Short Story: A Song for Walter and Eliza

 A Song for Walter and Eliza

“You have to give it up, Mom. We don’t want to lose you.”

“I just can't give it up like that though, I’m not ready.”

Jessica sat in her hospital bed, she was upright and talking to her family around her. She knew what was going on and she could talk to her family and answer their questions, even if she didn’t want to or care to.

“Mom, you’re just barely clinging on, at some point you have to realize you can’t keep going on this way, and just give it up, it’ll kill you, and then, we’ll never see you again. You’ll just be… worm food.”

“I’m not just going to do that though, you don’t know. You don’t know what it is like to be in this position. I just can't stop like that, it isn’t that easy for me. Sure, others do it all the time, but I can’t, I just can’t do it. I’m so sorry, honey.”

Jessica knew what it felt like to be in her daughter’s shoes. She had dealt with the loss of her own parents just three years before, the sudden knowing that they just wouldn’t be there anymore was an impossible weight that pressed down on her chest; it was still pressing.

Her daughter continued pleading with her for what seemed like an eternity. Lisa begged her to realize that if she just kept on the way she was she would die and then there would be nothing left of her. She asked her if she loved her family or not. Of course Jessica did, it wasn’t that simple. Lisa cried. She laid down on the bed with her Mom. They fell asleep. Her husband had been asleep by the window. Jessica was dying and wouldn’t admit it to herself that she was willingly abandoning her family, or at least their hopes, for some silly feeling that she would see her parents again.

Her husband sat in a chair by the window. He had nodded off in the warm afternoon sun that came through the window and filled the room with a surprising warmth for such a cold place. People didn’t just die anymore for no reason, people willingly chose now. It was all so calculated and measured, so clinical. There used to be some heart and soul to a place where people clung onto life with their dying breath, now people just checked-in like a hotel to check-out.

A plane flew by and caused the room to flicker for just a moment in the shadow. Eric woke up and walked over to his wife. He looked down at her and shook his head in disbelief, he couldn’t believe that she was dying like this. They had plans, they had talked about how they would go out, this wasn’t supposed to be the way. He reached under the sheet and held her hand and watched the rising and falling of her chest as she slept. She looked peaceful asleep. He almost forgot she was very quickly dying before his eyes.

As she slept, Jessica did not have to worry about the decision ahead of her, she didn’t have to fight against the promise that technology gave so many hopeful and trusting people. She didn’t have to place her faith in the cold mechanical arm of an impersonal machine. She didn’t have to think about her parents that died in a car accident just three years ago. Her Dad suffered a brain aneurysm while driving, lost consciousness, swerved off the road into a tree, and they both died the coroner said her Father was likely dead before they hit the tree, the collision only killed the Mother. “It’s a shame the clot couldn’t have been detected earlier so that he could have died in peace”, was his version of a condolence. Jessica didn’t have to think of these things.

A tear fell from Eric’s cheek and down onto Jessica’s hand. He didn’t even realize he began crying. It landed in a soft splatter. The sun made it sparkle with life as it flowed through the dried skin on the back of her hand. Weeks of laying in a cold dry hospital dried her skin out to a fragile paper. Her kidneys and liver were failing which made her hate the idea of drinking water, which only made her kidneys and liver fail even faster.

The doctors gathered in whispered conference outside of the room before they looked in at her. Whenever doctors whispered it was always bad. They stood outside, deliberating, asking each other how long they think she had to live; there was no chance of a recovery. Two weeks, three? She had a rare blood disease that made her ineligible for a transplant. Her body would reject whatever they put into her with no exception. The damage was done, there was no reversing course anymore, her kidneys were all but shut down, and her liver was sputtering and choking and spreading poison throughout her entire body. Jessica was done. Jessica already knew, Eric already knew, and Lisa knew too.

One of the doctors breathed a visibly distraught sigh and opened the door. He was readying himself for the news he thought he was about to break. Eric gripped his wife’s hand harder as they huddled around the bed in wait for the confirmation of their worst nightmares. Birds chirped outside the window in happy oblivion.

“Jessica, Eric, Lisa...” He stopped, choking on his words, swallowing sticky spit down a dry throat, and started again. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to come right out and say it: A panel of doctors agreed that there is nothing we can do to prolong your life.”

Lisa started crying now, she hugged her Mother tighter in the bed, under the white covers in that maddeningly golden sunlight. Jessica looked out the window and nodded, not at the doctor, but at the songbird outside their window.

“Doesn’t he sound so pretty.”

The doctor added, “Unfortunately, your kidneys are only functioning at approximately 10% capacity, your liver is quickly following that trajectory, and we don’t expect you to last longer than the week.”

“No matter what, he just goes on singing for all to hear.”

“It will likely advance to full organ shut down which leads to convulsions and expiration. It will not be an easy death. We have ways to ease the pain should you desire.”

“I could just die right now in this moment, that bird is beautiful, my family is all here. Perfect.”

Eric and Lisa stared hopefully at her in response to her statement about being ready to die.

Lisa whispered in her ear, “You mean you’ll do it then?” Eric followed up with, 

“When do you want to undergo the procedure?” The doctor informed her, “We can get a team in here within the next five minutes, your husband filled out all the paperwork, we just need a signature, it has to be voluntary, you have to voluntarily give up your life.”

Jessica spurted, “No! I told you I do not want to do that, I will not do that, it’s unnatural, people are just supposed to die, they die, they don’t cheat death with computers and memory banks and what ever, they die and that is that!”

“But honey, so many people are doing it now, it’s supposed to be painless. We’d all get to be with you again...don’t you want that? Don’t you want to see us again?”

“I want to stay with you now, I want to be with you until the end.”
 

“There doesn’t have to be a god damn end though, don’t you see that, there doesn’t have to be a fucking end if you would just trust that this works.”

“Dad just means it’ll just be a break, we’ll all be together again. Family, Mom.”

Jessica started crying now for the first time since they had been at the hospital. It was amazing she had anything left to cry. “I won’t see them again...”

“You know that they wanted the operation, they would have wanted you to have the operation too.”

“No one even knows if it works.”

“We know the way you’re proposing definitely doesn’t work.”

“Mommy, I don’t want to lose you.”

A cloud passed in front of the sun and cast a shadow on the tree outside of the room. The songbird glanced up for a moment at the change. He looked toward the window Jessica was staring out of and continued to sing his song. Jessica smiled at the bird, and she closed her eyes. She would see her parents again, she knew it, she saw them now in the room with her family, all together one last time.

Eric yelled for help and held her body down as Lisa screamed in terror as her Mother’s convulsions shook her from the bed and crashing onto the floor. The doctor ran from the room for a crash team and Jessica listened in peace to the bird sing his song.