Lisa spent most of her time in the long-term care facility thinking. She realized that other people were hearing each other and having normal back and forth conversations, it seemed they were only deaf to her, whereas she could understand everything other people said. The truth of her speech impairment dawned on her when one day she was in the recreational room where there was an old-fashioned machine usually used by patients who could sing or play an instrument to record their own music. Lisa decided to record her own voice and went through the motions, ensuring there was a memory unit to record on and figured out how the device was to be used. She firmly believed she had spoken loudly enough and recited her favourite poem from childhood, but when she played it back, there was nothing, only background sounds and nothing of her own voice. No speech therapy or help was given to Lisa. She took care of herself in all the matters necessary. She slept in a crowded room where twenty-three other patients slept with curtains for privacy around their beds. A nurse and an assistant nurse came by once a day to check on them but they never had the required time to see all the patients in the room before something more urgent was called upon them.
Meticulously, Lisa went over the story of her life, month by month, year by year, wondering if she had lost any memory but concluded that if she had, it was of insignificant details. She came to the conclusion that until Bruce, she believed that she had never done anything wrong. Even if some of her actions were commonly judged by religion and social standards to be morally incorrect, the fact that all her actions led to what she considered her great lifetime achievements, which all related career-wise, and that she knew all other great achievers were no better morally than she, even though popular and official history hid unacknowledged truth, this caused her to believe that the only valid morality was that of the end justifying the means and achievement was the purpose of human life; but the outcome of what Bruce had become loaded down on her shoulders a heavy and painful weight. She had been so wrong about that and it gripped her mind with remorse at every chance. This led her to doubt the justification of more and more of her past actions spiraling her spirit downwards until she felt herself to be the lowest of the low where it seemed that everything she had done in the past was wrong. Certain thoughts she still resisted such as her role in the demise of Colleen and Michael's death but a horrible sense of guilt was encroaching.
The care facility was not a prison and the staff had no time to keep track of the whereabouts of the patients. Lisa loved going outside into the backyard that was let wild and never cared for; particularly she loved the birds and the way the trees and plants evoked memories. One day, during a slight afternoon rainfall, Lisa simply walked out the garden gate never to return. No one noticed her absence, let alone report her missing. No one had ever come to visit her.
Lisa walked in a quick step without any thought to where she was going. The care facility was at the end of the road and the walk away only in one direction. It seemed to her that her sense of hearing had suddenly improved. The sounds around her impressed inwards in her mind's awareness where she imagined she heard the echo of the birds outside and the breeze rustling the leaves. Likewise she was aware her vision had also improved; she could see farther, in greater detail. She bent over and touched the moss on a nearby stone, sparkling in the sunlight and realized so too, her sense of touch and indeed her inner emotions and feelings were intensified. The road was narrow and took her into the center of the city to a cairn of megalithic stones from which the road began to curve towards the left. She stayed on the road that was now taking her in spiraling circles of ever wider diameter outwards. There were a great many people, many finely dressed and others almost threadbare. Night fell, the crowd thinned until the only souls were those hunched against the walls of buildings hiding in the shadows cast from widely spaced street lamps. Lisa did the same when she slumped on the ground exhausted, but thrilled, by the day's walking. Just before waking, early the next morning, she dreamt a young man who strongly resembled Bruce, was kicking her and growling, 'Get up, homeless, move' but when she abruptly awoke, it was a dusty old woman gently nudging her, saying, 'Come on. Let's go eat.' The old woman held Lisa's hand and Lisa could feel the warmth of the woman's spirit as she went with her to a tiny trailer that was serving coffee, eggs, toast and bruised apples to the line-up of hungry people who had spent the night on the concrete outdoors. They sat together on the cold grass of a small park, amid a huge flock of pigeons. The woman was telling Lisa the story of her life while she was tossing bread crumbs to the birds. The woman never noticed that Lisa did not talk and at the end of the woman's story, which came to the present day, about an hour later, she thanked Lisa for listening because no one had ever listened to her before, especially with such interest as Lisa genuinely showed. After that the woman and Lisa parted ways.
