Unfading Scar

    by Elaine David

            I had never imagined a time in my life when I would simply be unable to get out of bed without aid.  And yet it has come to this, when all the independence I had developed living alone for over two decades now turns out to have been for naught.  I sigh with an irritation wrought by the powerlessness I feel.  And so I play an excruciatingly slow waiting game with death, when patience has never been a virtue I have been accused of having in abundance.

            I turn my head slightly, wincing at the short stab of pain that shoots from my neck at the effort, and watch a nurse stride to my bedside with a thin smile.  She takes my limp arm – the one not attached to an intravenous device – and proceeds to take my blood pressure briskly, and I am reduced to admiring her detached efficiency.  She turns me over to my side shortly after, causing me to grit my teeth as cool air suddenly comes in contact with several sores that line my back, pustules which she wipes down with a damp cloth.  Tears spring unbidden, small rivulets coursing down cheeks roughened with age and the eventual ravages of disease, mere trickles that escape the dam built out of the sense of frustration that constantly threaten to overwhelm me.  One day, perhaps, I may allow myself to weep unabashedly; probably just before I inhale my last breath.  For now, I content myself with clamping my lips after uttering a muffled groan.

            The nurse leaves as quickly and as silently as she had come, leaving me to stare at the ceiling, my eyes hunting for patterns in the white-coated expanse.  Its even plainness bothers me; I had made a career out of trying to fit patterns together, finding logic and flow in complex business scenarios to translate into workable algorithms.  Now, though, it seems my mind too may have finally given up trying to discern meaning from apparent nothingness, just as my body that had begun to fail me when cancer had first struck over a year ago, leading to the downward spiral of frailty that has come to plague me since.

            My doctor arrives shortly, making her daily morning rounds, and as she enters, I notice the tightness around her eyes, the grim line that shapes her mouth.  Dr. Mia Rosario’s slim, angular face is infinitely familiar to me; after all, the physician I had chosen to oversee my care is my childhood friend.  She had once told me when she was still in med school that she never wanted a friend to ever fall under her care.  Unfortunately, wishes have a tendency to fly in the face of reality.  In the end, it may have been a final selfish indulgence on my part, but I had wanted to have someone I trusted by my side.

            “How are you feeling?” she asks in a neutral tone, ever the consummate professional, though from the clipped cadence of her speech, I could detect the tightness that she had tried to hide.

            “What, you expected my answer to change from yesterday?”  I quip, in as playful a tone as I could muster.  Of course, it didn’t help that my voice sounded incredibly wheezy even to my own ears, robbing my response of the resigned acceptance I’d attempted to convey.

            “Not really, no.” She sighs and perches herself sideways on the bed, one hand holding a clipboard by her side, the other grasping my free hand in hers.  “Still, one can hope.”

            “Ah yes, hope,” I reply, squeezing her hand with what feeble strength had been left in my grip.  “I still could hope for something, I suppose, like a swift, less painful demise.”

            “Ever the pessimist,” she retorts, cracking a slight smile.  Her dark eyes glisten, bright with dismay and vexation, and I wished I had still possessed enough energy to prop myself up and embrace her, to brush loose strands from her shoulder-length auburn hair off her face and feel their silkiness slip through my fingers just as I‘d done numerous times before.  There are far too few things that resemble ordinariness in my life these days, it seems.  

            “I hardly see a reason to change now, of all times.” I chuckle, triggering a slight fit of coughing, as needles of pain pricked my chest with each movement.  Mia peers at me worriedly, and I try to reassure her with a wan grin that, as her frown deepens, apparently lacks effectiveness.

            Her face comes close to mine, eyes as dark as charcoal alit with that inner spark which at any moment could roar into an all-encompassing blaze, consuming those who came too close to the heated passion she held for her profession.  Despite her diminutive frame, she embraces its inherent challenges as hard-earned rewards, though she continues to view losing a life as an affront to her skills, and as such a completely undesirable outcome for each cancer case she tackled.  That we have been friends for over four decades was one reason I had chosen her as my oncologist; that she had become quite accomplished in her field through dint of hard work was the other.  However, not even she could wring miracles from a brittle body that had just a few years ago been beset by arthritis, making my ordeal with bone cancer an even more onerous task to bear.

            “I wish I could come up with a reason to tell you otherwise,” she whispers, smoothing long hair from my forehead and arranging the rest into a curtain of sorts that fell across my chest.  I had once been quite proud of the luster of my hair, now reduced to a dank, dull mess.

            “There is one other thing I’d long wished you could tell me,” I rejoin, staring directly into the flames that lurked in the depths of her gaze, seeking warmth not only for my ravaged body but for my even more ruined soul. 

            I had wrought irreparable disservice to this woman, once.  It was something we both denied, perhaps dismissed as a memory of a drunken evening spent together when reason had held no sway.  She had never quite held me accountable for our having slept together, when I had initiated the encounter on the night following her breakup with her then-fiancé.  We had woken up the following morning acting as if nothing had happened between us, even though we had probably both realized that our friendship had been marred just as a paper cut mars a skin’s smoothness in that least unexpected moment, leaving a minute scar thereafter.  We had continued to remain friends, and I had even been part of her entourage during her wedding to another man three years later, and then served as the godmother of her first child.

            And yet there are some scars that never quite fade.  There are half-healed wounds that continue to fester beneath the surface, still tender when pressed hard enough, pain having been dulled but never quite gone.

            “I’ve long forgiven you for that night, if you think forgiveness is actually mine to give,” she remarks, kissing my cheek.  “What seems so wrong now may actually have been what we‘d both needed, back then.”

            “It is something I’ve never stopped needing.”  I have never stopped needing you, I want to add as I shut my eyes, wanting to block her out of my sight, afraid that I might find pity for a dying woman in dark gaze, maybe even remorse for a friendship tainted by ill-conceived desire.  Or perhaps I was even more fearful of what I would not find – the kind love that she would never have for me.

            “I know, just as I’ve known how you’d felt about me then.” Soft lips touch mine lightly, causing my eyes to flutter open in surprise.  I find her smiling face inches from mine, a smile as enigmatic as I have ever seen her display.  “Have you ever thought maybe it was I who’d taken advantage of you?  That I would so completely disregard how you may feel afterward for that one moment of relief for me?  I thought not.  Forgive me – both for my deception, and for that which I cannot give.”

            She touches my lips with a finger this time, embraces me once again, then gathers her clipboard and departs without looking back.  I stare at her back until she rounds the corner and shuts the door behind her.  I lift my free hand and touch my lips, feeling not the cracked ridges of dry and broken skin but the residual warmth her presence had left behind.  I sink back in my bed, reduced to staring at the blank ceiling yet again, trying still to perceive patterns that may lurk well-hidden in the nuances of the seemingly smooth painted surface.

            There are some bone-deep lesions that linger, marked by scars too entrenched in the fabric of one’s being to ever fade away.  Holding on to pain can potentially become a habit entrenched so deeply that it blocks all possible channels for healing.  I embrace my brittleness as I realize that though more than my bones lay shattered within, I am to push through the pain to seek a wholeness that, though fragile, would allow my sundered soul to knit itself back together once more.

In the end, I can finally make the choice to ignore that unfading scar that has come to mark my life and define my soul with its shallow ugliness.  And so, finally, I allow myself to weep.