II
How would you imagine your last day, last moment on this planet?
Lisa imagined her last day to be crispy clear and clean. From the fogginess of her tired mind, she imagined her last moment as the moment of clarity to understand which breath of hers would be the last one. Not much to ask. Is it?
Hot water of her shower was pleasantly caressing her skin, immersing her body into warm wet comfort. Two weeks without any meds sharpened her senses and put her on the very edge of something unknown, dangerous and exiting.
Stepping out of shower, she took up the new towel - acquired for the occasion - and wrapped it around her full figure. She gently dried herself, carefully examining an appearance in the not so clean mirror, dropped the towel on the floor. Her hair, clean and lustrous, draped her pale face into a dark mahogany shroud. Her eyes, green and sharply focused looked into her eyes from the flat surface of the mirror, repeatedly asking “are you sure? Are you sure?” Lisa nodded her head with a short “yes”.
She went on the toilet, forced herself to urinate, but she was dry and she was satisfied. The “pleasure” of the enema she endured last night. From her limited academic knowledge, but the excessive internet surfing she knew that when a person loses consciousness, next they lose bladder and bowel control. she walked to her bedroom, step by step, stepped on the towel, felt its softness with her feet. She put a new pair of underwear on, kept from Christmas time for the occasion. Next was a pair of pajamas. Then she walked slowly, barefooted, over a dirty carpet, from her bedroom to the kitchen, holding numerous bottles of pills close to her chest.
In the kitchen, Lisa opened a cupboard and found the last, clean glass, filled it with water from the sink. Then she started slowly opening the bottles of pills, reading names and dosages, examining color and weight, the doctor who prescribed, pharmacy that dispensed, direction how to take them and why. She had half a smile and half a grin on her face while observing the pile of pills on the kitchen counter. There was two weeks of her supply, max she was allowed to have… “Precaution for overdose” she thought and smiled to that thought. There were sleeping pills, anti anxiety pills, pills to treat good mood and bad mood, muscle relaxant. And the last two new prescriptions, with names she was not even able to read, and could not remember what they were prescribed for.
As she emptied all the bottles, she took a handful of pills, making of her own prescription and as she was about to shovel them in her mouth, she saw a shadow, in her side vision, from her left, behind the kitchen window. She sharply turned around, nothing was there. “An owl” she thought. “Why is she hanging there at such an odd time of the day? And, wait a minute, why she is she but not he?” And, in her thought, it was definitely SHE. With this in mind, Lisa took a large gulp of water to wash down the first meds of her prescription, and then another one and another… until all of them were taken. Suddenly she felt thirsty “I shouldn’t be” she thought “it’s got to be anxiety”. Although, the calm and tranquility of the moment was so great, that she did not let herself dwell on such an insignificant thought. She finished the first glass of water, filed another one, drank half of that, put the glass in the sink, overflow with dirty dishes and walked back into her bedroom, her last sanctuary on this planet.
Lisa was lying in her bed, flat on her back and was carefully examining all the sensations within her body; trying not to lose the beginning of The Moment. All was familiar; she experienced no difference, no changes….
She started to feel sleepy, dizzy and slightly nauseous in about twenty minutes. It was nothing too terrible at first. But the intensity of the symptoms was increasing with every passing minute. Helpless, half paralyzed and violently ill, she started thrashing in her bed. There was no more glamour of the last minute and of the last breath, she was fighting something so painful, so frightening, so awesome, powerful and extremely uncomfortable. And it was objectively real; even so she did not see it, she felt the presence.
The flow of time had disappeared for Lisa. Hey! Lisa had disappeared; she was just it, a fleeting moment of life, fragile and incredibly resilient at the same time. That fragile moment of her was in a crushing grip of the dark awesomeness and resilient was not giving up.
She was on the floor. She vomited. It was so violent that it brought a filament of consciousness back and she felt as if she expelled her stomach and her intestines outside of her abdomen with that violent urge. It made the crushing darkness step away, perhaps from the disgust when Lisa’s face landed in the puddle of pharmaceutical vomit.
At this time Lisa’s consciousness was gone. She was back in her last night dreamland, running the fields with the Cat and at this time the owl was there too, she was comfortably sitting on the Lisa’s left shoulder. Lisa thought that it would be nice to see some flowers on the field, and flowers appeared, throwing green grass into the mosaic of colors then she thought about the distant sound of water and she heard it too, and then she wished for mountains, and they appeared in a foggy perspective. She suddenly realized that she is dreaming. She had read about lucid dreaming that other people describe and claim to have, but never believed that it was true, now she experienced it and it was beautiful.
