Sixteen Small Deaths (3 page)

Her name was Rianna Peterson and she was a doctor calling from Massachusetts General Hospital. My father had dialed 911 and only a second after the operator answered, silence spilled from the other line. Police and an ambulance rushed to the house and found my father crumpled on the kitchen floor, his fingers still touching the receiver. He had experienced a massive heart attack shortly after noontime. Doctor Peterson said the paramedics found him dead.

I closed the phone and immediately leaned forward, ignoring the urge to let my insides spill to the carpeted hotel floor.

#

I drove that night with fire in my eyes, the smoldering strands of shock still waltzing in my head. The ride to the hospital should have taken three hours, but with my foot on the gas and my heart in my hand, I walked through the front doors in just over two. I was barely coherent at the front desk, managing to say the words “father” and “Armstrong” and “heart attack.”

Doctor Peterson greeted me a minute after, olive skin somewhat comforting in a sea of lost souls scattered about the hospital lobby. She shook my hand with the grace of a beautiful woman and asked me if I was okay. I told her “No” and smiled,
unaware that I was gazing into the distance.

“I know this is difficult for you, so I’d be happy to call any relatives that might need to know what happened.” She placed a hand on the side of my arm, unpainted fingernails plucking the rogue fuzz from my jacket.

“Yeah,” I said. “His brother, my Uncle Charlie. If you can, please call him.” I shook her hand again and walked away, forgetting to button up my coat as I walked out the front doors and into the throes of December.

A gentle sniff of the air told me that another storm was coming. There were already four inches of snow on the ground, and before long I’d be wondering when winter would be over. I knelt down and ran my fingers along the concrete, swirling figures into the ground that were symbolic of my confusion. I stared out into the night, half moon poised in the sky like a low-hanging slice of glowing frost. I removed my gloves and shoved them into my pocket, letting the back of my boots support my backside as I knelt down to scrape up a handful of dirty ice and snow.

I packed it into a ball, watching the flesh of my fingers begin to flush with red. Smile upon my face, I closed my eyes while I worked the snow until it was as hard as baseball. I opened my eyes and held it in the night air.

It was good enough to throw.

She exhales a strand of icy vanilla lace and my heart freezes with uncertainty. The beeps and whirls of the ventilator are a dazzling lullaby and my eyelids start to drop and barely open again before her hand squeezes mine. I’ve spent fourteen straight nights in this room with her and at least once a day she’ll grasp my hand and give it the lightest press. The doctors say it isn’t a sign of things to come but I spoon hope into my mouth everyday regardless of the world raging outside of my head.

Filthy orange moon in the evening sky and before long I’ll drift off into another fit of slumber without her gentle embrace. I squirm into the cot next to the bed and hear the creaking of its rubber ends against the sterile hospital floor. The nurses in the intensive-care unit walk past the room and each one looks like they’re afraid to smile.

Autumn’s chest heaves in and out with the help of a machine. I can remember nights watching her sleep before the accident, watching the beautiful chasm between her breasts lift in a strand of moonlight as my breaths drew long and comforting. She wears a white gown with jade polka dots and for only a moment is she the most gorgeous being in this building.

I clutch her hand in mine and run a finger along her nails, bits of crimson nail-polish like a map to her past. She painted them only a few hours before nearly dying and I hope that I never see the full pink under her fingernails again.

My eyelids grow heavy and the siren of sleep creeps into my veins, body tired but my mind running with a hundred uneven memories. I stare at the array of stars just beyond the window until I can’t feel my arms or legs but only the dry touch of Autumn’s skin.

#

Dead tree limbs dress a perfect mirror of ice and snow, azure sky painted above the horizon. Sparkles of freezing water drip onto my face and the landscape smells like a mix of bourbon vanilla and saffron. Vision is hazy and circles of white light adorn the film reel in my mind, stains and burns of an unforgiving world given to the throes of December. I take a step forward expecting to fall through a thin layer of ice but my steps are weightless burdens on its fragile frame.

