The raindrops slide down outside, against the window. Each time a new one arrives, it clings to the slippery glass, hovering, perhaps waiting for one of its fellows to come take it down to the sill. They drum against the pane like so many impatient fingers, but they are not asking to be let in. They do not care what is inside. They are not even curious.
I watch the indifferent rain come with no sign of stopping. It is not an insistent rain, either. It is in no hurry. Relentless, but not through determination. Simply there, as if accepting the fact that they will keep on coming, and coming. Urging those who see to accept as well. No, not urging. The rain has no feelings. No ideas. One can only urge another to take action when one has some idea of the action oneself.
My gaze slides out, squeezing and maneuvering around the hundreds of drops on the glass till they grow blurry, because my focus has moved past them. Outside. They are outside, as well, just outside, but I choose not to focus on them, stare past them instead. They have nothing to tell me.
Gray. Everything is so gray, right down to the flagstones paving the wet courtyard. The old man’s hair, the umbrella sheltering those few hairs on an otherwise scantily clad head. The back of the worn-out wheelchair, carrying its too-light load. The blanket draped across his knees as if to offer what pathetic comfort it can against the dreary wetness surrounding it. I cannot see his face, from this distance, and at any rate his back is turned to me, but I am sure his cheeks are ashen as well.
Even the nurse’s uniform is gray. It is white, of course. It is not gray, because that would look dirty, unclean. In a hospital—even outside the hospital, in the courtyard of the hospital—cleanliness is of the utmost importance. Neither is the wheelchair gray. It is a dignified mahogany brown. The blanket is trying and failing to be cheerful with gaudy bright colors that clash horribly and belong nowhere but in an elementary school classroom. But they are still all gray, each one of them. Gray.
She wheels him around, infinite patience embodied in those slim white hands that hold the cold rubber-gripped handles of the wheelchair and the plastic-and-vinyl one of the umbrella. They move towards the building. No doubt she has persuaded him to get out of this awful weather and back inside, where they can control the temperature of every individual room down to the hundredth of a degree. But then the umbrella slips, clatters on the ground with a noise I cannot hear because the window is closed and the rain steals the sound away and I am too far, anyway—rolls across the gray flagstones that are not gray, but oh, they are. And the nurse’s mouth is not infinite patience, like she must have trained her hands to be. Her mouth scowls and moves in the utterance of what no doubt would be frowned upon by her superiors had they been there to hear. But if they had, she wouldn’t have spoken it, now would she?
No, infinite patience is in reality with the man, the man in his mobile chair sitting quietly while the imprudent nurse scuttles to fetch the umbrella. She is already soaking wet, but if her patient should catch his death of cold it is she who will be scolded. He must not be in too serious a condition, however, because she does not hurry as much as she should. So a few seconds of rain will not hurt him. And the man only sits, sits, as though he had all the time in the world—often it seems to be the ones who have the least time who have the most, and the ones who have more time who rush along choked city streets as though every step costs them a second on a running stopwatch. Still the old man sits, and he looks around, but not with any interest, blinking dripping water off his white eyelashes like it is already dripping off his feet, which the umbrella was too small to cover. Or the nurse was careless, maybe. His eyes are truly gray, gray and as transparent as the gray sheet pouring water overhead is opaque. How do I know this? I don’t, of course. I am not even close enough to see the color of his ashen cheeks…
The nurse with the scowling mouth and carefully tendered hands—no doubt she has groomed them to be white and pretty and always gentle, lest someone be watching—but hasn’t she done anything about her mouth, which speaks even when it is not moving, with the sour tilt upon the pretty lipstick? No, of course not. The woman who buys jewels and minks and all sorts of expensive attire, or the man who purchases a custom-tailored suit that cost more than some people’s salary for a year—they groom themselves to impress, to awe those whose eyes fall upon their mighty presences, yet they do not bother to conceal or disguise or—heaven forbid—repair that ugly set of haughty arrogance upon their faces.
