The Void

by Bryan Healey

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2012 by Bryan Healey

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9855983-0-3

  www.thevoidbook.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotation embodies in critical articles and reviews.

  Made in the USA

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2011962271

  "It is not known precisely where angels dwell whether in the air, the void, or the planets. It has not been God's pleasure that we should be informed of their abode."

  Voltaire

  She believes I am all but dead.

  But I can hear her...

  I have been quite still as I lay, years passing by me gently and without fanfare or care; my eyes stay closed, my body sunken, and my muscles withered and useless, a soft, seductive, persistent beep-beep-beep of life-sustaining machinery always echoing, perched somewhere just behind my head.

  I don't know why I am kept here, or why I am kept alive at all; and yet I am. And those who put me here, who keep me here, they come and go, night and day, men, women, children, even an occasional pet; nurses, doctors, family, friends, strangers; they talk to me rarely, sometimes to themselves, and frequently to each other, or to no one and to nothing. And they have very much to say, I have found.

  And they don't know that I can hear them.

  But I can...

  "What a morning," a nurse grumbles.

  Perhaps it doesn't matter...

  "I know," another answers.

  ...if I can never get my mouth to move, to make words; if I die here, alone in the void, in the darkness, with my eyes still sealed, and my muscles still wasted, their trusted secrets will die rattling inside my frothing mind, safe, isolated. Whenever the delicate machinery ceases to whir, the meaning of each encounter will fade to decaying organics, as meaningless as the body that houses my thoughts and musings.

  "The traffic was terrible, wasn't it?"

  Memories lost forever...

  "Unbearable. I was on route four for an hour."

  ...but even that being my future, for now, as I lay here, I can yet hear, can consider, and can wonder at the lives that seem to swirl around me like a furious tempest, some of whom I have always cared deeply for, and some of whom I am finding I care suddenly.

  "Were you late this morning?"

  They bring me my only remaining comforts.

  "A little. No one seemed to care."

  They bring me my only sense of sanity.

  "I hope the road's are better tonight."

  They bring me my only dose of reality.

  I treasure them...

  "Hello," a soft, familiar voice echoes. It's warm, gentle, somewhat somber. It is the familiar resonance of my wife, Jennifer, who comes to me every day, or so I believe, usually just after the first nurses leave. I don't know what time that truly is; time means nothing to me anymore. I now only know the weaves of routine...

  "Hello," says a man.

  ...and when they unexpectedly break.

  "How is he?"

  "The same," the man now exhales from another point in the space of my room, off to the right, about level with my head; my doctor. He never says much worth hearing, but he is always writing furiously, the sound of his pen grating against a stack of paper is unmistakable. How I wish I could see the strokes his pen was making, the etchings across the page...

  What is he writing about me?

  "Good morning, my love," now beside me.

  I like to believe that she is touching my hand, wherever it rests, but I, of course, can't really feel it if she was. Sometimes I like to pretend that I can, even if only for a moment, but rationally I know it likely can never be true. I delude myself often, a trick to keep my sanity as best I am able.

  "How are you today?"

  The same as I always am...

  I loved that she asked me questions.

  "I'm well."

  I pretend I had answered, and ask her...

  What's new with you?

  "Brian came by the house today."

  Did he? How nice!

  Brian is our son. I can't say for sure quite how old he is now, but I know that he is in college and lives away from home, surely in a dormitory of some kind. His life, as a father would hope, has continued on without me, reaching for his dreams, destined for great things; far more than I could ever have done.

  I must be old now.

  I wonder if my hair is gray...

  "He is doing well."

  Good to hear it!

  "He just finished his last required math class-" and so he must still be in college- "says he hated it."

  He always hated math...

  "His grades are up, though, so that's good. He'll be graduating in the spring."

  My son, the college graduate...

  "He has a girlfriend." Oh? "Julie," with a hint of whimsy; I am flabbergasted! My little boy, now with a girlfriend, the first I've ever heard mentioned. I only really ever knew him as a child, innocent, unknowing of the world that awaited him. And now, that starstruck adolescence has evidently discovered women; he best be a gentleman toward her!

  I never explained sex to him...

  "I met her."

  Did you? Must be serious...

  How is she?

  "She's lovely."

  I wish I could meet her...

  "I'll bring her by here to meet you sometime, maybe, if I can, if she'll come." I laugh at the merging of minds, a peculiar laughter, without any sound or use of muscle. It doesn't resemble the laughter I remember in any way; me and Jenny, cozy and drunk, sitting beside a fire in a wooded cabin we didn't own, no distractions but our own humorous stories of broken limbs and mismatched socks. Her laughs echoed in that cabin like a perfect tuning fork, and I soaked in every decibel with absolution and abandon...

