Passing Time

By H. M. Mueller

The story of an old man succumbing to the effects of cancer and the toll it takes on his mind, body, and family.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 30, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462807093

H. M. Mueller

H. M. Mueller lives in upstate New York. He received a Master’s in English from SUNY New Paltz. This is his first novel.

Book preview

1

AMBROSE LAY ON the hospital bed, his torso shrouded by the hospital gown and bed sheets leaving his head and arms protruding from underneath appearing severed from the rest of his body. The veins of his arms show in almost complete visibility under his skin tracing a map of his life for anyone who cared to look.

The air carried a scent of ammonia so strong he could almost taste it. The gloss white walls magnified the glare of the light bright enough to blind a person when they entered the room. Through this brightness the smile of a clown leered at him from a picture framed on the wall opposite the bed. He spent most of his time trying to ignore it, the smile, by staring with intent at the ceiling or out the window or anywhere he could except at that picture. Whenever he looked at it he could hear the beeps of his heart monitor quicken as they ticked off each second of his passing life. That picture so much like the one hanging in his wife’s hospital room three years ago.

2

AMBROSE STATIONED HIMSELF at the side of his wife’s hospital bed day after day after week after week. Her brittle fingers always cradled within his gentle hand with their wedding bands always touching. The creases in the palms of her hands had turned brown some time ago. Neither he nor she talked, nor did they need to talk, nor could they as the respirator doled out the air she breathed. The parchmented skin of her chest creaked with each breath. He placed his other hand on her head where her beautiful silver hair once grew.

When her hair began to fall from her head Ambrose went out and purchased her a number of hats. He made sure they did not have a gaudy appearance. They were simple yet beautiful, some adorned with a few flowers but nothing more. She thought they were beautiful, some too beautiful to wear. He thought they only accented the beauty he saw in her. One of these hats now rested on the shelf of the closet with the dress she wore when she entered the hospital.

3

SUNDOWN PASSED SOME time ago. His thumb caressed her forehead until she fell asleep. The only light came from the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling which made her or any patients’ skin look green and made them look sicker than they were. He never lost awareness of his wife’s sickness but he could not turn his attention away from that picture of the clown hanging across from her bed; the mindless smile a questionable constant in the room. Its ivory teeth framed by the sanguine mouth surrounded by the spectral white of the face. Above this muzzle a vacancy projected from the eyes hinting at perpetual stupidity. They always appeared the same while his wife’s condition deteriorated closer and closer to failure; always smiling, always vacant, oblivious to the occurrences of the day. The image of the eyes followed him home when he left her for the day mocking him, and her, and time and time again this image of the clown nightmared his sleep.

She’ll die. She’ll die. You know she’s going to die. The clown sang and somersaulted around her in the