Autumn Reflections

It was that time again, the kind of time when the leaves turn brown and the passing time is very timely. Like the time when the time stored in an hourglass begins to dwindle down to the last grain of time and you begin to realize that your time is ending. That was the current time that it was. 

I was sitting there on my bed at that time, watching the wind blow and carry the windy winds across the sky, dragging clouds along its paths like… like wind. Across from me was my roommate, my fellow sick soul. We were roommates, both of us in that room; the kind of room which is almost entirely empty and appears very roomy. That was the kind of room that we were in. 

In that room, my roommate asked me, "what do you think of this room?"

"What is there to think about," I said, "it's a room."

"Well," said my roommate, and then he gestured around the room.

It was a dramatic gesture, the kind of gesture that an actor might make to gesticulate his mood. That was the kind of gesture that it was.

He continued, "what do you think about this?"

His hand gesticulated a gestural gesture in the general direction of his I.V. bag and the accompanying machinery. The machine made an incessant beeping noise, the kind of noise which numbs your ears and is very noisy. It was a noise which continued to emit noise continuously, until the loud continuous noise was all you can hear in the silent room. A noise that you can't fully bring yourself to ignore but can't pay attention to either. That was the kind of noise that it was. 

"It's annoying," I said. 

My roommate was a year older than me. He had a rather namely name, the kind of name that is, namely, quite lame. That was the kind of name that he had. All bare was his head of hair and his eyes were dark blue.

He grinned at me… the sort of goofy grin full of grand illusions concealing hidden grime. That was the kind of grin he gave me.

"Yeah, I guess it is a bit of a nuisance huh."

I felt a chilling chill, like the chill you might get during the chilly season when the cold chills you down to your very bones and it's… chilly. 

I attempted to change the subject, "it'll be Thanksgiving soon. The nurses say that they'll bring turkey to celebrate."

The turkey here wasn't great. It was very dry. Dry like the dryness of drywall when it splinters off of the wall and lands dryly on your tongue, melting like a dry paste all over the inside of your mouth. It's very dry. That was the kind of dry turkey they had here. It came with a viscous gravy so viscous that you must question whether the viscosity conceals some chemical agent of terrible taste; dimmed out from your tongue by an excess of salt. That was the sort of viscosity which the gravy had here. 

My roommate Lukas kept grinning and said, "I know, I can't wait to try some. Having the same meals every day gets old after a while."

I shrugged. I've never had a problem with repeating things. I could repeat it like a repeater, or a record put on repeat. I'd even repeat my life if I could. Anything to live a little longer, even if it's living redundantly. I just want to live. Repeating the same meal is a small issue by comparison.

He added excitedly, "It's also gonna be my birthday too by the way! I'll turn sixteen this year."

Lukas talked about years like how those older nurses would talk about arcade games such as Tetris or Galaga. The nurses liked boasting what their highest score was, Lukas liked boasting his highest year. So every year, yearly, he'd grow closer to the next year, adding year after year to his yearly struggle; the struggle to reach the next year. That was the kind of yearly struggle that he had. 

He was a year older than me. It was a long time. The kind of lengthy time which was long enough to span along the length of a lifetime. That was the length of his time from mine.

"Happy almost birthday," I said.

"Thank you," he replied, and this time his smile seemed real. 

But it was short lived… 

Time kept passing despite our dialogue. The sky grew darker. The kind of darkness so dark that it darkens your mood dimly. A darkness which was dark enough to darken the brightest sun and wrap it in… in darkness. 

He tried to say something, "You know…" but he never finished his next words.

Instead, he hacked up a sudden and terrible cough. The kind of terrible cough which carries a terrible and callous creep of cold in the bones and is terrible. A cough so terribly troubling and terrible that it caused the skin to crawl away from your body, and what followed after was a terrible scent of rust and then a clump of terrible sordid blood. 

I pressed the red button on the side of my bed with terrible urgency, calling for someone, anyone, a nurse, a doctor or a damn quack, anyone would do. I pressed the terrible red button and called for anyone and waited in my bed as my roommate Lukas coughed and hacked and puked terribly red all over the sheets. 

"Are you ok Lukas!?" I asked rather dumbly.

He looked at me. It was the kind of austere and stormy look you'd give when you're looking at the end and it's not looking good. That was the sort of look he gave me. Again he tried to speak and again he hacked more blood before he could. His blood was a dark red. The kind of red so bleak and dark that it darkens the soul itself for those who see it.

Again I pressed the button, I pressed the red button and Lukas kept coughing. 