  She's nearer me now.

  I can hear a change in the pitch of her voice as she speaks, softly and quite slowly, carefully. "I hope you can talk with her... someday."

  I'd like that.

  "My sister is going to stop by next week."

  Mary? Mary is coming here?

  My goodness, I haven't heard her voice in a great long while... It would be nice to hear more of the voices of family; I hear far too little of them. The only voices I know well enough to know at first resonance are Jenny, my night nurse, my brother, my best friend, and my mother. My son rarely visits, and even my parents were here with decreasing frequency.

  I need more voices; it's all I know...

  "She misses you."

  I miss her, too...

  "She said she would bring Robbie with her, but you know how he is." I hadn't heard his voice in the term of my memory, although I'm sure he's back there, somewhere, buried in the neurons and tissue and blood that seems to continue giving me life.

  "I wish you could talk to me," she mumbles.

  I wish that, too...

  "You know, they tell me it's not good for me to come here everyday, to talk to you like this. They say it's not healthy, that I need to move on."

  What... Why would they say that?

  Who would say that?

  "I
can't help myself, though."

  If I could, I would smile...

  Can I blush?

  I imagine I'm blushing...

  "I love you, Max."

  I love you, too, Jenny.

  I would trade my soul, surrender my salvation, to be able to lift my arms, to clasp her back and grip her with the ferocity afforded by years of neglect and desire. I need to touch her face, to see her face, to feel her lips, her arms, her fingers, her thighs, her back, her neck... I want to love my wife, more fervently than I even want to live, paradoxically as that may be...

  But I can't.

  So, as always, I listen...

  ...I listen as she rises from whatever it was that she used to sit beside me, walk to the other side of the room, to the window, and throw open the curtains. I am sure there is sunlight across my face now, but I can't see it or feel it. My world has no concept of light; it is always the same dull gray, devoid of texture, of beauty, of color; only the void of nothing that consumes all but my ears, of which I am eternally grateful to still have.

  I would surely be mad without them.

  "Good morning, Mrs. Aaron!"

  That is the voice of another of my nurses. I hear her particular voice an average of two times per week, but I don't know her name. She is now going to attend to me, to check my machines, check my catheter, check for shit and blood, read my vitals and write them on some paper, perhaps my chart.

  What, exactly, is a chart?

  I won't be able to feel any of her working, of course, but I will be able to hear the shuffling and clanging of sheets and metal amongst a vast sea of additional unrecognizable noises, and it all embarrasses me. No one should need to attend to me like this, I should be able to care for my own body without assistance. It is my body, after all...

  "Good morning."

  Jenny is always polite...

  "How are you today?"

  "I'm surviving," Jenny mumbles.

  "And how is our Max?"

  "The same, as always," a wisp of sadness.

  "His vitals are as strong, as usual," with a touch of hope she retorts. I, as always, recognize her tone as fake and empty, and I have no doubt that my wife did as well, but we all choose to believe her just the same. It is the delicate dance of group deception, designed to calm the grief of knowing that I am almost sure to never see them or say anything again.

  "Good to know."

  "And he has good color today."

  "Yeah," Jenny mumbles, suddenly closer to me. I hadn't heard her walking from the window back to me, which seems odd. I usually notice such things. I must be distracted... "He looks so handsome."

  I do? I look handsome?

  Surely I'm blushing now...

  "Yes, he does," and shuffling noises suddenly begin. I think the nurse has begun her efforts, but it sounds... different... than what I am used to hearing; I have no way of knowing exactly what she is doing.

  I hate that.

  "I wish the weather would improve, just a little bit," my wife grumbles, once again further from me, clearly back in her usual corner; I presume on a seat of some kind. She is walking softly today. Perhaps she is wearing new shoes.

  I'm sure they're beautiful...

  "I know. I miss the sun."

  No sun, it seems...

  I was wrong; my face is dark.

  "I'll be glad when spring finally comes."

  When spring comes?

  It's winter?

  "I don't know how much more of this snow I can handle. It feels like it's been snowing every day for weeks. It's too much."

  We must be deep into winter.

  "It's beautiful, though, isn't it?"

  My wife always loved the snow...

  "It's annoying, is what it is..."

  ...or she did.

  I miss the snow...

  "It has been a little bit excessive," the nurse concludes, and they say no more on the matter. I wish they would; I need their descriptions. I am as a child trapped in his room during a furious storm, no power, only candles for illumination, relying solely on his youthful imagination for any sense of reality. A good book in hand, words have only meaning when the mind can give them life, but the words are still needed to guide the birth. Without the words, there is nothing for the mind to do, no world to create.

