We Were Birds

Quinn's last day of life dawned bright and cool, one of the early days of fall.

It was unfair that today should be such a nice day; today was the kind of day where Quinn would wake up, take a look outside and look at Fern very somber-like and just say, "Today's the day, honey. Today's the day." He never really knew what today was the day for, and more often than not, nothing ever exciting happened on those bright, cold days. Except for maybe that they were in higher spirits all day, thanks to the weather. Today was one of those days, and as soon as Fern told Quinn the weather outside (because he always asked), he smiled and said, "Today's the day, honey, today's the day." And Fern shook her head and said no, that wasn't true, and those days had never been the days for anything so why should today be any different?

They'd been married three days ago, but nothing had changed. Quinn had asked Fern to call him up a lawyer who drew up his will. Quinn left everything, and there wasn't much, to Fern, who while listening to the conversation between her husband and his lawyer, sat perfectly still and pretended this was all a movie she was seeing.

What would she do without him? What had she done before Quinn?

It was that last day, while Fern sat in the overstuffed chair next to Quinn's hospital bed, skimming a book while he napped, that she thought of her life before Quinn. Her mother, who had been so beautiful but couldn't be caged the way her father wanted to cage her. Her father, who studied and held beautiful things, like if he kept them close to him at all times, they would never escape. And herself, who watched the birds, so happy but so sad in their own way and she'd been like them. She'd lived her life in solitude, never really seeing things, like those caged birds; always singing but never really knowing why. Because she had to. Because she wanted to. Who knew.

And then Quinn had opened the door to her cage and had set her free. She felt so much for him: love, appreciation, friendship, confidance, gratitude. Everyday she wanted to wake up and thank him for showing her that life was beautiful and that you could take small pleasures in bright, cold mornings where everything seemed possible and nothing had to be all that difficult. And that the smallest things like a single white feather from a tiny chikadee could be a miracle.

Fern knew she'd never forget that. She'd never stop seeing the beauty of life, because even when she was gone from Quinn, even when she lived with her father without him, she still saw the world with new eyes. What had been different, then? She saw the world with eyes that Quinn had uncovered, but he hadn't been there to hold her hand or to whisper that he loved her or that he was excited for the day when they'd buy that small house on the beach and have their two kids and live until they died together, old and happy and peaceful.

Suddenly, Fern touched Quinn on the arm. He awoke; he never slept too deeply these days. "Are you peaceful? Are you in pain?" she asked.

"I don't feel so good," Quinn answered, and he looked even worse. "But I'm okay. I'm happy, so it's all right." He took her hand and squeezed it. Then he moved over in his bed and lifted his chin just a tiny bit. "C'mere," he said with casual laughter laced through his words. Fern got up, set the book down with careful fingers and laid beside him in the hospital bed. It was tiny, tinier even than their mattress in their apartment in the city, but it didn't matter. Fern listened to Quinn's labored yet soft breathing and did her best to match her breaths with his own.

Quinn put his cheek against the top of Fern's head. "Today really is the day, isn't it?" he asked quietly.

From the pit of her stomach, tears seemed to rise up like a geyser, but when it came time to cry them, they wouldn't leave the back of her throat and eyes. Instead, Fern just nodded. "Yeah. Yeah it is." Her voice wavered but did not break.

"Fern," Quinn started, and pulled her closer to him. "I want to be buried at home. My first home, you know. Well, I'd like it to be near your house. The cemetary near your house, overlooking my house and the water."

He could feel her tense. She was silent for a long while. "You've given this a lot of thought, haven't you." It was a question, but her voice was flat. He knew what she was thinking. Going back home to her father. Her father who took her from him. But she was right to go and even though Quinn wanted to hate him for making her leave, he couldn't. Because he had made Fern who she was: soft and sort of unassuming with a fearlessness about her that surprised him everytime. Because of him she was strong in the most unexpected of places. It was why he was not worried that she would be all right without him. It was himself that he was worried for. What would he do without her in that great black void?

Instead, Quinn just chuckled. "Listen, hey, I mean I drove you all around the country. The least you can do is drive me back home," he teased. What happens now? Was running through his head. Maybe it was like a long sleep where you had sweet dreams over and over again and he could live in eternity with Fern. Hopefully.

"You know I will, Quinn. It'll just be difficult. Father told me to come back when everything was all over, and I never expected it to ever be all over."

Quinn took a finger to her chin and lifted her head up so he could stare at her. "What the devil are you talking about, darlin'? It's not over. It'll never be over. What, you think just because I'm dying means that it's all of a sudden going to be over? You can't do that to me. At the end of it all, you're going to be the only one who remembers me. So you have to keep moving on and telling everyone you know about me, because I'm scared of being forgotten."

"You won't be," promised Fern.

For a moment, they looked at each other, and Quinn's hard look softened. "I'm sorry," he said after awhile.

"For what?" questioned Fern.

"For dying on you, honey. It's just not fair."

