Coin-Flip

Part III: In Between

 The machine continued to beep. She could see the scene now -- her body stretched out on the hospital bed, stick-thin and only just clinging to life, barely more than a mess of tubes. Around her, people in long white coats bustled frantically, shouting medical jargon at each other. She drifted among them like a ghost. Her feet felt strangely light. Glancing down, she realized that they weren't touching the ground.

"Am I going to die?" she asked the nearest doctor. He did not hear her.

She watched as they pried her mouth open and forced a long plastic tube down her gullet. Her throat tightened at the sight, even though she couldn't feel anything. As she looked on, the tube began to fill with fluid. On the hospital bed, her body spasmed; a nurse held her down. One of the doctors hit a button on the machine the tube was attached to, and the tube suctioned the fluid back out of her stomach. It was oddly discolored. Her phantom gut twisted in revulsion.

She caught bits and pieces of the conversation between the doctors.

Possible liver failure, one voice said.

Seven grams of acetaminophen in the bloodstream by now, went another.

If only she had been found earlier--

Passing straight through the wall, she left the room. Her body twitched weakly, then went still.

--

It was dusk outside. Headlights blinded her from all sides as she stepped into the street. The cars went straight through her, their drivers staring ahead blankly, oblivious to the lost girl in the middle of the road. She gazed at each of them as they passed.

They all had lives of their own, she realized. Lives she would never know.

That one was singing along to the radio, his falsetto airy and thin. That one was talking on a cell phone in casual tones. That one was looking in the rearview mirror at two toddlers in the backseat. Life went on, even as hers was beginning to end.

Her brother swayed on unsteady feet in the sour-smelling alley, a switchblade in one hand and a half-full bottle of whiskey in the other. He was facing a massive man who looked just as drunk as he was. A crowd had gathered around the two of them, jeering and hurling broken bottles.

No, she wanted to say, don't. But no words left her mouth.

Her brother took the first swing, but he was so uncoordinated that his own momentum sent him staggering off nowhere near his target. She saw that his wrists were bleeding and wondered if he knew that, on the other side of the city, his sister lay dying.

He put a hand on the wall behind him, steadying himself, and took a gulp of whiskey. He choked slightly. A tear trickled down his cheek and fell from his chin.

My sister, he said, slurring the syllables.

He knew.

She backed away from him and fled down the alley.

--

The boy sat at the desk, his face solemn. He held a thin sheet of purple origami paper in his hands. He folded it this way and that, creasing the paper with his deft, confident fingers. When he was finished he looked out the window. His eyes were grey-green, with hints of gold. The paper dragon perched on his palm, no bigger than a sparrow. It did not breathe fire. It did not breathe at all.

"Noah," she said.

He closed his fist, and the dragon crumpled into nothing. She had danced with this boy once, in the rain, with the sound of violins and bassoons blowing away in the wind. She knew that in five or ten or twenty years he would not remember. She was meant to be forgotten.

--

Weightless, she floated in the vast empty vacuum of space. In the distance she could see the same stars she wished upon as a child. They were light-years away and probably already dead.

She turned and saw Earth, nothing more than a blue speck in the darkness. On that spinning planet, people danced and sang and loved each other and faded into oblivion. What were their lives worth in this cold, expanding, slowly dying universe? Galaxies collided and stars collapsed and planets turned into dust. Time progressed ruthlessly, and she saw that each human life was but an infinitesimal disturbance. One by one they would all wink out.

If it must happen, then why not now? she asked herself.

--

In the hospital room her father was crying. He towered over her, yet he seemed strangely small. Shining tears fell like stars from his eyes and dampened her hospital gown. His hands shook as he touched her cheek.

My daughter, he wept.

He walked to the window and looked out into the grey void. She could feel his desperation.

She cannot die, he shouted, pounding his fist on the windowsill. God, do you hear me?

There was no reply.

Please, God. He fell to his knees, begging. My daughter. CANNOT. DIE.

No one else was in the room. When his voice broke and he finally stopped shouting, the only sound to be heard was the steady beep-beep of the heart rate monitor.

God, do you hear me?

She looked on and felt nothing. It had not snowed in years.