Lydia layed, slowly rubbing her hand along the metal post connected to her deathbed, the sensation in her palm used to, many weeks ago, detract a little of the pain she endured
The pain had been slowly decreasing for some time since she had that sit down chat with Doctor McMorrison, a sit down she thought that marked the beginning of the final chapter of her life The Life Of Lydia was to officially start to end here
"There isn’t much we can do at this stage Mrs Lane but there are things that can make it…"
He considered, he woudln’t want to hear what she was about to hear, but then again he’d do anything in his power to avoid her situation entirely,
"Easier"
The pale woman took a good look into his eyes, as if they were and perhaps they are, the barrel of a revolver that was today to finally pull the trigger on her, she held a powerful stare, one through his eyes and into his mind, a very large indeed go fuck yourself of a stare
She spoke, "You’re saying nothing can be done at all?"
The man pretended to consider, another performance that Lydia’s deep brown eyes shot directly out of the sky
"We will do what we can, i can promise you that."
The cold metal feeling brought her to her childhood, the steel legs of ancient wooden desks, the handrails attached atop the seats on a long school bus trip, the thought made her both happy and instantly sad, thoughts of her youth reminded her almost immediately of how severely she wasted it
How she sat down and took it when she should have stood up and fought and the times she stood her ground when the overall victory of the battle, meant absolutely nothing at all, Her bed was positioned next to a window, a window a shade of white almost as pale as her skin, the same sanitised boring colour as the rest of this place, outside of the window would show you the sprawling city of Sydney
But before that what would catch your eye is St Agatha’s Kindergarten, Lydia thought it incredibly ironic to put an aged care facility such as the one she now permanently resided, opposed a kindergarten, one bastion of the end of your life and yet another of only the beginning
She began to ponder which came first, the eternal question chicken or egg?, then she decided it didnt really matter anyway, she reached her thin right arm up towards the drawstring of her curtains, considered for a moment, and instead aimed slightly lower, for the remote that controlled the angle of her bed
She adjusted the bed, the cold metallic nature of it seeming more of a curse than a blessing at this point, and peaked out over the boring windowsill
This would be the beginning of what was to be a long running tradition for Lydia, she cared not for the programs that they show on the television, it was free to air so it was mostly Murdoch bullshit she’d figured, but what did interest her was life
A woman as close to the end of the lifestick as you could possibly come had the utmost ironic interest of all, Life was a see-saw she thought, she had been in the air for far too long it was now her time to come down and give someone else a turn
But she wasn’t ready, she thought that the number of people in the world truly prepared for death, not that bullshit religious prepared for death, she meant the real thing, was akin to the number of people in the world that could read minds, in other words none
But she was almost there, she hadn’t anything to live for and figured thats the closest you can get to being okay with dying, she’d been given the curse of a long healthy life until ofcourse a few months ago when diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, Why cant it be one or the other she wondered, and had outlived anything worth giving a single fuck about
In many years past, she was a compassionate politically minded activist who would fight for justice over the inequalities of her country, but she had grown too tired for fighting a long time ago, and she thought the world had been doomed many a moon before that as well
“Petty squabbles and the world is ending” she mumbled to herself, confident that she was alone, all the terminal patients become permanently alone eventually, she thought about the children in the playgrounds that she watched over with loving eyes, the arguments they would have, the meaningless love and hatred and pure emotion of childhood rushing through their veins
Then she considered the world these children were destined to grow up into, if they made it as far into their life voyages as she had, 89 years so far, they would find a world much worse than the one that she was forced to be leaving, ushered out like an overconfident teenager many moons away from being proper being asked for his ID
She felt tired, the bell at St Agatha’s signalled the end of lunch and the beginning of a nap period, Lydia thought shed join them.