Last Chance

Bright colours, speeding past in a blur of motion. If you don’t focus on anything, the promise of the outside seemed exciting, unknown. Things are so much simpler out of focus; everything blurs with eachother, so you don’t know where the sky ends and the trees begin. It’s in detail that the wonder begins to fade with the colours.
I don’t know how long I had been sitting here, on the train. I don’t know when I got on, where I got on, or where I was supposed to be going. But I think that was the attraction of it, why I stayed here, refusing every familiar station. I didn’t know what was going to happen next for once. Maybe that was my plan. I got on some random train to wherever just to see where I would end up.
Yet I still seemed to be haunted by the sameness, the monotony, of real life at every station. The train begins to slow as it approaches; the clackety-clack of the tracks increases to a near roar as each dimple or dent, each imperfection magnified, when the speed drops, the excitement wanes, and the details come out of hiding.
Graffiti stains the cracked and dirtied brickwork below a rusted tin roof.
And the passengers get on the train.
The siren sounds.
And things are simple again.
At each stop the blur recedes, and for those few moments I seem to watch the same sequence of events play out beyond the metal and glass of the train. A group of people would be conversing (although the conversations would always seem rather one-sided), a messenger, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, but usually only one of them, would speak to another, again of varying gender but also in age and number, eyes cast downwards as if being the bearer of some ill-fated news. And each time the older of the listeners would attempt a brave face; even if the only one they would be hiding from were the messenger. Then they would be alone to mourn for whatever had been lost (for it seemed that something always is), when the messenger leaves of politeness, embarrassment, or some other appointment.

Sometimes the messengers are the same, station to station… or look the same; sometimes their audiences return, mixing and matching, and the outcome is always the same. Sometimes they look like people I know, or knew.
And the passengers get off at the station.
The siren sounds.
But things aren’t simple again.
My memory’s playing tricks; I swear I just saw…
How long have I been here?
“Too long”
I spin, surprised to hear such an alien sound. Next to me on the train sat a man, I don’t know how long he had been sitting there. He looked like one of the messengers, clean-shaven and sporting a white coat, jet black hair close-cropped, but tired, worn down.
I don’t know how long he’s been sitting there. Did he come in at the last stop? How did he-?
You’re talking to yourself, he says. “I’m just answering your questions”.
Sorry, I tell him, I didn’t realise. I let out a nervous laugh to cover my embarrassment.
“It’s all right”, he assures me, no one ever seems to. And he smiles.
I don’t want to talk to him, so I turn back to the window. You’re not supposed to talk to people on a train. It’s one of those unwritten laws that everyone abides by; it’s just not done. But there are always those people that feel the need to vent on a complete stranger. They come to you with all their grievances, all their insecurities, and they unload on you. At first in nervous and disjointed small talk, but soon in voluminous rants, secure in the fact that they will never see you again. And all the while you’re stuck there listening to their inane problems, like you don’t have any of your own; too uncomfortable to pay close attention, too polite to just walk away, in case they blow a fuse, shout, and draw the piercing and unwelcome gazes, interrupted from their won solitude.
The girl up the back has the right idea, headphones jammed in between a plethora of piercings. iPod, the great isolator. And suddenly there is a role reversal: if someone tries to talk, you simply feign ignorance, and they will be the ones feeling awkward, getting the looks, making fools of themselves.
“Where are you going?” The man in white asks.
I need to invest in an iPod.
I don’t know, I tell him, still facing the window, hoping he will get the idea and leave me alone.
“You should go home”, he continues, before… he trails off.
Before what? I don’t bother to hide the contempt in my voice. I didn’t want to talk to him.
“…it’s too late”, he finishes. He doesn’t take any notice of my annoyance, he just stares at me, eyes boring their way into mine, as if what he has said should profoundly affect me.
Too late for what? What could you possibly know about whether or not my timing will have some kind of affect on my life? Because it won’t. Nothing changes about whether or not I get off at this station or the next except how long it’ll take to get back to where I started.
I’m facing him now, his calm composed expression burning a hole in space. He put on like he knew it all, worn down by the burden of knowledge. I didn’t have to put up with this.
You need to go home, he keeps telling me, your family’s waiting for you.
Home. Family. He says them like they’re things want to go back to.
And the passengers get on the train.
The siren sounds.
And the man in white is still here.
It all keeps going around, outside this capsule. It’s like it’s all an endless repetition; people get on, people get off, people are unhappy, people are depressed. But it’s all they’re used to, so they just take it in their stride because they don’t know any different. All I want is a change, to escape this monotony that seems to be chasing me.
I tell him this, I think, but his expression, like the world outside, never changes. Like he understands.
You don’t want to do this. You’re not ready to let go of everything. There’s so much you’ve left behind, left undone, left wanting. So much promise to turn your back on; are you really prepared to do that?
It seems absurd, but I think he’s pleading, throwing ideas at me to force me to some decision. Like anything I do would make any difference to anything. Like I ‘mattered’; I’d always been told it, but I’d soon understood the term for what it meant. As long as you have something to give. As long as you have something to take. I was sick of being used.
I guess you can only run in circles around something for so long.
Time is running out. I’m not even sure he said it; the words, barely a whisper, ushered through near unmoving lips. The man had his head bowed, almost submissive, like he was defeated. And then I feel it, that unmistakeable rattle in the flooring. It grows, slowly, to a rumble, and the train shakes. I can hear the squeal of the brakes barely tapped as the cracks start to form. The man in white stands, grasping a clipboard under one arm, and looks ahead, down the train. Perhaps he glances at the girl, or the man holding steadfast to his newspaper, I don’t know. We’re approaching. He looks down at me one last time, his eyes filled with a kind of resigned sadness.
Leave; he warns me, this is your last chance.
But it doesn’t sound like a threat.
Graffiti stains the cracked and dirtied brickwork below a rusted tin roof.
And the man in white waits for me, expectantly.
The siren sounds.
And I never move from my seat.

