End on Extinct

Chapter Three

Spring 2028

ASHYR

A Hybrid Tea rose with its milky white petals, rich red edges, a mix of cherry and cream, a deep inhale brought the fruity smell to live inside him.

A pure moment.

He staggered toward another. A floribunda full of honey perfume, apricot petals dainty like a girl's party dress.

He raised his torso up and scanned the splashes of blooms. Mauve, pink, peach, lavender, white, scarlet, bursting within the hospital's garden, to bring someone like Asher hope. A hope that today felt as unreachable as Saturn.

Another shuffle of the feet, a shift of the arm, the hematoma bruise from an IV needle staring back at him as his fingers stretched toward another hybrid tea rose. He cupped the deep coral with violet undertones. Such softness, delicateness, fragility against his skin.

To not aggravate a recent incision in his side, he proceeded slowly, bending down for another draw of breath. The rich fragrance intoxicated him for a mere moment. One second of sheer drunkenness.

Only to feel the pain shooting back through him. The tumor had been removed, yet the cancer was alive. Alive and rapidly growing inside him.

Death.

It was coming for him.

The doctors had just shared the news.

Death. A word that had meant so little to him.

Until now. Until he breathed in the scents of all he had missed in life, all he sensed that was unfulfilled.

In an effort to stand upright, Ashyr grasped his abdomen. A taut eruption inside, a reminder that he needed to tell his mother. Which meant speaking to her again.

She would tell Granddad.

But then, who else?

He drew in another breath, shallow this time as he fought to straighten his back against the piercing stab in his lower side. Approximately a quarter mile return trip loomed ahead, forcing Ashyr, amid the quick rapid breaths, to find a place to rest.

A bench, a few feet away, caused Ashyr to draw in another stiff breath and shuffle toward it. A man sat on the other end, absently staring into the garden. Aiming to not disturb the moment, Ashyr cautiously used the armrest to lower himself down. Cacophony breaths followed.

One quick glance at the opposite end of the bench and he met the man's smoky blue eyes. "Good afternoon," he pretended to sound calm, while his inner organs crippled him forward.

The man simply nodded, his eyes glancing down on the hospital band around Ashyr's wrist.

Uncomfortably aware of his appearance, his balding head, his yellowing skin, the clothes which sagged over his sickly body, Ashyr tenderly leaned into the distance between them and extended a hand, "I'm Ashyr."

The man's fingers paused at a stroke against his course blond beard. Then he accepted the handshake. "Folsom Grady."

Before Ashyr knew it, he found he was lost in conversation with his new friend whose wife had passed away from the same cancer Ashyr was fighting. He also soon learned of the man's regrets over an invention he made for his wife, but never gave to her.

Ashyr exhaled a short cautious chuckle. "So, you're an inventor?"

"I dabble in it. By day, a biochemist. By night, an inventor," the man said. "And once, I was going to change the world."

Ashyr released a longer chuckle, strong enough it hurt at his internal organs. "Ah, perhaps we have some similar coding. Me too, I'm an inventor. I too was going to change the world. But, my friend, there's still time for you."

Folsom shook his head. "Not when my greatest invention was for her." He rubbed his palms against his khakis while his eyes watched his hands. "I invented a relief for her from the pain, and I didn't share it with her." His hands paused. "With her gone now, none of it has purpose anymore."

Ashyr held his breath, stuck on the word relief. "Tell me about it, your invention."

"It was for her," Folsom said softly, his focus turned more toward the garden's entrance than to Ashyr as he spoke about a device that offset pain by focusing on the memory of another person.

Ashyr couldn't contain his intrigue. "Did it work? Did you test it? And did it work?"

Folsom paused as if his mind were returning to the bench, his eyes turning to meet Ashyr's. "I don't know. It was ready. From all the tests I could perform, on my own, it was there, ready to try. The plan was to give her a pause from the pain, separate from the heavy meds that turned her into a ghost, which she was taking to combat that pain. For just a spell, I was going to give her life again in her final days. But the doctors refused."

Ashyr shifted. In a jagged breath, his words came out, "Why did you ask them?"

"What do you mean?" Defensiveness seemed to ride on Folsom's tone.

Whereas, Ashyr's voice grew more excited. "Why did you ask them? Why didn't you just do it?"

"Because. I wanted her off the morphine." Fury held in his tone. "Because I had created a new drug. And..." his words softened, "I follow rules. And, because I've been involved in the pharmaceutical crafting of enough drugs to know that I wanted to explain to the doctors the neurological interactions and discuss how it might conflict with her other medications."

While regretful pain hung around the man's eyes, Ashyr tried his best to hold back the questions that kept burning on his lips.

"I spent the last month of her life, debating, fighting all the way to the top of hospital administration, begging, reaching out for a temporary NDA-approval for human testing, pleading for hastiness, fighting an idiotic battle, when there wasn't time for such a fight."

Ashyr couldn't resist any further. "If she was dying anyway, why didn't you just give it to her?"

"Because I didn't want to be the one who killed her!"

Ashyr pressed his lips together, the breath catching in him. The agony in front of him nearly palpable.

"What if I was wrong?" Folsom continued. "I mean I wasn't wrong. I knew what was in the drug I'd created. I knew it's interactions, I'd done my animal tests. But I just didn't know enough about her treatments. And the more they saw what I was trying to do, the more they kept the details, the fine, necessary details from me."

Suddenly, Folsom stood. "Let's get you back. I can see it on your face. It's like how my wife was, you need your pain meds." He extended his hand toward Ashyr.

Ashyr delayed for a moment, certainly feelingthe internal discomfort, but at the same time, finding a distant hope within thisconversation. Still, he wrapped his fingers around the offered hand. But ratherthan attempt to stand, he clenched around it, exerting more force than hisfrail body felt capable while looking Folsom directly in the face. "Please. Try your invention on me, mate."