Michael was barely conscious. He had the vaguest awareness of a rhythmic beeping from his bedside, the fuzzy outline of a few people surrounding him, and the smell of lemon scented cleaner. The only thing that was crystal clear to him, was the feeling of Sara’s hand in his. He knew every crease in that hand. The scar on her palm from grabbing an overheated teapot, the painted nails just long enough to peek over her fingertips, and the many wrinkles that had come from their long life together. Her hand felt hot in his. Not warm, but almost burning. He guessed it must’ve been because he himself was so cold. In spite of that heat he put all that he could into squeezing that hand back. It was a pitiful grip, but she returned it with enough pressure to hurt even through the fog of morphine and failing organs.
It was just her, he was fairly certain the other shapes he was seeing were doctors, orderlies, or nurses. He remembered his daughter Laura kissing his cheek before she went home to sleep. His son Vick had stopped by that morning, but only briefly as his grandson had only been born two weeks before and his wife needed all the help she could get. He’d been aware enough to be proud of him for making that choice, and he remembered the squeeze his son had given his shoulder before he’d left, and the slight shaking in his voice as he’d said goodbye.
It was just him and Sara, as it had been when they’d started their life together. He wanted more time. He deserved more time. He wanted to hold his grandson, walk his daughter down the aisle and, perhaps selfishly, he wanted to spend more lazy days with Sara. He wanted to wake up and start his coffee and her tea, sit together with her on their couch and just talk. Three years of retirement. That was all he’d gotten. The cancer had started to affect him the first year, the second year he’d gotten his diagnosis all too late, and his third had been him fighting for his life. He’d always told his kids not to expect life to be fair, but to do their best to make it fair for everyone they could. In that moment though, he cursed life’s unfairness. He wanted more time. He’d worked hard, he’d earned a couple decades of enjoying the fruits of his labor. He wanted to die as a hunched over ninety year old that could barely hear a damn thing and spent all day reading old scifi and watching history documentaries.
He felt his awareness start to fade again, as if it was being slowly enveloped by a rising tide. Soon the vague understanding of his surroundings was gone. He no longer heard the rhythmic beeping, saw blurred shapes, or smelled lemon. All that was left was his wife’s hand holding his. He knew she would be okay. She was strong, stronger than him. She had been his rock when their second son had died. When he’d been diagnosed she was the one who kept him from giving up. If she’d been the one who’d be dying, he’d be bereft, a useless burden, but she would be okay. She would live a long life, welcoming more of their grandchildren into the world. She would have good days again without him, and he was grateful for that.
He focused on the feeling of her hand. The heat of it, the strength of her grip. It was all that was left, there were no other thoughts or feelings left to him. Just that last piece of her that clung to him and that he clung back to, desperately. Then even that was gone.
Michael awoke in a sea of stars. Inky blue darkness surrounded him, and in front of him were a trillion miniscule points of light. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. He tried to hold up a hand, but saw nothing. He was a spirit without a vessel, floating without form. He started to feel a pull from behind him. A gravity that was slowly drawing him in. He looked back to see a sun behind him. A roaring ball made up of millions of those same points of light he saw in the distance. He let it draw him in at first, feeling the heat emanating from it, almost as if he still had skin on which to feel warmth. Warmth like what he’d felt from Sara’s hand.
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He started to fight against the pull. He pushed whatever he was still made of away from it, even as the gravity began to strengthen, and dragged him back more forcefully. He pushed harder, and started to break out of the pull. He wanted to live, wanted to have his life back. He moved toward a different light, a small mote that seemed to be idly drifting near him. The pull strengthened more as he moved away from it, but with his destination set he fought even harder to escape, to go anywhere that wasn’t the massive sun burning behind him. He was nearly there and he reached out, realizing he had a single hand floating in front of him. He grasped the little light.
Michael was in darkness again, but this time there were no lights to guide him. He felt.. off, closer to how he’d felt before he’d been floating in the sea of stars, but still somewhere between life and whatever that place had been. He could feel pressure building. As if there were walls around him that were closing in. He realized then that he had a body, but that everything was strange. Something was wrong and not just physically. He felt
The pressure continued to build and the walls kept closing in as he felt himself pushed headfirst toward something. It all felt familiar, somehow, but he wasn’t able to figure out why, he was too filled with a number of emotions that all felt too large for whatever it was he had become. He began to feel his head pushing against something. It felt solid at first, but after enough time it slowly began to give way. He could feel air on the top of his head. It felt… cold.
Soon more of his head was cold, and very shortly after that, all of him was cold. He could hear people talking in an equal mixture of excited and concerned voices. He didn’t recognize the voices, but his body seemed to. He couldn’t tell what they were saying, but he couldn’t tell if it was because everything was muffled or they were speaking some language he didn’t understand. The sensation of the cold, his own confusion, and the feelings that all seemed to be exploding out of him, made him scream.
He heard some laughter, and the concerned voices seemed to all be replaced with excited ones. He could feel warm hands on him, and was swiftly wrapped in a soft fabric that helped against the cold, but seemed harsh against his skin in spite of its softness. As if he had a sunburn.
He felt himself being moved toward a smell that was somehow familiar to him, but was stopped and handed instead to someone else. These hands were not gentle. They handled him roughly and placed him on a hard table. He could see the vague outline of a person bent over him, looking down at his small form. He could feel the outline staring not just at him, but into him, as if it was reading him like a book. Michael continued screaming, finding that he didn’t have any other option and unable to fully gather anything resembling coherent thought.
He saw the vague outline standing above him, let out a long sigh and shook his head.
He couldn’t understand what anyone was saying, but he recognized what those screams meant. They were of a man and woman. Their cries were a mix of anguish and disbelief as loud as they could be. They were the same cries he and Sara had let out when they’d found out their son had died.
The intense feeling of wrongness struck him again. The feeling that he’d done something terrible that he hadn’t fully understood. He reacted the only way he could. He kept crying.
The man that had been staring at him, picked up his small form and began moving. The cries continued behind him, the terrible wails of a family mourning the death of a child, as they walked through the threshold. The air that had been cold grew even colder, as the man with the rough hands carried his swaddled form into the night. He could hear their cries long after the home he’d been reborn in had fallen out of earshot. He would be hearing them for the rest of his new life.
The man holding him did not hold him close to his chest, nor did he rock him or say a single word. He offered no comfort, and Michael could feel somehow, that he deserved it.