Future

Future Me

by kimoy virtucio-tolentino
(written when i felt too exhausted in skin diving)

“You have to do it Troy. You know the Ethics of Medicine...”

Troy's piercing green eyes were staring at the floor. Sweat broke at his forehead. “Yes sir. I just hope you don't rush me because this is a very hard task.”

“Yes, it is hard. I wouldn't be able to face it myself. But...”

“I understand sir. This is for the rest of the people,” Troy stood up, walked out the door of the Head Doctor's office, and went straight to a telephone booth just outside the hospital's left wing. He dialed the numberless buttons. Troy heard three long rings before a sweet female voice came in.

“Quarantine Services, Good morning...”

Tick tock tick tock.... so goes the clock. A single man lay on his uncomfortable dusty bed, in a room lit by a weakening sepia from the bulb. It's dusk now, and the horizon is orange immersed in deep violet, and the desert outside looked more of a death valley. The sinking sun is reflected on the high fences surrounding the house, reflected on the man's tanned face. His eyes were a pair of crystals showing a bright green against the light. These piercing eyes were looking at the pictures at the far left. The largest frame was a class picture... he could do nothing but reminisce these faces he knew 54 years ago. Four pairs of boys surrounded by a horde of 36 girls... he could do nothing but reminisce.

He scanned the pale faces smiling back at him, and spotted at once the face that always stooped at him whenever he looked at the mirror. That was years back. He doesn't see the boy now; all he saw at the mirror was the withering mirage of a ghost. He focused back at the picture, scanned it again, and saw the two girls who have been the mirror of his childhood.

“We are old now... I never thought we would eventually get separated,” the man told the picture in a voice tarnished by time. The bigger of the girls he never saw since he graduated college, the other one he saw two years ago – dying in an asylum... tears fell down the rocky edges of his cheeks.

He looked at the clock... tick tock tick tock. The short hand was pointing at the dot between 5 and 6. “It's about time,” said the man. Before he closed his eyes, he took his time looking at his priceless possessions: the eight books written under his pen and the pictures of the people who made his life on earth a meaningful one. He dropped his eyes on everything, trying to create a mental picture of the room he is in. There was the volleyball he has played with when he was a child – it's deflated now. The personal computer stood sinister beside the door. The set of slippers he had worn out lay silently at the shoe rack on the far right. And lastly, there on a chair beside his bed, slept the figure of a woman. The brown hair that once shrouded her head is now silver, her skin was still silk but had fine lines embedded in it, and her face was still the sculpture he encountered on a bus station in a busy city three miles away. She had always been fond of this lady, and the girls and boys that she reared and he fathered.

“It was so bad they cannot come, Tori,” the man whispered now. The woman stirred and sat upright in a breeze, looked at the man and said:

“Everything is alright, Keith. You won't suffer anymore...” the woman cried, but in silence, as the hazel eyes pored down on his. And as if they communicated in a language the spirits taught them, Keith looked away, looked at the sun, and blinded his green eyes with the powerful rays. A piercing pain gnawed at his head.

“It's time, Tori. I'll see you soon,” he told the woman without looking at her, and with a final breath, he closed his eyes, let out the last somber hold he had against morphine, and succumbed to death...

“I love you Keith...” was the last thing he heard.

Five minutes later, Tori dialed the phone.

“He's gone. Bring them in.”

Immediately after, a group of paramedics entered the room, hauled Keith's body on a stretcher and left for good. Eighty-seven days later, Tori reunited with Keith again.

Three miles away, a hospital was buzzing with lilfe. A young medical doctor with piercing eyes strode to the Head Doctor's office.

“Sir, the last two specimens infected by the virus died over the past three months. The last one died today. I believe the virus has been eradicated...” there was shivering in his voice.

“I see. Very well done, Troy. Very well done.” the head doctor congratulated Troy. “And Troy, I want you to know that I'm very sorry for their demise.”

After the meeting, Troy went out the hospital terrace and breathed the fresh air.

“May you rest in peace now mum. I hope you and dad understand why I did this...”