The Woman in the Room Upstairs

Hi, it's me again, back!

She was wrapped in many loosened layers of cloth to hide her cold wet outfit, stuck to her body refusing to leave it, but frozen. Her eyes were shaded with wide spots of dark spotted muddy eye shadow that nothing could compete with but the darkness of her eyes, or the darkness of the room upstairs.

I saw her that night, a cold rainy thundering one, trying to make her way up to her room, in the last phase of night.

I stood there watching her stumbling over the never-ending stairs, as it probably seemed to her, with her little wet hands, shivering, and clinging to the cold metal dusty banister, making her way up through the old damp stairs, struck every now and then by lightning flashes.

Deep inside, I felt like wanting to help her on her way to her room, but I wouldn’t take a step for a woman like her, the kind of man I am shouldn’t let women like her exist, yet till I find a way to kick her out.. I keep watching her.

I have seen her many times before, so mysterious to me, always distant, always quiet, always alone. Seldom have I seen her in day light, I always watch her on her way back- in the dying beats of the night. Nobody really knew her, or tried to. Everybody talked about her in their daily morning coffee gossip.

Many nights I’ve watched her, cautious enough so she wouldn’t notice, until that night, while she was going up.. when she heard Bang!

She rushed down the stairs, panicked, seeing my body piled up on the ground. She pulled me inside.

All I can remember was the deep scent of smoke graving out of her clothes, with her mouth into mine breathing her warmth out, to me, giving me the kiss of life, and her little hands on my chest pushing it hard till it was revived, being there by my side.. in the screaming red rays car.. and daylight.

Some other night, late at night, I woke up, sober enough, with vague memories of it. I decided to go upstairs to her room, and thank the woman who saved me from my sick heart. I knocked on her door, but there was no answer. I know she is always in her room by this time, getting ready to sleep by the first lines of the breaking dawn, I wanted to catch her in time..before sleeping. I knew she was inside. I kept knocking, and after several trials, and the increasing regretful lava rushing through my veins, mixed with the hope for wet drops of forgiveness and salvation, I decided to break the silence.. and doors.

I went in, and called for her, I wouldn’t be that bold with usual people in usual circumstances, but I had the feeling that the past night after my sick heart breathed her life in, and its weak pulses were, for some moments in time, rhymed to the beats of her merciful palms, a lot of borders were melted in, and the usual frames were unbounded.

I tried to switch on the light, but there was no light, only darkness. I lit my cigarette lighter to be able to see, but it didn’t work, I couldn’t see further than a chair I laid on. After all the noise I made, I thought she must be late and decided to stay there and wait for this woman in this pitch black.

Light slowly crept in, curtaining aside what had been there and I hadn’t seen. I saw her sitting on the opposite chair with her head leaning down by an old cracked column. Trying to see more clearly, begging the sun to quickly stand up and sweep the darkness remnants away, I rushed to her and gently tried to wake her up. I held her hands, to find them cold and almost solidified. I was panicked and didn’t know what to do. I kept shaking her violently and shouting in hope for an answer. No replies froze my mind. I opened her bag searching for any medication she might be taking, all I found were tapes of pills, which I later found to be pain killers. I decided to give her one and rushed to the refrigerator across the room for a glass of water and any sugary juice or something. I opened it up to find it completely empty and dark. I don’t know why it took me that much to realize that the woman was pulseless dead.

I just sat down by the chair next to her. That was what I did. The sun unbashfully and clearly unveiled her last notes in a barely tightened wrecked notebook. Opened, unlike her writer, it laid in front of me.

“Time is running..I have to get some money to buy this dose’s shot, the doctor seriously warned me this time. I wish I could stop the pain.. it’s killing me”, and I saw some marks of tear drops buried in the paper.

Pages were turned, one after another, and lines spoke out the unspoken. Her words were there to tell me what I was never there to hear, neither me nor anybody.

“I’m hungry. Very. I couldn’t eat anything at the hospital today.”

“I am so sad. He died tonight. The patient in room 207, neither our nor the doctors’ trials were able to save the man and keep him for his poor family, poor they are for their loss, for their coming days, poor they are for they couldn’t afford him a good private hospital, for the life they have to afford after his death. I couldn’t help them, or anybody else. Not even myself. I wonder how the doctors stood chatting and smoking after their patient’s death! Invaded by their cruel senseless sinful smoke, I end up.. time after time.”

“God, I need you. I need your help. Mercy.”

“Now I’ll put an end to all the suffering. I’ll set the final full stop. I won’t have to think anymore about how they see or consider me. The answer is always pre set. Pre defined. Like everything else. Now I will put the final end as simple as dot. Full stop. Black.

All I have to do is pass the knife over that vein and stop the suffering. Stop the pain.”

“Today was beautiful, I saved the man in the room downstairs. He seems very kind. Poor man, hard heart attack,  his heart seems to have a problem, I talked to one of our hospital’s doctors, Doctor Nabil about him, and he said I took the right steps, he always says I’m his cleverest nurse”. “For so long, I enjoyed daylight with this poor man.. hope he’s doing better now”.

“I’ve almost forgotten how the sun looks like, today I felt its warmth”.

“Lonely again.”

With no more words to be read, I was left.

 Haunted by her shadows, and her breath echoing every beat of my heart, I lived.