The Beginning of the End (Editing)

Twenty Two : Sound Of Death

It's apparent that I was out cold for three days. That the combination of hard liquor and a bat to the head was a combination that could have killed me. Being in hospital again makes me wish it did, as does knowing that Eleanor is one level down from me in a coma. But maybe that's just selfish.

I remember waking up yesterday and my head was sore from the tension of the bandage wrapped around my head - around the wound. Ma told me that she found me lying on James' grave unconscious with the whiskey bottle tipped next to me so assumed I was too drunk. Then she noticed the blood and panicked. She said she thought I was dead because my eyes were open and glassy. I laughed, but she didn't.

I asked her how Eleanor was doing and when she told me that El was in a coma she looked at me with pity and I hated it. She said that Eleanors aunt Hannah was in the room with El when she passed out and that when she did pass out she was in the middle of typing something on that little computer of hers.

"She didn't tell me what she wrote, but she seemed shaken," She told me, looking at me then away from me then back at me. It was at that point that I knew she was lying but I couldn't be bothered to try talking over the headache. It was loud, and it felt stabby. Maybe there were shards of glass taped to the bat and they were left in my skull.

It's raining today and the doctors won't let me leave. They're concerned that I may be concussed and have assigned a neuro-something to come and see me at two-thirty this afternoon after the one o'clock lunch round. I have two or so hours to kill before I'm served their sad excuse for a sandwich. Thank god Ma is merciful enough to buy my food from the downstairs cafeteria, and I guess the birds are thankful that they have a meal thrown to the ground seven stories down for them.

"I'm going down to get a coffee okay sweets? Do you want anything at all?" Mom rises from her seat at the end of my bed, grabbing her purse and straightening her skirt. Given that coffees and absence of mothers cure my headaches, I request whatever she's having in order to make her heels click faster.

I close my eyes and focus my attention on the rain. Not the patter of it but the thudding of it. It's not lip locking kind of downpour where it's just enough to make Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams look perfectly drowned in overwhelming emotion. This is the type of rain which saves California from its unforgivable drought. It's almost loud enough that you can't hear the hospital machines beeping.

Much like the heart monitor that didn't beep last night and instead rung. Then following was many many rushing footsteps. I then heard a faint whizzing sound, then a faint thudding- not to mention the several voices yelling out numbers and words and letters that made no sense to me. But all that I did know was that I was listening to someone dying. And when I heard a few more feet retreat, followed by the rolling away of a bed I knew that I heard someone die last night.

It's something you don't know how to feel about, knowing that someone is dying at that you can't do anything about it. They sound so different. I remember being in the house when Grandma died and I could hear her gasping for her final breaths in the company of Ma and her brother Uncle George. I also remember the sound of James dying. He was screaming and the cracking of branches and his bones against stones was audible. Before the branches stopped breaking, he stopped screaming. I feel gooseflesh rise over my body.

I have reason to believe that the sound of Eleanor's death was, "I love you".

***