Paul hadn’t expected the end to feel like this; the absence of pain was unexpected. More than anything, a hollowing out, the curt of things had dulled. The distance gains and its softness, the body, delicately seeping back from it source.
Still but not gone, he lay, as if held by a thin, fraying thread. Outside, it was winter. Or, was it, fall? Which he couldn’t remember. Not anymore. The grey light emanated from a crack in the blind, the dust motes, like tiny stars, drifted.
His hands slack against the white of the sheets were once calloused and strong. He is a carpenter, nimble but now his fingers had grown numb. He couldn’t make a fist, not for days, or was it hours?
His blood was retreating. He could feel it but there was not pain, just the gentle withdrawal.
What time is it when time has lost its rhythm? Clocks ticked on, but not for him. Untethered, he floated inside the hours now.
His breathing came stretched apart.
A nurse came and went. A friend. His brother, maybe.
Outside the edge of awareness, voices murmured. Paul could not make out words anymore.
Someone took his hand. A warm palm wrapped around his fingers. He couldn’t return the grip, but he felt it.
Function slowing down. Without panic, the lungs struggled. Even the heart had grown polite in its labor. Each beat was a soft knock on a door, that didn’t expect an answer.
And he saw things, sometimes. Not mirages. Memories. Loose and partial. A class trip, as a child then running with his father. Fishing, the cold water on bare feet. A girlfriend, then his wife’s voice, the edges of her frayed. She wore her hair upswept.
Now, nothing demanded anything of him. Not the body. Not the past.
Not even his breath.
The room was airless.
Inches of him disappeared, as he was reclaimed. A tide came in.
He was in a new world now. A world without words.
A world without the need for words.
Breaths came farther apart.
Wait.
Wait longer.
Allison Whittenberg‘s latest novel is Killing the Father of Our Country. Her work has appeared in Columbia Review, Feminist Studies, J Journal, Obsidian, and New Orleans Review. She is the author of the full-length short story collection, Carnival of Reality. Whittenberg is a nine-time Pushcart Prize nominee.