Mountains will Drown by teaforpsychos

And So He Died

She sat in the overlarge chair beside him in the emergency ward. Repeated arterial and venial lacerations, drug overdose, hara kiri, drowning. A comatose. The list went on but she could not bear to read it. Instead, she let the steady electronic beats that were his heartbeats sooth him.

"Have you ever known what it's like to drown?"

"No."

"Good. Pray that you never will."

And again, he left her to her idle watch in the white square room. She had counted the tiles, the volume left in his saline solution, the time as it ticked by. She observed everything, just as he once did and once told her to. Her idleness paid off when she heard a sudden constant, elongated electronic noise. Panicking, she rammed her hand into the emergency button just over his head as she tried to shake the man back to life. Her world became a white blur of lab coats and hospital walls, as they rushed past her armed with defibrillators and what not. Too late.

He was dead.

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Once upon a time, in a year that seemed so very long ago, for so it seemed to her, he was her saviour. He had come to her despite his oddness and strange methods of comforting others. She leaned heavily on him for support, like a cripple to a crutch, an old man to his cane. And like a good support, he held her up.

''Girl, get up off that street.''

''Why? Why should you care what it is I do?''

''Good point.'' And so he walked away.

Glancing up at his retreating figure, she huffed. Like a lost child, she followed him.

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A long time ago, he drove her home. And in one instant as the lightning flashed, she realised that she never did lean on him. He, who became her pillar of strength, never was her strength, but rather her burden.

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She frowned at him. She hated that look on his face. The proud, untouchable, reserved façade he always put up. For such an expressive man, his face held so little emotion.

"What are you thinking about now?"

"Nothing."

"Liar. You can't lie to me anymore."

"Why do you want to know?"

"Good point."

He was always such an infuriating man. Enough to push her to her limit and make her walk away.

"Have you ever watched a person drown?"

She paused. "No."

"Notice, when you do, how they will try to hold what little oxygen they can by not crying out. By holding it in."

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At one point in time, mountains will become pebbles and then granules of sand. Some break down a lot faster than others, just like him. He lived to work, and worked to live. He did nothing but work, and other necessities. She watched him and his short-lived 'contentment' that seemed to last less time than a dying mans last wheezing breath. And yet, she stood in the shadows, or rather his, waiting for him. Watching him. Eventually, she moved in with him, not trusting him to stay alive for longer than a blink of an eye without her. Even then, she was helpless. She could do nothing for him.

Repeated arterial and venial lacerations, drug overdose, hara kiri, drowning.

Thus, she found herself in the emergency ward, dwarfed by a chair.