Truth is a Bitter Tonic

There are things which you never want to face. Truths which hurt your most fundamental beliefs and what you think is, and isn't. It all probably has to do with that idea of the ego and how any threat to it becomes a threat to your existence. It becomes another brand spanking new scar on your being that you can show off to all your friends and tell the story proudly, or not at all. You may choose to never ever speak of it and let it go with you to the grave. And so it will sink into the swirling dark space of the forgotten. 

I am in an operating room. One which hasn't seem a patient long enough for a fine film of dust to build up on its surfaces, making everything seem slightly gray and forgotten. I flick on the switch, and heavy fluorescent lights flood the dimness. 

I walk in, the heels of my boots sounding like gunfire. I approach the empty gurney in the center of the room, dusty surgeon's tools laid out like trophies beside it. I reach out to touch the scalpel, the dull gleam of it entrancing as light to a moth, and suddenly the place is filled with sound and the smell of disinfectant is strong and sharp. A gaggle of nurses rush in with a body on a stretcher. They disappear. 

But the body stays. I grasp the scalpel, afraid.  I approach, gingerly lift the sheet from off the body's face. I don't know what I expected to find, but it wasn't him. Not one of those truths one doesn't really want to face. Yet here he was. I dropped the scalpel, and it fell to the floor with a terrible clatter. 

And I do not want to write the rest. I do not want to say he sat up suddenly and stared at me blankly with his eyes and was broken. I do not want to say I was fooled by him. I do not want to say that I tried to cure him, and thought myself too weak to do so. I do not want to say that really, it was he that was too weak for my cure. I do not want to say that it made me crumple and wail like a mother over a lost child. I do not want to say I trembled, as I swallowed the bitter tonic of Truth, and I trembled harder as I tried to spit it back up. 

But I did. 

And when it was done, I washed my hands of him and walked away.

"We've lost him." says the echo of a doctor.

"Time of death—" echoes a nurse.