The finality of Death rang out at me in a discordant symphony of bells, as though sneering in my face with outright derision. I stared numbly, the chilly gusts of wind whipping my skin in lashes of fury. I knew this day would eventually dawn. It had hovered above us like a cloud of foreboding imminence, but neither of us had ever dared to venture into that topic. Nor had we ever thought of preparing ourselves for it, the final blow.
Ryan was strong and reliable, like a strong tree one could hide behind on a blustery day and not worry about it falling, succumbing to the wind. He was playful and serious, boyish but matured at the same time.
I was supposed to complete twenty hours of Community Involvement Project, starting out to just get it over and done with. It soon turned out to reach deeper into my heart than I had expected it would, and I started spending more time in Ward 136, by Ryan’s bed, chatting to him.
I had been drawn to the fact that the only family Ryan had was his little brother, even though he still had his mother and step-father. They never visited him and he rarely spoke about them, especially his mother. I reckoned he was too pained by the fact that her life was in jeopardy, being dominated by his abusive but affluent step-father.
Ryan poured out his soul, confiding in me and I returned the gesture mutually. Ryan, albeit being tormented by Tuberculosis since age ten, remained jocular about it.
“There’s no doubt about it,” Ryan had once told me casually as we took our daily stroll by the pond, “I’ve been dealt with a lousy deck of cards.”
I cried whenever he joked about his condition and he would hold my hand for a while, just gently stroking it while flashing me his goofy, reassuring smile.
He told me that he was a good weatherman, and could tell whenever a storm was coming. “So,” he had said with a certain conviction, “Whenever you notice the first signs of a storm, you’d see my face in the wind … just vaguely, but it’s there.”
He was trying to tell me that he was not going to be around forever, and wanted to let me down gently.
He had scared me out of my wits once, by pretending that he was dead. He had smeared a whole bunch of ketchup all over his bedsheets and bedside table and his mouth. When I arrived and saw him lying unconscious on his bed, my scream ruptured the tranquil hum of the hospital. Ryan had jolted awake and got up to clamp a hand over my mouth and calm me down.
We had laughed about it a few times after that, after my initial fury at his ill-conceived prank, and after bucketfuls of tears shed by me over that frightful moment of fear of losing him.
The second time he tried it was two weeks later.
Only this time, he was not in the mood for pranks anymore. I sniffed at the little pool of blood in his big strong hands, certain it would smell like ketchup. But there was no smell to it this time.
“Ryan?” I called out timorously, prodding him with a finger. Fear gripped hold of me, wedging me in an enclosed trap where I lost all energy to tear away from its vice-like stranglehold. “Ryan …” I murmured, holding his hand, willing his fingers to entwine mine. “Please wake up … Ryan?”
There was still no sign of his waking up and holding me in his arms to tell me that he was still alive. No, please, I prayed silently, trying to hold back my tears in hope of him waking up and laugh at my being pranked.
Nothing happened, however.
“Ryan, this not funny!” My voice had suddenly risen up several octaves, wobbling uncertainly and fearfully. “Get up now, Ry!” I screamed at him, my grip on his hands tightening till my knuckles turned white.
Ryan would have, by now, have gotten up to sweep the hair away from my face and wipe away my tears on his pajamas sleeve – had he still been alive. He would never have let me experience such fear and sorrow for more than a second. He would have chased it all away if he could, if it was within his power.
This was, apparently, not something within his power. And there was not a thing either of us could do to change that.
It had come silently, though, and innocuously enough. It had started out as a harmless prank to laugh over after it blew over. And Death had played a prank on him, as if in rebuttal, to punish him for not taking his life seriously.
I stood at an open plain now with Ryan’s little brother, reminiscing. Rain pelted our skins and the wind offered no warmth to our prickling-cold bodies. We were drenched head to toe, but I paid no attention to that. The skies have cracked open and were crying for me. My tears mingled with the raindrops on my face. For now, I just wanted to keep crying.
“Is Ryan going to be away forever?” Chris asked me, tugging lightly on my hand he was holding on to prevent himself from being swept away from the wind. He looked up at me with eyes wide and glistening with hope, watery from the strong winds blowing into them.
I had no answer for that. So I knelt down, hugged him tightly, and told him what Ryan had said to me before, “He told me he was a good weatherman, Chris. He said if you look hard in the wind that’s blowing at you, you can see his face.”
~ Joyce
0 comments:
Post a Comment