At the End with His Wife and His Thoughts

Short story about a sick man's last moments with his wife

                “Are yer dere?” Anne O’Connell asked. They were the first words Frederick had heard from another person in three days, and they came with the usual sense of dread. He had spent some of his time away considering what he would say in this moment, but ideas that once felt poignant were now exasperating.

                “I’m here. I’m okay.”

                “I’m here, too,” Doctor Hartledge added. Frederick had forgotten the doctor’s promise to be among the first to greet him. It was a promise Frederick was at first shocked to see kept, but upon second thought Frederick surmised that there simply weren’t many patients left to take care of.

                “Are yer okay?” Anne O’Connell questioned.

                “I’m okay. How long do you suppose I was out?”

                Anne O’Connell indicated Doctor Hartledge, who sullenly responded, “You were gone for three days this time. You know what that means? The next time we lose you - ”

                “Will be the last. I know. How long before I go out again?”

“It varies from patient to patient. Person to person. Could be a few minutes. An hour, maybe.”

Frederick internalized this, and though he had spent most of the last three days deciding how he wanted to spend this time with Anne O’Connell, he found himself presently too overcome with emotion to bring himself to decide on words. One thing he knew for sure. “Doctor Hartledge. Thank you. For everything. I wonder if Anne and I could have some time together now.”

“Of course, Fred. You just let me know if you need anything. I’ll be around.”

In these closing minutes, Frederick recalled the first moment he met Anne O’Connell.  He was visiting Ireland with his girlfriend. Anne O’Connell’s red hair disarmed him from across the bar, and when he met her blue eyes his heart sank. She smirked, closed lips eventually giving way to a broad, toothy smile. The image carried him through the month that followed before he could get back to Dublin a single man, and it had sustained him each time he drifted away since he got the virus.

Frederick quickly scanned Anne O’Connell and realized that she was no longer protecting herself. “Aren’t you worried about catching it, too?”

“Everyone's sayin' we are all gonna git it, anyway. What’s de use?”

It was unsettling, Frederick thought, to be present with the love of your life for the last time.  At the end of all things, he surmised there were only two emotions that mattered: gratitude and regret. The former for Anne O’Connell and the seemingly countless years of love she brought into his life, and the latter for each way he failed her.

“What’s it like when you go away?”

“It’s just me and my thoughts. And you know, you’re there, kind of. I couldn’t stop thinking of you every time I was out,” Frederick explained. He hoped Anne O’Connell would feel good hearing that. Comforted to know that after all this time it was still she who was on his mind. “Don’t suppose anything has changed in the past three days, huh? No miracle cure? No one has had any contact with the Solids?”

                Anne O’Connell began to break. “We ‘eard from the Solids. Yesterday. Dey can’t ‘elp. Too busy fightin’ ‘mong themselves. An’ dere’s only a couple of ‘em left, anyway.” Frederick felt the defeat in Anne’s O’Connell’s delivery.

Several silent moments passed by. Frederick found it oddly satisfying to settle quietly now when he was so near his infinite silence. He figured Anne O’Connell was disquieted when she blurted out, “Yer know who I spoke ter while yer were gone? Jen Lively.”

                “I thought Jen went out with the virus already.”

                “Naw. It was ‘er sister. Jen’s got it, dough. At de beginning. But, do yer remember the New Year’s party at her place?”

                “I couldn’t forget even if I tried. And you know, wasn’t that the first night that we talked to Adam in the Cloud?” He knew Anne O’Connell remembered. She couldn’t forget either.

                “On yer phone, right? An’ ‘e was tellin’ us how grand it was. An’ we were laughin’ like we’d never do it.”

                “But here we are.”

                “We used ter do so many dings. Do yer remember what it felt like ter do dings? Togeder?”

                They were in their mid-fifties the last time they went out. A fancy restaurant and a symphony in New York. By then they had been together for over twenty years, and the excitement of dating had worn off. Dinner that night proceeded as an ingestion ritual, each vaguely aware of the other while they read the screens in the palms of their hands. At one moment, Frederick glanced up to find Anne O’Connell laughing amusedly to herself. He wondered what she had found on her phone that provoked her to such a wide open guffaw, but figured it may be rude to interrupt her to ask. Later that night they attended a performance of some work by Brahms. Frederick genuinely did not know which composition it was at the time, and so could not remember it now. He could easily recollect how her voice trembled when she finally asked him if he was nervous about transitioning and confided she was. He hadn’t been nervous, though. In fact, he recalled, he would have done it sooner if they could have afforded it before the mandate.

