The Luxury of Flight

She looked at the boy. He was small, skinny, and unhealthy in appearance. I suppose that was pretty obvious since he had been throttled and almost drowned. She looked at the boy, and stiffened. She tried to relax. Inhale, exhale. She was going to come here for two hours on her Saturdays and Sundays. "How old is the little guy?" She asked.

The nurse replied, "Not very, he’s two years older than you." Then Dayl got even more scared. This small bundle of skin and bones was two years older than her? Was he really 19? "He’s tall. He may not look it, but under those covers, there’s six feet and five inches of Skip."

"What’s his full name again?" She asked.

"Dyton Marksman." She replied.

"Marksman," she repeated, looking distractedly at him, vaguely recalling that people’s last names indicated their position, place, or father’s name. "So you call him Skip?"

"Yeah. That’s what he likes to be called. Right, Skip?" the nurse patted his shoulder.

"That’s right." Skip said, turning. She was a bit startled; she had no idea that she would get a patient that talked for community service. She had hoped that she would get someone in a coma to read to, or sing to, or talk to. Besides, Skip looked too unhealthy to talk. Yet he did, and with a rich, velvety voice, too. His voice was as soft and small as his pitiful appearance. The nurse left. "So what’s your name?" Skip asked.

She was caught off guard, again. She thought… well, it didn’t matter what she thought. She was doing community service. "I’m Dayla Bowman. You can call me Dayl."

"That’s what your friends call you, right?" Skip said with an air of boredom, obviously having gone through the formalities before.

"No, I don’t talk to many people."

"Is that why you’re here? In community service. Hm." Skip said, processing her presence. Dayl noticed how big his eyes were in contrast to his face. "I’ll be you’re wondering why I’m here if I can carry on such quote intelligent conversation. I’ll bet you’re wondering when I was nearly drowned."

Dayl was wondering, "I guess so."

"You shouldn’t guess so much; it makes you sound stupid."

"Hey! It’s my first day. Be nice, all right?"

"I wasn’t trying to sound mean, it was just advice. Think. If I said, ‘I guess so,’ to most questions you asked, wouldn’t you think I sounded stupid?"

"No," She retorted to save face.

"Liar. I like you though. You lie well." They sat ( or rather, Dayl sat and Skip lay in the bed,), and looked out the window for a while. "You know, I can’t walk, or do math very well, the lack of oxygen to my brain shut off those functions. I’m useless to society. They can’t train me to walk again either. The hydrotherapy doesn’t work because I’m afraid of water more than four feet deep."

Dayl tried not to sound haughty, but she couldn’t help herself. "Only four feet?"

"I suppose it wouldn’t make much sense to you." Skip turned bitter. "Of course, I could always change that. Come here, let me strangle you and push you into a lake and try to drown you."

"Okay, I think you’re making this a bit of a sob story, like you’re some sort of drama queen or something. Well, king."

"You never know whether or not you should call me a king or a queen." Skip replied. Dayl didn’t know whether to take the advise or to laugh. "Plus I’m not USING it to do or get anything out of life. I’m just saying, if you don’t know what it’s like, don’t pretend you do."

"I can imagine…"

"But you don’t know, now do you?"

"No, I don’t."

"At least you didn’t say, ‘I guess not.’ See? This is an enriching experience already." Skip stopped then, and asked, "Do you like talking to me?"

Dayl started, "Sure I d…"

"And don’t patronize me. Give me the truth. I may not be able to use part of my brain, but that doesn’t make me overly-sensitive or anything."

"Well how am I supposed to answer that? I don’t even know you that well yet!"

"Just let yourself go and answer."

"Just let yourself go and answer," Dayl mentally whispered, then said aloud, "Okay, how’s this. It’s not necessarily going to be the best part of my day, but I don’t really mind. It gives me something to do. Other than writing, it’s…"

"You like to write?"

"You like to interrupt?"

"Sorry," Skip said, and laughed. Dayl started to enjoy Skip. Or at least tolerate him. "You were saying?"

"Go ahead." Dayl waved it off.

"You like to write?"

"Yes…" she drew the word out long, getting suspicious.

"What?"

"What do you mean, ‘what’? How am I supposed to answer that?"

"A bit snippish, there? What do you like to write?"

"Poetry, short stories. I like to sing, though. I like to sing and write."

"Where did that come from? That was random."

"What was random?"

" ‘I like to sing’ was random."

"No, we were talking about what I liked. What do you like?"

