Torn

For the brave ones,

Molly & Annie Philbrick

The Pinnacle Conklin, Colorado

He awakens with no memory of who he is, or how old he is, or why he should be in this palatial chamber. No, not so much a chamber as a grand hall, with one distant wall formed entirely of high, soaring glass, beyond which magnificent mountains rise from a stark landscape.

Men have gathered at his bedside. Doctors? Attendants? No, they are more like acolytes, for their eyes defer to him in supplication. Is he a prince? A king? A movie star?

He feels like a movie star. The enormous, glass-walled space, with its high curved ceiling melded into shadows, it has the look of a set, something designed for film. But if he’s a movie star—the star of this scene, surely—why can’t he recall his lines? Where have all the words gone?

“Good morning, sir,” says one of the acolytes, looming over the bed. A homely gnome of a man who looks vaguely familiar. “How are you feeling today?”

He searches for the words, wanting to respond, but the only thing readily available is one simple syllable.

“Ha,” he says, suddenly aware of the dryness in his mouth, a thickness in his throat that makes it hard to swallow.

“Bring water!”

A straw appears. He refuses, taking direction from his body, an instinctive recoiling from anything that must pass his lips. And then his mind catches up, slowly unfolding in all its complexity, and with a shudder he remembers that someone is trying to poison him. It is poison that thickens his throat and slows his mind. Poison that traps him in this bed.

He struggles but the poison has made him weak. A needle slips into a vein and the poison drips into him. A subtle, insidious, undetectable toxin that seeps into the cells of his brain, interfering with synaptic response. The bag appears to be harmless saline solution, but it cannot be. The notion that he’s being slowly poisoned is something that he has deduced, rather than proved. The theory is highly probable because it’s the only explanation for his condition: under no other circumstance would men like this—mere drones attending the queen—dare to treat him in this fashion. Unless they had betrayed him.

The drone with the homely face dares to speak for him, as if interpreting the words that clot in his throat.

“Stand clear. He wishes to see the mountains.”

He has issued no such command—what does he care of mountains?—and then the rising sun strikes the peaks in just such a way, as if etching them into the sky, that his labored breathing catches. He knows it is only reflected light glancing off stone, ever so briefly imprinted on his retinas, but the image has the power to bring tears to his eyes.

He remembers, then. For a fleeting moment he regains a sense of who he is. Not a king, exactly, and certainly nothing as insignificant as a mere movie star. He is like the mountain and these lesser beings seek to erode him. They scratch and fuss and block him from the light. They drip their pathetic poisons like rain upon the mountain and like the mountain he will prevail, he will survive, in the most fundamental way, long after they are gone and forgotten.

The drone looks away, as if aware of the greater man’s thoughts and ashamed for his own. He glances at an expensive wristwatch, feigning patience, and when the sunrise ceases to color the mountains he calls for a screen to be drawn around the bed.

Nurses attend to him, changing his catheter, evacuating his bowels. Sponging him down, patting him dry, as if he was some mewling infant and not…whatever he is. He struggles to hold a sense of self. Who is he? Who? A great man in a glass room, beset by lesser species, suffering various indignities. Indignities soon forgotten, absorbed by the scent of baby powder. Beyond that he does not recall.

Nothing holds, nothing stays.

Drip, drip, drip.

“Sir? Your wife is here. Would you like to see her?”

With great effort, fighting up through the silky gauze that swathes his mind, he musters a single “Ha.”

A woman who claims to be his wife floats into view, and if he could laugh, he would. Because it is beyond a bad joke. The woman is old enough to be his mother. Regal, beautifully preserved, expensively coiffed, and obviously very wealthy. But old.

As if he would marry a woman like that! He finds the notion so absurd that it’s hard to hold her words in his mind and sort them into something meaningful.

“Arthur? Can you hear me, darling? Blink if you can understand. I’ve done exactly what you requested. What you spelled out months ago. I followed your instructions precisely, do you understand?” She studies him, then announces triumphantly to the others, “He blinks! He understands!”

He understands only that she must be an elaborate fraud. An aging actress contracted to play a role. She may be in league with the fawning acolyte. Whatever she is, whatever her motives, he cannot trust anything she says.

“You have the best doctors, my darling. The very best in the world. We are not giving up on you, do you understand?” She leans in close, wafting the scent of lilies, and whispers words meant only for him. “You can’t die, Arthur. Not now, not ever. Whatever happens, you must come back to us. One way or another, you must live forever.”