Autumn’s bright red hair speeds by like a flaming comet and I don’t realize I’m smiling. Her arms are wrapped around me and her breath escapes from cobalt lips, tiny clouds of white dissipating before the glitter of winter touches my face. She’s talking in slow motion and I struggle to decipher the words. Her eyes are as blue as a serene ocean and my heart flutters with the recollections of our life together. She brings a red fingernail to my nose, lets it slide down to my upper lip. Autumn leans in for a kiss and my lungs fill with chilled love. It feels like I haven’t kissed her in forever and I want to hold on to this moment until I’m buried with her in the frozen ground beneath our feet.

Our kiss ends with a hush and the sun starts to dip behind the steaming horizon just beyond a row of trees. Autumn’s arms aren’t around me anymore and she’s standing next to me, looking at the last moments of tepid daylight. She points high in the air and looks at me, her glance attempting to tell me every story she knows. I don’t know what she sees and her lips move again but I can’t hear the words, can’t hear what this exquisite woman is saying to me.

Time moves forward as quick as it can while all I hear are only my deep breaths in the winter cold.

Autumn stands in front of me and all the echoes of the bitter terrain are silenced by her eyes. Her eyelids drop and I can finally listen to the supple whisper of her voice.

“Will you?”

#

Carroty streaks of twilight dance into the hospital room and my hand is still entwined with Autumn’s. It looks as if she’s smiling but it could be the haze of early morning affecting my vision. A nurse walks into the room and marks a sheet on a clipboard after looking at the various monitors above the bed. I stand up and leave the room, the sound of my footsteps drowned in a sea of hurried doctors and medical personnel rushing past.

The ICU visitors’ bathroom is just around the corner. I push the door open and an elderly man wearing a long brown coat exits. He has the eyes of a dead soldier. I turn on the faucet to wash my face and only a few moments pass before I see that my lips are blue. I back away and close my eyes for a second, letting the empty noise of the bathroom stalls soothe the slightest tinges of panic in my mind.

A deep breath spins in my chest and I finish washing my face. My reflection is now a warm state and lips have returned to the color of tired flesh. The past two weeks have been a time imperfect and before long Autumn’s voice will be replaced by the frightening silence of her death.

#

I take another sip of water and imagine that I’m sitting in the café where I met Autumn five years ago, a dull Saturday morning when the sky was as dark as dirty glass. She was wearing a tight tweed skirt, legs like two pale knives with boots creeping up to the middle of her calves. My heart stopped for a few minutes when I first touched her skin and I imagine she stole my breath during our initial kiss and hid it in the corners of her stomach.

I haven’t drank a latte since that day.

The beep of the heart monitor forces me back into the present. I sit on the edge of the cot and see that it’s almost nighttime. I
haven’t talked to my parents or friends in too many days and I believe they’ve lost faith in Autumn’s recovery. The hustle of medics outside the room has waned, only a lone nurse sits behind the ICU desk, reading a newspaper and answering the phone on sporadic rings. I stand up and pull the cot closer to Autumn’s bed until the weak metal frame is touching the bed sheets. I lay back and nestle my head against the pillow, taking Autumn’s fingers and placing them over mine. I close my eyes and see the colorless void where my dreams melt with black snow.

#

An excess of icy rain at my fingertips and I’m staring into a faultless circle of moonlight. Dead tree limbs hang over my head and Autumn grabs the edge of one, pulls it back and bits of snow fly into the night air. She giggles but the noise is caught somewhere between the stars and my heart. Her hair is like fire caught in a mesh of fuzzy fabric, untamed and flowing behind her ears and neck. She reaches for my hand, black fingernails gracing my pastel skin. Autumn smiles and brings it to her mouth, giving my hand a quick kiss and leaving behind the residue of cherry-flavored Chapstick. I curl an arm around her shoulder and pull her close to me, her wool hat nudged against my chin. She smells like apples and lucidity and my body starts to warm with the glow of the moon.

A heap of blue roses in her lap, Autumn lifts one to the air, its petals shining amidst a blanket of winter dust, and drops it. It falls to the frozen ground and she grins. I stand up and take her hand, warmth against the chill of December, and try to speak. Before the first of my words escapes, Autumn collapses and sinks into the ice below our feet. Splashes of frosty water, and a quick explosion of blue light blinds me. Seconds or minutes pass and she’s pounding on a thick layer of ice, her screams muffled by water and air bubbles. I fall to my knees and try to break the
crystal sheet but she descends deeper into the water until the tip of the fiery swab of her hair burns out as her body slips to the blackness of beyond.