"Drawing and acting. And soda. I’m thirsty. Could you get me a soda?"

"Yes, master." Dayl slobbered out, pretending to be Igor, or whatever the assistant in Frankenstein was. Skip chuckled. When Dayl came back with the sodas (one for herself, of course), she saw Skip staring out the window. "You like looking outside, don’t you?" she said, setting the soda on his lap.

"Yussssss…" Skip slurred.

"Skip, you sound like you’re drunk." Dayl laughed.

"No, I’m not really, I just like acting that way, gets good laughs." Skip paused, reflected on Dayl’s presence. "Do you realize how fragile life is? How just the slightest change, and it can all go haywire?"

"Now that was random."

"No, I’m just saying…" Skip trailed off.

"I suppose…"

"There you go again, ‘I guess so,’ and ‘I suppose,’ you’ve got to stop."

"Okay. I believe so. Life can change at the shifting of the tides." Dayl mused. Skip shifted uncomfortably. "Oh, sorry. I forgot. I just like anything associated with water a lot, so…"

"Oh, okay. That makes me feel a whole lot better." Skip replied with his sarcasm.

"I’m just giving you an explanation."

"Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to offend the water guru."

" ‘Water guru’?" Dayl raised an eyebrow.

"That sounded better in my head."

"Why, does it echo in there?" Dayl giggled. Skip was impressed by the speed of her response.

Skip continued, despite the last comment, "Anyway, lives can be altered so easily. Society molds us so many ways; it alienates the strange, yet it craves the nonconformists. Then it’s so confusing, that once we think we’ve got it figured out, it turns our world upside down and shakes it, like a snoglobe, or we die."

"Wow." Dayl mused, then, concerned, "Are you suicidal?" Dayl asked, Skip gave her one of those looks of disapproval. "No, no, I’m just wondering. You seem so melancholy."

"You know, we’re two very strange people, you know that?" he said, kind of avoiding the question.

Dayl decided not to push it any further. "Yes. Yes we are." She affirmed.

"Sing to me." Skip demanded.

"What? Are you nuts? Are you SURE you’re not drunk?"

"Sing to me. You like to sing and I won’t laugh or make comments."

"What if you fall asleep?"

"Isn’t that good for you? You get to go home."

"Oh."

"What? You don’t want to go home? If you want to hang around in this hospital, I’ll trade places with you."

"All right, all right! I’m singing, I’m singing."

"Really. That doesn’t sound much like singing to me."

"How are you going to hear me if you don’t shut up?"

"All right, all right!" Skip gave in. Dayl sang beautifully. Skip closed his eyes slowly. Dayl wondered if he was asleep. And as if he was a mind reader, Skip said, with eyes still closed, "I’m not asleep, but you can go now. Back home."

Home. It seemed so far away now to Dayl. So impersonal. She didn’t have many friends at school, and her parents were strict but tried to be nice and patronizing which insulted her intelligence which made Dayl mad… But she calmed down. She found her car in the lot, and drove. Not home, however. She wouldn’t go home, just yet. She drove around, and sorted her thoughts, thought about life, her life, Skip’s life, her goals.

"This is so much like an ABC movie of the week," she thought, "girl does community service, boy is deep, girl falls in love with boy, boy dies or goes into coma… only I’m not in love with Skip, and he’s not in a coma. Okay, maybe it’s not really like an ABC movie of the week." She sighed, "I can’t believe how well we’ve gotten along in just two hours." Dayl thought to herself. When she got home, she told her parents she wasn’t hungry, then went to her room. She saw the sunset, and imagined what it would be like, if she died or went into a coma.

She thought… it usually didn’t matter what she thought. Everyone had always told her what to do. But now she knew that she could tell someone, whether they knew what she was talking about was irrelevant. She could tell someone, and that was all that mattered. Skip would listen. Still she wondered whether he liked talking to her. If he enjoyed her presence. If he enjoyed anything; he was so melancholy! But, despite everything, Skip would listen. Skip with his brown hair and violet eyes would sit and listen to everything she had to say.

He soothed her pain, he eased her mind, and he would listen as she vented all the problems of the world to him. When he did talk, it was like he was a master poet. She admired him greatly. His words were beautiful, but immersed in sorrow. He did a world of good for her, yet she didn’t know how she could help him. "It’s me, not him, that is useless to society…" she whispered to the window. She hugged a pillow close to her, and cried softly. As the evening stars started to appear, Dayl fell asleep, her head against the cold, tear-soaked pillow.

