2
Dec
The Death Prompt
I tried to convey someone dying.
Leah Yegneswaran
The phone rings. Sarah groans and turns over, jamming the pillow over her head. The machine picks up, her own voice ringing out tinnily in the small apartment. The machine clicks off once again without anyone leaving a message. She mumbles something about stupid prank calling kids, and the phone starts to ring again. Finally, she gets up, stumbles into the kitchen and seizes the phone off the wall. “Hello?” She tries to say, but it comes out as a garbled, groggy mess. She coughs, scrubbing a hand over her face. Someone on the other end of the line is screeching in a high-pitched, too-fast voice. “Hello?” She tries again, louder this time. “Who the hell is this?”
“It’s Janet, it’s Janet—“
“Janet? What do you want?” She’s confused, befuddled. Her sister knows better than to call this late. Sarah has work early, Janet knows all about her new position at the hospital and how close she is to promotion, she wouldn’t bother Sarah in the middle of the night.
“No—I’m not—this is Dawn. Janet’s in the hospital. Sarah, Sarah, she got hit by a car. She’s not going to make it.”
Sarah’s world slams to a halt.
“Please come.”
She nods dumbly, her voice locked away somewhere deep and icy in her chest, each breath a thousand needles of pain.
“Sarah, hurry.”
She hangs up. She stares at the phone in her hand for a long second before turning and letting the thing crash to the floor as she bolts to her room. She nearly breaks her neck trying to get into her jeans too fast, but then finally, she’s out the door in mismatched socks, a scarf half wound around her neck, open coat flapping half on and half off. She guns the engine aggressively, cursing the light, pre-dawn traffic. Every inch of her is laced with hatred, anger. If it weren’t, she’d be full of crystals of pain, of despair, and so she fumes instead, roaring swearwords at the pigeons that peck at the sidewalk.
The hospital is as green and antiseptic as a bottle of hotel mouthwash. She hates it immediately and passionately.
Her sister is swathed in a hospital blanket, bandages, a neck brace. There’s barely two inches of skin visible at a time under all the trappings and what Sarah can see is purple-bruised and pulpy, like fruit dropped one too many times.
“Janet?” She reaches out, not sure where to put her hand. Not sure her sister could feel her touch, or if she did, if it would bring nothing more than pain. “Janet, baby, can you hear me?”
Dawn is there, sitting in a corner with her knees pulled up to her chest and her arms crossed tight. Sarah has never been close to her sister’s roommate, and the sight of her here now distresses her.
“Could you… could you give me a minute?”
The girl nods, her eyes red and swollen, and swallows with a noise like a frog. “I’ll get you some coffee.”
“No—that’s not…” Sarah shakes her head. “Thanks, but no.”
The girl just nods, unfolding herself from the chair and fleeing. Sarah takes the chair from the corner, lifting it carefully and placing it by Janet’s bed. She doesn’t want to drag the legs over the tile; the noise is already too full of sounce: the whoosh of the respirator, the beep of the cardiac monitor, the steady dripping of the IV tubes that pierce Janet’s bed, pinning her to the bed. It’s like watching someone crucified, slowly choking away on their own body weight. Sarah can see how Janet’s pressed against the bed, how there’s nothing of her sister’s soul left inside this hollow shell. Nothing filling up the flesh anymore.
“Janet, baby. It’s ok. It’s ok, you’re going home. I’m so… I’m so sorry. But… you’re going to be alright now. I promise.”
She smiles sadly, reaching forward to lightly brush her sister’s cheek with two fingers.
“You’re going to be alright.”
She takes a steely breath, reaches over, and switches off the respirator, silencing the alarm with an easy twist of her trained fingers.
Janet blinks, the motion tiny and fragile, and that’s all it takes.
Sarah doesn’t cry. She doesn’t know how.
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Warren Rochelle on 12.05.2011
Poor Sarah.