The Final Victor

The Final Victor – Flash Fiction, January 2013

I push open the door and poke my head in, the scent of disinfectant wafting up my nostrils. With a breath I enter the room, far more used to the smell than I should be. Even though it's been a good few days since my last visit, everything is just as it was. There's a rolling table hovering next to the bed and a plain plastic chair resting just to the right of it, untouched since my last visit. The rhythmic beeping is anything but calming, but at least it assures me of the life hidden inside the pale, thin figure lying motionless on the bed.

Sometimes it's hard to remember it's my best friend lying in the bed and not some stranger. It's not even the bandages throwing me off but the utter lack of movement. This is my friend, after all – this is Adam, and Adam is anything but calm and motionless. I've known him all my life – at least as long as I can remember – and he's never this quiet, never this still and certainly never this pale.

My feet move of their own accord and soon I'm standing by the bed, peering down at the too-pale face and the sunken eyes which never seem to open. It's been two weeks since the accident and he hasn't moved once. His eyelids, to my knowledge, have never even twitched.

Part of me feels angry.

"You jerk," I growl, a rumble in my otherwise steady voice. "You're supposed to wake up."

But the doctors warned me.

Told me how he might not wake up. How is surgery was risky. How he might not recover.

And I can't blame him for not waking. Just looking at him I can see how tired he is. I can see how much effort it takes to even get those breaths to lift and lower his chest, even with the breathing tube. His lungs aren't the problem, they told me – it was the fact his body was too tired, too ruined to move correctly, to work properly and allow him to breathe as he should, to allow the oxygen to do him any good.

"He's fighting," they tell me.

Yeah. Of course he is. He always was a fighter.

But even fighters have battles they don't win – can't win. Adam is strong but everyone has their limits. A part of me worries Adam found his.

A part of me wonders if it might be for the best – because he's so tired, and I've been his friend for a long time.

There's an exhale – soft, quiet, and I know.

I know even before that monotonous line sounds that being a fighter can't always be enough. I know even before I'm shoved away and nurses crowd around him that it's over.

I've known him since I was five. Twenty years of friendship and I know when he's had enough.

I can't even be angry. I can't even cry as I'm forced out of the room and more doctors file in. I can't even think because I know nothing will be the same now. Maybe I knew that all along. Maybe I knew it since the accident.

To every fighter there's an enemy, and in the end my friend is no match against the enemy of all.

Death is the lone victor at the end of every battle.