fifty-seven : lightning bloom
It’s suddenly 6 o’clock, and the phone is ringing. Zach wanders into the kitchen to answer it while I turn on the TV and flick through the stations. I’m still channel surfing when Zach rushes back into the room and picks up his keys.
“We have to go.”
I look over my shoulder at him.
“What? What’s happened?”
His face is pale and his voice comes out scared and small.
“It’s Sheena. She’s in hospital.”
In the emergency room, there’s an overwhelming smell of burnt skin, blood and antiseptic.
Sheena’s manager is in the waiting room. He talks in circles. I gather from what he says that he was the one that called the house. Zach is colorless and sweating, gripping my shoulder, and a nurse hurries over from the desk to check that he’s okay.
I explain to the nurse who we are, and she tells us that a doctor will be out in a few minutes.
We sit, staring at the floor as nervous people pace between the rows of chairs, and wait for the doctor to come. After what seems like hours but must have only been a few minutes, the nurse comes back instead, and asks Zach to come with her. Halfway across the hall he looks back and signals for me to follow.
She takes us into a smaller waiting room and leaves. The room has light blue walls and a couch. There’s a box of tissues and a lamp on the coffee table. We know it’s bad. This is that room.
When the doctor comes in, he asks which one of us is her husband. Zach steps tentatively forward, and the doctor places one hand on his shoulder.
He shakes his head. “I’m sorry. We did all we could.”
I feel a lump forming in my throat.
“Your wife had an aneurism…”
Zach is shaking all over, and I feel as though I might vomit.
“…part of the brain…”
I taste acid. Zach tries to grab my arm to support himself.
“…was impossible to operate…”
The doctor’s voice sounds tinny and hollow, and as Zach’s legs buckle, he trails off.
He clutches my arm. The tears he has been fighting back since we got here are spilling from his eyes, and he is making a muffled, tortured sound like a wounded animal.
After a moment the doctor suggests organizing a grievance counselor, tells us he has to see to other patients, and leaves. I stare at the door as he closes it.
Zach is shuddering, anguished, his whole body convulsing with every breath. He kicks the table and the lamp flies off. It hits the wall and shatters glass and porcelain all over the floor.
I put my hand on his shoulder, and he lashes out, hitting me in the arm and chest, “Zach…” my voice cuts through the room, and he collapses into my arms, sobbing.
“Zach, I’m so sorry.”
***
Three days later, after the funeral, Zach and I stand outside Sheena’s parents house in the pouring rain, staring up at the door. Her friends, her family, the people from the gallery; they’re all inside for the wake.
Sheena is reduced to a name on a headstone.
“I want to go home, Josh.”
“I’ll go in and call a taxi.”
“No,” he turns to me, squinting from the cold rain running into his eyes, “I mean I want to go home.”
“I know… We’ll leave tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay.”
We look back to the house through the sheets of rain and walk up the concrete steps to the green front door.
This is our last afternoon in London.
We say goodbye.
tonight i tried to write while listening to sarah blasko’s cover of flame trees. my mind kept wandering into the kind of thoughts i don’t want to have. impossible thoughts, self destructive thoughts. i need a new motto. don’t get your hopes up probably isn’t a good one. anyway. my point is, i couldn’t focus. so this is an old piece, something i wrote a few years ago as part of an assignment for uni. it’s not the best thing i’ve ever written, to say the least, but as i said—no focus.
