A friend had given her a book once called The Tibetan Book of the Living and Dying, with great insights as how to care for people in terminal conditions, to help them feel more comfortable with the idea of their demise, but she had found it difficult to put into practice. First, you had to see death in an entirely different way than Susan did in order to help someone pass away peacefully, as the book taught. You had to be able to cope with death yourself, to think of it every time you got the chance, to bathe in the idea of it at a snap of a finger. But whenever Susan came to think about death she would put it out like a cigarette butt; she would then throw a bucket of ignorance over the smoldering remnant and that was that. And every morning, at work, when Dr. Susan Kelly crossed The Cave to go into her office she would pick up her pace, slaloming through the people there as if they were contagious.
Sitting there, looking out the window with an ear on the roar of the sea, glimpses of her dreams from the previous night began to creep into her thoughts. She felt them more than she saw them: her body was being overrun by a stampede of termites eating her inside out; the veins had now become myriads of tunnels channeling the insects into the very heart of her cells. The body itself was now no more than a hollow hive, pulsing with munching insects. Hungry little monsters.
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The Sphere
Cerita PendekSusan lives on the lush coast of eastern Ireland, taking care of her daughter and her many patients. But an enemy Susan is intimately familiar with begins a full on assault on her duties as a mother and a doctor. **This story received 2nd prize at t...