The visits progressed through the weeks, and Dayl got to know Skip better, though their conversations were still at the same level. It was a sort of an unspoken bond. They were the best friends each other had, and they didn’t know it. Each suspected something, but wasn’t too sure. And the people at the hospital would see Dayl come and go, and make fun, asking if Dayl was getting too close to Skip. But they both knew it was nothing like that. They were too close to be in love. That would ruin everything. Each time, Skip would somehow weasel a soda out of Dayl’s wallet, and they would have periods of cloud-infatuation where they would stare for hours at the clouds and muse about the sky.

"Do you not like water of any form?" Dayl once asked Skip.

"Well, I like rain, and steam, and snow. But mostly rain. It’s beautiful. Like diamonds dropping out of the sky." Suddenly, Skip burst out, "Are you going to say you’ve enjoyed your visits and that you’ve learned a lot from them? Because if you do, it’ll be corny and I’ll make fun of you."

"Can you say, ‘random’?"

"Yes, I can. Very well, in fact, thank you very much."

"Okay, see, that was irony, there."

"I’m very familiar with it, yes. That was my brand of counter-sarcasm, you see."

"That was my counter-counter-sarcasm."

"Liar."

"No, really."

"Sing to me."

Then Dayl would sing, and go home. Skip watched and waved at Dayl as she went out to the parking lot. One day, a nondescript nurse came in as he was waving and staring out the window.

"Hey Skip, who are you waving to?"

"Oh, Dayl. You know, the girl who comes for community service."

"Oh yeah, she’s a really nice girl. She seems to care about you a lot."

"Well, yeah."

"You seem to care about her a lot, too."

"She’s my friend. Of course I care about her."

The nurse seemed to change the subject, "You know Skip, you’ve become a legend around here. You’ve stayed here the longest out of all our patients. Most of our other ones either went home or…" she paused.

"Or they died."

"We want to try to do anything to make you happier."

"I suppose then you wouldn’t mind trying to bring my parents back from the dead. That is, if you can find all of their body parts."

"Skip, you shouldn’t say such things. The plane crash was horrible. We salvaged what we could."

"Yeah, I know. But Dayl’s here and she makes me happy. I haven’t talked to anyone so refreshing in a long time. It seemed for a while that all the community service kids were all to smiley and overly-ingratiating and condescending and, well, stupid."

"Do you love Dayl?"

"Uh!" Skip’s eyes grew even bigger, which surprised the nurse; she didn’t think his eyes could get much bigger, "What kind of a question is that?"

"A perfectly valid one. But if you feel uncomfortable answering that, you don’t have to." The nurse said, glad that his eyes didn’t pop out. A car door outside slammed.

"Well, that’s not an easy question to answer, you know." Skip started. Footsteps came around the corner of the hall. "Let me think." He stalled. Dayl walked in the room.

"Hi Skip, I forgot my purse. There it is!" She grabbed it. "I’ll see you tomorrow, Skip." Smiling, she left.

"Yes. I believe, in a brotherly way, I do." Skip replied, finally, after waving to her again through the window.

"Only in a brotherly way?" the nurse was suspicious.

"It could be more, but then the situation just wouldn’t be the same, then I wouldn’t love her anymore. I don’t know if that makes sense to you or not." Skip said, looking at the drawer beside him.

"I understand perfectly." The nurse said, not really understanding, but getting the gist of it.

"She forgot her pen." He commented to no one in particular. The nurse then watched him in silence as he wrote with Dayl’s pen "remind Dayl you’ve got her pen" on his hand. The nurse got up, patted his shoulder, and left the room. Skip sighed, and put the pen back on the drawer.

Summer came, and though the community service was for school, Dayl still went to see him. She worried that if she didn’t he might slip through her fingers, like her older sister, who was her best friend until she died when Dayl was 10.

Dayl though of her sister Jane as she drove to the hospital. An SUV hit Jane as she was crossing the street going home. The internal bleeding was too much for her. Dayl watched as the body was lowered into the ground. Her parents didn’t want her to see how bad of shape Jane looked, but Dayl knew that buried six feet under, was a disfigured, completely purple, mass of dead flesh. Dayl cringed at the thought, and almost ran a red light. She sat at the intersection, looking at the picture of herself and Jane, both smiling. The light turned green, life went on, Dayl parked at the hospital.

