the repetitive passing

They enter the room and exchange false pleasantries. They don’t stay for long. They never do. Why would they? The acrid stench of death tastes of rancid pork; a forgotten, Asda’s ‘scrumptious pork and apple cider stew’ chilled meal-for-one lies lurking in the corner of the fridge like a lynx– it’s frightening; the visitors fear their own fate. The undeniable and unavoidable fact I will soon be dead circulates in the air and wraps around the three visitors that still have the grace or the guts to watch me perish.

Sat around my deathbed in the Pilgrim’s Hospice is my mum… my dad … Kathy, my ex-wife.

Kathy is only here out of guilt: she filed for divorce two months before I was diagnosed. She can no longer blame me for my mood swings and short temper — I mean, how could you blame a dying person for anything? –so instead, she blames herself: she visits when she can to atone for her perceived sins.

As they smile at me with their fixed, artificial emoticon grins and gently touch my decrepit hand, I am suddenly made very aware of the fact that today, I will die.

“Mum, dad –”

A vicious coughing fit engulfs me, and for 86 seconds I can only spew up what little there is left of my lungs. Blood and mucus spray the white sheets and Kathy’s glasses; my visitors shrink away instinctively, quickly correcting themselves when realising their reaction. They are trying not to hurt my feelings.

When the coughing stops, I give my three visitors a frail smile. They look stunned and I try to raise my hand to my mum, but it won’t respond — my fit has left me weak.

I see tears welling in Kathy’s eyes and she tries to blink them away but instead, the movement forces them out and they spill over and run down her cheeks. She takes my hand in hers.

But I can’t feel it.

I can’t feel her small hands around mine and I panic. Is this another side-effect of the all the drugs?

“Kathy, I need a nurse.”

She doesn’t answer.

‘Kathy,’ I say and, weak as I am, a spasm of annoyance flits through me that Kathy has made me repeat myself. She knows it tires me to talk. But she still doesn’t acknowledge me. It’s as though I haven’t said anything at all. I clear my throat, which, surprisingly after my coughing fit, doesn’t hurt.

Dad is holding Mum in his arms. They don’t look up when I make a noise.

I try to squeeze Kathy’s hand but I don’t make contact — my fingers go straight through her hand. Adrenaline kicks in as I peer down at my hand and watch, with astonished horror, as my hand fails to grasp Kathy’s; it’s like she is not there. I roll off the list of drugs I take — which one has caused me to hallucinate?

Mum’s sniffles turn into a long, loud cry. Her wails sound strange to me — her voice is tinny as though someone has turned the treble up too high on a stereo.

A nurse with a blurred face enters the room. She moves over to me and shines a torch in my eyes.

They don’t react.

She squeezes my wrists for a pulse.

But there isn’t one.

“I’m so sorry,” she says to the visitors, “it was quick in the end and he didn’t suffer.”