Eternal Glimpse

For Terry and Larry - My Big Brothers.
Though you never saw the light of day
You're still touching our hearts in a special way
You left our lives before you came
But you'll be remembered just the same.
This one's for you.


"I don't know how to tell you this, Mrs. Jarrett...."
Betty's heart stopped. Never before had Dr. Foley called her Mrs. Jarrett. It had always been Betty. She knew what was coming wasn't good. It's never good when a grey-haired country doctor calls a twenty-three-year-old pregnant woman, whom he had delivered himself, "Mrs." Not once had he called her anything but Betty, unless it was "Bumpkin."

"I can't hear your babies' heartbeats." There, he said it.

Betty was lost for words, but the expression on her face spoke louder to Dr. Foley than even the most painful of words. It said, This can't be. It just can't be. You're a doctor and you can't let this happen. For an instant he regretted ever letting his mother talk him into medical school.

"It may be nothing." He couldn't stand looking at that face any longer. "The afterbirth could be blocking the beats. Let's wait before we jump the gun. Come in tomorrow and we'll give it another listen."

"But, Doctor..."

"Betty, now don't you worry yourself about this. It happens all the time," he lied.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm sure." At least he called her Betty again. That settled her a little.

But the next day, there were still no heartbeats.

"What's happening?" Betty asked, tears collecting on her cheeks.

"Now listen to me, girl - you've carried those twins for eight and a half months, and I hadn't noticed one problem. Maybe their hearts are just a little weak. Come see me tomorrow and we'll try again."

It was no use, and Dr. Foley knew it. Even though this was before the time of ultrasound and high tech medicine, he knew that Betty's babies had died. He didn't know how or why, but he knew just the same. If only he knew how to tell Betty. It wouldn't be easy, but the doctor knew she was going to have to know.

"I'm afraid your babies have died," he confessed during Betty's third visit that week. He hoped that the mouthwash he had used covered up the gin he had the night before, when he decided there was no way he would wreck her dream sober. Betty and her husband Jeff had been trying for three years to have a child. And when Foley had the pleasure of telling her she was pregnant, he saw just how badly she wanted one. When he told her it was twins, he thought she was going to die from happiness. Now as he stared down into Betty's hollow, grief-stricken eyes he wished he had become a plumber instead of a damn doctor. How upset can a person get when you tell them they have a clogged drain?

"What am I supposed to do?" Betty was trying to be strong but the doctor had just crushed what heart she had left.

"Nothing. We can't risk the effect induced labor might have on you. You're just going to have to carry them to term. It will only be another couple of weeks."

Betty left Dr. Foley's office a broken woman. She had suspected the deaths ever since he had called her Mrs. Jarrett, but even then there was a little hope; no matter how small it was, it was still there. Now she had none at all. How was she going to tell Jeff? Wouldn't he blame her? Everyone had told her to take it easy. But no, she had to be so damn strong. Even when she was exhausted, she pushed herself to continue. She wanted to show everybody how tough she was. But now she felt like the weakest person on earth.

The birth of the twins was meant to be so much more than adding a couple new editions to Betty's family. She had thought that if Jeff saw the pain she went through to bring him two beautiful children, he would open up to her and be more loving. Jeff hardly ever touched her, unless they were having intercourse, and he never told her that he loved her. But she believed that somewhere deep down in his heart, whether he wanted to admit it or not, he did. At least she hoped so. She knew that she loved him. And losing the twins made her fell like she had failed him.

Betty waited until Jeff had eaten the dinner she made for him and sat in front of the TV before she told him, "Dr. Foley told me that the twins are dead."

He looked at her for a moment, but she couldn't read any emotion in his face, then he turned back towards the television. Gunsmoke played on, as Matt Dillon cornered the bad guys. Finally, a commercial came on and Jeff looked again at his wife. "Is he sure?"

"Yes."

"Well, I told you you were working too hard." That was all he said. The conversation was over that quickly. Deep in her heart, Betty hated him for that, but she didn't want to admit it.

It was almost a month before Betty received her first labor pain. She knew that the twins were dead, but the pain still conjured false hope. She told herself it was just wishful foolishness, but inside she wanted so much for them to be alive.