"Now, you see, this. This is special. This really is nice, to see you here when your time has been done." Skip smiled a lopsided smile when Dayl walked into the white, tidy, hospital room.

"It wasn’t like I was forced to. It was fun. Really. Don’t say corny."

"I’m sorry, but I can’t control myself."

"Then how often do they have to change the sheets?"

"Okay, I’m a guy, and even I don’t make sick jokes like that!" Skip said, stretching out a face.

"Not all guys make sick jokes."

"You do have a point there. It was disgusting, though,"

"Soda?"

"Random and after a sick joke."

"Soda." Dayl asked again, though it was more of a command, like "accept a soda or face the consequences!"

"I suppose I can’t refuse."

"You said, ‘I suppose’ right there."

Skip gasped, "My IQ just dropped 10 points! AAA!" Skip screamed so loud, an attendant checked in and asked if Skip needed some morphine. "No, I’m fine." Skip said with an almost invisible smirk. After he left, Skip and Dayl laughed until it hurt. Dayl went to get the soda. She came back in with the two sodas.

"A Coke for you," Dayl announced, dropping it into his lap, "And a Dr. Pepper for me."

"Geez that’s cold!"

"Sorry, but you didn’t want it warm did you?"

"No, but you shouldn’t have put it in my lap."

"What’s wrong with that?"

"Well, I’m a guy."

"Omigawd! Are you just finding this out now?" Dayl asked in mock horror.

"You could’ve put it on the table." Skip protested, his manly-ness a bit offended.

"Ugh. You’re impossible,"

"I’m impossible?"

"Yes." Dayl replied, closing her eyes, as if that ended all the world’s problems including the argument. She reopened them to see Skip making a funny face at her. She yelped and giggled. Skip watched as the rest of her dark brown hair fell out of its binder.

"Arg." Dayl grumbled as she bent down to pick it up; her brown eyes turned darker with annoyance. Her eyes would turn jet black when she was really mad. Skip noticed it all. Dayl tried to put her hair back up in a bun; "It can never stay up long."

"You know, your hair is kinda highlighted red in the sun," Skip said, gazing.

Dayl was looking out the window, so she didn’t notice. "Yeah, it gets lighter in the summer. I’ve even found some blond strands."

"Does this mean your IQ dropped 20 points?"

"Yeah, I guess it does." They both chuckled. A blond nurse walked by and shook her head at them. They looked at her, then each other and laughed even harder.

"Oh, shoot! I have to go." Dayl said, realizing the time.

"You have to go? You mean you can go. Such freedom, such freedom to come and leave. That luxury is as far from me as flight." Skip whispered to the room. His voice quivered. Dayl’s heart nearly broke in two when she saw him on the bed, not being able to move his legs. "Before you go, I’ve got a song to sing to you." Skip said, staring out into oblivion. Dayl wondered whether it was because he was embarrassed to sing it, or whether he was just in deep thought.

"Good. It’s about time you used that beautiful voice of yours." Dayl grinned and ruffled his hair. How thin it was from his ailment! Skip laughed, and cleared his throat.

"Silence, but for the ticking of the clock,

But for the rain on the window,

She stares out the window,

The sorrow deep within her,

Sadness in her hands,

As she holds the letter.

The rain falls as she watches,

Her eyes cloud up,

As she loses the will to live,

She sighs, a tear slides down,

The letter slips from her fingers,

As the wings lift her up,

Higher, higher in the rain,

Her beautiful voice floats through,

The raindrops, the tears,

Soaked in despair,

Her head bows down,

Her hair saturated in angst,

She screams,

Smiling, she can feel again.

No one hears her words,

Doesn’t matter, nobody ever did,

The earth sighs with relief,

As the rain quenches its thirst,

But it’s never enough,

And her tears and sobs,

Go on unnoticed."

As the last note hung in the hot, summer air, time seemed to stand still. Nothing but the sound of their breathing could be heard. When they both finally came back to reality, Dayl asked, "Did you write that yourself? I never heard it on the radio."

"If you heard it on the radio, I’m going to get sued. Yeah, I made it up myself. You okay?"

"What? Why?" Dayl felt her face get hot, she touched her cheek and realized she had been crying. "Oh!" she exclaimed and wiped it with the back of her hand. She departed quickly after saying her good byes. That night, Skip heard a commotion in the hall. Lights were quickly turned on, and people were scurrying around. Finally, a patient was put next to him. Skip wondered if this was going to affect Dayl’s visits. He questioned a nurse. This nurse had just been hired and had no idea who Dayl was, however.

