by D.C. Clemens
Chapter Twenty-Six
Resignation
On the third evening of our revisit with the sea, I was lying in my cot with the thought of Dayce’s birthday in mind. It would be in a couple of days and I was not sure whether to acknowledge it, and, if I did, how much I should. I was sure Dayce had no idea the day of his birth was close at hand, since I had not really kept him up to date with the calendar. I was leaning toward not acknowledging it at all when some heavy breathing entered the sleeping quarters to distract me from my conundrum. The distressed respirations came from Eloram. I had never before seen her so disturbed without the threat of immediate death looming over us.
“R-Roym,” She faltered and began catching her breath for another few seconds before continuing. “It’s Neves. Someone found him collapsed. They took him to the medical rooms.”
I was standing before she finished her explanation. My eyes went to Dayce, who was sleeping soundly, and I glanced back to Eloram, with a face now surely as pallid as hers.
Eloram understood and said, “I’ll stay with him.”
I grabbed my mother from the neighboring room, repeated what Eloram had told me, and she followed me as I ran through the hallways to find sick bay. My legs seemed to know the way to the area, even with my brain temporarily absent. I could only tell that my mother was not far behind going by the clangs of her steps on the metal floor. I soon came upon the section of the ship that housed the numerous rooms meant to hold the sick and injured, and that currently held the clarity to the obscurity dominating my outlook. Yitro was the first I met, who stood by the closed intensive care room. Delphnia was sitting on some nearby grated metal stairs, simultaneously wearing a face of agony, defeat, and affliction. Her tears flowed uncontrollably down her cheeks. Siena and Bervin were next to her attempting to console the distraught wife, but it was all in vain. She would not be held and she would not be comforted.
“What happened?” I found myself asking Yitro, hearing my question at the same time Yitro was.
“I think some soldiers found Neves unconscious outside,” he began whispering. “I don’t know what his condition is. They haven’t told us anything.”
At the end of his report, an old memory came rushing to the forefront of my mind. Liz was sitting next to me in the waiting room of the Hornstone hospital as I held on to Dayce, who was just a baby then. Delphnia and Orins were also there. We were nervously anticipating something. I was more anxious for her than for myself. A decrepit doctor calmly informed us that Neves had a minor heart attack and would be fine. Liz lowered her head with relief and I smiled. Neves was going to be fine. I was transferred back to the present. He had one before, could he have had another?
I was standing this time around, without Liz by my side or Dayce in my arms. Someone opened the intensive care entry. He was a military doctor about my age and his face was grim. He said something. His words came out languidly and deliberately, but no sound reached me yet. I saw Delphnia stagger back to the floor with a wretched face that I wished I had never seen. The doctor’s words finally encompassed me in their echo.
“He appears to have suffered a severe cardiac arrest. I’m sorry, we couldn’t save him.”
I heard Delphnia howl a piercing shriek, one that I wished I had never heard. The distraught woman stumbled to the doctor, and with a voice that fractured my ears, she cried out, “I want to see him!”
Adhering to her forlorn plea, the doctor stepped aside to let her pass. I involuntarily shadowed her, hearing other footsteps merge with mine. Only Yitro stayed behind. The room was small, but it did not feel crowded, even if there were more bodies inside than the room was meant for. The steel walls were dull, the lights too bright, and the air impenetrable. The only operating table nearly filled the whole room, and it was where I saw Neves had been laid. His shirt was torn from his chest and I saw the remorseful defibrillator on a small metallic tray table beside him. I exonerated the defibrillator for its unfulfilled duty as soon as I saw Neves’ face. The expression I was seeing was not one of someone who had experienced suffering or anguish in the final hectic beats of his heart. No, it was veiled in a sereneness that told me he was at peace, as if he was now living out a pleasant fantasy that he had waited his entire life to see. Delphnia’s tears stopped and her cries ceased for just a moment as she stayed staring over his tranquil face. She placed her quivering hand on his cooling cheek before outright embracing his lifeless body, setting her head on his chest, as if she wanted to hear the sound of his heart or feel the rising of his chest. Then she wept a thousand tears, and we all let her.
Slowly, I saw the room begin to dwindle away from my perceptions. There were no sweeping emotions that stirred up in me as everyone and everything became more distant and foggy, including myself. I could see as my progressively friendless figure became smaller and thinner until it too was wiped out from existence.
Ultimately reaching my eyes and ears was motion and sound. Dayce had just awoken. I was sitting in his bed with my eyes looking past the floor and my ears heeding Dayce’s rise from his pillow. For a moment, I attempted to recall just how it was I arrived there and what it was I said and did, but it was pursued without success. Fragments and jagged pieces were all I could gather, not that I necessarily tried all that hard to seek out those remembrances. My last clear memory was releasing Eloram of her charge and seeing her leave the room in search of Yitro, leaving us alone.
I could sense Dayce’s eyes on me, though my own still did not deviate from the leaden floor. He already knew. Of course, he could not know exactly what had transpired, but, undoubtedly, he knew. There was no point to pause or hesitate in telling him everything there was to tell. I looked at him when I had pronounced my last word. His eyes stayed watching me. Not a line altered from his countenance, not a tear formed in his dry eyes. I saw my own face in his, and I realized that my own reaction must have been not so different from what he displayed.