  Silence was my death...

  Beyond what is given me by those around me, I can experience nothing but what I am able to cobble together using old memories and my old knowledge and my old beliefs and ideals, and the product always lacks the pull of the sonorous echo of Jenny's ever melodious words, drifting into my ears like rose petals against a stiff breeze. Her voice makes me see color, see music, to see a lively painting, rolling fields of yellow and green cast across a blue, formless sky; she reminds me that there is a world, and at least part of it still cares that I am here.

  She is my life...

  "I have to go," I hear her say, and I suddenly want to cry, but have not a way. I hate when she leaves me, and when she must, I always wait diligently for her return. Of course, what else would I do? What else is there for a man such as me? "I love you," she almost cries to me, as she does nearly every day.

  I love you, so dearly...

  And then her steps, tapping against what I assume to be a typical linoleum floor; then the door, a soft ring of metal on metal, and the deepest of silence.

  Such silence...

  Penetrating, unsettling silence...

  My mind is a blank canvas now; some times the nurses will leave something running noisily in the background, whether it was a television or a radio I had no way of knowing. It may even have been something else entirely; it has been years since I was last kept informed of the latest technology. What could the world look like today?

  What devices of entertainment could be today?

  Anyway, no matter; there was no noise this day.

  I am utterly alone...

  It is these times of solitude that my mind drifts about, flitting carelessly from thought to thought, from memory to memory. I have no concept of sleep; I don't think I even can sleep. I just go from one state of being to the next, little to no transitional process to cushion the awkward shifts, interruptible only by the sudden noise of real world routine.

  Or are my memories all that is real?

  ...stop that...

  My memories are not reality, as perception can tell, but only a hint of oldness to them. Sometimes they feel as I remember dreams used to be, either vivid and palpable, or confusing and fantastical. And yet, they are as real as anything I have now, and it is the only thing I can really and truly see anymore.

  And so I treasure them...

  I am now on my way to Vermont.

  It is the first winter weekend after I graduated. Freshly married, Jenny and I head to the northern range for a refreshing intake of mountain air, our skis strapped securely to the roof of our car, a terrible little sedan that I purchased from my neighbor just after high school, now our only protection from the harsh world beyond the windows.

  We exchange lunacy and laughter as we sail along the winding roads, working to avoid suffocating boredom that incubates on a very long and monotonous drive, devoid of any stops worth taking...

  "I hope it snows!"

  "It's supposed to."

  "How much?"

  "Paper says near a foot by tomorrow night."

  "We can make snow men!"

  I laugh.

  It is cloudy and dangerously dark, the air thick and moist despite the biting and insistent cold. Around us, stabbing the sky, mountains erupted into the fog, making them appear short a
nd squat, but knowing they likely kissed the clear above it all.

  "That would be awesome!"

  "We'll have to buy coal and carrots."

  Another laugh.

  "I hope it buries us," she muses.

  Jenny could never get enough snow; the more, the better; when storms struck, she would watch the yard as an epic play. A true powder hound, she would have happily wasted her life bumming around the Rocky Mountains, skiing endlessly until old age or accident prevented her from living.

  I just liked her company.

  The road got progressively more narrow and erratic as time progressed, swinging from left to right to left to right to left to right, the edges of the road becoming smaller and rougher, and the surrounding rocks growing taller, darker and more intimidating. Trees were ever thicker and more tightly packed, devoid of leaves and buried in old snow-pack.

  We were nearly there.

  "I see snow!"

  She points through the windshield at nothing. I squint into the sharp contrast of the headlights against ink, and see nothing.

  "I don't see anything."

  She stabs at the glass.

  "Look! Right there!"

  More squinting...

  "I think you're crazy."

  "I'm not crazy, you're crazy!"

  "It's not snowing," I confirm.

  "I saw it!"

  I continue scanning, looking for the sudden dots amidst the cone of light my headlights emitted, the scatter that always accompanied nighttime snowfall, but not seeing anything no matter my strain. Finally, I sat back in my seat, huffing. "You're definitely crazy," I conclude with a brilliant, confident smile.

  "I'm not crazy," she grumbles.

  "Well," I snicker, "either way, it's not snowing,"

  "You'll see," she exclaims.

  And then, terrifyingly, I do.

  All at once, the cold, moist sky unzips itself and the snow comes in a raging fit, covering all visibility in front of me like a blanket. In a panic, I throw on the windshield wipers and stomp on the brakes, my tires gently tugging to the right as we decelerate quickly, waiting for the rapidly covering view port to clear.