The Way Down

golden melt
i know this is difficult to read since there are no punctuations in this story as there is no pause no stop no end when one is on the way down
i find myself sitting outside the intensive care unit where my father has been admitted since two days as he could no longer sustain the chemo for leukemia it is past mid night and i am undulating between deep sleep and wakefulness i see a giant blood pressure measuring instrument with its mercury oscillating wildly i look down and find it attached to my forearm and then the mercury shoots through the roof and spills all over the floor silver droplets of sheer poison collecting in a pool at the head of stairs
the duty doctor shakes me and tells me about the heart attack my father had fifteen minutes earlier and that he could not be revived wobbling pool of mercury retracts and shoots back through my nostrils straight to the smoldering brain white rage surges through me i scream at the doctor and shake him till his teeth rattle why couldn’t he just let me know before may be my father would have wanted to say something to me a few syllables a few words the white explosion ravages the intensive care unit the equipment and patients lie scattered
i meekly follow him and see the lifeless corpse that my life giver had become i see fear in the eyes of other patients they see their own fate reflected in him i become a mechanical bot just following what others tell me to do we must move the body it cannot remain here in this ward any more but where do i take him at this time of the night there is no mortuary in the hospital someone suggests that there is shed behind the parking lot i should get tons of ice and keep the body way down under the ice slabs till the morning i sit barefooted mounting a vigil by his side icy water percolates wetting my curled up toes and i smash the ice slabs to smithereens casting them far and wide reddened with my blood reaching up to the skies kicking up thunderstorms of erupting emotions i did not know existed i sat and waited for the morning bemoaning him under the dim bulb and not a whiff of wind
another place a month later i get a call there is a doctor on the other end asking me to permit amputation of my brother’s leg above the knee he has been in an accident and there is a chance of gangrene setting in i say yes and rush to catch the next available train they cannot wait for me to reach there is no flight and the train takes twelve hours at the hospital i see my brother talking describing the events with gusto most unlike him since he seldom spoke more than a few measured sentences i spend an hour listening to him he looks so relieved the doctor comes and beckons me to see the amputed leg i am not at all keen but he insists we walk corridors upon corridors of the big hospital till we come to a laboratory the leg lies in a bucket under a marble shelf feet up there it is he says it is repulsive i say but he takes me to an x-ray viewer says he took his chest x-ray prior to operation come and see it yourself look do you know what these roundels are in each lung these are cancer cannon balls a single cannon ball alone means a life expectancy of only one month he has nine of these we can’t even attempt to treat him till his leg heals i look at the leg i see my brother all the way down the marble shelf white rage brings down the hospital and nearby buildings the road is ripped up into ribbons and a bottomless pit opens up the magma i jump into the red hot lava and walk out utterly shaken to the core behind the doctor i do not know the way to my brother’s ward i do not know how to speak any more
another place another time sitting by riverside the sun setting at the other end sending molten gold our way through the half frozen waters our daughter playing in the play ground giggling away at nothing and my wife watching her all the gold flowing between them i click pictures of the river time stands still everything freezes the gold the looks the giggles all frozen in that speck of time i sink way down to the bottom of the river fish suck at my soles sea horses small big octopuses and sharks and whales pull out of my body black flat noodles of frustrating rage bit by bit i rise to surface leaving my demons way down as unknown fear surges through me i give my daughter and wife a longing stare huge hug and everything melts again gold flows through me too maybe i did not see its reflection before the river flows heavily with big chunks of ice carrying their own rainbows