Shots in the Dark

Mama Sobel

A/N: So as per the usual this was originally posted on fictionpress, find it at https://www.fictionpress.com/u/810658/ 

Blah, blah, blah.

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Of course, as was my luck, the maternity ward was right there and filled with the joy of life. The nurse had abandoned me, assuming I could find my way, assuming I had visited often. I knew which hall she would be in, knew enough of her condition to expect the kind of place she would be stuck in, but I didn't think it would be wise to wander among the rooms, especially on the off chance I would fail to recognize her.

I tapped a passing nurse on the shoulder and asked her, "I'm looking for Mrs. Sobel's room" but my voice had choked off to nothing by the end, and the nurse asked me to repeat myself and was I quite all right dear?

I nodded and repeated her name, but when I tried to explain the talking problem the choking started, so I left it at that. The nurse was very sympathetic of course, knew all about her condition and asked would I like a cup of coffee? I said yes but would she show me to the room first, but the nurse said the pot was right here and reached behind the nurses' station and poured me a cup. I thanked her and we set off down the hall and away from the joy of the maternity ward.

When we reached the room, she asked would I like to see the doctor now, but my voice was completely gone from answering her questions so I just nodded, and walked into the room.

I suppose it didn't hit me until then what advanced tuberculosis actually meant, besides the obvious impending death. I mean, the picture of the disease is a tiny dot, a miniscule wrench in the works that somehow or other shuts down the body, but this, this was a corpse.

"Mama Sobel?" I said, perfectly aware that she was, and would probably remain, asleep.

Asleep, for the rest of her life.

Quite unexpectedly, I heard someone clear their throat behind me in such a way as I could not help but turn immediately from Mama Sobel and regard the clearer. He was a medium-aged doctor, that is to say a bit younger than middle-aged, but certainly not young enough to be irresponsible. Medium-aged is the best age for a doctor, in my opinion, for in my experience they are the most understanding, and least likely to take my throat un-seriously.

But this was not about my throat, it was about Mama Sobel.

"You're the son?" he asked, and I immediately took a disliking to him.

"No", I said shortly, "the grandson". He looked taken aback, as well he should have, but recovered quickly and asked, "Would you like to know the details of her condition?"

I was stuck there, because I knew basically what her condition was, and more basically how hopeless the prognosis was, but I couldn't be sure whether I wanted to know more. He sensed my hesitation, and went on and covered it up with a deluge of medical terms, which, to my ears, sounded no more sensible than if they had been torn straight from the pages of a microbiology textbook.

As they may well have been, it seemed absurd, still seems so now, that such a long and involved monologue would be necessary to describe what could be summed up neatly in two words.

She was, quite simply, nearly dead.

I didn't relish the fact, I had no reason to relish it, nothing to gain, no inheritance from Mama Sobel, bless her poor, badly managed portfolio.

It was quite simply better that she died. Not better that she had tuberculosis, that was, in my mind, the grandest of tragedies, almost too great to bear at first. No, it was far better for her to die now, a mere twenty years into the pain, than allow some medicine to give her another ten. I suppose she may have thought differently, at first, but she barely thought at all in those last days.

I know I didn't.

0000

After the first ten minutes of awkward silence, the doctor allowed me to be alone with her. Of course, the modern hospital is fit with the latest in noise making apparatus, to replace, I suppose, the tedious job of humming in empty rooms. I found that after a while, thirty minutes or so, the arrhythmic tones and beeps began to take the shape of a melody, vaguely reminiscent of Beethoven, but as if played just out of earshot. After amusing myself with a game of "guess the made-up piece", I began to try to shape the non-existent melody myself, but I found it to be fickle and not the least bit controllable.

I had been called into the hospital for the only reason left, that the doctors believed her nearly dead, or more nearly dead than she had been, and it was true that she was much less active than she had been a month before, as far as that word can be applied to a bedridden hulk.

I got a second cup of coffee and waited for the end.

The end.

When was the end? Now? Or perhaps when she became bedridden? Or maybe as far back as the diagnosis, the infection!

That question remains for the ages.

I wish I could tell you that the death, the biological death, the official death, was spectacular and heart wrenching, or at least meaningful. But I suspected she had died long before, and forgotten to tell her body.

The certificate of death stated the time as 1:47 a.m. and I left before the sheets were drawn up over her face, not because, as I'm sure the doctors assumed, I couldn't bear the emotion, but because there was nothing at all left for me to do. I had sat through the night, I had held vigil, and then I walked onto the sidewalk outside the hospital, into the cold air.

I believe, to this day, that nothing happened in that hospital bed, that it was all a farce, a mockery of death's overt coming. Requiescat in pace. Though I suppose she had, in a way.