After a long while in reserve, Dayce finally asked, “Do you believe we turn into Spirits?”
“For a long time I didn’t think about things like that,” I said in a tone I had never utilized with him before; one of a sage. “Remember you told me you saw Mommy in your dream and she warned you about going to the ships? I saw her too, but like you said, she was… different.”
“Maybe you change a little when you become a Spirit,” he suggested introspectively.
“Maybe.”
I was standing on the top deck at daybreak, the sun’s swelling presence caressing the unbroken morning sky and being redirected back up by the unworried sea. I couldn’t help resent the scene, even though I knew I had no tangible reason for the feeling. The wind was gusting, but it was drowned out by the axioms of Neves’ memorial behind me. He was not a soldier, he did not save countless of lives countless of times, but that did not hinder the war cleric from bestowing him a warrior’s farewell ritual. Neves was cloaked in a black veil, at least, from afar that’s what I made myself believe. His body rested inside a dusky body bag. Placed alongside him were a few of his last remaining possessions, the ones he elected to carry with him to the end of the world. It was not very long ago when I was alongside Delphnia as she tenderly placed the pictures he had always carried with him. Each one was of his family. Our family. Before Delphnia parted with the last of her husband’s images forever, she would kiss them, each more earnestly than the last. Among them was a photograph of myself, one I had always hated. It was of me sitting alone on a park bench, looking far too serious for the occasion. I told him to replace it the first time I saw it, which was probably the precise reason why he hadn’t. Also with him was the watch that was always in his pocket no matter where he traveled. It was too old to be worn and too tarnished to work. He never wanted to get it fixed, for he had received it in that condition by his late father, the last link to his most recent ancestor.
Neves was lowered into the sea. As was custom for navel soldiers, there were sinking stones embedded in his casing
to quickly lower him to the innermost depths of the fathomless ocean. There he would rest forever and where it was hoped he would not be disturbed by the vile creatures swarming over the surface. I appreciated that at least we had this opportunity to say goodbye, knowing few others had even that luxury. I thought of Liz. I wished she were here to comfort her despondent mother, to give her last valediction of her father, to comfort Dayce like only she could, but in the end, it was mostly for me. I wanted her for me.
Just as the water swallowed the last remaining glimpse of the man I was lucky enough to describe as my father-in-law, I heard the maddening cries of Delphnia; cries signifying more than just the end of her bond with her soul mate, but quite possibly the end of every meaningful bond tethering her to this world. How much misery can one endure before the soul can be deemed defeated? I could tell her that she still had Dayce in her life, but how could I, when every time she looked at him it was as if she was looking into the eyes of her daughter and husband? I actually felt Delphnia’s vitality waning in front of me and I found myself not blaming the widow if she desired to lose it completely. This train of thought made me recall a period when I was reading about the wonders of nature, captivated with the minds of species that were not our own. I would think about how they would not allow their wills to break and never consider the option of suicide, even when under the greatest of stresses. An animal could witness its entire family or brethren being killed by a predator or calamity, and it would merely attempt to find a new mate and start again anew, only looking toward the future, not for themselves, but for their species. That’s what we had to do. We had to emulate the strength in primordial nature to overcome the most horrific tragedies suffered during modern sapience. Living for ourselves was no longer possible, but perhaps living for someone else’s future was still not too late to achieve.
The memorial was over. Siena approached me. Her eyes were vapid, so much so, I thought them colorless. She too was worried about Delphnia and she told me she would keep a close eye on her.
Idle hands are the gateway to an active mind, which was a dangerous thing living in a world such as ours. Our time in the ship was spent doing any job we could manage, as long as they did not require expertise of the mind or hand, though the sophisticated technology on the ship didn’t seem so sophisticated to me anymore. It was like we were children playing inside a plastic toy boat. In any case, any deed that could keep us busy was done, lest futility should grip a hold of us entirely.
To prepare for the inevitable, I agreed to allow Dayce to consort with the soldiers and have him learn how to operate and clean various weapons in their arsenal, knowing he would have to put his knowledge into practice one day. From time to time, I would sit and watch him, becoming absolutely entranced by the scene, literally watching him wipe away what little innocence he had left. I knew that every time he would raise a weapon and pull the trigger that it would be a failure on my part to protect him. Liz would hate me if she knew. She would loathe every part of me for accepting that her son needed to perform this now necessary affair.
Now and again the Arians would welcome personnel and refugees from various other ships in the area we cruised, so as to waste as little fuel as could be helped by emptying less critical ships. There were over two thousand passengers aboard, the vast majority of which were soldiers from all corps, divisions, ranks, and titles. The Arians obediently followed her convoy on a generally northeastern path, keeping a fair distance from the coast of the continent. We were far away enough away to feel safe from the vigilance of our enemies, but near enough to feel we were not completely deserting the land and its resources. We were often moving so slowly that I was sure the headwind was able to stall us, as though we were as susceptible as the mariners of old.
