Eighty-two year old Marcus sat beside his best friend of more than six decades. The heart and blood pressure monitor beeped slow and regularly, as air hissed into the tubes attached to his mask.
At eighty-seven, Clay would be dead soon.
“You wanna go another round,” Marcus asked him in a raspy
voice. He held the deck of cards in shaky
hands. He had dropped a few earlier, but
luckily the nurse had come by to pick them up for him. He took that opportunity to take a quick peak
at her rump as she bent over. She gave
him a scowl, but then pretended to wiggle her butt at him with a
half-smile. Such exchanges had been
their routine for a little over a month.
“No. You
always…cheat,” Clay answered in short breaths, elongated by his southern drawl.
“Fine by me. I was
getting tired of beating your sorry ass anyway.”Clay was able to manage a grin through the air mask.
Marcus busied himself by looking at the wall of the hospital
room. It was dark because the curtain
was pulled closed, blocking off the light from the hallway. At one in the morning, there wasn’t a whole
lot of noise coming from that wing, and most of the other patients in the
adjoining rooms were asleep. But Clay
always had trouble sleeping in hospitals at night. “How can ya sleep when all ya do is lie there
all day anyway,” Clay once demanded with irritation.
Marcus knew that wasn’t the real reason the night bothered
him so much, but he also knew not to press his friend on the subject. During the day, he was kept awake by the
noise of people. At night, he was kept
awake by the absence of it. And for
Clay, being awake in silence was a lot worse - especially when his mind
drifted, and he couldn’t tell if he himself was still there anymore.
“Hey. Marcus.” Clay spoke haltingly, and with a sudden
change of expression that interrupted Marcus’s inspection of the wall.
“What?”
“I’m…uh…”
“You’re what, you old coot?”
He made a mock gesture of putting his hand up to his ear. “Speak up.”
“Tell…anyone…and…” he said in between breaths, “and I’ll
kick…your ass.”
Marcus grinned, but it probably would have looked more like
wincing to anyone who might have seen him do it.
“Yeah, right. Think
you can take me on,” he asked with a bit of phlegm caught in his throat. “Tell anyone what, dumb dumb?”
Clay was silent for what seemed like a long time. Finally, he responded.
“I’m…scared.”
Marcus held his tongue for a minute. Then, he asked needlessly, “Yeah? Scared of what?”
“What…if there ain't nothin'?
Nothin'…at all?”
Marcus leaned in a bit, as far as his stiff back would allow
him. “Hey. Hey now.
You listen to me. A billion
people can’t be wrong, right? You worry
too much.”
“What if…” Clay persisted.
“…what if a billion people are just scared?”Michael F. Mercurio
Copyright 2013
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