He’s gone now, left behind in a blur of colour and motion, along with everything, everyone, else at the station. There are almost no passengers anymore. I’m here, the girl up the back is here; there are a few others, but I don’t know about the other carriages, whether they too are carrying people still. The train begins to rumble, so soon after leaving the station, but it doesn’t slow down. We accelerate more the further away from the station we get, and the shaking only seems to get more violent.
And all at once things are suddenly simple again. We have left the tracks behind, shooting out into the open sky, gliding through clouds, the green and yellow patchwork of farmland and pastures criss-crossed by strings of blue water far below. Eventually even that is left behind.
The endless black stretches in every direction; illuminated here and there by pinpricks of light. We could drift forever in this, leaving the insignificant blue-green ball millions of miles behind us. I study the others in my carriage; a man with a scarred lip steals furtive glances out the corner of his eye, from behind the safety of his newspaper, at the darkness beyond the barrier. Others do the same, not risking embarrassment by pointing out the impossibility of what had happened. I wonder how long it would be before someone spoke to another out here; how long before we coupled off to screw and reproduce; how long before we had to decide who to eat when the food ran out. It didn’t frighten me. I just sit here, the barest hint of a smile playing on my lips, content with the wondering and the not-knowing. It was different. It was what I wanted. I had made my choice.

***

The Doctor walked out of the room, his white coat billowing with his pace, clipboard in hand, clutched to his chest. Dealing with the families was the part of the job he hated most, when was forced by procedure to deliver the harsh news.
“In light of the severe brain injury sustained, and the duration of time spent by the patient in this state, the likelihood that he will ever awaken is bordering on zero”.
This man, the woman’s husband, the child’s father, had been trapped in his mind too long; it was too late, he had missed his last chance. Or rather, more appropriately, they had missed their last chance. This woman would be torn, a widow whose husband was not legally dead, between her oaths of marriage, her love for this man, and the acknowledgement that he may never return. Then there was the boy, a child abandoned by a father who had never even left, who, in fact, the boy saw every day. They had lost their last chance at living a more simple life, where you knew when to move on, and not feel guilty; because hope can be a terrible thing.
And like every time he had to give bad news, he could barely ever meet the families eye-to-eye. Instead he always had his eyes transfixed on his shoe, like there was something more interesting stuck to its lip. But it was when the tears started to flow that he had to leave, for his eyes would be dry, and he couldn’t bare the silent accusation he had once seen in a family’s eyes. You could have done more, they’d tell him, how could you be so cold? And it would seem like they meant to say that he personally had been the cause of their ill fortune.
Yet there was a light spring in his step; he knew that he had done what he could to the best of his abilities, but some people were just stubborn, some people never changed.
His eyes wandered over other patients in the coma ward… there weren’t many; comas aren’t as common as in soap operas, and even then they usually only last a few weeks. Those in the long term are transferred here, where some would waken to blinding lights and white coats, and some wouldn’t. He wondered if he could have helped those that wouldn’t: the man in Bed 14 with the scarred lip from some childhood accident, or the teenage girl down the hall with pinprick dots along her ears where her numerous piercings had healed over. But he didn’t know them… they weren’t his patients.
And the Doctor left the ward for a dying man’s bedside, for someone who would accept his help.
Somewhere a train sounds its siren.
Somewhere.