2005 - Vol. 2, Issue 6

Barnston Elementary Panthers repeat as champions. Like they're born for something greater. Ellen's coffee grows cold next to the bamboo chair, strung from the growth of her grandmother's back yard. The citizens had swarmed, petitions signed until she cut it down. The chair is all that remains.

The water heater sounds like someone brushing his teeth, fluid with rough edges. Ellen watches her son sleep, the brows furrowed. In the championship photo he is more at ease. In his sleep she doesn't have to tell him the truth, his dreams tell it for him.

"Just a prick, Leonard." The syringe hovers in front of a menacing hand. The doctor's. "We'll say the Pledge of Allegiance and you'll look at me and we'll focus on the Pledge and not the shot."

The doctor takes his blood, a million intricacies floating inside it. They're microscopic stories to tell, ones to hear at night when you're a child and afraid.

"I pledge allegiance," he says. He knows the words better than Ellen. She tries to look at him and not at the blood. She's frightened by what it will tell her, what dark truths may escape.

Her mother once held her down before the needle. Seven years old and screaming, she ran, the door closed shut and a nurse's hand always behind her until together they held her down, kicking and thrashing.

"Ellen," she said. "Ellen, it's all over."

Over, without pain. The son watches her now. Years later, he's seven as well.

"We'll call you," the doctor says.

Waiting. A clock ticks, she can count them while her son sleeps. Every few minutes she reaches for her coffee before realizing it's gone cold and placing it back down. When she picks it up again it has formed a brown ring around her son's photograph. His soccer uniform is dirty; that night she would have washed it, but after the game it told of battles won.

And here is another battle. A war, however short. Life is the definition of brevity. The curtains falling, the weight of cloth pushing you down while you try to hold the weight of another.

When he wakes up he will still be tired. Her lids are heavy with the clock's ticking, but she has not learned the agony of weakness.

Even in the failing light the skin looks yellow. Three days now the color has crept into her son only to darken in color. Nausea swims at her throat when she stares at the yellow for too long.

Loss of breath. Faintness. Symptoms crawling up to tell of sickness. First the weakness and the change of color, her son fading while the clock beside her ticks.

"No, doctor." There are words she searches for. Somehow she realizes these words have power and it is only the simple placement of them to make it go away. "Yes, I'm sure."

But always there are more questions, more referrals to other doctors down a food chain of medical carnage until the final syringe is filled. Ellen has named the syringe Truth.

There are hints of liver failure. Poisons enveloping the organs and drowning them. There is no time; queries are made for donors. Ellen sometimes finds herself praying for other children to die so her son may be saved. She can see the box on her driver's license. Organ donor it says, a small checkmark touching it briefly. She can picture a little boy trapped under the weight of a car while her son waits for his liver.

Inconclusive so far, the doctors ask questions. Other possibilities, perhaps an ulcer or weakness along the intestinal lining. Only the tests will tell. These things take time. Diets, past recipes. What has he been eating? Yes, poultry, milk. Sweets. Little fingers reaching up towards the bread and the cookies. Juice staining the lips red.

Her mind plays with these images, the color fading into black and white and he is just a pale child staring up to her. Before days without fathers. Human loss repeats itself. She can feel its orbit winding around to take another, pulling it into its center to melt within the core. To leave her there alone.

His name. His first steps. His first words. The infant in her arms. Her first day sitting home alone. His first day of school. Sandwiches and chips and juice and sometimes milk money. A birthday party with cake icing caught on his face and photographs, hundreds of them scattered across the floor and cedar chests. Childhood tantrums and a parent's embarrassment in public settings. Her first tears driving home from the hospital with him looking off beside her.

Three hours. To let the enzymes form and tell their secrets. Time never felt so indecisive, rushing forward while drawing on forever. Waiting takes on its own personality, flavor soaking down into its crevices, dialogue passing through the minutes with herself. Different realities molding together. This never happening, a successful transplant, a donor. A grave.

His grave. The skin is no longer yellow. His eyes watch out. She reaches down and runs through the hallways with him in her arms, the priest trailing behind her while the mourners watch bewildered from their seats.

If only she can run faster, death will fall behind and wait somewhere else. Waiting has become an art, the last strokes falling from a drying brush.

But then the phone rings, the sounds reverberating through her ears and she looks away from it and watches her son.

His eyes have opened and she realizes he's been awake all this time, hours spanning over the brevity of his fate hiding on the other side of the phone's receiver.