Fragment
Fiction - by J. Anthony Hartley
They said it was important. Or so it was supposed to be. The way we reached out, brushed fingertips against cheeks, or finger to finger, thumb to thumb. We sought commerce and ideology within our sharing. That was then. I can still see traces, fragments drifting, stuttering, welling up inside of me as if they were once an essential part, though they never were. They belonged to you. I might have pretended they were of me, for me, because of me, once upon a time. Those days are past, as am I, I think.
I see him striding down the street past others. They’re dressed the same. Some carry briefcases. Traffic whizzes past, whirrs, ascends, rotates, moves in other directions. Pastel streamers paint the sky. There is no scent, just motion and purpose. He stops. He is reflected in the walls behind him, beside him. Slowly, he tilts his head as if listening and then turns. I see him then, leaning forward, reaching out, his index finger pointing, stretching, lengthening, closer. It is almost upon me. He is concentrating, peering towards….
If I had fingers now, I would steeple them before my face as I muse upon this fragment.
There were birds perhaps. Yes, gulls, wheeling and plunging and crying. They sound raucous and harsh in the chill morning air. It was morning. A salt tang, iodine, seaweed, although there is only sand. The beach stretched on and on, disappearing at a point where it became indistinguishable from sky or surf. The child walked across the sand, struggling with the soft surface, its arms outstretched for balance. No, not the child. She. She tottered across the mini dunes, uncertain, but still she was trying.
“She’s not getting any better.”
“None of us is getting any better, Belle.”
“But that’s not the point.”
She’s unsteady now, and about to fall. Again. She falls a lot recently.
“What if she doesn’t make it? What if there isn’t enough time?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.” He sighs, turns. A face, the outline, at least. There are dark eyes there, intense, a straight line that could be a mouth, so stern,
“What if none of us has enough time?” he says and looks skyward.
Gulls wheel and turn, soaring upon the unseen currents. Their cries shatter the morning light.
“Hello?”
“Is anybody there?”
“Hello…?”
“I don’t want to be alone. Here. All alone.”
“Hello?”
It seems like it has been forever.
“Can you hear me?”
The silence echoes, settles, stirs.
“Hello?”
A pool. Water reflecting flowers, mirrored above and below, pink against the green. There is no sky. The sound of falling water, spattering. There is no other sound. No voices. No movement Suddenly a bullfrog leaps, splashing into the pond with a plop sending ripples breaking against the lillypads. It does not reappear. All is still once more. An arrowhead skates across the surface, becoming a line, a wake, coursing towards the edge, A rounded shape crests the surface, first smooth, then eyes, then a nose. She stands, naked, rivulets running down her body, leaving beads on her deep dusk skin. Weed tresses fall from her shoulders. She takes one step, then another, strangely fluid in her motions. Both hands reach, cutting like knives through the intervening space, stretching, growing longer, wanting to reach, finger to finger, thumb against thumb. Is this not commerce? Or perhaps it is ideology. I feel confused, not knowing which is right.
“Tell me what you want,” I say.
“Do you know where we are?” I ask.
Still she reaches, arms impossibly long. Off to one side I spy a waterfowl, nestling beneath an overhanging branch.
“Listen to me!”
Walking between vast buildings soaring up to the sky. Above us, vehicles reflected in the glass, their motion is breathtaking. The child is older now, though not by much. Powered struts made of force surround her legs, articulated at the knee and ankle, but still she struggles. I wait to catch her at every step.
“She’s all right, Belle. Just let her go.”
How can I let her go? She is a part of me.
“Just let her go.”
Above us, the cars pick up their speed, moving faster, elongating into time and beyond.
I try to trace their movement, but I fail.
“I can feel you there.”
“I can…feel…you….”
“Me…”
“Feel some…thing…where…”
“Are you?”
“Some…where…”
“Am. I?”
Are they all like me?
Every one?
Everyone?
White. Everything is white. White walls, white ceiling, white furniture, white lights. The floor is grey. That’s not white. Why is it that white always brings to mind something medical? Not everything apart from the floor is white though. Displays surround the bed, scroll on walls.
A small round table sits between us.
“You know there’s a risk. Not everything in one hundred per cent approved. We’re almost there, but there are still a few hurdles remaining.”
“I know that,” I say. “As I told you before, I’m prepared to take the responsibility.”
“You know the procedures are still experimental….”
I lift my face to look at her then, dragging my attention from the displayed brochure, hovering there between us. Flowing auburn hair, much longer on one side than the other. A dark, bias-cut business suit. A serious pinched face, pale, lips deep red. No white. So not a doctor. Not medical. But then…? I force myself to look around at the displays. A couple of them are newsfeeds. A business channel. The other feeds show graphs, charts, not readouts, or are they? So not medical. Then why is there a bed here?
