To Nothing Special, With Love~Part Three

Part Three of another collaboration with Scribbla. I like his brain. He is always willing to challenge himself and to provide fodder for my twisted brain. And as always, his writing is brilliant. Clearly there is more to be written here…nod, nod, wink, wink.

III

“You look pale today.” Gayle said as she settled on the trunk at the end of his bed. Her grey hair was in a tight bun. She wore a brown cape with a hood and she draped it over his feet in the bed.

“I always look pale, Momma.” He slowly moved his head to look at her. His eyes swam and the world rocked like a boat for a moment. He closed his eyes to will it to stop, and it did. He started to sit up.

“Well, you do have your father’s complexion, God rest his soul.”She glanced around the room, then down at her hands. “Did they bring you your meds already?”

“I told them to stop.” He said quietly. He took a break, sat up to catch his breath. He felt the familiar hunger return and longed for his pills. But he knew they were making things worse, pulling him farther from his goal.

“What?” Up went the concerned voice of his mother, and 2 other patients eyes swung towards them.

“I told them to stop, save them for someone who has a chance.” He sat up and reached for a smoke. “Can you open that?” He pointed to the screen window next to his cot.

“Oh don’t be dramatic.” She stood and opened the window with a baleful squeak. The constant wind blew her olive green dress.

“Stop momma.” Orion pulled the covers aside and placed his bare feet on the wood floor. Clenching the cigarette in his teeth, he stood carefully and pulled on the jeans from the chair in the corner.

The room was not large, but could hold 6 or 7 patients and Orion was in the corner, and had been for 2 months. There was a disease, and it was devouring him. This cabin had been built for this very purpose, for those struck down with this disease.

His mother had proved immune to the disease, but their neighbors were insistent. Or they would have been if Gayle hadn’t already made arrangements for him to leave. There were bubbles of civilization in the deep forest and they had officially cast Orion out of theirs.

Travel between the bubbles could be dangerous and unpredictable. People had been known to disappear. But Gayle got Orion to the cabin, elevated off the ground in a clearing. Adjacent to the cabin was a cleared field for a farm of sorts. An impressive array of vegetables and fruits were planted in a seemingly haphazard arrangement.

Then in the far corner and visible to Orion at all times was a flattened square, paved and marked with a yellow X inside a circle. Twice a week a helicopter touched down, dropped off boxes. And the amount of boxes had gotten less and less with each shipment. His condition did not worsen, but it didn’t get better either. He felt the eyes of the nurses, Frieda and Gisele, on him when he wasn’t looking. He would not be figured out.

“So what then? You are sitting here, waiting to die?” She spat the words at him, as if her mouth was filled with sour juice from his admission of surrender.

“No” Sometimes surrender is good, Momma, he said in his head. But never to her. His mother was a fighter, and fated to be so. She could not be expected to understand. Her scars would not let her understand when she had fought like a man, lost and fallen, only to rise again and secure a home for her and her son.

“Waiting for her, then.” Now tears colored her voice a melancholy greenish blue.

“Momma…”

“It’s an old story, Orion! Your attitude is going to go a long way to healing. Take your meds; believe in the healing process, you’ll…”

“The meds aren’t going to work, Momma. He told me. I’m to wait for her.”

“I don’t believe him!! I can’t! And you mustn’t!” She was furious and her tears fell without shame.

“But I do.” Gayle rested her face in her hands. She tried to cry quietly, but her shaking shoulders gave her away. He only leaned forward and rubbed her back, still smoking and looking at the helicopter pad. His feet moved and wriggled on the floor, cooling and so real. He hated all the laying involved in dying. He hated the waiting. But he knew Leslie would come.