The Blue Dress

The halls were quiet in the night here. Almost everyone asleep, except for occasional padding of feet every now and then. Nurses making rounds. Checking up on patients that would not make it through the night. It takes me to another time, another place. So different from here, it might as well have been another life. It gets easier to see the end the closer it gets. It is much more difficult to see the beginning, because it is the very first thing that one loses to time. It's like the very first grain of sand that you grab onto and, the very first to slip through. Sometimes it is difficult to remember the beginnings, while the ends scream louder than anything else. But there are some beginnings which are too important to forget. And, it's my job to remember.

Timelines are complicated. The point is to accept that, not try to sort them out. It is a series of interconnected webs. It begins were it ends, it ends where it begins. I don't know when I began, that is not important. I don't know why I am, I just am. Our job is to look back into time, or look forward, into significant moments. We exist, and we see. We must, before everything ends. Before everything begins again. But I am going in circles now. This is about you.

I fall back into the moment I first saw you. You were a tiny blip in time. Gone before you could make a substantial mark on anyone but your family. The ripples your existence caused died out quickly, absorbed by other overpowering ones. Insignificant. There wasn't anything extraordinary about you either; you were just another face among the billions. To be fair, I had been a little naïve then. You were my first awakening to the fact that nothing that ever happened was insignificant.

I sat in the garden on that clear night, on a bench near a tree. What kind of tree was it? For the life of me, I can't remember. It was relaxing to watch time pass slowly. You walked out of the building and into the garden, wheeling your IV drip with you. I go back to those moments again and again. I try to analyse every square inch of your expression from memory. What were you thinking right then? What made you decide to come sit next to me that night? I remember seeing you hesitate. I was sitting in your usual spot, it seemed. You could've turned away, taken a lap around the garden or something, and I would've been gone the second time you came upon the bench. But you didn't. You sat down quietly next to me. I didn't say anything. I remembered seeing you in one of the wards earlier.

"Hey." You said after a while, holding out your hand to me. There were many ways things could've gone down. I could've wished you goodnight and left. I could've disappeared, and you would've chalked it up to your high medications, shaken your head and quickly gone back to bed believing I was never there. I could've talked to you about the weather and we would've parted ways cordially to never see each other again. I talked to a lot of people, ones nearing the end of their time. So, I knew it shouldn't make a difference no matter what I did here. Nothing would change.

The moment our hands touched, I could see all of your life flash before my eyes. I didn't dwell on it, though. I was used to seeing through people's lives, and I would only focus on the ends. I saw your end. You would die two weeks short of turning twenty-five. You would die three weeks later. That was too long. The closer people are to death, the safer it is to interact with them. You were a risk.

"Hello." I said back politely. "How are you doing?"

"Um, I'm good, thanks. And you?"

"I'm good too, thank you for asking."

"Do you have a family member in the hospital?" you asked.

Yes, you'd think that. I was wearing normal clothes of your time to blend in. "Yes, my mother was admitted for a few days. She had an allergic reaction."

"Oh, I'm so sorry. Is she okay now?"

"Yes, she's good. She needs time to recover. What about you?"