#

I wake to the sounds of doctors screaming for help. I’m on the floor of Autumn’s room, huddled in the corner as two nurses try to lift and shove me out of the room. They succeed and slam the glass slider shut behind me, quick wave of beige curtains replacing the view into the room. I stand in silence for moments before the lone sound of a piano plays a single note in my head. It’s not enough to comfort me, not enough to know that the one love of my life could die at any second only ten feet away from me.

A single sheet of glass separates me from Autumn and I look for something large enough to smash it to pieces, but I know they’ll only carry me further away if I do so. The ceiling lights gleam like champagne flowers and Autumn’s soul could be flying in a semiotic sky.

#

A sea of rain penetrates the windows of the ICU waiting room. It’s been three hours since Autumn flatlined and not a single member of the staff has said anything to me. Autumn could be dead and I’m just sitting in a pine chair while figures on a television screen above me jostle fake emotions.

I walk over to the counter and stare at the attending nurse. She frowns and looks away from me, my face a canvas filled with the stillborn echoes of lost hope. I shake my head and point to Autumn’s room.

“Autumn,” I say.

The nurse nods and walks to the room, motioning for me to
follow. The trip feels like a four-hour journey from ignorance to erosion and I immediately notice that the glass sliding door is open and bare of a human barricade. The familiar sounds of machines whirling and beeping relieves me and even now I can live with an Autumn that will never say another word.

She’s even more bandaged than before and I can’t count how many more tubes are sticking out of her torso. Bits of red hair clash amongst clean bandages like bloodspots on a newborn baby’s skin. I walk to her side slowly, my boots dragging along the tiled floor. The stigma of hope fades into a mess of black and scarlet as I close my eyes and place a hand over her exposed legs, my fingers touching cold, pale skin.

I wish I could see the blue of her eyes. The floor is surprisingly warm as I slide to the ground and glide into another waft of slumber.

#

A miscible sun projects unfiltered light the color of a fresh bruise. I’m a world apart from anything living and stuck between two frozen lakes. My feet are planted in virgin snow and I’m covered with the sticky dregs of a Sunday suicide, fingers and toes frozen between black wool.

The absence of life surrounds me. Wind beeches draped with ice stand amidst a field of untouched snow, a surface glistening with sunlight. I can’t move and it’s only a few minutes before Autumn brushes my side with her hands, her touch anesthetizing me and sending whispers and shivers of hope through my spine.

She stands before me with her eyes closed, curls of hair falling in front of her face and dangling like liquid flames. Autumn tilts her head to the side and I mimic her. We do this for what seems like months until she raises an unpainted fingernail to my chest. I can move again and I immediately enfold my arms around her tiny frame, not wanting to let go until I can feel her curves
pressed against the front of my body. Her gaze is a bulletproof solstice and she pushes me away.

I fall backwards to the snow and ice, my backside to the ground. She lies on top of me and kisses me, her tongue a warm snake in a tunnel of frost.

My fingers jet into a grip on the back of Autumn’s hair and I could die like this. She pulls her mouth away from mine and presses her forehead against my nose, waves of vanilla circling my head.

“Will you wait for me?” she says.

My eyes quiver with affection and our hearts beat to the tune of a thousand dead angels.

“Endlessly,” I say.

#

I watch the night explode into daybreak and Autumn takes the last of her breaths. Her chest heaves one final time as the sun begins its crawl into the sky. She always wanted to get married at sunrise and this is the closest we’ll ever be to spending the rest of our lives together.

The doctors rush in and I comply with the nurses’ request to leave. I walk out and sit in the ICU waiting room, where I wait for Autumn’s ghost to fly overhead. The fumes of the afterlife are only apparent for a few seconds and I’m quick to inhale them, embrace them as if I was holding onto the living flesh of Autumn.

The head doctor walks up to me and I can’t help but smile. He frowns and shakes his head and begins to speak but I hold a hand to the air and nod. His tongue is on the edge of his teeth and I walk away from the ICU and down the stairs into the lobby of the hospital, past the front desk.