The fragments of the memory of her last minutes were painfully returning back with waves of nausea and an urge to vomit. Lisa was regretful and she knew that she wants to wake up. She wanted her life back and she knew she would never do anything stupid again. She wanted to find the green field and run there at sunrise with her Cat (she will go and adopt a kitten and name him Cat). She would not shout at the owl ever again, but check on internet what she needs to do to keep the owl by her window. At this time, the owl started hooting, and she was not crying about food, but her cry reminded her of static white noise, something unpleasantly mechanical. And despite that Lisa felt love for the bird.
The room becomes quiet, too quiet, and shadowy still…
Knock on the door disturbed no one, another knock and one more… “Lisa, Lisa, are you there, your door is open...” Loxy’s face appeared in a doorway. He thought that she left her apartment and forgot to lock the door, although it was a little too early and unusual for her to venture out. He was about to walk away and close the door behind his back, when something suddenly stopped him. He was uncertain what, perhaps a hint of a strange smell or eerie stillness of the place.
He walked carefully inside, without realizing he was scanning the apartment as he was walking toward the bedroom…. Lisa was there, on the floor in the position of the moment when she lost her consciousness.
At first, when Loxy saw her, he was frozen stiff because of the shock of the conflict between denial and reality of the scene. the reality brought him into his senses quick and he jumped to her, dropped on the floor on his knees, picked her head gently with both hands embraced tightly to his chest, as his tears were uncontrollably pouring from his eyes down his checks and dropping on Lisa’s wet hair which smelled like coconut, Loxy thought that he would never be able to use anything containing coconut or smelling like one. And he thought about left over ice cream in his refrigerator that must go into the trash can as soon as he gets home. He touched her wrists, her neck, leaned close to her face and he sensed subtle signs of life: fainting pulses, shallow and slow breathing. “Lisa, Lisa …” he was shouting loudly, helplessly and without any results. Then he reached into his pockets, pulled out a cell phone and started dialing 911. He got it right on the third attempt.
As he talked to the emergency operator, describing the situation, giving directions, performing basic CPR under the guidance of a distant stranger and waiting for the ambulance, time had slow down. He felt that some large portion of his time disappeared and his being was invaded by heaviness. And that he, himself, was the invader and a stranger; because he was watching himself do all of his acts and think his thoughts as a movie where the hero was him, an obvious retard. He pulled himself together as much as he could…
And at this moment, the ambulance arrived, Loxy determined from the siren that it was getting closer for the last seconds and finally chocked silently by the front entrance of the building. Heavy and loud footsteps of a few people end up with a loud inpatient knock at the door. “It is open” he shouted, but his voice was deep and raspy, hidden somewhere in the pit of his stomach changing his shout into just a whisper, but it did not stop the paramedics; the knock was obviously just a routine, because three of them were in the apartment and in the room within seconds. Young woman in uniform with her stethoscope ready in her right hand shoveled Loxy aside with her left hand “move” while kneeling next to Lisa’s body.
Busy and concentrated, almost silent two of them were attending to Lisa, while the third one was on the phone with the hospital, as Loxy deducted from the broken phrases, he was passing information along to the other two. Two cops entered the apartment shortly after. They were on Loxy like a shit on underpants. He was never comfortable with cops, at this moment especially. But he did try to answer all their questions; some were so absurd that Loxy had to ask to repeat those questions a few times, which must have made the cops suspicious. But, in reality, both policemen thought that Loxy was in a medium stage of retardation. And all in all, everyone worked to their best to pull the fading life back.
Within ten minutes, the policemen were done with Loxy. One of them offered his help for the medics; it was politely refused. More routine, thought Loxy. And they left.
Loxy, tired and exhausted, slid down to the floor and was sitting there in the corner in an emotional slumber. He understood that Lisa was doing better from the conversation of the medics, which was more coherent at this time and drifted to a personal matter.
The woman was complaining about her life being split every morning between daycare and school, before she gets to work and no help because her husband was on his second tour in Iraq, and her partner was crying that since his divorce, he has little time with his kids because of his bitch wife, that tortured and manipulated him using the kids.
The woman noticed Loxy in his corner “Hey, cheer up, she’s lucky, you saved her life. She is alive, just in a deep sleep for now.” And they left the apartment with Lisa on the gurney, strapped flat.
Loxy was not moving, his heart had dropped low and was flipping on his diaphragm like a fish on low tide, every breath was painful, the air, he breathed, was turning into water in his lungs and was painfully and slowly drowning him with every breath, the sensation of pending doom was deepening. He was listening and he did not know for what…
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