The last ray of light

[Noirre]

Tarina on englanniksi koska kirjoitin sen englanninkieliseen kilpailuun ja olen turhan laiska suomentamaan sitä. Kommentteja kiitos!

The light that filled the room pulled on Anna’s lashes and forced her to open her eyes. Every ray, every stream of sunlight from between the Venetian blind felt like a thousand stabs. She ached all over. There wasn’t a single part of her body that felt right: no muscle that worked as it should have, no vein that allowed the blood to flow the way it was supposed to, no cell that didn’t scream in agony of the pain. All was forced, all was artificial, all was wrong. For the hundred time she sought to purify herself of the feeling of lost power by crying, but tears wouldn’t come. Her nasolacrimal ducts failed her, there was no fluid left to draw on. She couldn’t even weep anymore, her own body denied it.

She felt so utterly stupid. All this she could have prevented if only she hadn’t been a fool, scared of the unknown, too proud to give the decision to someone else. Now it was robbed of her all the same. The long hours, days, weeks she had lain here were occupied by the memories that raced in her head. Looking back at what she had been through, she saw with cruel clarity her own arrogance and self-assurance which seemed to mark everything she had done. Oh, she had been a tigress, with not the slightest desire to even try to hide her stripes. She had roared them down, skinned them alive, and shown their limp bodies as trophies to anyone else who might be foolish enough to try cross her territory. She had hunted and feasted on the lesser beings like she had had a nest full of cubs to feed. But she didn’t. All she had done had been for her own selfish ends. She felt herself shiver: despite all her body refused to do when she asked for it, it did seem to react to an emotion too strong to push aside. She hoped with all her heart that others hadn’t seen her the same way she did now. She tried to lift her hand on top of her eyes to shut out her vision of the world: it seemed to her the only thing that separated her from the nothingness she wanted to dive into. She didn’t manage it.

“And how are we this morning?” A gentle voice asked her. The nurse had come in unnoticed. The hospital had finally replaced the old, squeaking carts which she had used to push and this time Anna was completely surprised when her breakfast came. The nurse came next to her bed, smiling, and slow and steady, she lifted Anna upright to a sitting-position. Then she picked up the tray from the cart and sat herself with caution on Anna’s bed. She’s in total control, Anna thought miserably when the nurse began to feed her. She didn’t remember when she last had been able to move her body with such grace or dignity. To be able to tell her legs to bend just slightly, to use her hands to do something else when she sat down – oh, it felt like a lifetime away.

“You’ll be getting a new roommate today”, the nurse told her between the spoonfuls.
“I tell you, she’s quite a lady: she’s gotten the good doctor Spenner loose his words twice now.” The nurse gave a little chuckle when she recalled the event.
“She really knows what she wants and outright demands it. I wish I had her spite.” The nurse put away the empty plate and lifted a glass of milk to Anna’s lips.
“To be able to speak out so boldly, she must be very confident about herself. I never could.”

Nor do you need to, Anna thought to herself. She couldn’t help but envy the young nurse. She had her whole life ahead of her, but still she had already accomplished so much. She had a fiancé judging by the ring on her finger, a degree and a profession for here she was, and a job she obviously liked for she always seemed to smile – what more did she need? What more did anyone need?

“I- I think I might be pregnant.” the nurse blurted out abruptly when Anna had finished her milk and she had put the glass down.
“I don’t know what to do or what to say to Johan – he just got promoted you see, and he accepted the place. It means good money and good opportunities for him and I know he wants it, I really do, but I would wish he’d be home more, that he’d be here with me when the child grows in me and I – I get so lonely in the long evenings he’s gone!” The nurse played with the sign of her dedication to one man for the rest of her life and shook her head. This had not been what she had in mind when she said yes, Anna surmised in her mind. She felt a sickness of another kind, deep in the depth of her soul. She’ll have kids. She’ll raise them and watch them grow and when she’ll be old they’ll take care of her when she’ll become frail and dependent on them. What did she have to complain about? In a surge of emotion, Anna’s fist hit the tray next to her bed, sending all the dishes on it flying to the floor. The nurse sprang up, shaken and rattled, and looked at Anna with fearful eyes. Anna hoped that her eyes told her how angry she felt. Hastily the nurse collected the plates and glasses from the floor and dropped them on the cart. She pushed them out of the room without a backwards glance. She had forgotten to lower Anna’s head. Just as well, Anna thought dryly to herself. She felt just as bad lying down as sitting, so what was the use anyway? Again, she was left completely alone.




“This room smells like a coffin! I won’t have it!” A woman shouted through Anna’s sleep, for it had to be a dream she had seen just now. A dove as blue as the sky, the sky as pink the rosy cheeks of a blushed girl, a girl with skin as golden as the light that threatened to wake her again. Had she really dozed off?
“Madam, there is no room anywhere else, you have to be content with this one as long as it takes for us to find you place somewhere else! I assure you, the first room we get--”
“Assure my ass! Oh I’m sure you’ll be rid of me the first chance you get, but knowing you doctors that might be two weeks from now! I’m a paying citizen damn it, it’s my tax-money that keep you hanging on the corner of the bread, so you’d better do something about this RIGHT NOW.”