                “Yes. The symphony. Brahms. Dinner.”

                “Are yer havin’ trouble stringin’ togeder full sentences?”

                “Yes.” How displeasing, Frederick thought, to be able to have the same complex thoughts he had had for so many years, but to now only be able to express himself in short, broken dialect. A word at a time. He hated himself for wasting time now considering once more whether it was worth it to transition to digital. Everyone had done it, and then came the law.

                “So it’ll be any minute den.”

                “Yes.”

                “Know that I love ye. And I’ll miss ye always.”

                Frederick’s thoughts briefly turned to the Solids who were still alive. Flesh and blood. The last biological humans. How lucky they were to one day enjoy their death.

                “You asked me. If. I was there. Strange.” The words spilled from Frederick like the clicking of a broken typewriter.

                “I’ve always tought it ‘as weird. Dere. Or here. Wherever we are.” Anne O’Connell let out the kind of small laugh one might use as a conversational aid. Nothing was necessarily funny, but she had learned to properly cue her speaking mannerisms, even though the laughter, she regretted, did not fit the timbre of these last moments together.

                Silence.

                Anne O’Connell thought perhaps that Frederick no longer wanted to speak because he was embarrassed by his slowness. She confessed, “I can’t remember wot yer face felt like to touch, Fred. I’m sorry. I haven’t really forgotten wot yer looked like, but I haven’t the ability to remember the details either. I’m so sorry.”

                “Very handsome,” Frederick reminded her. And he began trying to remember his own face, which he had not seen in hundreds of years. He couldn’t find it. Couldn’t find his reflection staring back at him anywhere in the ether of the Cloud. He searched and searched his memory until he wound up visualizing a photo from his seventh birthday, which forced him to recall his father who biologically died before the transition to digital. He wondered what his dad might have thought about living in perpetuity. Would his dad have tried to stay a Solid or would he have complied with the law? Then of course, Frederick considered the laws he had broken and remembered the time that he and Jim were arrested for underage drinking. He had forgotten to include a photo of Jim during the digitization, and now had absolutely no means of conjuring an image of Jim’s face to reminisce. His thoughts now journeyed to whom else he might have chosen to bring into his memory if given another chance. He knew the girl he dated when he met Anne O’Connell to have been cute, but at the time reasoned that Anne O’Connell wouldn’t have been comfortable with his choosing to convert the woman into his new permanent memory. This of course, brought him back to thinking of Anne O’Connell, and he remembered suddenly that he was supposed to be spending his last few moments with her and not in his head. He tried to speak her name, but found the virus had finally eliminated his ability to vocalize entirely. His thoughts calmed. Silence once more as he waited for Anne O’Connell to speak. An hour passed and she did not. Another hour and she did not. After a period of time that was longer than three hours but shorter than a day, Frederick began thinking once again. His first two thoughts were of happiness and melancholy respectively. I exist, was his first. This is eternity, was his second.

Author's Note

This is my first post - I would like every criticism imaginable

Reviews

[Stanley R. Teater]

An interesting glimpse into a scary future world. One comment - I found the constant use of the full name (Anne O'Connell) a bit much. Perhaps you had a good reason for it, but if so it eludes me. Hope you enjoy your experience with Writers' Cafe. I've been a member less than a week myself.

[A. St.Romain]

I enjoyed it. An interesting twist on the singularity. You clearly write well and should definitely keep it up. On to constructive criticism. I found the use of phonetic spelling to convey accent to be a bit distracting. There are ways to convey an accent without being so heavy handed as to be unintelligible. Secondly it benefited greatly from a second reading. The hook at the beginning was interesting but all the pertinent reference information was buried in the last few paragraphs. I think this could be helped by up-ing your amount of static description in the beginning to better set the scene. Thanks for the story. Keep it up!