ECHO: A thousand lifetimes. One last day. by H G David

Author:H G David [David, H G]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 34

I looked forward to today as a man about to walk the green mile looked forward to breakfast. This was a new treatment straight from the lab, I’d fought hard for it, and grabbed at the hope with both hands. Three months of treatment and today we see. They said I needed tablets myself, that it would help me. I walked around not knowing if I was, awake, dreaming or caught between the two, lost in that somewhere land where ghosts and shadows live. Might I wake up tomorrow and my life be magically whole? I’m so angry sometimes, like a child’s tantrum beating uselessly on a cushion. But no matter what I did, I couldn’t fight the flow of the river for my little girl.

Medication didn’t stop my nightmares, it just stopped them from waking me, made it easier to roll over and not mind the bad dreams so much. Every moment was a sickening fear like the helpless feeling of falling backwards of a fairground ride mid-climb, and I seemed to spend all my days sitting in ugly chairs staring at walls.

It’s the little things you miss the most like pictures, something precious created by someone special just for you. There'd been no new ones on the kitchen wall for months. Everyday greyed around Ava, and soon she could be gone, now just this last hope stands in the way of losing her. The councillor acted like Ava was gone already, a broken damaged thing, and the world would somehow rearrange itself in compensation for my loss. I would smile again one day, as the hearts wonderful restorative qualities won through in the end.

I couldn’t allow myself not to feel hope but stopped asking. No, it wasn’t denial, not questioning decisions doesn’t mean I had to accept them. When you’re fighting for the moments, the day becomes long and unbearable, and 'life isn’t fair' might not be the answer. If I hear that one more time. Fair to life is never a consideration, fairness right and wrong are concepts, and life is defined more by ambiguities than certainties. The weak will perish, a world without her, bleak, cold, and colourless. Her hair has mostly gone, I'm frightened and watchful as her sweet face once like a ripe peach slowly closes on itself. Hollow-cheeked and pallid, a stranger’s face wearing a forced smile and endlessly recycled gowns. How many ends had they seen, were they waiting for this one too? Weak now she only mimicked the gestures and posture that once made her herself, paying the price in pain and exhaustion later. She didn’t talk with her hands like mommy now. She was a child with an unknown fear of something her mother was too frightened to tell, not able to understand yet her eyes still asked the question. The absence of all hope the only answer her mother’s eyes returned. Not sobs for me now, but that ugly crying when she’s not near, the type of crying where your whole-body shakes.

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