Grudgingly, Jeff got out of bed and took Betty to the hospital. The labor lasted forever. Several nurses stood around Betty and tried to comfort her. It was an awkward feeling. She never really had true emotions expressed toward her. The prime example was her father. He loved her very deeply, but never touched her. Betty assumed he was afraid that she was too delicate to hold, but she needed it. She longed for a heartfelt embrace. Marrying Jeff only continued her love at a distance.

Finally, after nine hours of labor, Betty brought forth two dead baby boys. Dr. Foley refused to let her see her stillborn children. She wanted so much to see them, just to see what she had carried around in her for nine months, to see if they had little fingers and toes. But the doctor stood firm.

"Jeff, please see them for me?"

"Okay."

Betty lay in her hospital bed thinking of her boys who she would never see. Tears ran down her face, soaking her pillow. She didn't notice her father walking into the room. He took in the scene for a moment, then went to her side. In an instant beyond explanation, he left his pride behind and reached out to her. Betty weakly lifted herself as her father's arms went around her, and hers around him. All her life, she wanted him to hold her. And in the end the price for that hug was her two little sons.

"How's my baby?" he asked.

"I'm all right," she lied through tears.

The embrace lasted only 54 seconds. It was the only hug her father would ever give her.

A nurse came in to tell him that Betty needed her rest. Betty felt helplessly confused as her daddy left the room. She was so tired from the labor. Everything seemed like a dream. Her whole life felt like a dream. Unable to hold on any longer, she fell asleep.


"I couldn't do it," Jeff said two hours later when Betty woke. "I couldn't go see them."

"It's all right," she said. But it wasn't. She had needed him to see them.

Jeff sat in a chair next to the bed and dozed off for a minute or two. Betty laid awake, stiff and sore from all she had experienced earlier. A labor that was rewarded with nothing. No little human to hold close and watch grow. Nothing.

Understandable depression violently invaded Betty, laced with the malice felt toward the sound of her husband's healthy snoring. How could she have let this happen?

Betty was staring blankly through the window at the sad morning struggling to overpower the night. A new day. And when she thought her existence couldn't be any lower, she noticed something else in the window.

"Jeff..." She nudged him awake. "Do you see that?"

"Yes." That was all he could say.

On the window of the second-floor hospital room, two perfectly shaped figures lay embroidered in the glass with dew. The shapes of two babies' faces. Betty knew it was her two sons coming to say, "We love you and we're sorry we never got to meet you." Though Dr. Foley never let Betty see her physical sons, she was allowed to see their spirits.

The sun won the fight with the darkness and erased the boys from the window.
But they will always remain with Betty. The eternal glimpse of her two angels.


A year later, Jeff and Betty had a healthy living son of their own.
And I'm just sorry that I never got to see my little big brothers.

Child of the Dark

As I lie on my death's bed, I strangely recollect the fables of my youth. The bizarre, twisted, but so lovely tales told to me by the elders in our family group. As children we have all heard them, and some of us even believed; however, with adulthood we set aside the ridiculous legends of our youth. Even so, there are some adults who believed the folklore to an almost religious margin. They find strength and peace in them, as I am beginning to, here in the final chapter of my life.

In their stories, the elders would speak of a world called the outside. They told of vast open areas, carpeted with a living green substance they called grass. Solid structures (I forget the name they gave them) holding something called leaves, stood scattered throughout this land. Some were said to be only knee-high, while others were as tall as twenty or thirty men. But men didn't build them - they were created by a great force called "nature." The grand-elders told of how something called a breeze ran through these structures. To me it sounded as if the breeze was a magical being; it was an invisible temperament that could pass right through a person and cool him when he was hot, or bite him when he was cold. I wish that I could experience a breeze before I die.

I was told of a light, not like the dim olin rocks that I read and write by, but a light so bright that it hurt to look at it. This light gave off heat and it tanned the skin. The light shone on everything as it sat in what the elders called a sky. The sky, I suppose, was something like a high ceiling that changed colors. It was said to be blue one minute and gray the next, and sometimes water poured from it. The great light moved across the sky and hid for a while so people could sleep. In doing so it created something called a night, which I'm told is the opposite of another something called a day. If such a time did exist, I imagine that the people of that time had trouble keeping up with all of the things that were taking place.

