Days (short story)
By Luke Labern
Sterile morgue, precise necessity – this is where my story begins. Does this set the tone, or is it merely one of the many aspects of the journey?
The hospital in which the morgue lies is where I spent the majority of the day. How many ways can a hospital inspire emotion? The joy of success – the heart bypass that brings the patient life. The lessons learned – the heavy smoker who has one last chance to stop the cancer spreading.
I saw and heard all of a hospital's events on that spring day. The humidity felt special – there was a tension in the air; every minute felt important. This made the pleasant times exceptional: a kiss from my husband made my heart pound. A tall tropical drink was an explosion of ecstasy in the form of mango and pineapple. In the Tate Modern, a particular Picasso painting left me dumbfounded.
* * *
The day started as usual: with my face hovering over the toilet, and with my body exiting through my mouth. My husband – my soul mate – kneeled behind me and held my hair back as I wretched.
'You won't have to put up with this for much longer,' he said, trying to make my feel better. I knew he was right, but when matter is going up rather than down your throat, it is hard to feel anything but terrible. After I had finished I turned round, where he instantly wiped my mouth with a tissue. Always there.
I had a strong deja-vu moment, and I hugged him. I imagined what we might look like in a painting. The strong husband, protecting his pregnant wife as she carried their family's future within. As common to a human couple as sex itself. There was a wash of endorphins that ran throughout me: I felt the baby kick, and I knew that this was nature at its most beautiful. 'I love you,' I said to my lover. He said he loved me too, and I knew he meant it with every fibre in his body. He was so proud to be a father.
After we had got changed, I looked out of our flat window across the docklands in London. It was nothing like the countryside, but its scale felt somehow natural: I can feel the city brimming with life, and I knew that I would be bringing another child into the world soon. I was due in just seven days. I wondered what would happen in those seven days. Would we eat at fine restaurants? Would we have arguments? Would there be an atrocity on the earth? There are an infinitesimal amount of things that could happen between then and when our baby was due.
Again, I felt his warm hands on my shoulders and we embraced in front of the beautiful view over the Thames. I'm sure some people below us saw us, both standing there with our brown hair – mine long, his short – in our prime, in our late twenties. We were both good looking, of course I thought he was the most handsome man I had ever met, and he often told me how beautiful he thought I was. Somehow he said it in such a way that I believed him. I really felt as amazing as he said I was.
Another kick and I let out a startled noise.
'He wants to go to the art gallery, I think,' said my love.
I chuckled and replied, 'Jack, you know it's going to be a girl!' When I had the ultrasound, we both wanted to keep the sex a secret until I gave birth. It was a running joke which got us very excited. 'Maybe if it's a girl we should have another, to make it even!'
Jack played the fool and acted shocked: 'We'll see! I've lost enough sleep for one decade!'
* * *
We stood in the Picasso exhibition and studied the paintings. I was feeling tremendous, and every painting seemed to speak to me. As an art critic, I missed being surrounded by such works every day, but I was more than happy to take maternity leave. Jack, on the other hand, was less impressed.
'That's just stupid! Just a bunch of random drawings all smashed together,' he said, with his eyebrows twisted into knots of confusion.
'It's cubism,' I informed him. 'What Picasso was trying to do here was illustrate the confusion of human experience – it seems to have worked, you're confused!'
He laughed and kiss my cheek. 'I'm going to the toilet, to see if I can figure out the human condition in there.' As he walked off I wanted to run after him just to kiss him once more. He was never impressed with paintings whereas I adored them: but the difference of opinion seemed to illustrate love's power to bridge such gaps, just like synapses do in the human mind. Picasso inspired me to think this way. He was like a drug who opened doors in my mind, allowing new thoughts to flow where they couldn't before.
I continued to move around the paintings until one particular painting struck me. It was my favourite. Simply, it was a painting of a woman in a cubist style. Where Jack saw random shapes I saw art: Picasso tried to show that experience is the whole three-hundred and sixty degrees: when he saw this women he did not just see a three dimensional image of her: in his mind he saw her back, her front, her form, her eyes, her emotion, her memories; the full human experience. He used his paint brush to show that a person does not simply have an image to be seen by human eyes, it is intertwined into the viewer's mind. When you see this painting, you don't just see the paint on the canvas: you see the time and effort Picasso put into it.
I was enchanted. Little did I know that I would later be haunted by this cubist approach to that very day.
