561. Mute Eyes

He had not called. He was not taking calls.

They wheeled her into her own room, just a single bed, white sheets and a solitary window overlooking the grounds of the provincial hospital. She sat the bed in a cotton gown, head turned forty-five degrees, eyes fixed on the window. The room had no smell, clean, bland, insipid. She breathed without moving, foreign air into her lungs, in the care of strangers, alone. Limp, her arms hung, hands in her lap, as they had been placed. Her lips, dry, cracked, felt as her heart, bleeding, cause unknown. Strength absent, waiting for purpose, waiting for a call, a sound in the silence, a ring that someone gave a damn.

Images flashed. Her father at the helm, steadfast, the ship rolling in a storm; her mother, pearly smile, saucer eyes, arms conveying what words couldn't as strength slipped away in heartbeats faint and fainter. Family, connection, relationship. This was life. To care, to love, to act, to hold and caress and kiss, a flower in a vase, a thumb on forehead, strokes gentle.

The room had one bed and one small table next to the bed. Light slatted into the monochromatic cell, bars of shadow, confinement solitary, an antithesis slap to all she had known. Together, she had told her father, we will lift her up. Together, her father had repeated into their embrace, father and daughter drawing upon the other. Together their strength grew, together their love multiplied. Together mattered. Together gave meaning. Together flowed, naturally. Together smothered doubt, held fear at arms length. She sat the room, silent, alone, her unblinking eyes fixed on the window, on the grounds, seeing nothing, neither tree nor leaf, neither flower nor bird.

Spoken, not a word, they had said. Mute of eye too. Her chart said shock. She had seen them, strangers, move today as she imagined they had moved yesterday and as she suspected, they would move tomorrow, with or without her. Their hearts distant, necessity she wondered, grown callous in the labor of care, weary in battles lost. They had even misspelled her name. And through it all were images and silence.

Together, father and daughter had lifted, spirit and casket, when the time came. Together, pure as morning before song of bird, within and not without, they lifted their souls as they lifted the soul of womb to eternal light. The walk seemed forever and an instant, timeless she would say later, the most curious mixing of contradictions, held within something larger, something greater, and, for a moment, as if a crack in the wall of darkness, something flashed, something no word could describe, no concept could hold, and her feet felt to float, casket too, and they walked, father on one side, daughter on the other. Together.

Alone, in the white barred silence, Em sat the bed with doll arms, fingers clawed in natural repose. Her face felt paper thin, fragile, fading in this alien world, some Janus forsaken outpost, cared for in a system doing what systems do, processing, cold, mechanical, the faux caring of one in a play, mouthing words mouthed a thousand times before and to be mouthed a thousand more. The room held but one table. The table sat between bed and window and on that table, a small metal object, neither blinking nor buzzing. He had not called. He was not taking calls. He was not here. He was not coming.

Unnatural, the air. Dry, sterile. Not the air of Hyneria. Not the air of love. They had taken her locket, as they described her brooch. Taken her mother. She had watched them, remove her clothes, take the brooch. Her mind moved, her arms did not. And cold foreign hands took the enclosure, their placid unreadable faces illuminated in the pulsing light. She saw her arm resist, in her mind. They placed it in a box. Her mother. They didn't know. She could not speak, her words gone as moments are gone, her chest constricted, caving into itself, a fetal curling, involuted, he would have said.

Would have. Past as present. The world, this cold, alien, foreign world, white, sterile, alone, the silence of the guilty. It wasn't suppose to be this way. Mother had died at home, in loving arms, in familiar surroundings, flowers and poetry, light warm as wood, hands as caring as the bee to flower. Love is round, she had said, not a line or a square but a circle. In bed, pillow under her head, her hair combed, her eyes clear, she raised her left hand into mine, her right hand into father's. A circle she said as father and I joined hands, love is.

Leaves slipped from moor, dancing before the window, a sight best shared, imbibed like children's laughter, hearts drunk with innocence waiting the sentence of time. Innocence held not weight, nor past, nor future. Moments laden as pregnant dew, happy in their own accord, glistening in the light of possibility, the kind of possibility that knows not failure. Her weary unblinking eyes thought of fairy tales and wondered why. Why the silence.