FOLLOW THE FEELING PART 21

39

Why was he not shocked, moved and frightened? Had he been switched off for twenty years and more? Was that even a thing? His mother was proud of him, he was everything to his family and yet something felt not quite right, surreal, bur very vivid, a feeling that had to be chased like the moons silvery glow on the thirteenth night of a haunted month. It was so powerful, there were no words…He did not shed tears even though he was overcome with this perceptive and poignant idea. He did not run or sleep or eat or bathe or tell anybody for fear…of, well… fear?

40

…And of his mother in the place where all those women go to die? With or without hope of resuscitation they could not give her a new body, a fresh start, she’d only do it all over again. Smoking, killed her, but she enjoyed doing it and she didn’t enjoy too much outside of family and the occasional drink in life, so Dennis could never bring himself to confiscate her smokes away…

“Errr Dennis…I know it’s hard…but…”

The palliative team wanted to move his mother to a care home. “Time was of the essence…” and she may very well cease to be during the move.

“What would the point be…” he asked.

In short, they needed the bed for a woman who may have a chance of leaving here on two legs and a zimmer-frame.

Dennis stared off into space and they left him to it, “There’s no rush Dennis but time is of the essence.”

It sounded so false, a woman ruled by her job, had lost the ability to speak with any sense of sincerity. Time is of the essence…repeat…repeat…(he heard her recite the phrase several times across the ward)

He played dumb and they fucked off.

Time moved so slow and carefully that he had to turn the blue plastic, almost school children’s chair, away from the ever ticking clock. The poor lighting turned his eyes malaria ridden. They felt blood shot and overtired. In the reflection of the double wide windows that could be opened ever-so-slightly to feel life outside he saw himself and perhaps what he could have become, with hair of course. Then it mixed, conglomerated and swirled into something of all the little fragments in life he had been a part of…It was all intuitive and hunches from the past… visiting and man managing the characters (employees with soul) on the railway…his mind sifted through several… he settled on John and where he…