A Perfectionist Cure.

Chapter 1

The silence of the full and quiet,
Of her; in a dress red velvet
Was too absorbing.

"Floral dresses, dancing and wine and music;

A happy ending as she closed her eyes jolly.

To be dead."

She wanted one so badly. She wanted a happy funeral. So badly- and I couldn't give it to her. My promises departed along with her. Now I am stuck with the last piece to what would've been an almost complete puzzle- just that one piece alive, while the rest of it ceased to exist. That was the first thing she ever told me about her wildest wishes.

I never came to know of the ideology or logic behind it- maybe she wanted her walk up the heavenly stairs to be rejoiced or maybe it was something else. I could never really put myself in her head and I couldn't get her out of mine. Bringing myself to forget her then was a whole new degree of agony and distress.

As time passed, maybe I didn't think much of her but she sure did help me breathe like a normal person and how she did that, was etched flamboyantly beneath the void left behind. If she would've given me a chance, I would've done it exactly the way she wanted it to be done.

"We seem to be done before dark doctor. Shall I take leave?"

That sure did disturb the pensive air around, so I looked up and acknowledged. Well, she didn't stop there. She went on with more information I had to pile up in my head. Apparently, my next day was to start an hour early and without a doubt it found a comfortable place in my lifeless brain. I looked straight as Olivia turned off the lights, dimming the ambience furthermore. I looked at my watch and it was 6 something. I decided to call it a day and grabbed all my stuff. My walk back home was dull. The alley walls were reminiscent of my worries while I enjoyed the blooming magnolias. I wanted to think of something, but I couldn't think of anything but her which I felt was not very productive so I chose otherwise. Magnolias had nothing to do with her, so I plucked one of them and neither did alley walls but I couldn't take those concrete chunks of brick home now could I? Too many things reminded me of her and the next day was a big day. I found a bench on the sidewalk and got my buttocks seated there, and made no efforts to deny or divert my thoughts. I just went on and on about her for three hours and later decided to go home and have a cup of coffee before hitting bed.

I came home to a room of teeming nihility among the faded new furn. Well, I changed and poured hot coffee from the machine, set it on my study and waited for my brew to cool. I felt it quite tormenting, the slow ticking in my watch- it was god-damn slow! Annoyance got the best of me and I hit bed. While in bed I noticed the porch light had stopped flickering, so I envisaged how it would be if I walked out to a frog hanging from the porch light- I didn't know if they could do that, but the odds of them doing it as I walked out the door and my prospective reaction seemed to humor me as I turned my back to the condensing vapors of my brew hanging afloat under the nightlight.

***

The next day dawned and I got dressed up after an early morning shower in cold water- I loved 'em. I sat around the house for a while, and scrubbed the furniture clean.

As the needle hit 7, I grabbed my stuff and walked an old man's jog to my clinic. My precious Olivia had already reached there. She greeted me a loud and pregnant "Good morning, Doctor!" from behind the desk with a beaming smile that lit me up for the rest of the day and I couldn't help but smile back in such a way that all my white and perfectly sculpted teeth were visible! A few minutes after I settled down in my cabin, she walked me through the scheduled appointments. The kids kept arriving- some late and the rest on time- the whole day, and we broke in middle of every few hours to satiate our appetite.

Olivia was somewhere in her late 30s and lived in Kenya at some point in her life where she adopted a child- and man! I loved her braided hair, the type Jaden smith had in The Karate Kid.

***

I placed my neck at the spine of the chair- still smiling. This one kid, Noel Adam, he was a jolly boy with curly black hair that found its way till the end of his neck who loved chanting "oh whoopsie daisies!" while his mother looked at me with difficult eyes that said, "Oh no! He's no trouble at all!" He wasn't very well, so I looked after it.

I met the duo again when I broke for lunch- Noel fast asleep in his baby-walker.

"Second time's a lucky charm eh?"

"Well well, Hello!"

There was plenty of chit chat and I came to know that one Mr. Noel was a naughty guy. Turns out he's a fan of our special Hugh Grant from The Notting Hill which he saw when his parents were falling asleep beside him and how the TV remote often was found in the toilet and how he refuses to eat when not fed- he would turn a full plate upside down.

My break came to an end and gradually so did the day.

***

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