She stood quickly, rushing into Jerry’s arms, confused, but she ran right through him! She spun around and reached for him again, and he dropped the fireplace tool and reached for her, but she was undone. The new half-life she had come to love so much was being ripped from her and she had no idea what came next. The flames in the fireplace seemed to grow, to seek her attention, like a hungry beast, and within the flames something stirred. A darkness moved like a flame, but it was completely without light or warmth. It writhed weakly and reached for her, finally making its move, after nearly a century.
Then the tension deep within her snapped like a rubber band stretched too far and all of her fear, all of her worry, all of the terror for her future vanished. She was free.
“Vremya prishlo, Shvibzik.” It’s time.
Ana spun at the voice. Standing tall and straight, Alexei stood beside the Christmas tree, some of the needle-filled branches appearing to grow right out of his arm and a glass ornament sort of hung from his elbow.
She looked at Jerry to see if he could see what she was seeing, but her darling only stared at her, stunned. She looked back to Alexei. “Lyoshka?”
He saluted her and smiled. “That is Lance Corporal Lyoshka, to you.” His smile saddened just a bit. “It is time to come home, Shvibzik. We have been waiting.”
“‘We’?”
“The family. Everyone.”
“In Nebo? Heaven?”
“Da, I believe so. Even Jimmy.”
“They have dogs in heaven?”
“Silly Shvibzik, it would not be Heaven without dogs.”
Tears coursed down Ana’s face. She was ready to explode from the magnitude of the emotions bouncing around in her heart and head.
Alexei held his hand out. “Come, big sister. You have done what the rest of us could not. Father is so proud of you.”
Ana took a final look at Jerry, his tears matching her own. She had felt so at home with him. Like she had never belonged anywhere until she was with him. And now she had to leave. Alexei tugged her sleeve. The flat was fading quickly. Before it was too late, she signed “I love you” to Jerry and blew him a kiss.
JERRY COULDN’T BELIEVE his eyes. Ana was leaving. She walked through the couch, toward the Christmas tree. Fading fast, Ana turned and her fingers flashed the signs he had taught her. He flashed back “I love you, too!”, but she was gone. Did she hear him? Did she see his signs? Did she know that he loved truly her? That he always had? He felt like his heart was being torn out of his chest, then the door to the stairs flew open and police in SWAT gear charged in with their weapons drawn.
JERRY SAT, STARING out at the rain again, empty. Why hadn’t he told Ana sooner how he felt about her? The police came and went, taking Gervaise, the revolver, the six mysteriously flattened slugs, and his statement. They could tell that he wasn’t well, so the lead officer gave him his card and asked him to come by tomorrow and answer a few more questions. He refused their offer of medical assistance, so they left him alone.
He got up and looked around. He wanted to smash his fist into the brick wall surrounding the fireplace, but restrained himself and simply started a fire to chase away the damp chill that seemed to permeate Victoria since he’d arrived and only subsided when Ana was beside him. Once he was sure the kindling had caught and the flames wouldn’t sputter out, he shuffled around the loft in his pyjamas, restless. The headache wasn’t any better, but it wasn’t any worse, either. He dropped a few flakes of food into Sushi’s bowl, but ignored the Betta when it looked at him from just below the surface of the bowl while picking at breakfast.
“Maybe I just need a little caffeine to ease the pain,” he said to no one in particular. There was a dull pain in his chest and a lump in his stomach that didn’t seem to be connected to the agony in his head.
Switching on the single-cup coffee maker, he knew he’d find his salvation in coffee. It was another minute before the “Ready to Brew” light came on and with a push of the button, Jerry had sweet flavoured elixir dispensing into his mug with gurgles and splashes and a wafting scent of delicate caramel teasing him. With mug in hand, he went in search of his painkillers. He knew they were obviously right where he’d left them, but it took him a few minutes of hunting to remember that he’d left them in his pants pocket. The caramel washed down the pair of capsules as he made his way to the desk, turned on the laptop, and started ruthlessly deleting emails from people he’d never see again. Part of him just wanted to curl up on the couch and cry, but he could almost hear Ana’s voice telling him to stop wallowing in self-pity.
Halfway down the page, he saw an email from Haley, back in St. Marys. “What does she want?” He opened the email and read it aloud. “‘Dearest Jerry, I hope your new life in Victoria is all you’d dreamed it would be.’ Yeah, I dreamed of cancer and death and losing the woman I loved just when I found her. ‘I miss you, Jerry. Things are not the same here at home since I came back.’ Of course not! You walked out on your husband and girls because you were bored and then wandered back into their lives because you were curious if it could be better, not because you wanted to actually work on it and fix it. ‘I wish I was out there with you, feeling sand between our toes, watching the whales swim past, and making love in some little inn overlooking the ocean.’ There’s more to love than sex, Haley. Sorry. Dee-lete.” He clicked on the trashcan icon and the email was gone.
He scanned his email inbox, saw nothing more that caught his attention, and pushed the laptop away. “Enough of that junk. I don’t need to enhance my performance, collect my Ethiopian inheritance, or lose weight like Jennifer Biels; I need a cure for Stage Four, terminal, brain-sucking cancer. I need… whatever.” He stomped over to his couch cocoon, turned the big screen on, and went through the tedious process of booting up Netflix. Once he was in, he searched for Ingrid Bergman’s Anastasia.
He didn’t even make it through the opening credits before he was up off the couch, suddenly restless. He knew he was hungry but had no idea what to eat or why he should even bother. It was all so senseless. Why was he even going through the motions of life when it was going to be over soon? Now that the seizures had started, Jerry knew the stark, lonely reality was that he maybe had weeks left. Weeks. Weeks of what? Seizing, puking, sleeping? And he had his ever-positive, always-loving mother coming out for a weekend. Yippee.
The world expected him to put on a brave face and fight this stupid disease right up to the end, his chin held high as he lost weight, lost his hair, and died from the inside out. But that’s not how he wanted to die. It’s not how anyone wanted to die. What was it the Palliative Care woman had said? “With dignity and peace”, or something like that? Surrounded by people watching him fade away, tears of pity in their eyes, but secret thanks in their hearts that it’s not them whose light is being snuffed out in slow, agonizing increments. Someone would hold his hand, someone would say some crap like they loved him, and then everything would go dark.
Jerry knew he wasn’t going to get to come back like Ana. When he was done, he’d be done. No mystical, Hindu reincarnation. No waiting virgins, no welcoming arms seated to one side of God. No blaring trumpets, no wings, no reunion with his father while they ate cream cheese and drifted in the clouds. One second he’d be alive, and then he wouldn’t. Game over. So why didn’t he just get it over with right now? Why didn’t he tell the pain and the disease to just piss off? It’s too bad he hadn’t let Gervaise finish him off. Instead, he’d have to hang himself, or cut his wrists in a tub of warm water. Yeah, the tub would be best. The mess would be contained and he’d already be naked so they could just tag and bag him and shove him in an oven so they could cremate him down to fit in a pickle jar and be shipped back home where his mother could dig a hole on his father’s grave and drop him in. That way she could visit and natter at the two of them at the same time. She’d love it, and he wouldn’t care.