“I have to repeat,” she says. “Our protocols, you understand. You are sure you’re comfortable that there’s a risk, potential loss of life.”
The framing is so eloquent, so well euphemised.
“Of course I understand,” I tell her. “A risk is a damned sight better than a certainty, wouldn’t you say?”
I’m becoming a little weary of the dance now.
“Anyway,” I say. “What do you care as long as you’ve got your fee and I absolve you of all liability. Freedom of choice.”
I hold her gaze for a couple of seconds. “What do I have to sign? Show me.”
The features are familiar. Do I know you? The image looms closer, resolving in and out of greyness, out of traceries of colour streaming with mosaic hintergrounds. Small tiles, fragments, snap, merge, separate in background, each one becoming a movie, a play, a single drama caught.
I’m sure I know the face. Hesitantly, I reach out with bones, knuckles, fingers that are not there.
Don’t I know you?
I think back, searching through memories, sorting, and re-sorting, selecting, and discarding.
Of course I know this face.
You saw it in a mirror, didn’t you?
Then where is she…?
The one you seek….
“Belle, you have to face up to it. She’s not going to get any better. It’s only going to get worse from here. While you’re desperately chasing around looking for some sort of cure, time is slipping away. Can’t you see that? You need to be making the most of the time we have left with her. We both do. Don’t you see?”
“I refuse to accept that there’s no solution. There has to be something we can do, some alternative that we’ve overlooked.”
He slowly shook his head, his eyes closing. Finally, taking a deep breath through his nose, his mouth set in a firm line, he opened his eyes to look at me.
“It’s over, Belle,” he said. “You have to accept that. It only gets worse from here.”
I shook my head.
“Listen,” he said, reaching for my hands. “We can keep draining our resources on an endless quest for some magical cure that we both know is pointless, or, we could devote that time and money to giving her the best possible time remaining. There are so many more memories we could create together, so many more things we can experience together. Together, Belle. Memories to carry with us when she’s gone. Make her mean something. Think about that.”
His words sat there like a stone monolith in my awareness. In a way, wasn’t that being selfish?
Memories.
Memories to carry with us.
Were we not simply memories after all?
And then I remembered for myself. I thought it was something I’d read somewhere. I wasn’t really sure.
I am Belle.
I am Belle.
I am Belle.
I am….
He’s gone now. He left about two months ago. If those things would matter anymore, we might have called it irreconcilable differences. Not differences between us. Simply difference in opinion, in belief. I guess you could say that my devotion is religious. I refuse to leave her, to let her go. She is, after all, a part of me, and I hope, in the end, that I’m a part of her. I am watching her now, struggle across the park, swinging her limbs to plant them, awkwardly step after painful step upon the grass. Her arms are supported now. The force beams projecting from her wrists and ankles keep her limbs steady and in position as she struggles to take another step. The brace projects from her lower back, keeping her upright.
Joshua still retains visiting rights, but he is coming less and less. I think, in the end, he finds it too painful. But then, I find that to be indulgent too. He was the one who talked about making memories, together. Now, it seems that he would rather remember her when she was good, before the deterioration got too bad. We both know it is only going to get worse and he seems to be the one now that can’t really face that. Soon, she won’t be able to walk at all, to stand, to sit. Eventually, all she’ll be able to do is lie there and breathe and swallow and drink and eat. Not long after, she won’t even be able to do that. And then she’ll be gone. Gone from me and gone from him.
Perhaps Joshua can accept that, but I will not.
His sole means of dealing with that appears to be looking the other way.
But if I’m wrong…
I don’t think I am. Everything I’ve read tells me that there is a great possibility, that there’s a solution. I haven’t discussed it with Joshua in detail. Not since that first time I brought it up and laid out what it was I planned, and I watched him as he erupted. I hope he won’t interfere. I don’t think he will. Inside, whether he admits it openly or not, he must know that there is little other choice. Inside, even if he believes it will never work, he knows that there is not a single other chance. He will let it be. He will let us try. At least he will give us that.
I know he is a good man. We were happy once.
I wouldn’t say that I’m happy now, but as I sit there watching her in the park, knowing what is to come, knowing that we’ll be together, perhaps I would say that I’m content.
I thought I caught a glimpse of her, far off in the distance. There were parks and beaches but all of them were merging into one, impossible to tell which was which. I saw her, or at least I thought it was her, tiny, tiny, like a moth or a dragonfly, flitting, consciousness streaming from her and leaving a colourful landscape in her wake. Her limbs were moving freely. How small they were! I gave chase, pounding across the grass sand, or was it sand grass, or was it water grass, struggling to reach her as she moved, ever further away. Why was she not here with me?
