Excerpt: Ending the Beginning

The leaves were falling. On the gentle breeze, they performed their ballet, choreographed by fate. Yellow held brown while red and orange pirouetted to their side. Then partners changed- brown was now spinning with orange in what seemed like a forever spiral. Yellow wafted to the right with red close behind. Their silent dance coming to an abrupt end in a pile of leaves below the window, out of sight.

Unlike the leaves, I didn’t want to move. I wanted time to stop, move backward even. Maybe if I stayed here, quietly, without moving, I could command time to reverse course. I closed my eyes and created a picture in my mind of the wall clock across the room. I focused on the hands, willing them to move backward.

For what seemed like eternity, I tried my best. In my mind, I had succeeded in stopping the clock. In reality, about five minutes had passed. Time had defeated me, but I had lost a much larger battle.

I swung my legs around so that they dangled off the side of the bed. It was time. The battle was lost. Time for me to concede. I picked up the phone and dialed the numbers that I had come to know by touch.

“Hello, this is Stacey,” came the voice on the phone.

“Morning, Stacey. It’s Mr. Owens in room 4C.” I couldn’t say much more than that, my voice cracking and my eyes welling with tears.

She knew what the call was about. “We’ll be right there, Mr. Owens.”

I placed the phone back in its cradle. Making the call took everything out of me. I lay back down, this time with my back to the window. I watched to make sure that my assessment was correct. Even with tears streaming down my face, I could tell. I had felt it in my soul.

He was gone.