Forgotten Dreams of Eternity: Lost Odyssey: Thousand Years of Dreams

(Short Story -XXVI.) *Signpost*

She closes her eyes.

Her sunken eye sockets harbor dark shadows.

Kaim settles himself into the chair by her bed.

He waits for her to say more, but she seems to have fallen asleep.

Her breathing is calm, and a slight smile plays upon her sleeping face. The signpost seems to be working. Without the drug, hammer-like pains in her back and violent chills would prevent her sleeping. Even worse than the physical suffering would be the fear of approaching death.

More than a girl than a woman, young Anri was struck by a mortal illness. At the end of her long battle with the disease, the doctor gave up all hope of treating it and prescribed signpost for her instead.

Ordinary people are not allowed to use the drug, but special permission has been given to patients for whom there is no hope of recovery in order to afford them a peaceful death and bring their lives to a quiet close-in other words, to enable them to die without having a deal with a regret or despair.

Before Kaim began this work, a doctor explained the effects of the medicine to him, concluding with a smile, "In other words, signpost forgives all the debts the person has built up toward life."

Anri wakens.

After she has confirmed Kaim's presence at her bedside, she says. "You don't have to worry." and closes her eyes again, smiling.

"I'm fine. I think I can go just like this . . ."

So, she knows there are other possibilities.

In certain rare cases, signpost can have undesirable side effects. Sometimes at the very end, when the person is just beginning to slide into the abyss of death, there can be an attack of nightmares. The patient experiences a literal death agony. Even though signpost have a provided such a wonderfully tranquil departure on the person's final journey, every last bit of tranquility can be swept away on the cusp of death.

Worse still, some patients concluded their hallucinatory episode with a frenzied physical outburst. They might have barely enough strength to breathe until, tormented by the nightmares, they lash out violently enough to break the bed or even strangle the caregiver in attendance. Such can be the mysteries of the human body, or, more so, the human heart.

This is why Kaim is here.

He is to stand vigil by Anri's deathbed against the remote possibility that she might be tormented by nightmares and go wild under the influence of signpost's side-effects.

The doctor has supplied him with yet another drug.

It is a poison that will kill the patient instantaneously.

Kaim has been instructed to administer it to Anri as soon as she begins to exhibit strange behavior.

"Believe me, this a humane measure," the doctor said, "not murder by any means. The face of a patient who has suffered the drug's side-effects is truly grotesque-not something that anyone could stand to look at.

A person's death should never be that excruciating.

This is a final kindness to give the person a quiet, peaceful ending."

Kaim was not entirely convinced by the doctor's rationale. Neither, however, was he able to bring himself to take an issue with it.

Now he can only hope that, led by her signpost. Anri will be able to pass her final moments in peace.

Some part of her inner self might be paralyzed at the moment, and her empty eyes might never regain their former gleam, but if she is happy that way, it is nothing that anyone has the right to deny her.