Krikett
Months and years battling an incurable illness can wear down even the most resilient of souls, Edward Krikett thought as the clock on the wall seemed to tick the longest seconds of his life. In other times, his imposing stature and charisma had granted him an aura of admiration. He had been a strong man, even in moments of adversity, but now... now not even an echo of that man remained. He couldn't even remember the last time he had the courage to look at himself in the mirror. Perhaps because he feared facing the image of a face he would barely recognize. He preferred to preserve in his memory that version of himself that still looked vibrant and full of life.
He knew, with implacable certainty, that his time was running out. He felt it in the stinging pain that coursed through his body like a cruel whisper, in the fragility of his trembling hands, in the way his breathing grew heavier with each dawn. It was like a flame slowly consuming itself, sputtering in its last flickers before extinguishing forever. But even those weak flickers he held onto stubbornly, like a man clinging to a sinking boat, unable to accept that the dark ocean would eventually swallow him.
There were so many things he should have done and never dared. There was always something holding him back. Fear, perhaps. Fear of failing, fear of not measuring up, fear of confronting the emptiness that had accompanied him even in the brightest days of his life.
It was difficult to admit that a man his age, a man who had lived so much, could still feel fear. And yet, fear had been there, constant, like a shadow that never disappeared. The last few years he had simply dedicated to enduring the pain: the physical, which consumed him day by day, and the other, deeper, more corrosive... the pain of guilt. A guilt he considered his just penance for the mistakes he could never repair, for the people he had pushed away from his life.
Sitting in that hospital bed, cold as an anticipated coffin, Krikett took a photograph from the pocket of his worn hospital gown. He held it with trembling hands, his pale, bony skin contrasting with the faded colors of the image. A woman with long black hair smiled sweetly, embracing a girl of about ten years old. Both looked so happy, so full of life, that the contrast with the aseptic, oppressive room seemed almost grotesque.
He slid a finger over the photograph, carefully tracing the contours of the woman's face. His touch was like that of a specter, fragile and devoid of warmth.
"There is no forgiveness for people like me..." he whispered in a broken voice that barely rose above the hum of the medical machines. "This train has no platform to stop at... even as the stations pass, nothing changes this solitude."
Those words were not his own. They were the last lines of a book written by his most brilliant student, the same one who appeared in his life when everything began to crumble. The irony struck him hard: now that his existence was definitively falling apart, he had discovered another brilliant talent, like her. Life is cruel until the very end, he thought, letting out a bitter smile that barely formed on his cracked lips.
His tired eyes rested on the door of his room. He looked at it with longing, almost desperation, as if it would suddenly open and his sentence to solitude could end. Today, perhaps... I feel it in my bones, he thought with the last thread of hope he dared to harbor.
But the minutes passed, and the door remained closed.