Why can’t I reach her?
She’s there. I know she is. It has to be her.
It can’t be me.
When I told her that it would be for the both of us, she looked at me, a slight frown etched between her brows. She tapped at the display before her, still frowning and then looked up again.
“Um, I’m not sure that….”
“Let me worry about that,” I told her. “I’m not going to leave her. She’s too young. She needs someone to look after her, to guide her. I’m her mother.”
“I see…” There was a lengthy pause. “Can you wait here for a couple of minutes? I need to discuss this with a colleague.”
She lifted a palm to indicate I should stay where I was. “I’ll be back soon. Don’t worry.”
I watched her as she stepped out the door and disappeared. I crossed my hand in my lap and stared down at them. There was nothing else really to occupy me. This particular room was too familiar. Far too familiar.
After a time, I heard footsteps approaching down the hall. The door opened, and she reappeared. I followed her with my gaze as she moved to sit across from me again.
“After consultation, I’m pleased to be able to inform you that we can accommodate your request,” she said as she sat. “Do you have any questions about the requirements or what that might involve?” She waited. “Of course, there will be an increase in the fee. The extra risk. It’s somewhat unprecedented. But then, the entire procedure is somewhat unprecedented.”
When I didn’t react, she asked me again if I had any questions.
“Again,” I said. “Show me what I need to sign and where.”
I was really starting to dislike this woman. Perhaps I was a little short with her.
“I’m here, baby. I’m here. Where are you? Can you hear me?”
“Baby?”
“Hello?”
“I’m here, baby. Where’s my little girl? Can you come to me?
“Baby?”
I’m surprised at how little resistance the gurney gives me as I push it into the room. I am dressed in a simple white gown, one of those that is open at the back, ties. She is in a flowered smock. I insisted that I push her in, that I walk with her, that it was my hand and not some nameless stranger. I wanted her to have the familiarity of my presence, my face, my voice. There are two couches in the room, both of them surrounded with displays and monitors. Over each hangs something that looks like a flexible showerhead, but it can’t be, because an array of small blue lights pulses across the end instead of tiny holes. The flexible metal pipe disappears into the wall somewhere above. Braces and brackets cluster at the head of each bed, and I feel my heart begin to race, a sense of trepidation. But there’s no going back now. Or is there?
I look down at her there, unmoving. She is still, so still. The vaguest rise and fall of her chest gives the lie to her stillness and the faint flicker of motion under her closed eyelids, telling me she is still here. I sense it all the same. She’s a part of me, after all. Always has been. Always will be.
“Are we ready?” says one of the attendant technicians.
I hope that they are. I’m not sure that I am, but I have to be. I have to be for her.
I pause for a moment, taking in the scene. It must have taken some work to set this up. I had insisted. We would undergo the procedure together, in the same room. I wanted to be with her.
At first, there’d been protests, but then, they had acquiesced. I was paying, after all. And it wasn’t as if it was a trivial sum.
I take a deep breath and nod, biting my lower lip. I watch as they lift her from the gurney, place her on the leftmost couch. I watch as they strap her in place, affixing pads and monitors, braces around her shaved head, then lowering the shower thing to sit flush against her skull, bands clipping it into place.
One of the attendants looks to me and nods.
I return the nod and walk slowly to the other couch. It’s not too late. I can still change my mind. What about the risks? There are so many. But then, isn’t this what I’ve struggled for, what I’ve fought for, for both of us? My breathing a little unsteady, I climb up on the couch, lower myself, close my eyes. I can feel them move around me, putting things in order, affixing things to my skin, my neck, my arms, and my legs. There’s a large metallic contact on my scalp and then the bands snap into place holding that thing that will do whatever it does. My heart beats and I can almost hear it.
Finally, I open my eyes.
“Are we ready?” says the attendant.
Again the ‘we.’ For some reason this amuses me, and I laugh.
“Is everything all right?”
“Yes, yes. Everything’s fine. Please. Please go ahead.”
I’ve arranged for cremation when all this is done. It won’t matter how our bodies will look after this. Besides, there’s no one left to care. Joshua perhaps. But then, Joshua made his choice. I made ours.
As the cold pad hisses against my neck, I give a sharp intake of breath.
Then everything fades away in fragments, falling, falling into an impossible depth.
I am reaching out with fingers, there and not there. Perhaps they were fingers once, or bones, or knuckles. Hands to cup these memories and hold them close, or merely claws, shards of bone, of things once remembered. Am I dreaming now? Closer to the edge, closer to the fragments. Are they me?
Or simply unintended.
Perhaps, I’m someone else’s dream.
Perhaps I’m her dream after all.