Bodies – Chapter 2: Relating & Unrelated

This is the second installment of a novel I’m writing called Bodies. You can read chapter one here. Feel free to comment. This is a work in progress and any insights could be helpful.

– – – – –

Silvie had begun to read and stopped twice now. The first time her voice faded off as she stared at the girl and wondered. The second time she just lost interest and desire to recite the written words she was not sure the girl could hear.

“You love torturing yourself, don’t you?” Silvie jumped and spun around. Phil was leaning in the doorway, arms crossed around a clipboard.

“No,” Silvie snapped, “I’m just curious.”

Phil put the clipboard down on an end table and sat in the chair next to Silvie’s as if her anger was an invitation, “Do you expect her to wake up and give you answers? She’ll likely never come out of it, and even if she did, she’s likely moderately to severely brain damaged. Who knows if she’ll be able communicate or remember anything.”

“Still,” Silvie held her ground, “I’m allowed to visit her and wonder.”

“Yeah, of course, I never said you weren’t!”

“Really?” sarcasm crept into Silvie’s voice, “I talked to Bonnie.”

“I was just trying to protect you, Silvie,” Phil’s smile was as soft as his voice, “I’ve come to care about you quite a bit.”

“Well, next time you care about me so much that you want to control me, save yourself the effort,” Silvie blurted bitterly. She grabbed her book and shoved it into messenger bag, getting up to leave.

“Hey!” Phil grabbed her arm, and Silvie pulled her arm away forcefully, “What the hell’s gotten into you?”

Silvie rolled her eyes, and any guilt she felt about snapping was rushed away by righteous anger, “Feminism,” she explained as she stormed out the door.

Silvie supposed Phil would get over his ‘caring’ and stop speaking to her, which made her anger drop down into sadness as the elevator made its way to the ground floor.

“Good job, Silvie. You managed to loose a friend to defend your relationship with a girl in a coma.”

“He’s an asshole,” she explained to no one in particular as the elevator jerked and came to a halt, “Macho. Definatly not my type.”

Her actions properly rationalized, she made her way into the crisp late afternoon and down the steps wondering if Andorra’s was open.

* * *

“Man, I just don’t get women,” Phil was off work and sitting in a local pub called Bernies with his friend Matt. Phil knew the man would have nothing more sage than that to say, but it felt good telling someone his frustrations regardless.

“How can you say that?” Phil cracked open a peanut, “You’re married.”

“I thought that was the first clue that I don’t have any good advice,” Matt chuckled and leaned back in his barstool, precariously balancing with his foot on the bar.

“Don’t worry, my man, you’re off the hook. I don’t need advice, just to blow off some steam.”

“We could always go to the strip joint,” grinned Matt devilishly. Phil snorted, “Yeah, well, I wasn’t being serious anyways. Jenny would divorce me for less.”

“How would she even know?” Phil’s mouth was full of peanuts. He washed them down with his beer.

“That is one of the mysteries of the universe, Phil. She just would.”

“Huh,” Phil’s eyes wandered to the flat screen TV across the room.

“Look,” said Matt rubbing his eyes, “If you like her, just keep at it. Women are moody. Maybe she’s on the rag.”

“How philosophical of you,” Phil’s eyes never left the screen. It was a commercial for something that made people dance and he was trying to guess what it was before the commercial was over.

“Har-dee-har. No, we leave the tough thinking to you, Phil. That’s why your mom named you that. Phil the philosophical,” Matt laughed at his own joke.

“Yeah? Well, you know what your mom calls me?”

“Phht. I gotta take a leak,” Matt pulled himself out of his leaning bar-stool position by grabbing the bar and slammed down the rest of his beer before heading to the men’s room.

Phil in truth felt a bit better, but he also didn’t want to think about it anymore. Everything he did or said to Silvie was always wrong. He tried to be sensitive and caring and it somehow came off as manipulative.

Maybe I’m trying to hard with the touchy-feely approach. Maybe I should just try the classics: flowers, chocolate, dinner… If Silvie wants to make herself miserable, let her do it and get over it herself.

It’s not my problem.

Bodies – Chapter 1: Life and Death

I saw The Bodies exhibit today, visiting New York City. It was inspirational in a lot of ways.

– – – – –

I could only stare at her as she lay somewhere between life and death. The green light conducted a series of continuous, monotonous pings which told that technically she was with the living. Seeing the pallid, paper skin, my eyes told me otherwise. A poor, trapped soul in a lifeless husk. I imagined for a second what it would be like to be trapped in that cold prison. I shivered involuntarily, empathic pity welling through me. My god, how could they let her stay like that…

* * *

“Are you saying that you support pulling the plug on patients?” inquired Phil, one of the med students from the neighboring university, both mortified and intrigued. I sighed. I wasn’t what I meant, but I guess it was true. Typical. How could I expect to get through to a third year med student about empathy?

