Day 113 - Memory Trap

 Memory Trap

 Matthew Ryan Fischer

 

Itemized lists, spreadsheets and photographs. They all went into the box with the promise of elimination to follow. Each item elicited an emotional response and was traced and tracked and documented. Synapses flared and new memory paths were formed. There was no reason to want to remember such pain, but trauma response all but deemed it inevitable.

Outside the hospital, Elaine tried to get cell service. She didn’t know if it was the building itself or some machinery inside that blocked her signal. She walked the parking lot to no avail. Then up the side of the hill that led to the ER and cancer wards. Nothing much was helping. It had been a long day and there wasn’t much to do but sit around and she had grown nervous and bored. Walking didn’t help.

Inside a room there were maybe thirty people in chairs, receiving chemical poison in the arm. Not too much, but just enough to perhaps kill what needed to be killed without killing the host. A medical miracle that started as a war crime accident. A man tried to tell the world that his medicine for dogs would do a better job. The world had not heard.  

Personal items were gathered together, to be sent home to anyone that might care. Linens were changed while some were bagged to be destroyed. The stench remained, barely obscured by the smell of cleaning products. The flowers in the vase by the window had died and wilted long ago.

Elaine was able to reach her brother, although words were meaningless at a time like this. Pauses and broken sentences, interrupted by sobs and deep breaths seemed to be the language spoken. Her phone was faulty and her ability to stomach more calls was nil, and promises were made that she wouldn’t have to be the one to make all of the plans and decisions.

One thousand miles away, a sister, unaware that her day was about to be ruined, had just gotten in her car to go pick up her daughter from school. Her plans were soon to be interrupted.

An old man sat in a waiting room, unaware of the dramas that occurred in the world around him. His wife was somewhere down the hall, sitting in an armchair alone. Perhaps awake, perhaps asleep. He didn’t know. There were immunocompromised to be protected and he had been asked to sit in the waiting room. He wanted to hold her hand. He felt bad that she should be alone.

The old man looked out the window and watched as a young woman almost lost her balance coming down the side of the hill. There was a sidewalk for a reason, he thought. Foolish people always trying to find a shortcut. He didn’t know why it bothered him, but it did. He had enough pain and worry, he didn’t like that she would be so cavalier, traipsing through some landscaper’s hard work like that. He wanted to be upset, to admonish her. But really, he was worried about his wife. It had been close to two hours. She was usually finished by now. He hoped everything was alright.