As I moved from the painting I felt a heavy kick and it made me wince: I sat down on a bench next to an elderly man, and held my stomach. He asked me if I was alright and I replied that the baby was kicking.
As we discussed how pretty the baby might be I felt moisture. My waters had broken. When Jack returned from the restroom I told him, and instantly he became the man in charge. An ambulance was quickly summoned, and we were on our way to the hospital. The baby was coming. I was in labour.
* * *
'One last push!' the nurse said, in an excited yet tired voice.
I screamed and contracted every part of my body, and I kept pushing until tears rolled down my cheeks. Jack also had salty cheeks, as he watched from the corner of the room in his standard medical garb, unable to touch me. Past his soft mouth guard I could see his smile: his eyes always made a precise shape when he was. This was a hearty smile...
The smile of a father! Which was joined seconds later by the crying of a baby, as it took its first breaths in the world we had brought it into. I almost fainted at that moment, but I kept it together just to hold it in my arms for a few seconds. As I clutched it I knew I would never be happier: Jack again had a hand on my shoulder, and another supporting our son.
He told me he loved me and I said it back. I kissed him and our baby on the head with the rest of my strength and serenely fell unconscious, secure in the knowledge that my husband and baby were alright.
* * *
When I awoke a few hours later, the nurse was sitting next to the insulated cot where my child laid, sleeping for the first time outside.
'He finally fell asleep!' she said, warmly. 'He's beautiful. What is he called?'
Jack and I had already agreed that he would be called George. I told her and she came over to me and held my hand.
'You've done a beautiful thing today.'
We exchanged a long smile and I knew that this woman was a mother: there was something in the way she spoke that appreciated everything I had done and everything I was yet to do.
I asked her where Jack was and she told me he was out buying me a bunch of flowers. This news made me smile even more, to the paradoxical point where the muscles in my face were in pain trying to sustain this show of positive emotion.
* * *
As dusk fell I awoke again, after dozing off once more. My room was empty and dark. I tried to switch the light on above my bed but nothing happened. I was expecting my love to be resting beside the bed, but there was no one in the room except for the baby – the nurse had said earlier that was extremely healthy, and would need only a few checks per hour with a nurse, and that I could be left in peace.
As I looked around the room and wondered how my life would be in the future. I was tired – exhausted – but pleased. I had spent all my energy today setting up as perfect a life I could ever hope for.
As I daydreamed pleasantly, a shrill cry pierced my thoughts. The baby had awoken and was crying. As I called outside, I could hear a similar sound in the hall. I heard the dual weeping and a chill ran down my spine. This was the very opposite of just moments before.
The nurse who had shared a quiet and pleasant experience with me earlier entered the room, her eyes pointed at the ground. I couldn't hear her footsteps over her sobbing.
I tried to say 'What's that matter?' but my voice was dry and weak. I couldn't say a word, I couldn't utter my question. Yet I already knew what tragedy had unfolded whilst I mused about my future life.
'Your husband... He's...' she fell to her knees before continuing: 'He has died.'
* * *
“A gunshot wound”, read the label attached to the body bag in the morgue. Within the black lung, zipped up, laid what remained of my husband – with a hole missing in his sternum.
The precise morgue. There I was, in my wheelchair with the baby in my arms, tears streaming down our face as we existed just a metre away from the man who was supposed to be the centre of our family. I had had a baby, but lost my husband. All within a day.
* * *
In his last moments, he had bought flowers and walked towards the hospital just in the distance, he was confronted by the desperate young man who had followed him for the last quarter of an hour. Soon after, his wallet was missing and his blood was dripping from the rose petals, pooling on the floor and signalling his life exiting his body with every second.
The bullet had shattered his central rib cage and splintered into his aorta. He bled to death just as I slept softly, and our son had clutched his blanket like he should have been holding his father's thumb.
* * *
Like Picasso, I ask you this: what am I supposed to remember? The honey of birth or the gravel of death? Do I see but a mere image of my day, or must I forever live the whole twisted, bitter-sweet hours?
Do I remember the blood wiped from my child's body as it breathed its first gulp of air, or my true love's last blood-tainted inhalation?
Perhaps he was right: just like the painting he had seen hours earlier, this day was just as confusing. Just as incomprehensible.
-----------------------
The idea of a father dying on his son's birthday is based on truth: two years ago a man was shot dead hours after his wife gave birth, in this very country.