“Just forget I ever said anything,” I said with a tinge of annoyance, but mostly disappointment.

“Hey, whatever Silvie, just trying to start up a conversation,” replied Phil defensively. I knew he didn’t understand what he’d said wrong, but I let it go. I really didn’t expect him understand feeling the emotions of people, or lack there of in the case of the girl. The sweet, cherry blossom teenage girl with the slight frame and speckled pallid skin, with the dark hair that reminded me of innocence gone with adolescent promiscuity. Angelic little demon of living death, whatever could possess your soul to stay nestled in your inactive frame?

“What is the case with that girl,” I ventured curiously, “Why doesn’t her family pull the plug? What happened to her?”

“Hm,” Phil smiled slightly, “Well, that’s the funny thing. There is no plug to pull. She just stays like that. Even when we found her she should have been dead from dehydration, but she wasn’t. She still clung on somehow. Of course, they do have her on an IV, but to tell you the truth, I’m not sure she needs it. And as for her family,” Phil swallowed and grinned, “there’s only an older brother, and he’s either just not stepping forward, or he’s long dead.”

I couldn’t help but wonder what gave people like that the thrill in telling people’s tragic tales like fairy tale fiction. Emotions, Phil wouldn’t understand, but a girl who could live without food or water, that was certainly the type of thing Phil would believe. But, I didn’t say anything. Again, I knew that it would be useless arguing the point with Phil, so I told him goodbye and headed down the steps outside the hospital I regularly volunteered at.

And with the steps away from the distance fading hospital I found that my thoughts of the girl did not fade.

* * *

So, this is the new store Karen was telling about, I thought. It looked quaint enough, not the occultish looking place I was expecting- probably becuase it was in the mall. Somehow the lack of scary mysticism made me happy. The place was simply called “Andorra’s”. I opened the ringing door and stepped right in. The inside was almost as simple as the out. That actually almost made it more eerie than the scary occult shoppes of back-water Lassington and industrious, smog-ridden Worner.

Natural wood walls with stained shelves, neatly arraged with bottles and books, a display of handipped candles, tools tucked away on either side of the room on the floor, and a cushioned, round seat at the back wall under a blank wall surrounded by neat piles of books lay half cluttered about the store. A white-haired woman sat crossleged. She put down the book she was reading and smiled. You could tell her personality was a smiling one. She glowed with a white, gold, and silver laced aura. There was a quiet confidence about her with wisdom in those faint blue eyes.

I felt like I had just gone home.

* * *

“Why don’t you go home, Silvie. You seem like you could use some rest,” said Bonnie, one of the nurses. She didn’t reprimand, but seemed genuinely concerned. Her round face smiled in a serene way that often soothed patients. She had caught me staring off again while I was supposed to be busily handing out fruit cups and fruit-flavored gelatin.

“Oh, I’m fine. I’m just a bit distracted,” I said moving off down to the next patient.

“Uh, huh,” she stood in front of me blocking me with her wide frame and crossed arms, attitude demanding an explanation. I slid the metal tray down onto the foot of an unoccupied bed and sat next to it. I knew Bonnie thought it was her job to cure the ills of all the world, patients and people alike.

“Do you know the girl in room 358? The one they found in a coma?”

“Why, yes,” Bonnie jiggled in recollection, bringing her hand to her face, “You were with her last week. Phil mentioned that I shouldn’t put you with her again.”

“Oh, did he?” I asked suddenly angry.

“He was just concerned about you, is all. He said seeing her made you really upset.”

That was defiantly Phil’s prescription for emotions. If something made you feel something other than happy, it was best to cut it off.

“It looks like he was right,” Bonnie continued, “I can understand that. I read to her on my breaks. It’s tragic. They just don’t know what happened to her and there’s no one to come forward and shed light on the situation. I know there are lonely people in this world, but still, not even a friend or coworker has come to see her.”

“Do they know who she is?”

Bonnie sat next to me, shifting the tray of gelatin and making it wobble, “No. No, they don’t. There’s no clue on her body either. She wasn’t beaten or anything.”

“Then why would she go into a coma?”

“Emotional trauma is the doctor’s best guess,” Bonnie shook her head, “It’s amazing what the mind can do to the body.”

We sat there on the bed together a moment thinking. Bonnie’s pager beeped. She went to dash off but gave me one last smile,

“Why don’t you go on over and see her, Silvie? Read to her or something.”

– – – – –

Reading is good for you I hear. Goodnight, people.