The gentle hands—lying hands—come back to grip the handles of the wheelchair once more, and the umbrella isn’t much good as the man it is supposed to be sheltering is already about as wet as it is possible for a person to get without submerging themselves in a bathtub, but she holds it diligently above his head anyway. Again they start to move, closer to the building, and just before they disappear out of my line of sight I see what the old man is holding in his pale, papery hands, and close my eyes so that I do not have to see the images my cruel mind pulls from the files of dusty memory for me to see.
My consciousness returns to the room, as there is no more to see beyond the window. I am in a room in the very hospital the courtyard belongs to, a room for a patient with a terminal illness, with a mask over my face and a cap over my hair, and gloves sheathing my hands, hands too small for my body that can never stay still. I am in this hospital on this upper floor in this room in this chair sitting, in this room, one of many for those with terminal illnesses. But I am not ill. There is nothing wrong with me.
No, that is not true. That is not true at all. If I told you it was it would be a lie. I do lie, you know. Terribly, sometimes. Are you surprised? You shouldn't be. But I am telling you the truth when I say that at least I do not have a terminal illness; at least none that I know of. Well, perhaps I have. If I do I’d certainly rather not know, though I think I do anyway. Already. A little late. But mine doesn’t fall under the category of the many files and clipboards in the cramped teal-gray offices with fluorescent lighting, awful lighting that brings out the veins in ghastly faces and turns to sick-looking even those who are not. Fatigued and jaded and wishing out, perhaps, but not sick.
Or maybe.
Anyway. I am here and that is all you need to know. Actually, you did not need to know even that; only that I am selfish and a bit thoughtless and have told you anyway, perhaps against your will. If I have I am sorry. No, I can’t say that. That would be a lie too. I am not sorry in the least, because I am like that. You are not here to gaze at me with reproachful eyes and tell me without saying it that I am being the selfish me that I am, so I do not feel sorry. Perhaps I should.
I don’t.
He told me, a few minutes ago, he is as tired of this place as I am. He wants to go. Selfishly—selfishly—I told him not to go yet, because then what would she do, what would the others do? But really it is what would I do, but I did not tell him that because even to my ears that sounds incredibly selfish. Selfish selfish selfish. That is always me. Well. He ought to know me. I still did not tell him.
The clipboard by the bed with its pen trailing from a leash of cord tells me the last time he was lucid or even conscious was over three months ago. The machines, too, they tell me his brain activity is the same—that is, close to nothing—and his breathing and heartbeat, weak and irregular, but there. Who depends on these things? If they knew anything they would squawk and alert their appropriate doctors and nurses as soon as he opened his eyes. But no. He goes on slumbering peacefully—or not so peacefully, but outwardly at least—according to these machines of theirs.
Who depends on these things? They lie, almost as much as I lie. He spoke to me. He speaks to me sometimes, when he is not too tired. When it is not too heavy. Then we speak. Or he speaks, and I listen, because it is seldom that I get to hear his voice and truth to tell I fear that it will stop, someday very soon. We speak, sometimes for half-hours on end, though it fatigues him terribly, he does not show it and I am cruel, wicked, and I do not tell him to stop and lie down like any decent human being would. I want more—more of his voice, his gentle hands that have seen too much of life, his missing teeth. He got tired of them, he said, and threw them away. I wonder where they are now. And all through this, not a peep from the machines. According to them, he only sleeps his unnatural sleep and might as well be dead to the world. He fools the machines, he says, and he looks so pleased with himself. And I cry when he does not look, when he gets tired again and lays down and settles back into the rest of himself that the machines are monitoring. Then I cry. Sometimes. But I do not like to let him see. He calls me his sunshine. What kind of sunshine am I, that rains instead of shines all the time, that does not look after him and keeps him tied here even though I know it would be better to let him go? He will not leave as long as I do not want him to. But the terrible thing is that he should. He should have gone, long ago. But I do not let him. I cannot let him, yet.
A nurse just came in and left—not the cold-mouthed one from outside, a few minutes ago, but a different one, a man with a smile that would have been nice had not so much tiredness been pulling around his eyes. He checks the machines, makes sure the bag dripping tears is dripping appropriately into my grandfather’s pale arm.