The hospital in which the morgue lies is where I spent the majority of the day. How many ways can a hospital inspire emotion? The joy of success – the heart bypass that brings the patient life. The lessons learned – the heavy smoker who has one last chance to stop the cancer spreading.
I saw and heard all of a hospital's events on that spring day. The humidity felt special – there was a tension in the air; every minute felt important. This made the pleasant times exceptional: a kiss from my husband made my heart pound. A tall tropical drink was an explosion of ecstasy in the form of mango and pineapple. In the Tate Modern, a particular Picasso painting left me dumbfounded.
* * *
The day started as usual: with my face hovering over the toilet, and with my body exiting through my mouth. My husband – my soul mate – kneeled behind me and held my hair back as I wretched.
'You won't have to put up with this for much longer,' he said, trying to make my feel better. I knew he was right, but when matter is going up rather than down your throat, it is hard to feel anything but terrible. After I had finished I turned round, where he instantly wiped my mouth with a tissue. Always there.
I had a strong deja-vu moment, and I hugged him. I imagined what we might look like in a painting. The strong husband, protecting his pregnant wife as she carried their family's future within. As common to a human couple as sex itself. There was a wash of endorphins that ran throughout me: I felt the baby kick, and I knew that this was nature at its most beautiful. 'I love you,' I said to my lover. He said he loved me too, and I knew he meant it with every fibre in his body. He was so proud to be a father.
After we had got changed, I looked out of our flat window across the docklands in London. It was nothing like the countryside, but its scale felt somehow natural: I can feel the city brimming with life, and I knew that I would be bringing another child into the world soon. I was due in just seven days. I wondered what would happen in those seven days. Would we eat at fine restaurants? Would we have arguments? Would there be an atrocity on the earth? There are an infinitesimal amount of things that could happen between then and when our baby was due.
Again, I felt his warm hands on my shoulders and we embraced in front of the beautiful view over the Thames. I'm sure some people below us saw us, both standing there with our brown hair – mine long, his short – in our prime, in our late twenties. We were both good looking, of course I thought he was the most handsome man I had ever met, and he often told me how beautiful he thought I was. Somehow he said it in such a way that I believed him. I really felt as amazing as he said I was.
Another kick and I let out a startled noise.
'He wants to go to the art gallery, I think,' said my love.
I chuckled and replied, 'Jack, you know it's going to be a girl!' When I had the ultrasound, we both wanted to keep the sex a secret until I gave birth. It was a running joke which got us very excited. 'Maybe if it's a girl we should have another, to make it even!'
Jack played the fool and acted shocked: 'We'll see! I've lost enough sleep for one decade!'
* * *
We stood in the Picasso exhibition and studied the paintings. I was feeling tremendous, and every painting seemed to speak to me. As an art critic, I missed being surrounded by such works every day, but I was more than happy to take maternity leave. Jack, on the other hand, was less impressed.
'That's just stupid! Just a bunch of random drawings all smashed together,' he said, with his eyebrows twisted into knots of confusion.
'It's cubism,' I informed him. 'What Picasso was trying to do here was illustrate the confusion of human experience – it seems to have worked, you're confused!'
He laughed and kiss my cheek. 'I'm going to the toilet, to see if I can figure out the human condition in there.' As he walked off I wanted to run after him just to kiss him once more. He was never impressed with paintings whereas I adored them: but the difference of opinion seemed to illustrate love's power to bridge such gaps, just like synapses do in the human mind. Picasso inspired me to think this way. He was like a drug who opened doors in my mind, allowing new thoughts to flow where they couldn't before.
I continued to move around the paintings until one particular painting struck me. It was my favourite. Simply, it was a painting of a woman in a cubist style. Where Jack saw random shapes I saw art: Picasso tried to show that experience is the whole three-hundred and sixty degrees: when he saw this women he did not just see a three dimensional image of her: in his mind he saw her back, her front, her form, her eyes, her emotion, her memories; the full human experience. He used his paint brush to show that a person does not simply have an image to be seen by human eyes, it is intertwined into the viewer's mind. When you see this painting, you don't just see the paint on the canvas: you see the time and effort Picasso put into it.
I was enchanted. Little did I know that I would later be haunted by this cubist approach to that very day.
