Family Short Story – Falling Short
Photo credit: yli from morguefile.com
Could you at least pretend to feel my pain?
Her thoughts pranced upon my hazy inebriated mind. The last glass of scotch went down difficultly but it did, warming up the rest of my cold body. It was raining outside, going on like some endless September nonsense. Nonsense! I hated the rains. I did ,I guess. I hailed the bartender to pour me another, and he just smirked his face and poured down some more in my glass.
“You should definitely slow down,” said a woman from across the bar.
I turned to look at her in the dim light; she was a beautiful woman or so my drunken eyes said. She was dressed in a sultry orange: who even wears orange? I thought. She walked from the distance between the two of us in the most obsessive way– obsessive meaning that I had too much attention on her.
“What is that you’ve been drinking? Seems to be some good stuff,” she said, taking the seat next to me.
“Hmm,” I grunted; I had nothing to say.
“How long have you been here? You are sulking onto the chair,” she said.
“A woman of questions aren’t you?” I asked, “My wife sent you?”
She was not the least bit stirred by the word ‘wife’, the intense emotion of her eyes maintained their helm on me.
“I hope not,” she said and smiled.
I was driven towards her by some vague desire to lurch onto something. I know my wife was somewhere now, in some hospital, giving birth to my child, but I just could not bring myself to care. I guess I was afraid or just devoid of any emotion.
“You are intense,” she said to me.
“It’s funny, my wife used to say that,” I said.
Suddenly, I heard a strange beeping sound and the sound of a door open and shut– echoing in and out.
“Hey, where are you?” she waved her hands in front of me.
I smiled and said,”Right where you got me.”
The bar emptied itself in slow time and it was still raining. It was just her and me in that empty bar, with me drowning in alcohol.
“How will you make it home?” she asked me, a question I honestly could not answer.
“I don’t know if I will,” I said and smiled.
She started to get closer to me and for the first time, I actually saw her face. Before that it was all just a blurry image with a wonderful voice. And only as she did, did I notice that she bore a striking resemblance to my wife. Or maybe I was just too drunk to notice anything.
It was almost as if I started to see my wife everywhere– some drunken mistake my mind was making.
“Follow me home now, we have adventures still,” the woman said.
This was the moment it was becoming stranger than anything. She was saying things my wife used to say to me. About adventures and being intense and all too many things about my drinking.
I saw her get up and walk out the bar, turning around just once to see me.
All of a sudden, I felt my cheek get wet. It was strange as I was still sitting inside the bar; the rain was outside.
I miss you, darling.
Said someone in a very loud voice in my head. I was definitely too drunk and bordering on delirium. It was echoey, as if spoken in some different dimension.
And the next thing I know, I am running down the rainy streets, looking for the hospital.
In my crazy, extremely drunken mind I realized, I did care about my wife and my child. My feet were moving and since when I do not remember, but they were leading me somewhere.
The strange beeping noise came alive again and I heard my wife’s sobs.
“It’s time,” said someone.
Fear took over me and I was madly running through the corridors.
“My wife! my wife!” I was screaming in the hospital. “My wife!” I saw her face, for a faint second and I ran towards her.
Running. Running.
Suddenly, I ran out of breath. My chest started to stricken and the world around me started to collapse. My eyes blurred; there is no more air left to breathe.
I can feel your pain.
“It was the right decision,” the doctor said. “His organs were failing. This was it for him.”
A wife left that building, pulling the plug of a man whom she called a husband. They had a beautiful baby boy; one he could never see. The night she gave birth, he was in a car accident and then he slipped into a fatal coma. He died, an absent figure– only just a second away from proving to his wife that he cared.
__END__
