It was here, in this room, my father died, end coming to him reclined upon the sofa, infection consuming his body as he bled post op on the fine leather seating. The doctor and his nurse had come to Venleaux Villa to see after him, to operate on the small chance he might still be saved. I had been ushered to my room by my mother nearly an hour before, presumably for my own protection, but... In my childish, anxious boredom, I had wandered down against mothers orders.
The sound of heavy feet and muffled voices called out to me, drawing my attention from the stair on the far side of the house. Sobbing mixed fluidly throughout, tying them all together in some strange, macabre symphony. It tugged at my ears and my heartstrings like a harps sharpest, deepest notes, pulling me forward and wounding me with every step.
Growing louder, I found my breath catching, clawing at my young lungs and unable to fight it. It resolved into my mothers sorrow, biting, and then... The door, it stood before me taunting, the sounds inside muted, but omnipresent. Why the hush, I could not tell and to the door ajar I placed an eye to see.
A jackal and doe in green scrubs and bloodied, instruments poised and readied, crimson red drip, drip, dripping from the table they had set up in the center. Down below a pan, half filled with gore, streaked in yellow puss somehow more revolting than whatever else it bore. Graceful and damning their fingers fell, to what I could not easily see, too high above and bodies blocking. But between I could see the figure on the table, my father, cold and pale gray, seemingly sleeping but grimacing all the same in painful, fevered dream.
For a long time I watched them work, not one of them the wiser, frozen in place. The sounds of spurting fluids and mothers crying drowning out all other thought as I cried silently for my father to get better. The pan filled, then overflowed, spilling onto the woefully inadequate newspapers under it, then onto the carpet, then to the wooden floors beyond even that.
At long last, the doctor sighed and wiped his brow with his forearm and shook his head, setting down what appeared to be just needle and thread. His words were indistinct, muffled and directed to my mother who was obscured by her position in the room. The doctor nodded, and with the nurse, set about cleaning the mess.
It took less time, it felt, for them to dress down my father and clean him, and convey him to the sofa where he would spend his last night clinging to life, never to awaken and say good bye. They passed me by, with nary a glance. Mayhap they somehow missed me, scrambling backwards from the door... But mother heard, and quietly she called me in and together we grieved.
Late into the night, we kneeled, keeping vigil, unto the wee hours of the morning and dawns first light filled the room. Never before had I been so tired nor so determined to see the sun rise fully on a new day. I would see my father make it to sun rise! I will!
But no... The gray predawn lightened, and his breath grew shallower, and shallower, becoming nigh undetectable as the first gold tint suggested itself to the walls of the drawing room.
A shaky breath, long, rattling, like air sucked through a straw partially submerged in water it seemed to drag on and on, chest rising and held. For just one, brief second, I though, maybe... Maybe he would make it after all. But his chest fell, exhaling, sensing in it the inertia of death.
I slumped into mother, and she leaned back into me and keened, wailing at the sun in anger and grief. How dare the sun rise on this dreadful day, coming seconds too late, denying the chance to see one last dawn with his wife and child?
