Monday, November 17, 2008

facebook

No. No. No. Not Skype. Facebook. He touches his face. He paws at it with his one hand. His face is bruised from the fall but he pokes at the blue and blackened skin with a harsh finger.

"What? I don't know. I don't know."

He pushes the laptop away an she catches it in a slide from the bed. The nice nurse. The helpful nurse. The pretty nurse who says "fuck you then," snaps the laptop shut and then walks away with it. He holds his face in his hand. His shoulders tremble. There is an awkward heaving of his shoulders. Evan is suddenly aware of the other beds. The pause as other patients turn in his direction and watch him cry.

"Fuck you then." he tells them, but his voice is a jumble of syllables buried under his heaving breath and the small ugly sobs that he has little control over.

'I checked the obituaries from the day you went quiet'

Her unread message winking somewhere on the internet. He can feel it there but he has no access to it, no way to contact her at all.

'It's morbid, I know, but I checked to see if there was a death notice there. And I thought about if you had died, that I would never know perhaps. After months of speaking every day I wouldn't know. I don't even have your phone number. You are my imaginary friend and if you died I would not be able to join in the grieving.'

His unspoken replies. Suddenly it seemed quite important. The problem of her unread messages swelled to giant proportions.

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