Peter, the oldest person I have ever met, told me that when he was a child he had seen the outside. He said he remembered when someone had broken through the great wall, where an entrance from the outside once stood. The door was left there for five years, in case an outsider made his way to our world; after that our founding elders ordered it sealed, and the great wall was the result. As Peter told the story, the man who had broken through the entrance had at one time lived on the outside. He had never totally adjusted to his new environment. His longing for the outside world had driven him crazy. In one totron cycle (24 hours), the man had managed to make an opening in the wall, where the entrance was, big enough for him to crawl through. Peter, who had visited the wall regularly as a boy - mainly because his mother had brought him in while he was still in her stomach, and his father had died on the outside - saw the man as he opened the entrance door. A blinding flood of light bolted from the hole in the wall. Peter said that even though it was severely painful to look at, he could not take his eyes off the beam of light that appeared to be solid. He stood mesmerized as he watched the man crawl through the opening onto the white sand, where the man's body started to melt. Peter felt the heat as the man's skin turned from red to black. The horrid smell of burning flesh had just started to reach Peter when someone closed the door. Peter remained standing, eyes transfixed on the hole, but he saw nothing, for the light had blinded him indefinitely. He told me that the image of the burning man, and the hideous screams of torment, were forever branded into his mind.

Peter also told me that people lived to be even older than he was. He said he had heard of a man who lived to be thirty-six. I find it hard to believe. But all the fables are hard for the thinking adult to swallow.
I suppose the most unbelievable tale of all is that once men and women could survive without the masks. It's been said that on the outside, before it passed on, people could breathe freely without the aid of a Com-pose mask. Their skin was colored by the big light, and people grew strong. I would like to have seen these lively looking people. If they did exist, they must have been gods.

As I grew into adolescence, in my fifth year of life I began to question the fables told by the elders. I boldly asked them, "If the outside was so great, what happened? A war, or something?"

They would reply, "No. Once land was against land, and each had weapons that could destroy the other. But before they did, each destroyed themselves. All of these great men and women, who had such a wonderful gift, misused it and neglected it. They continued to take from their beautiful world, and never gave anything back. Soon, their air was no longer fit to breathe, and the great light began to grow hotter. Great bodies of water dried up. As their world began to rebel, the people tried to save it, but it was beyond repair. Millions of the outside people died, and what was left built inside worlds like this one. And though thousands flooded into our world, now only a few hundred individuals survive, and no one knows how many, if any, other inside worlds still exist."

Some of the elders believed that maybe one day the outside world will repair itself, and allow life to flourish there again. Unfortunately, they also believed, when that day finally comes, none of our world will believe that an outside world really exists. And if anyone ever did discover it, especially one as frail and night-sighted as we, he would never be able to survive.

On my twentieth birthday, I knew death was not far away. Even the strongest of us rarely live longer than twenty-one years, and the lives of our women are shorter still, for none lived after giving birth. Bearing a child is a death sentence for a woman; however, most of them cheerfully sacrifice themselves for the existence of our species. The newborn babies are left for the younger females to raise, resulting in most males, like myself, experiencing our final years alone, without a female companion.

Before I felt the full effects of my age, I began to travel regularly to the great wall. On my visits I would place my hands and face against the barrier. Then I would close my eyes and feel for a breeze. Sometimes I would imagine one magically coming through the wall and filling my soul. I could feel the cool freedom that came with it.
So many stories were told to me in my youth. I am sorry that I can only remember but a few; even then I can't actually comprehend any of them, for I was born in this dark world. A world with no big light and no breeze. Our faces bear no color except for the black masks we wear. So I only try to construct simple images to fit the words of my elders, who have long since fallen victim to the beast we call death.

Now that the dark creature comes for me, I want to believe in the outside world. I want to believe that when my physical body perishes that my spirit will be allowed to travel beyond these walls, and into an outside world that is as beautiful as the elders once told all the excited children it was. I want to run with the free-spirited breeze. To pass through the strong people of that world. Maybe I could leave thoughts in their minds - leave the desire to take care of their precious gift - to nurture and respect it - let them feel the sadness that I and the children of the dark feel - the emptiness we experience - oh, how I want to make them see - to understand - to change, before it is too late - then maybe no one will have to wear these damn masks.

Only one man's foolish dream, an unjustified hope. I suppose the reason I wrote this is that I don't want the people to forget. If ever there is a day when the outside is inhabited again, I just want the new generations to respect and honor their gift. To learn from the mistakes of the first outsiders.

So with all said and done, my soul emptied, I shall continue dying.
To the insiders I say, "Adieu."