Another Birthday (Josef/Sarah) PG-13
Posted: Thu Jan 14, 2010 1:46 am
Just a vignette, set some years in the future...a trifle for our birthday celebration.
Disclaimer: I don't own Josef. Or Sarah. Sure wish I did. They'd both be happier.
Another Birthday
Waverly Place, 2034
A nod, and the nurse on duty slipped away, leaving them alone. He appeared at irregular intervals, throughout the year, but this date was like clockwork. He never missed.
He’d given up, years ago, on bringing presents, although the flowers ordered for the day were always special. Exotic bouquets of orchids, bright birds of paradise, in place of the usual roses.
Josef looked down at her sleeping form and let himself feel the black, empty hole in his heart pulse and threaten to overcome him. He’d gone through a period when he’d spoken to her as though she could hear him. And a few years as well when he’d raged at her, screamed at her to wake up, dammit, just wake up!
She never moved, never responded. Not so much as a shiver of an eyelid, or a twitch of a finger.
With each year, her skin grew more waxen, her hair darker, its deep auburn untouched by sun. Josef had found her beautiful as a mortal, laughing and moving. Now, she had the ineffable, distant allure of a goddess carved from marble, and he sometimes found himself so drawn to her he left everything to fly to her bedside, staring down at her for hours, her unearthly stillness a mirror to his own.
She’d be one hundred years old today. With no knowledge of seventy-nine of them. In all this time, he’d seen to it that she had the finest care, that everything that could be done for her was done. A dozen times he’d thought the researchers were close to a breakthrough, that some cure, some miracle, would be found.
And nothing. Nothing changed.
Josef took her hand, her pale, perfect skin unmarred by time. He felt the black despair rolling in, threatening to pull him under again. He felt something shift inside him, almost physical, almost like an icepack breaking. It was a decision, he supposed, perhaps one long overdue.
When he spoke, his voice was close to cracking. “Sarah, sweetheart—I’m sorry. I can’t—I can’t do this anymore. You’ll always be cared for, I swear it, but I can’t go on like this. I’m sorry. I loved you—I love you—but I just can’t.”
He gave her cheek a last caress, his eyes burning, sight blurred. He didn’t see the tear sliding from the corner of her eye as he turned away.
As he walked to the door, he felt as though he were wading in wet cement. He moved slowly, lost in the feeling that he was cutting out the best part of himself.
And because he moved with such sorrowful deliberation, when the faintest rasp of a whisper, something that might have been imagined, and might—might—have been “Charles,” floated across the room he was still there to hear it.
He was back by the bedside, on his knees, yelling for the nurse, begging Sarah to speak again.
At the end of the long night, he had to admit that nothing seemed to have changed, that her coma continued unabated. But it was a gleam of light in the darkness, and the watching, the waiting, the hoping, would go on.
From day to day, month to month, birthday to birthday, he would go on. Unbroken.
Disclaimer: I don't own Josef. Or Sarah. Sure wish I did. They'd both be happier.
Another Birthday
Waverly Place, 2034
A nod, and the nurse on duty slipped away, leaving them alone. He appeared at irregular intervals, throughout the year, but this date was like clockwork. He never missed.
He’d given up, years ago, on bringing presents, although the flowers ordered for the day were always special. Exotic bouquets of orchids, bright birds of paradise, in place of the usual roses.
Josef looked down at her sleeping form and let himself feel the black, empty hole in his heart pulse and threaten to overcome him. He’d gone through a period when he’d spoken to her as though she could hear him. And a few years as well when he’d raged at her, screamed at her to wake up, dammit, just wake up!
She never moved, never responded. Not so much as a shiver of an eyelid, or a twitch of a finger.
With each year, her skin grew more waxen, her hair darker, its deep auburn untouched by sun. Josef had found her beautiful as a mortal, laughing and moving. Now, she had the ineffable, distant allure of a goddess carved from marble, and he sometimes found himself so drawn to her he left everything to fly to her bedside, staring down at her for hours, her unearthly stillness a mirror to his own.
She’d be one hundred years old today. With no knowledge of seventy-nine of them. In all this time, he’d seen to it that she had the finest care, that everything that could be done for her was done. A dozen times he’d thought the researchers were close to a breakthrough, that some cure, some miracle, would be found.
And nothing. Nothing changed.
Josef took her hand, her pale, perfect skin unmarred by time. He felt the black despair rolling in, threatening to pull him under again. He felt something shift inside him, almost physical, almost like an icepack breaking. It was a decision, he supposed, perhaps one long overdue.
When he spoke, his voice was close to cracking. “Sarah, sweetheart—I’m sorry. I can’t—I can’t do this anymore. You’ll always be cared for, I swear it, but I can’t go on like this. I’m sorry. I loved you—I love you—but I just can’t.”
He gave her cheek a last caress, his eyes burning, sight blurred. He didn’t see the tear sliding from the corner of her eye as he turned away.
As he walked to the door, he felt as though he were wading in wet cement. He moved slowly, lost in the feeling that he was cutting out the best part of himself.
And because he moved with such sorrowful deliberation, when the faintest rasp of a whisper, something that might have been imagined, and might—might—have been “Charles,” floated across the room he was still there to hear it.
He was back by the bedside, on his knees, yelling for the nurse, begging Sarah to speak again.
At the end of the long night, he had to admit that nothing seemed to have changed, that her coma continued unabated. But it was a gleam of light in the darkness, and the watching, the waiting, the hoping, would go on.
From day to day, month to month, birthday to birthday, he would go on. Unbroken.
Oh my! I love reading anything related to Sarah. He'll never really be free because he doesn't want to be. She was the light of his life and he's not ready to go back to complete darkness.
Poor J. He's living Pygmalion in reverse.
