That last day, it’s a Wednesday. They call me in from work (that receptionist says it ‘might be a nice day for a visit’, but we all know it’s because she’s going to die). So I come and I sit here in this dreary pink room with some dreary pink flowers and stare at the curtains she can’t stand to open and she looks at me with this expression that just says, we’re buggered.

The first day, she looks at me and I look at her, and we’re both like, shit. Just shit. Because this is bad. We’ve handled floods and relatives and working out of town, but this, I mean, fuck.

So sitting here now, she’s looking at me like that and I’m looking back in the sort of way I hope says, maybe not? but I think probably is more, well, yeah, and that nurse who’s always so peppy I want to kill her and so gorgeous I want to kiss her is there, talking about climate change, or school lunches, or something. In that bed though, looking at me like that, all I can think is fuck me, she used to be gorgeous. This pretty definitely makes me a bad person, because it’s bad this time, and I’m concentrating on how white she is, and how her cheeks are all sunken and sagging, and how her eyes are just these bright spots of we’re buggered in this long, thin body of grey, and how I completely don’t find her one bit attractive right now.

She puts her papery little hand in mine, and I sort of flinch but mostly don’t, because she has the dead, dead hands of the devil right now and it freaks me the fuck out and Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I want to be somewhere else. That nurse fucks off and she lets her head roll to the side a little, looking at the dreary pink flowers in my lap, and sort of smiles, or at least, the gash of skin under her nose twitches a bit. Her head rolled to the side like that, she looks like a doll or something, a really old, ugly doll that some ignorant pustule of a child threw to one side because she wanted one with hair. So, right, she’s lying there with her arms and her legs all limp and her head to one side and I feel like I should take off my jacket and cover her up, so no one has to look at her, because she’s such an ugly and depressing sight. It’s like when nobody past a certain age wants to look at the disabled people, because it’s all, God, look at you, you poor, poor bastard, but at the same time it’s, holy fuck, I’m glad I’m not you.

Her bright spots of swear words are looking at pretty much everything, because she does that, like she actually cares what this shithole of a room looks like. I ask why, and she says something dull about wanting to remember the world, but jesus, does she think I’ve never met her before? So these eyes, they’re flickering, sort of, and then they close and she wheezes a little with each breath, like when you’re trying to squeeze the last bit of ketchup out of the bottle, and a little bit of drool gathers at the side of her mouth but I don’t touch it because she’s so repulsive right now that I just want to look and try and pretend I have nothing to do with her, holy shit, I hate her so much it hurts.

The peppy nurse comes in and says something about how she’s tired out today, and she thinks it might be good for her to have a nice long rest, and I’m this close to punching her because fucking hell, I’m sick of euphemisms. And then these two, half-arsed tears are rolling down my cheeks and I’m so fucking angry, because how dare I cry in front of her, even if she’s sleeping? These two, pathetic tears are turning into two more, slimy and disgusting and fuck, what sort of a man am I, and then two more and they’re gathering in one stupid, throbbing rotting ball of shit in my throat and if I thought there wasn’t anything in the world I could hate more than her, there is and it’s myself.

So I look at her, this breathy paperweight of a person, greasy hair, tenuous hold on reality, rotting teeth, and I look at myself in the shiny surface of the table, bright, slick with those bastard tears, red and healthy and all that good shit, and I look at her again, and I ask, get the fuck better.

I ask, please don’t leave me.

I ask, don’t you dare die.

And I look at the clean, sparkly ring on her finger and on mine, and I ask, how could you do this to me.