ALONE By Will Mayo

The room is built of concrete blocks, laid over with the gaudiest of tile. Men and women dressed all in white, parade the corners, some with hypodermic needles and stethoscopes, others with strange-speaking tongues.

The bed itself is in the center of the room. Laid over with white sheets stained with yellow and brown, the best that can be said of the man who lies there is that he stays still; he does not move in habitual dance like the others.

You would think it would take an effort to remain this still; so still that not even all the devils raising muster could bring him from his sleep. But, rather, he lies there in seemingly the most tranquil of sleeps; his eyelids not even twitching as he lies there. Yet only a fool would call this paradise.

Now and then, a nurse will come by, past the writhing dancers, and check all the tubes running throughout his body for minimal sustenance. Either that or inject a needle into one of the bulging veins off his thin, frail arms, bolted down to the bed so that they don’t turn inwards. She assumes nothing.

The doctors themselves no longer come by, having long since given up all semblance of hope. “No counseling fit for the dead,” they say whenever the nurse asks them. If only they knew.

He listens to their every speech, wishes to smile if the muscles will allow it. Much in the manner of an old dog that has at last learned a new trick, he has fooled them all. Or so he thinks.

Behind the thin veil of muscles that have gone to atrophy and breathing that has long since ceased to be noticeable, he dreams. He is on a high plain, all green with wild grass and an occasional bush or tree, as the wind blows its fierce racket through the cloudy air. There is a feeling of desolation here, one which only he could take pleasure in.

And he is alone, away from all the wild dancers and scowling doctors of the place he has grown to love and hate at much the same time. It gives him a feeling of exhilaration to be so alone, and for him not to have to move to get to where he is. “Like magic,” he says to himself, “this stuff of dreams.”

But just as he has muttered these words to himself, a figure appears out of the mists of the high plain. Skeptical and bemused at having his aloneness invaded, he is still somewhat interested as he watches her appear. A familiar sight, she is in a red cardigan sweater, old-style khaki pants, and an Eton jacket that does not hide her beauty. Her hair is long and flows about her face to her shoulders in a Valentine shape. As she speaks, he can still hear the feel of Old Boston come down to countenance itself in the South.

“I’m sorry, James,” she says, with a slight hurt look in both her face and voice. “I never should have made fun of you. It was the worse of times--for both of us.” He listens to her carefully, can almost feel the old stones of Johns Hopkins beneath his feet, but, no, he must stay in this dream, no other. A tear runs down his ragged cheek, if only in the winds of the plain, not the white-draped hospital room.

Her words -- Catherine’s words -- bring back memories of an intimate moment, best left to silence and reflection of the flesh; not laughter down the halls of the fraternity.

Finally, as if in some obscure rhythm, his arms herein cloaked in the old-school tweed as well as the mist, come up just as hers do. He walks towards her just as she walks towards him. There is a frantic tumbling in the wind, just to reach one another’s arms; the ultimate challenge to his aloneness, the dependence of self.

But it is, he realizes once more, just a dream. The wind howls one last time, and he tries to ease out a scream, as he hears again, behind blinded eyes, the wild dancers of the room. It comes out as breath just a bit more raspy, a breath that only the nurse can hear. His skin, his bones, they do not move.

“I think he needs to be alone a while,” the nurse says, as she ushers the long bed away. “This is getting to be too much attention for him.” The doctor orders one more shot.