Short Story: 15 Minutes

The beep of the machines rang in his ears as he entered the hospital room. His shoes made a quiet, thudding noise on the squares of speckled linoleum. The room had a mixed fragrance of disinfectant and bodily fluids. The bed lay in front of him, centered in the room, away from the walls and machines; a metal stool was perched next to the bed. The curtains guarding the windows stood at ease, giving a view of trees and a fountain; it was getting dark outside.

She was staring out the window, oblivious to his presence and covered in a white blanket that someone had wrapped around her feet for warmth. Her arms were on each side of the bed, restrained so as not to disturb the tubes connecting the machines to her mouth. Her hands lay limp on her abdomen. A wooden tray rose from the floor on the opposite side of the bed. Blank pieces of paper and pen laid on it, next to a cushioned writing pad.

She turned her head slightly to see him as he sat down on the stool. Her blue eyes burned in their sockets, alive in a way that defied the deathbed she lay upon. Their fire pawed at the iceberg that was his heart, the heat threatening to break him apart. Her brown hair was held in a ponytail, exposing the baseball-sized tumor on her neck. The sight of it startled him; he had never seen it so plainly before, the manifestation of the disease destroying her body. Pushing his unease away, he leaned forward and placed his elbows on his knees. He rubbed his hands together in a fit of nerves. He was sweating slightly, his breathing reduced to a shallow draw. He was definitely not ready for this, yet it was time. Reaching out, he grabbed her hand.

"This...may be goodbye for us," he said, his voice shaking. Waves of shock cracked the iceberg as the reality of his words sunk in. His eyes flooded with tears, but he did not release them. Her eyes widened fearfully in response. She moved her mouth to speak, but the breathing and feeding tubes that kept her alive killed her chances. She motioned to the wooden tray next to her. Standing slightly he let go of her hand, reached over her, and grabbed the writing pad, a piece of paper, and a pen. He put the paper on the pad, positioned them near her writing hand, and gave her the pen. He sat down again and waited as she wrote. From his seat he could see her handwriting was now jagged like a mountain range, so different from her usual loops.

"Am I dying faster?"

The iceberg, at last, broke apart. Tears poured from his eyes like heavy rain. He could not take any more of this; surely his heart would collapse from it, he would go crazy from it. He could not breathe; he felt as though he himself were dying too, that his heart and his mind were coming unhinged. His soul felt ripped from God.

"No," he sobbed.  The words stuttered their way from his lips in short bursts. "I just... don't know... if I'll be back... before..."

He couldn't finish. Heat was now filling his body like a tea kettle. Sweat covered his face and his hands, mingling with the tears he could not control. The smell of the room was getting nauseating; it reminded him of long nights during his childhood, when she had complained of pain in her chest and the idiot doctors tried to figure out what the hell was wrong with her, to no avail; they never found the problem or fixed what was causing her pain Now, again, they found themselves in a hospital room, but this time the doctors knew her ailment, and there would be no fixing it.

She motioned to write again. He secured the pen in her hand and looked down to watch his tears fall to the floor. He could hear the movement of pen on paper but could not bear to see what she was writing this time. The noise stopped. Steeling himself for whatever was there, he looked at the paper on her lap.

"Will I ever see you again?"

It was all he could do not to scream; he resigned himself to staring at the floor while a firestorm of thought and emotion raged through him. How could he tell her the truth? He was nearly out of his mind with grief; for one insane moment, he wanted to run screaming from the room, and to hell with the consequences. He wanted to hit something, to grab a baseball bat and destroy everything in sight. The sound of laughter from the nurse’s station outside fanned the flames of hate now burning within him, spreading them like the cancer that was overtaking her. Who did they think they were, those bitches at the desk? They were in the hospice wing; how could they be laughing at anything here?!

She tapped on her writing pad. Returning to sanity, he blinked and exhaled the breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. Wiping the sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand, he looked her full in the face.

"I don't know, Mom.”
            She put down the pen and reached out, putting her hand on the side of his face. He scrunched his eyes closed then opened them to look at her. Her face was radiant; she appeared to have a halo of golden light around her head that illuminated his terrible grief. In that terrible moment he knew, after years of evidence to the contrary, that she loved him. He grabbed her other hand and held it.

Long-held fantasies came to his mind without volition: his wedding, where they would never dance; his children, whom she would never meet, family vacations, which they would never take. He thought of the places she’d wanted to go, the ideas she’d wanted to accomplish, and the friends she’d wanted to see again. He could not voice these thoughts now; he would not upset her any further. On some level, he thought she must know how he felt: the halo of light told him so. They spoke in silence for several minutes, simply looking at each other. Finally he pulled his eyes away from her to look at the clock hanging behind him. He had reached the end of the time the nurses had allotted for their visit. 

He stood and tried to pull his hand away; she held it.

"I have to go now," he said, his cries now turned to uncontrollable intakes of breath. She shook her head violently and pulled him closer. He settled to her chest and put his arms around her. She struggled against the restraints on her arms as he sobbed; he could hear her cries wailing with her, giving voice to what he was feeling inside. Unable to accept a goodbye without a hug, he knelt down and wrapped his arms around her. He felt their souls take a breath together as he hugged her one last time before the nurses returned and he was forced to leave the room. 

He cried. 

She cried. 

And that was their goodbye.