Ananke Bridge

Claud peers at his blue-tinged hand wrapped around the railing. He wishes he could blame the color on the temperature. He flicks open a Zippo with his other hand then snaps it back shut with a click. Wind whistles past his ears as he stares at the river below, a couple of hundred feet between the water and him – all open air.

For the first time in years, his breath comes out steady.

The night is calm: stars sparkle in the sky, and the street is quiet. A cigarette would make it even more complete, but he gave up the habit when he first got his diagnosis. His stomach growls – a horrific, violent sound – but he pays it no attention. Besides, soon enough he won’t need to worry about choking down oatmeal and applesauce. A minute smile stretches across his lips. Peace is imminent.

Without another second to waste, Claud tucks his lighter into his pocket and begins to maneuver over the railing. Two aching arms push against the frigid metal as he brings his leg up. Claud’s chest begins to thud. All of it will be over; all his pain will slip away. He takes a final look at the picturesque scene behind him.

A figure – who had not been there before – sits on the railing across the road, feet dangling in the breeze. His heart sinks to his feet and a yell leaps from his throat. “Wait a minute!” The words clash with the still silence. For a split second he fears he scared the figure, and they’d plunge into the river.

The figure’s shoulders droop under their sweatshirt. Fabric drapes over their form in thick folds. “I’m sorry. I thought I was alone.” She, Claud could now tell, replies.

He brings his foot back to solid ground and leans against the railing. The movement sucks the energy from his muscles; metal bites into his back. “My name’s Claud.”

“Hisa.” The girl sounds young; someone like her shouldn’t be sitting on the same railing as him. “Um, were you planning on staying?” Her voice is nearly lost in the gap between them.

Claud needs to keep her talking. He shrugs. “Not originally. I was supposed to be floating by this point.” He cringes when the words leave his mouth.

She doesn’t laugh nor does she leave her perch.

Probably not the time for jokes.

“You want to talk about it?” The hypocrisy tangles in his veins. A series of coughs take hold of his body; they rock his lungs and force iron to spread across his tongue. He spits over the bridge. This is nothing new. His lungs are at their end. The fact they got him this far was a miracle. But even miracles have an expiration date.

“Are you sick?” Hisa’s voice grows louder. The syllables take a sharp shape.

Claud rubs his sternum. “Dying actually. The doctors gave me six months.” Six months of his body falling apart at the seams, flare-ups that will take him out of commission for days. Not even forty and the weight of six feet of soil squanders him. “What’s your prognosis? Did your boyfriend break up with you, your parents mad?” He wrings his hands.

Hisa faces him. “I got denied from med school.” She straddles the railing. The toe of her right foot nearly touches the concrete. “Fourth time.”

Claud smirks. It’s strained and awkward. “I guess the third time isn’t the charm then.” He strides forward and stands at the edge of the sidewalk. Two lanes separate them. “Why don’t you watch some 90s sitcom and eat a pint of ice cream? That worked for me when I got denied from UCLA.” Claud didn’t all that much about college, not the way Hisa does about med school.

Another leg swings over the railing; they hover above the sidewalk. “Why don’t you do that again?” Hisa’s bangs obscure her face as she looks towards the ground.

“I’ve got my lot in life.” He fists his hands in his pockets. He runs his thumb over the Zippo. The breeze picks up to a steady wind. “You have years ahead of you to try again.”

Hisa shakes her head and stares at her lap. “My parents kicked me out, and I’m seventy thousand dollars in debt with no job.” She huffs out a breath. “Starting over looks good.”

“They’ll be devastated if they hear about you on the news tomorrow morning.” Claud’s parents don’t know about his sentence. He can’t do that to them.

An ambulance blares in the distance. Claud takes another step forward; he eases from one foot to the next – forcing another bout of croaks away. Right, left, right, left. He pauses for a minute in the middle of the road; his limbs are bricks. The asphalt has seen better days, laced with tar stripes and chipped paint. The smell of the river wafts up; a faint air of sulfur stings his nose.

“Shouldn’t you be enjoying your time left?” Hisa’s words drop like heavy stones.

He finishes his journey. “Enjoy what exactly, respiratory failure?”

Hisa gnaws at her lip, the skin cracked and bruised. “Oh, um, sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

Claud rolls his eyes. Despite knowing each other for less than twenty minutes, the two of them have far surpassed crossing the line.

“Do you have anyone?” Hisa glances up.

