There Are Times When We Talk Without Talking

by Samantha Kent
Her nieces arrive first. All three of them, mid-twenties, clad in looping scarves and the guilt of being absent since their mid-teens.

Then her son, his eyes trained on the notices pinned to the walls, on the white rectangle of sky out the window.
His pregnant wife, his pretty daughters, their vitality as sharp and painful as a knife.

Finally her husband, back from pacing the sterile corridors. Knuckles white, eyes red, fingers tobacco yellow.

The room is warm – nauseating – but her feet, she says, are cold.

One by one her visitors ask if she’d like another blanket. One by one they are informed by the others, in jovial tones, that she already has three, ten, a thousand.

Over her dying body – because it is dying, now, the doctors are sure – the visitors draw a line around the thing they can’t face talking about and take a step further back for good measure.

You’re how old? Wow. How’s big school treating you?
That’s frustrating. Do you think your buyers will stick around?
No time off in between jobs, no. If only!
They loved it. They’re definitely cruise people now.
He’s good. Just hungover, or he would have come along too.

Every now and then the visitors force themselves to look down at the woman propped up against the pillows, to return her slumped and crooked smile.

It is easy to wonder how she might be feeling, beyond the icy feet and the aching lungs and the wounds from the failed cannula. But it is hard – it is impossible – to ask.

In time, snow begins to fall, and conversation turns to the weather.

About the Author

Samantha Kent is an Associate Creative Director and aspiring novelist (aren’t we all?). She lives with her husband and cat in suburban Berkshire, enjoys hiking and escape rooms, and eats faaar too much chocolate.