Never Too Late to Live

The darkness under his grandfather’s eyes reminded the youngster of a stormy night. It was just about as ominous as the hospital room they were in – two occupied beds with a curtain between them. Soft breathing and occasional beeps from machines came and went.

The boy's grandfather lay stretched out with an IV attached to his arms with a thin sheet pulled over him. In a chair no less than a foot away from the left-side of the bed, the youngster smelled death in the air. He was sure this would be the final day, and he would be the only one to witness it.

Black gave way to the whites of the grandfather’s eyes. The old man first stared blankly without focusing on anything. Then he blinked a few more times and shifted his eyes toward his grandson. He hadn’t spoken a single word the entire week nor had he made so much as a conscious movement either.

But in the next moment, the grandfather sat straight up. The youngster nearly jumped out of his chair. The supposed soon-to-be corpse sat there with a back as erect as a flag pole.

“Grandpa? Are you okay?” asked the youngster with a hint of timidity ringing in his voice.

His mouth made no movement to answer.

“Grandpa?”

The grandfather reached his arms up and arched his back and let out an audible gasp of relief.

“Wasn’t sure if I’d be able to stretch one last time again,” said the grandfather with the clear articulation of a man who could not have been on his deathbed.

“Grandpa, please don’t die today. The doctor said we were coming down to the final days.”

“Ah, perfect you’re already ahead of what I have to say,” said the grandfather scratching the wisps of thinning hair atop his head. “It’s time we venture out before I run out of it.” The grandfather paused. “You know for the past 40 years, I don’t think I did a whole lot of living. Now’s the time.”

“What will I do when you’re gone?” asked the youngster. He had a look of concern on his face on the verge of tears.

The grandfather stuck one foot out of the sheets and then another. He was a bit shaky, but he managed to stand one his two feet. “The inevitable will happen to us all, but we mustn’t think about that now,” the grandpa said to the wide eyes of his visitor. “Can you hand me my cane?”

The youngster did not seem to hear his grandfather. So the grandfather reached for it, and then proceeded to walk towards the exit. There was a wide grin spread across the wrinkled face.

The youth was blocking the old man’s way to leave. But the grandfather, just walked around him and stated, “If you try to stop me you’ll only be ruining my happiness near the end of my life and you wouldn’t want that, now would you?”

The boy remained frozen in his chair. And the grandfather passed through the door, took a wide gulp of air, and took two steps before bumping into the nurse named Olga. Olga did not look surprised upon seeing the old man. Instead, the way her face folded into itself, she looked rather displeased. The grandfather gave her a wink, and told her quite directly to “Fuck off.”

The grandfather had never cussed a word in his life. In fact, the old man had never been anything but the utmost polite. While crumpling to the floor after his second heart attack, he even uttered the words, “Can you please take me to the doctor? I think it’s rather urgent” to his own daughter.

Olga was a heavy set woman with a bun tightly connected to the top of her head. Not one piece of hair strayed outside that bun. Never. Her scrubs were always ironed without a wrinkle, despite working six days a week for 12 hours straight. Nobody in the hospital was sure this was legal, but Olga seemed to take pleasure in this sort of work ethic. Some whispered she took some perverse pleasure in controlling others under the guise of good healthcare.

There was an icy stare, a showdown of sorts. There was nowhere for the grandfather to go. Olga knew this and was about to celebrate with the outer edges of her eyes. (A fact most knew in the hospital was that Olga never smiled.) She made for a grab at the grandfather’s arm, but a loud beeping noise came from inside the room. It was the sound of someone dying.

Olga immediately rushed past the grandfather. His magnificent smile remained.

“Well I’ll have to thank my roommate for the distraction when my time comes too! But now it’s off to bigger and better things,” the grandfather said. “C’mon, boy we have to go face the world before it’s too late!”

As the grandfather turned around to gesture to the boy, he noticed that his grandson was focused on something else. The boy’s back was turned around completely in the opposite direction of the exit.

“C’mon boy, you can’t focus on the other patient, right now. We’ve got some last bit of living left to do.”

The grandfather saw his grandson crying, and he looked at the bed next to the blaring machine. Wisps of hair proceeded from the patient’s head with a cane near the bedside.

What he had expected as the other patient was, in fact, himself.

“I guess death doesn’t wait for anyone,” the grandfather whispered to himself as the room faded to black.