Beep [complete, dead dove] (Worm)

BEEP

I hold the hand before me.

BEEP

Her hand is warm, on the hospital bed.

BEEP

A car crash.

BEEP

My fault? Chance?

BEEP

My call.

BEEP

I grip her hand tightly. My father is on her other side. Both her hands are held in vice grips.

BEEP

The doctors say at this point they’ve done all they can. She’ll wake up or she won’t. All we can do is sit here and listen to the

BEEP

My eyes are wet but I’m not crying. My emotions are a storm inside me. My eyes leak, my nose runs, but I can’t cry. If I cry it’s because I’ve already lost her.

BEEP

She’s still here, still fighting. All I can do is offer the same. I’m not crying.

BEEP

I can’t be crying.

BEEP

My father isn’t crying either. We look at each other, eyes wet. A silent agreement.

BEEP

You cry when something bad happens, and we don’t know how bad what’s happened is.

BEEP

We don’t want to cry wrong.

BEEP

A flicker of movement at her eyelids. A tensing of muscles in her fingers. Is she waking up?

BEEP

Am I imagining it?

BEEP

Her beautiful hair was cut.

BEEP

Too matted with blood.

BEEP

I told Dad he should give her a pocket watch chain before she can see what happened to it all.

BEEP

I don’t think he understood.

BEEP

He thought a wig would be better.

BEEP

She can pick her own wig when she wakes up.

BEEP

If she wakes up.

BEEP

WHEN she wakes up.

BEEP

One of the nurses told me to have hope, she can still pull through.

BEEP

I told him that I don’t have any hope, that hope is for people who lack certainty, that I know, from the bottom of my heart, that Mom is going to make it.

BEEP

I told him I don’t have hope because I have faith instead.

BEEP

He gave me a sad smile.

BEEP

How dare he be sad. It’s not his mother, here on the hospital bed, clinging to life with her fingertips.

BEEP

It’s not his father, refusing to meet his eyes after a tearful confession that he’d been on the phone with her when it happened.

BEEP

They weren’t tears. Tears are what happen when you cry. I can’t be crying because she’s not dead. She’s not going to die. Not today.

BEEP

She can’t die. Not when it was my call.

BEEP

Not when she’d already told me she got what she was looking for.

BEEP

Wrapped neat and tight in the passenger seat.

BEEP

She told me she had it but I was too excited. I had to ask again.

BEEP

The card had her blood on it now.

BEEP

The box was on the table at the end of the room. It was labeled “to Danny, from your owls” but the ink had run.

BEEP

Her eyes open.

BEEP

I allow myself to feel hope.

BEEP

“Sorry, Danny,” she says.

BEEP

He doesn’t know what she’s apologizing for. This could have happened to anyone. All he wants her to do is get better and come home.

BEEP

“Sorry, Danny,” she says. “Open your present. It’s from both of us.”

BEEP

Coming home is the only present he wants from her.

My eyes should be full of white hot tears, but there aren’t any left.

Moisture runs through my sinus and out my nose.

I wipe it on a sleeve.

It’s dirty but I don’t care.

I cry but there aren’t any tears left.

A nurse moves me aside.

Not the same nurse.

Dad throws out the card. He doesn’t want to open it.

I know what’s inside.

Happy Fathers’ Day

 

Wow, this is amazing.

That last line killed me though, fucking gut punch and no mistake.

Well done.

 

Very well-written, but I can't give it a Like, for obvious reasons. Will likely give it a Hugs rating if I see it on SV.com.