Horrors of Us...

If I could kill myself, I would. 

 

Every night, I fall asleep to the perfect vision of taking a lengthy, sharpened blade and cutting it swiftly through my skin, plunging it deeper into my flesh. I wonder how the veins would split open. Would they cut easily, like butter, all of the blood spurting out at a single touch? Or would it be tough and stringy like overcooked chicken? I imagine slitting my wrists and thighs, reveling in the relief of watching the blood pool out. First it exits my skin in drips. It forms crimson droplets that roll one by one, then two by two down my forearm, leaving stains of weakened red. Then, I plunge deeper, and watch the blood pool together, running in thick, gushing streams. 

 

Sometimes it’s not a knife. Sometimes, on the days when I give myself a little more leniency, I imagine a gentler, more breathless exit. I imagine the angels descending, pressing their plush, cream wings onto my face. They sing to me as the breath leaves, as my lungs deflate and I shallow out.

 

I drift into the bliss of unconsciousness then. 

 

Falling asleep used to be my favorite part of the day. I would crawl into my unmade bed, and wrap the tangled bundle of sheets and blankets around my body. I’d tug and stretch the comforter so that it covered every inch, without doing the work to actually straighten it out. My room was my safe haven, as most people’s rooms are to them. There was nothing special about it, but I reveled in its intimacy. I was comforted by the midnight blues of the velvet pillow covers, the deep purples and silver glow of my nightstand. No matter what happened that day, I was able to fall asleep seconds after my head hit the pillow; It was one of my greatest talents. I don’t have that talent anymore.

 

Now, I lay awake for hours on a stiff metal plank, one of hundreds in the room. 

 

There’s a single white sheet that I lay atop, which has not yet been changed. I am clothed in a scratchy white gown, stained with the drips from my feeding tube and the rot of life in captivity. There’s a metal bathtub in front of my bed, rusted and splattered with blood — it’s the only thing I can see. 

 

I wake. I move my eyes right to left, back, forth, up, down. I’ve completed my exercises for the day — see, I  can still find humor in my misery. 

 

All around me, people are spewing a hacking cough. Blood splatters out of their lungs, the yellow fever dust cultivating in the air, dancing around, taunting me with their fatality. Some of the patients are soldiers. Others are civilians. All are unlucky. I close my eyes again.

 

Lift. I urge my fingertip to lift, just an inch. An inch is all I ask for. You know what, God? Take the inch. I just want half. Maybe, if I put all of my effort towards it, if all of my thoughts ache towards this single movement, something will happen. It doesn’t. 

 

I listen to the haunting chorus of my darkest fears that I will never move again, that the doctors will lose faith and let me wither away. Or worse, that they won’t. That I’ll have to live out months and years more of this tortured existence. I am weighed down by the heaviness of each unliftable limb, each deflated muscle. I’m plastered in my own body, as if my skin had turned to dry glue, molding my bones and flesh in place.

 

My mother walks into the room. My fiancé Henry trails behind her. They disrupt the ever-constant hum in my ears. Henry has been a part of our family for my entire life, the only other 1879 baby in the village. We were raised side-by-side, learning to till the fields and tend the livestock on the farm. When we got to be ten, we would teach the younger ones the same, frolicking in the hay and making madness out of the coup when they went in for supper at sundown. We were inseparable and we were free. Now I can’t even lift my finger. 

 

As I watch him, I pray that he comes closer. I look directly at him, urging him in the only way I can to lend me some comfort. He looks at me, knowingly. Then, something unimaginable happens. My mother strokes his hand. It happens so swiftly, so gently, that I’m not sure I really saw it. Mother comes over to the bed. She lifts my limbs one by one, and watches all of them thud right back down. Then she resumes her place besides Henry.

 

All of my thoughts are fleeting and unattached — there is no way to hold onto them, aside from repeating them again and again and again. How am I to trust anything I see? Anything I think? No, I need to stay true to the few things I know for certain — Henry Povich loves me. He always will.

 

“Adeline, please.” Henry says with a sheepish grin, as he swats her hand away, halfheartedly. “She can see us,” 

 

“The doctors say she is unconscious,” my mother says. 

 

I’m not. 

 

“She can’t see anything.” 

 

I can. 

 

I think of the first time he held my hand. We were fifteen, stacking crates in the horse shed. I had just twisted my ankle on a ride, and he was crafting a makeshift splint out of some old leather. When he lifted my foot to slip it into the splint, I yelped out in pain. Gently, ever-so softly, he took his hand and placed it on mine. Then, without missing a beat, he flashed me a grin that made my heart turn into soup. 

 

How long has this been going on, the two of them? I try to recall the last time I saw him, before the illness. 

 

The night of my stroke was a tribulation built upon my most daunting fears. It was the night before the first day of harvesting, and everyone was frantic, circling around the farm working on the preparations. I was cooking up a hefty breakfast of scrambled eggs and ham for the family and neighbors. Henry popped in to say a quick hello. He was so loving that day. Did he really love me?

 

All of the sudden I felt faint.

 

Henry walks closer to my bedside, and strokes my hair tenderly. “Goodbye Andy,” he says. He leaves. 

 

***

I never realized how much I took the knowledge of time for granted. There’s a pendulum clock on the wall, but it’s too far out of my eye line to make out anything more than a blur of black and white. Sometimes I get lucky, and the nurses will converse in front of me. The last useful conversation I heard was of a nurse talking about her plan for Thanksgiving. That day, I decided that it was November 21st. 

 

Even on the fortnights of impairment, I lived in satisfaction. I’d wake up at dawn, tend to my farming duties until mid-morning, meet up in the den with Henry, and then come home for an early supper. My routine was tenacious yet sturdy, and I liked it as such. 

 

Now, everyday, every second blurs into itself like a never-ending wave of unbridled nausea. It feels like flying through the fog with a broken wing. I’m barely staying afloat as is, yet every force is working to push me down, until I’m drowning beneath the light. 

 

My beige pills are my only indicator of time. I get them twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening. They have a chalky taste. Before Mother learned I can’t swallow, she tried putting it into my mouth. It just melted there, the chalky glue dissolving on my tongue. Now the nurses crush the pills into  a fine powder, which Mother pours down my feeding tube. 

 

***

 

Mother didn't come this morning. She always comes. She never talks to me, but her presence is always comforting. She'll sit on the chair by my bed, and lay her hand on mine. The familiar scent of goat’s milk and horse manure will waft off of her, filling my nostrils with visions of home. This morning, it’s just the smell of sickness and death. And metal — So much metal.

 

A nurse comes by to change my feeding tube. I imagine grabbing her wrist and pulling her face to my chest. I want to ask about Mother. I want to ask about Henry. I’d ask her to kill me and save me some dignity before my mind convulses into itself and bursts.

 

I feel the nutrients start to trickle in from the new tube. My hunger begins to dissipate, my stomach slowly beginning to fill. Then, without missing a beat, my right leg starts to tingle. It’s just a touch, but it feels as if all of my nerves are starting to come back to life. I try to turn my head. It shifts one inch on the pillow. 

 

The nurse sees my shift and freezes. She looks at me in disbelief. I let out a hum. She runs across the room, nearly tripping over my bed stand, to gather the other nurses. As they swarm around me, wide-eyed and confused, I make out a single phrase — one that tells me everything.

 

“Mother didn’t give her the pills today.”

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