Wrish

I could be anywhere; I know where I am going even if no one else does. Dragging my job behind me, walking casually in the direction from which I had come only minutes earlier.

It’s a busy day today, there are people purposefully moving around. Consternation, compassion and indifference, each expression drawn so clearly on their faces, primitive symbols for the emotions they feel, or want to feel. His face was lost, eyes swollen, he would have been a small child crying into his own hands, shut the world out and crawled into corner, resigned himself to weep for an eternity, only one thing held him into the shaky frame which now drew him quietly across the room.

I had seen her the previous day; her yellow skin was wrapped around a large plastic tube which forced her life continue. I remember not breathing because of the smell of urine and body fluids at the door, I remember taking only a quick glance in her direction, I remember the way that her image lingered on my mind for several seconds after I had looked away, I remember wondering how she found herself in such a predicament. I remember wondering what she looked like beneath the swollen flesh that crowded her face.

She was different today, I hadn’t noticed as I passed her on my way in, I had strained not to test another glance in her direction. Instead, I saw only the shapes that etched themselves on my peripheral vision. The shape of a person, his shape beside her bed, hunched low in sullen epitomisation of grief. He carried it with him now, arms across his chest to keep in the calming warmth, shoulders down and eyes that would rather gaze into emptiness than be forced to make contact with another’s.

He motioned weakly in her direction and looked around for the nearest receptive individual, wondered who he would break from their infinitely important task, his jaw hung for a moment before he spoke.
“She’s not well,” his words were interrupted by a much louder plea, coming from her,
“Somebody please help me!” Once again, nothing more than an instinctive peak at her contorted frame, now sitting, was enough to force my mind into the laborious task of examining every detail of her face and posture.

While my body continued along its way, even inviting a staffer into conversation, my mind scrutinised the scene it had just witnessed. Why did she hold her arms so, her mouth had hung open as if she didn’t know what to do with it, had she vomited, or just forgotten how to swallow the thickened fluids she was being asked to consume. Her eyes were so mournful on a face that longed to live without this pain.

The nurse spoke, I heard her words, even over another plea for assistance, but somehow they didn’t make sense, they were just words, each with its own definition, but their net meaning was nil. I spoke, then left.

While I continued on my way from another moment of experience, the voice of a young woman begging for her life echoed through my skull and I never felt so useless.