The tears that were sitting at the base of her throat and at the very back of her eyes threatened to spill over into the material world, so Fern forced a laugh. "It is too fair, you know, you smoking all those cigarettes you did way back when. Don't be saying it's not fair now, because you got what you deserved."

Quinn would not relent. "But you don't deserve it," he replied. "You never did anything bad and now I'm up and leaving you all alone."

"I'll be fine."

After a minute more, Quinn broke out in a smile. "Oh who am I kidding? Of course you'll be fine. This is Fern Whitelaw I'm talking about. The girl who, when I came home with glass in my foot, simply looked at it with a slight frown and said in that posh voice of hers, 'Interesting'. Like it wasn't that big of a deal that I had glass through my foot. And then just took it out with a pair of tweezers and bandaged it up and asked me to make supper." He laughed at that memory and Fern smiled, but shook her head. "What?" Quinn asked.

"Not Fern Whitelaw," she told him. "Fern Sutherland."

And then his mouth stopped smiling, but his eyes didn't. "Right," he breathed. "Fern Sutherland." They didn't talk for a long time after that, and Quinn's breathing became more laborious as the day progressed. After awhile, Fern got out of the bed and left Quinn's hospital room to get some food and some flowers for his room. Each step she took, her head repeated, Today is the day. Today is the day. Today is the day. Fern wiped away one tear hastily, not wanting anyone else to see her cry. She kept her eyes down, she didn't want to see anyone else here. The hospital smelled different than the one she'd worked in. There were more than twenty hospitals in the city and she'd brought Quinn to one she was unfamiliar with. She hadn't wanted to meet any of the doctors she'd worked with. It would be too difficult to smile for them.

This hospital smelled like disinfectant, like all hospital's do, with something rancid underneath. That was normal, it always was like that. This hospital though, smelled like Fern's past. Full of the blooming flowers her mother always kept in the house and the woody smell of the trees in the aviary and the clean and rich smell of the leather polish her father used in her study. This hospital smelled like the must of her and Quinn's apartment in the city and it smelled like aged cheese that Remy always had been trying to thrust on them and the strong coffee she served to them always saying, This is what the French drink. None of this tea business. The hospital smelled of the sea and the city and the countryside and those long routes they'd driven after and the sunsets that had guided them and the earth after it had just rained. It smelled of the past, the present, and the future, all coming together in this one moment.

On the way back to his room, Fern's steps were different. Fern Sutherland. Fern Sutherland. Fern Sutherland, they said instead.

As the day passed, Fern watched her husband, her book and the small window behind Quinn's head. The sunshine that had been pouring in this morning was going away and in its place came rolling clouds. This is more like it, Fern assessed, keeping her thoughts to herself. The weather couldn't have been nice on the day Quinn died. That just wouldn't be fair. When he awoke, she told him of how the clouds had come in, but Quinn had only nodded weakly. Fern held onto his hand and tried to make her eyes focus on the words on the page, even when all they seemed to scramble and blur together.

Night fell on the hospital, but here, most people had no concept of time. Fern thought of how when she'd been a nurse, death seemed like such a far-away concept. It was tragic and yet uninevitable, so what did it matter? She'd kept it at an arm's length distance away from her and did her best to be professional and friendly while still trying to maintain distance between her and her patients. And in those years of touching death lightly with her fingertips, Fern never grasped it fully to make her really feel something. Not until now, now when death had grasped onto her and was not letting go.

She heard the rain splattering on the windows of the hospital and on the roof, sounding like pebbles on a tin can. She thought of their apartment, how when it rained, there was always one tiny drip that they had to put a bucket underneath. That apartment now was empty, or maybe had a new family. They'd gotten it back when they'd returned to the city but had given up when Fern admitted Quinn to the hospital. What she wouldn't give to be going home tonight with Quinn to that apartment, just like any other night.

Lightning flashed in the window and the lights of the hospital buzzed and flickered. Quinn reached out a hand. Fern took it. She was somehow reminded of The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy is twirling in her house through the twister, off to Oz. Maybe if she just closed her eyes, Fern and Quinn would be twisted and twirled, up, up, up and away to Oz, where everything and everybody lived in technicolor and the only fear was a witch who could be melted in water.

And then Quinn started saying something very softly. No, not saying something, singing something. Fern opened her eyes and looked at Quinn.

"Quand elle me prende dans ses bras,
elle me parle tout bas,
je vois la vie en rose."

When she takes me in her arms,
and speaks softly to me,
I see the good life...

He kept singing the way Fern had sung to him that one afternoon so long ago, even though his voice was forced and weak and not on tune at all. And the tears that had been threatening all day came out, quietly, softly, without hint. And when Quinn's voice died away, he gave Fern's hand a tight squeeze. I'm here, it said. I'm always here.

The lights in the hospital flickered and died. Everything was plunged into a hushed darkness.

And when the generator came on only a moment later and the hospital was lit up once more, Quinn was gone.