As I moved from the painting I felt a heavy kick and it made me wince: I sat down on a bench next to an elderly man, and held my stomach. He asked me if I was alright and I replied that the baby was kicking.
As we discussed how pretty the baby might be I felt moisture. My waters had broken. When Jack returned from the restroom I told him, and instantly he became the man in charge. An ambulance was quickly summoned, and we were on our way to the hospital. The baby was coming. I was in labour.
* * *
'One last push!' the nurse said, in an excited yet tired voice.
I screamed and contracted every part of my body, and I kept pushing until tears rolled down my cheeks. Jack also had salty cheeks, as he watched from the corner of the room in his standard medical garb, unable to touch me. Past his soft mouth guard I could see his smile: his eyes always made a precise shape when he was. This was a hearty smile...
The smile of a father! Which was joined seconds later by the crying of a baby, as it took its first breaths in the world we had brought it into. I almost fainted at that moment, but I kept it together just to hold it in my arms for a few seconds. As I clutched it I knew I would never be happier: Jack again had a hand on my shoulder, and another supporting our son.
He told me he loved me and I said it back. I kissed him and our baby on the head with the rest of my strength and serenely fell unconscious, secure in the knowledge that my husband and baby were alright.
* * *
When I awoke a few hours later, the nurse was sitting next to the insulated cot where my child laid, sleeping for the first time outside.
'He finally fell asleep!' she said, warmly. 'He's beautiful. What is he called?'
Jack and I had already agreed that he would be called George. I told her and she came over to me and held my hand.
'You've done a beautiful thing today.'
We exchanged a long smile and I knew that this woman was a mother: there was something in the way she spoke that appreciated everything I had done and everything I was yet to do.
I asked her where Jack was and she told me he was out buying me a bunch of flowers. This news made me smile even more, to the paradoxical point where the muscles in my face were in pain trying to sustain this show of positive emotion.
* * *
As dusk fell I awoke again, after dozing off once more. My room was empty and dark. I tried to switch the light on above my bed but nothing happened. I was expecting my love to be resting beside the bed, but there was no one in the room except for the baby – the nurse had said earlier that was extremely healthy, and would need only a few checks per hour with a nurse, and that I could be left in peace.
As I looked around the room and wondered how my life would be in the future. I was tired – exhausted – but pleased. I had spent all my energy today setting up as perfect a life I could ever hope for.
As I daydreamed pleasantly, a shrill cry pierced my thoughts. The baby had awoken and was crying. As I called outside, I could hear a similar sound in the hall. I heard the dual weeping and a chill ran down my spine. This was the very opposite of just moments before.
The nurse who had shared a quiet and pleasant experience with me earlier entered the room, her eyes pointed at the ground. I couldn't hear her footsteps over her sobbing.
I tried to say 'What's that matter?' but my voice was dry and weak. I couldn't say a word, I couldn't utter my question. Yet I already knew what tragedy had unfolded whilst I mused about my future life.
'Your husband... He's...' she fell to her knees before continuing: 'He has died.'
* * *
“A gunshot wound”, read the label attached to the body bag in the morgue. Within the black lung, zipped up, laid what remained of my husband – with a hole missing in his sternum.
The precise morgue. There I was, in my wheelchair with the baby in my arms, tears streaming down our face as we existed just a metre away from the man who was supposed to be the centre of our family. I had had a baby, but lost my husband. All within a day.
* * *
In his last moments, he had bought flowers and walked towards the hospital just in the distance, he was confronted by the desperate young man who had followed him for the last quarter of an hour. Soon after, his wallet was missing and his blood was dripping from the rose petals, pooling on the floor and signalling his life exiting his body with every second.
The bullet had shattered his central rib cage and splintered into his aorta. He bled to death just as I slept softly, and our son had clutched his blanket like he should have been holding his father's thumb.
* * *
Like Picasso, I ask you this: what am I supposed to remember? The honey of birth or the gravel of death? Do I see but a mere image of my day, or must I forever live the whole twisted, bitter-sweet hours?
Do I remember the blood wiped from my child's body as it breathed its first gulp of air, or my true love's last blood-tainted inhalation?
Perhaps he was right: just like the painting he had seen hours earlier, this day was just as confusing. Just as incomprehensible.
-----------------------
The idea of a father dying on his son's birthday is based on truth: two years ago a man was shot dead hours after his wife gave birth, in this very country.
A Short Story,
Published 25 January 2012
Published 25 January 2012