It was simply not possible to sink back to the sweet dream again. Anna opened her eyes to the fight that was going on in her room – or in the chamber she occupied, if one was truthful.

“Madam, do try to be sensible – I am sure you rather be here than in the corridors? We have limited space here, and with all the patients from that big car-crash, a small hospital such as we—“
“Oh yes, youngsters who get drunk and decide to end their pathetic lives by crashing on to the oncoming car surely need more attention than we old hags do”, the odd woman nodded with sarcasm in her voice. “If it were me, I’d let them die, for that was clearly their intention.”
As appalled as the doctor clearly was by this statement, he still answered to the woman. “My doctor’s ethics deny that. And were I to think that way, I still have a responsibility to those unlucky poor souls that were in the other car. I’m sure than when they left with their children for the amusement park in the morning, they did not feel suicidal more than any parents do when they take their kids to somewhere that is nearly impossible to get them to leave at the end of the day.”

That seemed to shut up the woman, and the doctor bid her good day after a stretched moment of silence. When the door shut after the doctor, she sighed and then grinned at Anna.
“Well, you gotta keep them on their toes!” she declared looking happy with herself. When Anna didn’t answer her, the woman’s smile faded. With a great effort, she turned on her side – not completely, that was nearly impossible for her, but enough that the woman understood it as a dismissal. When she closed her eyes again, she heard the woman mutter to herself. “They told me she’s nearly dead, not that she’s mute...”

Nearly dead. The thought didn’t agree with Anna. Nearly was not close enough.



She felt herself gasping for breath – even her lungs were betraying her now. Again and again she tried to draw for some air, but all her attempts seemed to just postpone the inevitable. She would have laughed at her own stupidity if she had been able to. Why, why did her body try to go on at the moment it should have let go?

The angry woman facing her bed was calling out for a doctor. She uttered some nonsense about taking it easy, relaxing. How she wanted to tell her to go away, to mind her own business. A nurse hurried to her and shortly after the doctor from earlier that day. Or was it the same day? She couldn’t be sure.

It was... Spenner who tried to steady her, but she was out of the reach of calming words. They gave her morphine. It didn’t do her much good. They gave her more, because anything else would have been hazardous in her condition. She wished they wouldn’t think about it but just dosed her for the pain. She wanted to flee the aching – it seemed like all she was capable of. She lost count of the shots she was given, but after many her body became very still. Everything felt slow and she leaned back in her bed, eyes closed contently. The doctor studied her carefully and in a low voice told the nurses to get the needed equipment for a cordial massage – her heart was failing.

No! No! NO!

With a strength she did not know she possessed, Anna grabbed the doctor’s sleeve. With a hoarse whisper, she pleaded the man. “Let me go.”

The man stared at Anna. It was no secret that her Alzheimer’s had left her with little sanity to command what she needed or wanted – she could not remember anything that had happened recently, only old things and people from her childhood. So far, they had manoeuvred by the instructions of treatment she had signed a score of years ago – long before she had been diagnosed with the disease. As she had never been able to bear children: the only one she had had was still-born - and her husband dead twenty years before, they had prompted her to write one so that when the time came, she would be handled accordingly – unless she wanted to name someone to make the decision for her. She didn’t, and so she wrote. The instructions clearly stated that as long as it was humanly possible, she was to be kept alive at all cost. She was a wealthy woman. So when they had found out that dementia had claimed her, they had moved from asking her what she wanted to honour her written will. She was no longer in condition to make decisions for her self.

As Anna’s heart came to a stop, the doctor told the nurses that nothing could be done anymore. Anna was 93 – her body had lived on for more than enough. The tears she couldn’t spill before – tears of gratitude now – flowed down her still warm cheeks. She had regained her freedom of choice.




Somewhere, a golden-skinned girl reached out for Anna’s hand. A blue dove rested on her slender shoulders and Anna hurried to embrace her. The last ray of light faded from the sky and it turned rosy pink.
“Do you miss living, mother?” The girl asked her when they walked hand in hand towards a big gate that rested on an unbelievably green hill.
“No, I finished with it a long time ago, Rose. I was just afraid to acknowledge it.” Biting her lower lip, she forced herself to ask the question that burned on her tongue. “Is Fred here, too?”
“Dad’s waiting for you, yes.” The girl smiled and patted the dove with affection. Anna’s gaze followed her daughter’s hand.
“I bought it the first day I found out I was pregnant, you know.” She told Rose, all the while pondering. “I had no idea that stuffed toys could come with us here, let alone be alive.”
“Oh, I’m sure they usually don’t.” Rose chuckled, but became thoughtful herself. “It must have been because you buried it with me, and because I had nobody else here to receive me. It has been a good companion, mother.”
“Yes, I’m sure it has been. Oh Rose, I’m so sorry I left you alone!”
“Don’t worry about it mother, it was not meant to be. You had to finish your business, and I had thing to attend to here. We have all the time in the world.”
“All the time in the world.” Anna repeated carefully and then she smiled again. She took her daughters hand more firmly and they entered the gate together.