Nighttime Encounter

I felt the world narrow as I looked at her, a frail woman tonight thin and grey, lent animus by memory and desperation and loneliness. She gestured weakly as I came to her and said something, muffled, under the thick, coiled tubing which snaked to the mask bound about her face. I took the straps off, and at this early morning hour she straightened her hair feebly, gazing in the darkness as the machine sputtered and blew. I rapidly ministered to it, pleading for silence. Freed now, she spoke; Dimly, there arose an elegance, rapidity and lucidity, an English accent and gentle words spilling out in her deprecating way. She beckoned; I sat, and held her hand. She told me of her time-she was a young woman, on a boat, falling away, journeying overseas, Australia, to a new home far removed. Of a man she had met there, and loved and buried. Of her work-she had thought it very important; Of the children she had borne-how she missed them. For me, for herself, she sketched the arc of her star. Sitting on a precipice, she spoke: What really mattered now, here mostly alone, in the dark, a small hospital room and drawn curtains, fold-out fabric walls. At times I held that blowing mask against her face, to give her the breath, at times I asked a question-but mostly I listened and held her hand. The machine huffed, disconnected, waiting, in the dark. She smiled as she spoke, sometimes mocking herself, sometimes wry, sometimes happy, on some things she couldn't speak-we both understood. She held a strength, I knew, found in those who dare reject hubris. My pager interrupted, it was the world interrupting, really, I silenced it-and sat with her and listened until I could no more. Her last words, said with a smile: " I know you're busy. Thank you for listening to an old windbag like me. " I told her it was my pleasure-I have always honored teachers.