Journey's end

“I was going to call,” she says.

I speak a silence filled with unsaid words.

Her eyes flit about the room, taking everything and nothing in. The walls peel with the smell of chemical cleanings.

“I was going to say I love you,” she says brusquely. “But I thought, you already know that. Not much point in saying what you know, is there?”

I am dying, I think, or whisper, or say.

She pats my hand as though it were the paw of a dog. “I was going to talk about the weather, but it's not nice. All rain and chances of snow. It has to be above freezing to snow, you know. I read that somewhere.” And she laughs, the sound entirely devoid of a sob. “And here I am talking about it anyway.”

She reaches for the cigarettes in a pocket, drops her hand. “The doctors tell me you aren't in pain. They have you on drugs, so many drugs. You might not even know what I am saying.”

She looks at me, holding my gaze with hers; I see no tears, but a tenderness that confuses me.

“You never sent me letters; I almost didn't find you,” she says, soft, almost gentle. “But I did, and your eyes are so empty now, so very empty again.”

I want to ask how that can make her happy, what she could even mean, but my voice is a single breath, croaked, and she squeezes my hand and tells me she is here.

And somehow, despite everything, it seems right.