Claud rests against the railing. His breaths are short; the thirty or so feet felt like a marathon. A cloud comes over his head for a moment, fogging his thoughts and swirling them together like a blender. He squeezes his eyes tight and tries to focus on the task at hand. “Not anymore.” Claud wipes his dry eyes.

“I’m-”

“Don’t say you’re sorry.” He ducks to meet her gaze. Everyone says they’re sorry when he tells them about his illness. If apologies were water drops, he has an ocean worth of them.

Hisa’s mouth snaps shut. She slides from the railing. The rubber of her shoes tap the concrete. She keeps her grip, knuckles white and skin red from the cold. She needs some lotion. “Are you going to jump?”

“Are you?”

The pair of questions hang in the air like smoke; they surround the two and seep into their clothes. They bore into Claud and Hisa’s ears and reverberate in their minds. Neither takes another step.

Claud doesn’t even think he could pull himself over the railing again. He’s exhausted, more than he’s been in weeks. The memory of his soft bed, filled with plush pillows and two duvets, is alluring.

He lifts his hands and blows staccato breaths into his palms to warm them. Another wad of mucus travels through his chest, up his throat, and he pivots to cast it away. He retches twice to make sure it’s all gone, that another fit won’t commence, and sucks in beautiful oxygen. Mouthwash would be great.

“I have a cousin.” Hisa shatters the hush. Her eyes are wide, as though the words jump from her without permission. “He’s four years older. He offered me his spare room, but I didn’t want to impose.”

Claud bends over the bar. “I have a girlfriend, well ex, Eleanor. She wanted me to fly to London for an experimental treatment. I’ve already been through three” None of them extended his life significantly. The second added two months to his life, which at the time felt extraordinary. Eleanor gripped his hand while the doctor gave an overview of the treatment’s outcome. They celebrated with an expensive dinner, wine included. That night, Claud felt invincible.

Claud and Hisa’s gazes meet again. Hisa’s eyes are cherry red. Streaks of black – which he assumes is mascara – line her cheeks. A drop of blood, bright crimson, pools on her lip. Her hands fall from the railing and find warmth in the pocket of her sweatshirt. “You could try another treatment.” Hisa rasps out like the pneumonic patients Claud often gets placed with. She kicks at a green bottle cap until it bounces out of reach. “You still have time.”

Hisa makes six months sound like a full lifetime. “You could reapply.” He shoots back. “There’s, what, over a thousand grad schools. One of them’s bound to take you.” Hisa can’t be older than twenty-five. Imagining such a bright-young soul giving up on life makes Claud give pause to his own actions.

The corners of Hisa’s mouth rise. “There’s tens of thousands of hospitals in the world.” She blew a piece of hair away from her face.

Claud rolls his eyes, but there is a smile on his face.. “Then maybe there is still time.” He turns to the other side of the street. The empty sidewalk doesn’t lure him in. The glint of the water doesn’t call him. “Are you heading to your cousin’s then?”

A car drives past. It speeds down the bridge and ruffles the pair’s clothes. The sudden light burns his eyes, but he watches it fade into the distance; the red light dims with each foot of separation.

Hisa looks him over. “Are you going home?”

The walk to the nearest bus stop will be killer on his knees and that’s with the assumption he doesn’t collapse on his way. He fiddles with the lighter again, passing his thumb over the engraved initials: E. S.. “I will if you do.” The sand in his hourglass slows, like there’s a clump, or someone shoved a cork between the bulbs.

“I’ll still want to come back,” Hisa admits.

Claud lolls his head to the side. “I won’t if you don’t.” He grins at the near scowl that grows on Hisa’s face. “How about we swap numbers, that way if one of us ends up here the other can track their location and see.”

Hisa takes a step from the bridge’s edge. “You’d trust a stranger with your location?”

“I trust you with it.” Hisa isn’t really a stranger after the moment they shared.

A beat passes as the question dances in her mind. Hisa draws a long breath as she pulls something from her pouch.

Claud chuckles. “A pocketbook? God, you really are an academic.” He glances over her shoulder as she flips through the pages. Most are a mess of scribbles, sentences crossed out with passion. The words “dear” and “sorry” make him avert his eyes.

She pens down her number; Hisa already has a doctor’s script. Paper rips from the book and she places it in his outstretched hand. “There you go.”

“Thanks.” The paper is yellowed with an old book smell. “I’ll text you when I get back then.”

“And I’ll respond.” Hisa lifts her chin and straightens her spine.

“Talk to you later, Hisa.”

She steps back with her head held high. “I’ll talk to you later then, Claud.”

Claud strolls down the sidewalk and not once does he glance over the railing.