"I don’t think you have to worry about that. Um, you see, the patient next to you is in a coma. She won’t say anything, and I don’t think she can hear anything. She can’t move or signal in any way. The doctor said putting her in a familiar surrounding would help her, though I don't know how this would be familiar to a 17 year old girl." Skip looked over, and as if it were torn out of a soap, there was Dayl, lying peacefully in the bed next to him.

Skip froze. And for the longest time, all he could do was stare at Dayl. It wasn’t fair, he thought. He could bear the disability, he had gotten accustomed to it. He’d lived with it for years. But Dayl, not being able to wake up, to write all she’d wanted to write, to sing all that was in her heart… It just wasn’t fair. "Lives can be altered so easily. Society molds us so many ways; it alienates the strange, yet it craves the nonconformists. Then it’s so confusing, that once we think we’ve got it figured out, it turns our world upside down and shakes it, like a snoglobe, or we die." Skip repeated to himself.

"She used to be so free. She used to be so free." He sobbed. After months of the "familiar atmosphere," Skip got used to the idea of Dayl in a coma. Well, one should say tolerated. He didn’t like it at all that she couldn’t respond to him. The doctor responsible for her was coincidentally responsible for him. The doctor decided that with Dayl in a coma and Skip being so attached to her, it wouldn’t hurt if he moved their beds closer together; it would take away some of Skip’s pain. Skip felt so far away. He would talk to her, and sing to her. Make up new songs, and philosophize with her… until one day, as he was singing gently to her, her eyelids flickered. A barely detectable movement. Then she opened her eyes. "DAYL! Are you awake? Can you hear me?" Skip got so excited, that he almost fell out of his bed. Dayl stared. And stared and stared until Skip thought she couldn’t close her eyes anymore. Then Dayl made a face. It was a horrible face to look at.

It was one of infinite suffering and pain. Ultimate sorrow defined her very being. He looked into her eyes, and realized she couldn’t see or hear him. She was somewhere, lost behind those cloudy eyes. Trapped, forever. He wanted to ease the pain, the suffering. He wanted her to wake up and sing and talk and laugh. He wanted her to be alive. Not just technically, he wanted her soul to be alive. Right then, it was as if her soul had gone through what he had. It was being drowned. Skip started blaming everybody. "If it wasn’t for the stupid doctor I wouldn’t be having to see her like this. He should have been able to save her! It’s all Dayl’s fault for being so stupid! It’s…" Skip paused, realizing how selfish he’d been. "You’re not Dayl," he whispered hatefully at the opposite bed, and fell asleep due to exhaustion.

After weeks of that, he fell into a fever. He had not been able to sleep for days since Dayl had gone into the coma. But after having the fever’s "high," Skip’s thinking somehow got clearer as the fever progressed. He knew why she was in a coma. She had hurt herself. The doctors even admitted it to him themselves. She left a sort of suicide note, saying that she couldn’t take it anymore, and looking at Skip’s suffering was too much to bear. Skip cried and cried, until he was about to drown in his tears. Doctors tried to give him Prozac, but he wouldn’t take it. He screamed, and thrashed about in the bed, and covered his head with his pillow to escape taking the pills. The doctors, fearing that he would asphyxiate himself, relented. They tried to give him some other medicine, but he just started throwing them at the doctors’ heads. He once even dragged himself out of his bed to fling himself down on Dayl’s bed by her feet, Skip’s legs dangling lifeless and thin, off the side of her bed. His fever raged, and the doctors, fearing something might happen to Dayl or Skip, or both, sedated him, and put him back into his bed.

He thought he was the reason. The reason why she couldn’t sing, couldn’t talk, couldn’t laugh, couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t muse, couldn’t taste, and couldn’t do anything. The reason why she was dead. Skip implored and begged Dayl’s parents to pull the plug. Dayl’s parents thought it would also be a better idea to end it all. It happened. Then the iron lung stopped humming, and Skip watched her stomach stop rising and falling, the EKG sadly stopped blipping, and the green light faded, the IV finally stopped dripping. Skip, still in the fever, turned his head groggily, feeling light-headed and not knowing what to make of the world. What was Skip supposed to do now? For the meantime, it didn’t matter. Dayl was nonexistent except for a handful of memories. She was truly gone.

"Oh, God, Dayl!" Skip held her hand and whispered softly, as if he would wake her.