Oblivious

• Joshua Pham, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2014

The winter sky slept peacefully. Its cheeks glowed an eerie grey, engulfing the sunlight which enriched the malnourished city. The mother shivered as the crisp, cold air sank its fangs into her leathery skin; she winced as it surged through her nostrils. The nurse's footsteps echoed in the halls. Thuds which dimmed to dying scurries; each as oblivious as the clock hands which slowly and monotonously degraded everything under their influence.
The fresh faced young man stepped from the gates of the Sydney high school. His rigid figure demanded respect. His pearly smile earned him the affection of women. She remembered the youthful hands clasped around the beautiful girl at the dance. The legs that oscillated like pendulums. The eyes that dilated. Drowsy with infatuation. She pitied what had become. His powerful, proliferating voice, now a pathetic wheeze. A wavering hum drowned out by the incessant beeps of the surrounding machines. The ridges forged in her skin deepened. A cold smile; a dismal happiness.
Everything changed after he was conscripted. 10th September, 1965. Vietnam. She remembered, the agonising suspense that cemented her blood. The myriad of emotions that hijacked her son's face. Hopeless eyes. A criminal's gaze, seconds from imprisonment. Death grasped at his wrists. It tugged at his ankles as he half heartedly clambered up the stairs of the Boeing 727.
Stepping into the church a year after her son's return, the windows, stained with violent blurs of violet and crimson intensified the stubborn pain, evoking images of the bruises that painted his body. The vivid burns and perforations. Craters left by shrapnel.
"Have a seat. It's alright. Time heals all wounds," the pastor murmured.
The mother hoisted herself from the chair, shuddering. Flinging the chair in his direction, she erupted, "Time does not heal. It creates wounds. It allows them to fester. It pierces the heart and the only reason why we perceive them to heal is because the wounds which open as we speak cause us to forget the old ones."
For years she resided in the hospital beside her son. His shrivelled eyelids would briefly flutter. His numb sweaty body, still drunk from the potent anaesthetic, anchored him to the bed whilst the tangle of weedy wires choked him. Gracelessly grasping the rigid rubber mattress, the mother pulled herself towards him, lowering her chin until his sandpaper stubble massaged her skin.
Again she relapsed into her fantasy. The musky scent of tobacco on his diesel soaked skin. The sweet aromatic smell of the pine that oozed as his saw entered the timber. All that, replaced with the piercing sunlight that highlighted his pale, empty skin; a sterile miasma that exacerbated the glossy hospital walls.
But, even memories fade like photographs.
Years later, the fingers enfolded in her arms became lifeless. The winding vines which branched from her irises shuddered. A cascade of salty droplets emerged from its deep black wells, but the winter sky remained in slumber. And the nurse's footsteps still reverberated throughout the halls, each as oblivious as the clock hands which slowly and monotonously degraded everything under their influence.