He hates that thing. He asked me to pull it out, once, but I was a coward and couldn’t do it. He understood.
I think.
But he would pull it out himself, if he could. He could. It’s just I am here, and he wouldn’t do it to me. He wouldn’t.
Would he?
The nurse lets me know I have ten more minutes, and tries another smile before he leaves. I do not smile back. I have precious few left these days, and I must save all of them for the limp figure lying prostrate upon the bed in front of me. When he comes out of it, he will want to see his sunshine. Only I am afraid the clouds are too heavy, this time.
A little time after the door closed behind the nurse, he sits up again, and smiles at me. He must be doing well. Twice today. Sometimes I come and sit for days but he won’t come. Still the machines are silent and steady. He sees my gaze towards them and shifts, ever so casually, to block my view. I pretend not to notice. Where the green-on-black screen was a moment ago, now is his round shoulder in striped cotton, not too hunched in spite of the years. Only it doesn’t work, because he is getting so thin I can nearly see right through him.
He comes and sits beside me, perched on the end of the bed, and I turn my face away because I have no smiles for him, not today. Lovely weather, isn’t it. Sunshine. Just like his sunshine. Ugly… and gray.
At length he begins to talk, and I forget all my appalling musings and cynical turn of mind which she always says will be the end of me. Her sanity before me though. I just listen, drowning in his words and voice and soft nuance, wishing never to be rescued. He won’t let me drown, though. He is kind and cruel that way.
Words. Words about all manner of things. Me, him, outside, inside, the awful hospital food, the little girl across the hall whose door they keep locked all the time, because she’s sensitive to light. He goes to see her sometimes, he says, and talks to her like he talks to me, when I’m not around and the nurses don’t notice. At this I feel a stab of jealousy. I want him to talk to me, and to me only, and feel a little lonely when I’m gone, and wait for me to come back. As though reading my thoughts, he reaches out and takes my hand, and tightens his hold. He shouldn’t be able to. He should be too far gone. Or maybe…
No. I refuse to think. We stare out the window for a long time, my hand still encased in his. The utterly disinterested raindrops still go about their business, and we look at them and past them and nowhere at all. Finally he lets go, gently, and I turn to him in what might be approaching panic. He smiles. I know. But I don’t want to. I pretend I don’t. But I know. I look at him, fill my eyes with him, and he knows, and he talks a bit more so I can fill my ears, and holds my hand again so I can fill my heart. And eventually he slows down, because he is tired. Too tired. And this time I know I have no choice, but still I refuse to show him tears. I will at least be that for him, his sunshine. And I smile for him through the mask, a smile that rends me in two as I smile it. For him and only him. Me, his darling granddaughter. And it hurts. Oh, it hurts. It hurts that I no longer can keep him with my words and my eyes. It hurts that he would go and leave me.
He moves away, and I do not turn around. I do not need to watch him clamber back into his bed, under the covers, settling back into the shell of a body that has kept him imprisoned here for far longer than he deserves. I do not turn around as only a few heartbeats later, there is a frantic beeping from the machine—the great useless thing has awakened at last—growing louder and louder, shrieking in alarm. I do not turn around as the door bursts open and doctors and nurses pour in, making an awful racket above the beeping, then the one emotionless note that goes on and on and on as it flatlines. Too late. I do not turn around as they make their frantic efforts to turn back something that cannot be turned, just as something cannot be held back when it wants to go. But I do turn around when I can no longer bear it, and for a moment, he is standing in the doorway left open, outlined by the light, waving at me cheerfully and giving me that smile. Then he is gone, and I do not look at the bed. Not then, not ever. Because that is not him. He is gone. My sunshine is gone.
Outside, the clouds break and a few feeble rays of sunlight come reluctantly through. It seems ironic to me. And when has he gotten there? He is out again, the wheelchair-old-man that refuses to be confined, and now he no longer needs an umbrella. The nurse that hurries after him has a brisk step and, if not infinite patience, a good pair of hands and a good face. How do I know? I don’t, of course, I am too far away even to see what he still holds clutched in those papery hands…