Gifts - Soul Mates from The Unbelievables

Gifts - Chp 40

There is nothing more somber and morbid than mourning; humanity is such a fragile yet beautiful thing. How one can mourn or even find compassion and sadness at the knowledge that a life has been lost, any life has been lost. This Sunday morning I felt this nauseating illness, I was ill with mourning, the feeling that gnawed at your stomach and left you feeling as if there is bugs in your stomachs, crawling around in your insides like some demonic disease. I was ill with mourning for a man I’d never respected, and I’ll admit, disliked. I couldn’t seem to blame myself for feeling such dispassion for a man when he kept me at bay from my soul mate, from my whole world. Alas here I am now suffering from this heart shattering guilt, regret. How could I feel such a treacherous emotion for such an innocent and sadly deceased man? I was monstrous. And every single soul believed it, I was the new village’s entertainment, gossip and nightmare. That very Sunday morning, our front door was battered open off of its hinges; I was dragged out into the freezing snow alarmed and desperate. My youngest sister Elsie screaming in despair as the new man of the household – Russell – was holding her back, shielding her from such a haunting site. I was handcuffed and chained, the officers taking me to their boss. To be charged for the murder of Roberto, Lucille’s father. – Jacob Iris

Beep. Beep. Beep.

That was the sound of my grandmother’s heart beat, every beat and rhythm was proof that she was holding on, taking one more breath as her heart struggled to hold on. I had heard such sounds in my life before, the beeping sound I’d heard on an alarm or timer, my laptop jingle, phone jingle or even a beat to a song. How I’d taken the sound for granted, I’d even grumbled and cursed about it as I bashed up my alarm or cringed at the terrible song.  But now…

Now this sound bought forth such a significant and heavy meaning, that beeping sound was the living proof that my grandmother was still holding on and fighting. It was this hypnotically treacherous sound that taunted you in more skillful ways than even the devil could possess. It was agonizing, my eyes never strayed from the sight before me and the sound was something agonizing, something worse than even the nails down a chalk board. With one beep it bought the magical reassurance that I wasn’t going to be falling over the edge but then the next second bought this agonized heartache and ice cold fear that it was possibility the last beep, the reminder that you were sitting in a hospital praying for your loved one to wake up.

I’d never felt such conflicted emotions, in one heartbeat my entire body ached for the heart monitor to keep me entranced in this deep never ending pit of misery. Yet in the second strum of my very own heart I desired like the air I breathed that the beeping would stop, it’d vanish just like these cruel four white walls and the ghastly wounds tainting my beautiful grandmother’s aging body.

“Miss Wells,” my head hazily turned towards the lady standing in the doorway clothed in scrubs with a strict professional expression upon her face “I hate to repeat myself let alone tell you this at such a time but visiting hours are over.”

I just stared at her, seeing right through her.

 “Sweetie,” she began to only halt her voice softening and that professional strict manner slipping through her fingers, how many other times has the façade slipped through her fingers like every other nurse has done so tonight?

All night I had received the pitying glances and the pet terms like sweetie, I felt like it was some family reunion that takes place at a funeral. I remembered at Pop’s funeral I had met a dozen members of my family that I’d never met before in my life, every single one of them talked about the good old days were they knew me and my Pop coupled with those teeth-grinding pitying glances and all I could feel was this numbing gut wrenching pain and confusement. All of these pitying glances and pet terms from strangers was enough to have my teeth sanded down.