"C'mon," I muttered with frustration, "C'mon hurry up… nurse! Where's the nurse!?"

The machinery was beeping louder now. More annoying noises were noisily annoying me as I looked at Lukas and called his namely name. Still pressing the red button I repeated his name, "Lukas, Lukas can you hear me? Lukas!" 

His blue eyes grew duller, like the kind of dullness on a hunk of dull metal or the dullness of a person's skull when facing the cosmic forces and realizing that their dull mind cannot comprehend, let alone prevent such forces from enacting their mind-dulling will. 

I just talked to him. He was hacking and wheezing but I pretended that everything was fine. 

"The weather's getting colder," I said, "you should make sure you stay warm and ask for extra blankets if you need it."

I could never find words to describe the dreadfulness of his wheeze at that moment. It was dreadful, like the dread one feels when seeing the dreaded Death with His dreadful scythe drawing nearer with each dread step. The wheeze was dreadful! 

I rambled, "and don't forget about Thanksgiving this week… They'll give us turkey for dinner as a way to celebrate."

"Jack…" he tried to say.

"The turkey is dry and the gravy is slimy," I said, whining like how an infant would whine after hours of whining already. Yet still they'd be unhappy for some obscure reason that their un-telepathic mothers can't discern.

I whined some more, "The machines are so loud as well, like they never shut up. It's just 'beep beep' all day…"

Again he tried to speak, "Jack…!"

"But you know what Lukas, it's not so bad really."

Again he began, "please Jack…" and He didn't finish his words. 

I ignored his guttural coughs and kept speaking jovially. I wore a grin on my face… the sort of goofy grin full of grand illusions concealing hidden grime. That was the kind of grin I had on my face.

"Oh, and it's your birthday soon too!" 

His face grimaced and I continued, "maybe we can ask the nurses for cake. In fact, I'll demand that they give us cake or else… or else…" 

"I'm dying, Jack," he finally squeezed out.

I paused… he was dying? Does he mean the kind of deadly death that reeks of… of Death? 

I pondered– no! I raved. My expression collapsed like the walls of Istanbul. How could he be dying, he was only a child!? It's too young! Not enough! Damn this sickness, and these useless hospital staff! Damn these machines and the fading dusk and the blood all over the floor and the goddamn brown leaves falling off the trees! Dammit all, and damn you Death!

I could and do feel such anguish knowing the inevitability of time! No matter what I do, even if I eat the same bland food every day, and take the same medicine each morning, afternoon, and evening, and even if I repeat the same things again and again and again and again, pretending as if everything's the same; even if I do it all time still moves forward! Is that what you are, Death?

The nurses came too late. They rolled me out of the room in my bed, pulling me off of the machines for a while. A bunch of them surrounded Lukas, smothering him like the way a pillow smothers you when it crushes your face. He was smothered by those nurses and they crowded around to examine him. The flatline beep of his machines was the last thing I heard as I left the room that evening. 

The next day, Lukas died at fifteen. 

I spent that day acting all withdrawn like a vegetable and sitting in the room which just became a little roomier. The morning and afternoon passed like a record and I felt a kind of nothingness in my body. It was the sort of nothing where nothing matters and you feel like nothing's changed, but really, everything is different than before, and nothing will ever be the same. The leaves outside were all brown now; a kind of brown that's flaky and mottled with brown spots. The grass was brown too, and the tall trunks of the trees and even the dusky skies seemed brown somehow. All the browns bearing news of the coming winter.

The nurses tried to console me, but they said not long after that I'd get a new roommate. "Oh well," I thought, "at least it'll make the room feel a little less roomy, and this time I'll get to be the senior, since now that Lukas is… not here anymore, I'll be the oldest." 

That chilling chill I felt came back again, and I decided to call the nurse and ask them to close the window. It's too cold outside, like the cold of a cold as it chills your body until it's ice cold and you break out into a cold sweat. That's how cold it was outside. 

Eventually, Thursday came and the nurses gave out the turkey dinners to the patients in the ward to celebrate. I ate the dry turkey that tasted like drywall, and the slimy viscous gravy, and scarfed down the whole dry and salty meal until there was nothing but mess remaining. I looked down at that slop and thought that it reminded me of this ward.

We were messy, like the messy mess you see when a walking hot mess messes up everything they do. We were that kind of mess, we were ditzy, klutzy, ignorant… we would mess up everything, even just eating, living, or breathing, we'd keep spilling some mess all over ourselves. 

I stared at that mess and said, "I'm dying too…" 

messy and breathless. Breathless; like a lover's confession I repeated it again, "I'm dying too."