my money on something a while back, although I can’t remember what it was. A house? A car?  A friend? A lover?

            “It’s the last one. Did you forget me already, Vincent?”. It was the most angelic voice I had ever heard; like a song flattened and rolled into conversation. I didn’t need to ask who she was. I knew her name, her face, her desires, her identity. She walked beside me, through streetlights and pedestrians and cars. I was scared to speak, I felt that if I did, I would lose this moment and she would never come back. But eventually, her shoulders drooped from the boredom of my commute, and she began to fall behind.

            “Why have you come back after all this time,” I turned to ask her. But she was already gone, the sound of her voice still echoing in the distance, bouncing off the windows of the empty subway car. I had imagined her. The train sped up faster than it should. Did I miss my stop already?

She told me she hated the way everyone looked at her. She said that the plainness of the hospital room only got worse when their dry eyes and low voices wished her a speedy recovery that would never come. But the worst part, she always said, -worse than the white bed sheets and the indifferent nurses- was how I looked into her eyes. Everyone else looked at her with pity, and she knew that when they went home, they would pray to never become like her, secretly grateful that it wasn’t them in that prison of a bed. No, I looked as if I was willing to let us switch places, to give her my heart, my soul. My eyes showed that I loved her too much, and she was scared that the monster growing in her brain would get to her heart and that I would hate her for it. I could never hate her though, even if she turned sour and distant, I would never love her any less. At some point, we knew that the treatments wouldn’t help, but I didn’t care. Money didn’t feel like it mattered anymore, along with everything else I used to think was important.

I came after work one day to visit her, but I more or less lived at the hospital. If I wasn’t at work I was in that cold, gray room or the white hallways arguing with nurses and doctors who were numbed of any feelings toward patients. That day was particularly worse though. Her hearing had been deteriorating for a while, but it was gone now. Her words became slow and incomprehensible, but I understood one word that night.

“Home,” she said. Those eyes were so full of hope, of trust in me, that I couldn’t deny her. I was still clutching to the thought that one more day, one more night could heal her, but she knew I knew the end was near. I had made a promise to her four years ago when she first got diagnosed.

“Don’t let me die in a hospital.”

I nodded.

 

It was probably for the best that she didn’t hear anything that day. Every physician and patient heard the news by the time I signed the papers and rolled her out of there. They watched me walk out those doors as if hoping that their disdain would keep us from leaving.

That last week with her was a blur, as was the funeral. I danced and played, and although she couldn’t say anything, a small crack of a smile now and then told me everything. And then she was gone, and nothing mattered anymore, or really, nothing was real.

The eyes of the nurses, the patients, the bargoers, met mine, and I knew what I had to do. I could hear the bartender behind me, worried, assuring me I could afford a drink, but I wouldn’t find the truth at the bottom of a shot glass. I swung the door open away from the dark abyss and drooping shoulders, and I met her. Her eyes were golden and bright, always leading me. And I knew her name again.

I was free.