Vigils in Noise

She sat on a settee and looked on. There was an odour of an intangible sickness that dried her mouth. She looked on. The clock clicked on to strike half three, quarter past, four in the morning. She looked on. Her charge lay on the bed and tossed and turned and mumbled and grumbled.

 
‘But don’t you see, I must talk….what was I talking about..The AC, the AC!...where are the syringes, what about the syringes..there are syringes….am I going mad, I am mad, pleasedon’tleavemeIloveyoudon’tgoamImadwhatishappeningIdon’tdunderstand’.

She looked on and mused. Perhaps they should train budding psychotherapists by sending them out to bars where the drunken dregs of society swirl and twirl and perhaps that is the best way to prepare them for the truths of their profession. What is madness but another form of drunkenness- The figure on the bed began to weep, a cry for attention. She lifted a hand to caress a hand. Her voice was patient and soothing and jovial. But it was empty, empty, empty.

‘Don’t let them send me away, I love you….what is happening I can’t remember…what is happening, no listen to me, no I will be quiet, I promisejustletmefinishmysentenceIwillbequiet.’

That was then.

Then was an hour, a century, eons ago.

Then was a second ago.

This is now.

She thinks her charge will never stop talking and the noise is grating. Noise is what grounds her to the present and the reality of it all. Silence is golden, silence is blessed, silence will let you float away. She is scared of floating; she is scared of the future that waits on that bed. A crook of her fingers brings a furred head against her hand. Words are useless. He sits next to her in quiet contemplation, he has never spoken a word – has never needed to. The sweep of his tail is drowned in the noise. 

‘Close your eyes and sleep now. I can’t stay with you all night, you know I can’t.’

There may be irritation in her voice. It is not directed at her charge. Perhaps this is a lie. She is flawlessly human and so she is full of flaws. She shifts on the settee. She looks on. There is a lull in the fumes of the air.

‘I am going to go now- No, I can’t stay. You really must sleep now. Yes, I’ll wake you at 6. Yes, like I promised the last 37 times. Yes, I promise. Yes, I have an alarm. Go to sleep now. Close your eyes. Now.’

She opens the door softly, pauses for a last look and goes outside. The house is hushed and silent and heavy this early. Madness, no cure for madness. The great ones are always the mad ones, everyone says. Perhaps she will be lucky and she will be great. Math doesn’t lie. Probability says she will have a bed of her own to lie on one day. She climbs the stairs with madness at her heels. It is a slow climb, there is no point in trying to outpace madness. It was ingrained to win, it was written in secret, mysterious twists of DNA. She shuts the door on madness. There could be sleep if she chose, but when the bed is an all but certain future and sleep is for the condemned- there will be no choosing sleep just yet. There will be no choosing madness just yet. She sits and waits for the sun to break the sky. There is silence in her, around her. She breaks it with unnamed music and dances and dances and waits.