Riley's Brow

He looks up from his desk and out the window to the lawn as a small, grey cloud looms in the inner corner of his vision, moves quickly across the field of his seeing, and leaves him blind. He sits upright, stiff, cautious, observing the gloom, oddly detached though acutely aware that the end, his end, is present, is palpable, a real thing, but before he falls into darkness, the cloud passes and he looks again through the window to the green grass. The grass is clear now, sharp and strange, and sunlight coats the trees in light like an amber honey. He blinks at its beauty. Seconds later, a numb tingling drops like a curtain down the left side of his face.

"This is it," he thinks. He takes half a dozen quick steps to the bathroom, swallows three aspirin with a gulp of water, gargles some mouthwash, picks up his keys and cell phone, and walks out the door. He is deciding not to call his wife, his best friend, or an ambulance. The ambulance would be too noisy, cause too much fuss, and leave too many questions to answer should he return home still able to speak. Worse if he could not. He imagines his neighbors, strangers really, pained, aghast, staring as his mouth and his lips struggle to form words of conversation but really of absolution for them, from him, a prisoner in the darkness of his mind. In the darkness looking out. He feels small beads of sweat pop from his forehead at the thought, and these sad bubbles are as close as he will ever get to anything like having Athena spring from the brow of Zeus. Life is so much less than we imagine, he thinks.

He says, aloud, "Athena," as he approaches his car, but instead, a misbegotten Medusa is writhing in his brain like a chick in an egg, engineering a gestation whose implosion will spell his end. Midwife to the Grim Reaper.

The other options are no better. He opens the door. His wife and his friend would be mooing vessels of corked hysteria, erratic chauffeurs and irksome nurses, their overweening concern a feeble guise of neuroses and panic. Rather than lower, they would heighten his blood pressure and trigger another stroke. His last sensations: a high-pitched lamentation of "Oi vey! Oi vey!" coming from his friend, or worse, wails of woe and abandonment from his wife. His exit from the world riddled with guilt. Such are his fears, so as he grips the steering wheel, he dials his doctor, starts the car, pulls into the road, and hits the send button.

"Hello, Doctor Gamlin's office."

"I'd like to speak to the doctor."

"May I take a message?"

"It's an emergency."

"She's not available right now."

"It's important. I need to talk to her."

"She's not available. May I have her call you back?

"Tell her this is Riley Fife. I'm having a stroke and driving myself to the hospital. She has my number." There is a small gasp on the other end of the line. Then he hangs up, somehow mollified.

There may be no clean getaway this time. As he drives, he looks for likely places to pull over and fade quietly out of the traffic and out of life should another event be birthed within his hapless head. Outside the car window, bright meadows flash inadequately past, small roadside patches of greenery aglow with dappled light. Riley scans the sky for clouds and sees none.

He is surprised and chagrined that it is happening like this, for he has a fear and loathing of public, messy deaths. He thinks of a friend who died of a heart attack in the middle of an airport while running to catch a flight, her most personal and final moments thrashed out before a thousand gawking strangers. Such displays have never been to his taste, but he realizes now that he will have very little say in the matter. As he drives, he thinks. He thinks quickly and he thinks hard...