Hourglass

The fever has returned.

It courses through my body. Like ice. Like fire. Like knives. Like flowing water. I lie, stone still on the hospital cot, watching waves of silver and red pass above me. Faces and cameras. Cigarettes and sweet porcelain. There are quiet voices, whispering, calling me away, then back again. Everything spinning in soft, quivering circles.

Sometimes, shapes materialize. Doctors and nurses. Andrew and Svetlana. Noelle. I call out to them, grabbing at their spectral bodies with emaciated fingers. They slip away, through my fingers, through the window, into the air. I reach until my lungs ache and my arms fall limp and clammy to the sheets.

I just want it to end. This fever, this broken life, these tired lungs. I resent the cold, plastic oxygen more and more by the minute. The false streams of air, feeding my body, keeping me alive.

Pointless. Worthless. Endless.

Someone trips into the room. I roll over, groaning, panting. A thin stream of sweat runs down my pillow, hitting the floor. I watch it spread out, liquid fingers reaching across the austere linoleum.

Someone is fumbling with a clipboard. I hear a pen clatter to the floor. It rolls a few inches, colliding unceremoniously with the little puddle of sweat.

“Merde.”

A long, whispered chain swearing follows, along with more fumbling and crashing. I groan again, my hand sliding off the bed, my fingertips scraping the linoleum.

“Je suis tres desole, Madame.”

I open my eyes. A teenage girl is standing before me, her arms crossed in front of her body in a humiliated gesture of self-defense.

“Hmmm… what?” I murmur, my eyes clouded with fever, my brain too far gone to attempt translation.

“I’m sorry. I–“

“S’alright. Doctor?” My head is bursting with breathless fragments of faces and memories.

“Non… I am just volunteer. My mother…. She is doctor here–” She trails off, her English faltering.

I examine the girl more closely. She casts her eyes downwards, her mousy hair falling in her face. She is young, sixteen or seventeen at most. Suddenly, an idea is forming in my desperate, impaired mind. A risky, last resort of an idea. I smile, my dry lips cracking.

“What’s your name, kid?”

“Camille.”

“Pretty name.”

Camille smiles and gazes downwards again. I have no idea if she understands or not, but I have nothing left to lose.

“How long have you worked here?” My head pounds.

Camille thinks a minute, screwing up her face.

“Euh… dis is first day.”

I nod, satisfied. My eyes flutter shut and open again. I know I have little time before exhaustion and delusion set back in. I suck in a breath of synthetic air, letting it fill my dying lungs, coughing, gently, hoarsely.

“Camille, I’d like you to do me a favor.”

“Quoi?”

“A favor,” I choke on the word, a wave of guilt dampening the fever. But I force myself to continue. “A favor… you know, like something nice.”

“Ah, yes. Of course.”

“Good, good.”

Camille stands, a soldier at attention, a faithful old watchdog, the tips of her red shoes pointing inwards. I swallow, my throat dry, horrified with what I’m about to do.

“Do you see that switch over there?” I flick my hand, halfheartedly. Camille nods, her eyes washing over the tubes and wires, resting on a silver valve. She takes the switch in her hand. Her wrist twitches as her skin contacts the freezing metal.

“Can you pull it? Just a little to the left. Like that.”

Suddenly, she hesitates, her hand frozen. “What does dis do?”

I shrug, my heart fluttering, “It elevates the bed. I’ll be more comfortable. See. Go ahead… just keep pulling.”

Her pale fingers close more tightly around the switch, she pulls slowly, carefully, her eyes questioning. The switch clicks into place with eerie finality. Almost instantly, the flow of air through the oxygen mask stops. I smile, letting my mouth loll open.

“Sorry, kid.” I manage to whisper before I begin to cough and splutter violently, spraying little strings of blood onto the linoleum. One glob lands on Camille’s impeccable red shoe, soaking into the fabric. She gasps, her eyes widening as she covers her mouth with her pale, pale hands. Her small body is frozen in shock.

“Sorry,” I choke again, inaudibly. My lips part, forcing the real air into my lungs until they are close to bursting. My muscles contract around this last breath, my body desperate to live, my mind desperate to die.

Finally, my body gives in. I let the sweet, clean air out in a long steady stream. The breath flows out into the hospital room, steaming; years and years of dirty smoke leaving my exhausted body.

I close my eyes, savoring the taste of clean oxygen on my lips.

*******

I am sitting in an airport gate, my legs crossed, my bag propped against my leg. The sun is filtering in through a thick glass window. Others mill about around me, tourists, families, businessmen. But I sit alone, my eyes affixed to the neon sign above the door to the plane.Charles de Gaulle International Airport, it reads in glittering green letters.
Paris. My one hope. My home away from home. My last chance.

New beginnings.

New endings.

The sign entrances me as it swims before my eyes, shining, promising. Soon an electronic beep echoes throughout the sunny airport gate. Stiffly, almost robotically I rise and walk through the door, down into the dark hallway. The plastic walls contract and expand, plunging me deeper and deeper into this strange, glimmering blackness.

Suddenly, Noelle is there with her watery eyes and quivering lips. She has a white lab coat draped around her shoulders,Grey’s Anatomy clutched to her chest. She points a chubby finger at my chest as I walk towards her, my suitcase banging against the tile.

“Nat,” she says, her voice echoing, uncharacteristically musical. “Nat, you promised.”

I brush past her floating form, walking deeper and deeper, down into the dark.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, “I’m so sorry.”

She smiles sadly and floats away, back towards the bright opening in the tunnel, back to the sky as I continue downwards, down to where my plane is waiting.

There is light ahead, silver light. I race towards it, stopping only to take a deep breath of the clean black air. It fills my lungs, electric, vibrating. There is no pain. There is no coughing. There is no blood.

Only weightlessness.

A plane speeding down the runway.

Soft, black wheels leaving the ground.

Roaring wind.

Floating.

Freedom.