Free Black as Night: A Fairy Tale Retold by Regina Doman

more and more often lately. I don’t like it when I can’t trust reality any more. It scares me. I wish I could stop it. But—”
    She was reminded of how it had been to lose her own father to cancer, realizing that the gentle giant of her childhood memory had shrunken into a weak, dying man—a man who had eventually become a corpse, and then a memory. Suddenly, being here was like losing her father all over again.
    And he couldn’t help her, after all. More alone than ever, she had to go beyond herself or risk cracking. “Would you mind if I prayed with you, Mr. Fairston?”
    “Still berating me for being an agnostic?” he smiled at her wryly.
    “Of course not. Just being myself.”
    He leaned back. “If you don’t mind, I’ll just listen. It’s—peaceful.”
    She prayed, on the edge of that darkness and confusion. She prayed an entire decade of the rosary, feeling dry and barren within, hearing the faint reverberation of her voice on the walls in that cheerless sickroom. This was how it had been, for a long time now—comforting others, responding, smiling, going through the motions of her life, but inside feeling nothing but the echo of emptiness. The fear began to come upon her, and she struggled to keep her composure.
    But as usual, the prayers seemed to soothe him. He stroked her hand as she finished. “You know, sometimes I think you’re like the daughter I should have had, if I had had a daughter. I’m glad you came by, Blanche.” His eyelids were growing heavy.
    “I am too,” she said, and this was sincere. She had always enjoyed visiting the elderly, but Mr. Fairston had become more than a work of mercy. He had become a friend.
If I can stop one heart from breaking
I shall not live in vain
If I can ease one life the aching
Or heal one pain
…I shall not live in vain.
    “You left your book on Emily Dickinson here again,” he said, rousing himself and reaching shakily for the book on the bedside table. “I was looking at it while you were gone.”
    “Keep it,” she said. “It’s a gift.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “I am. Keep it, until—”
    There was a silence, the usual breaking-off of sentences. It was understood what the silence meant.
    “I’m sure my wife will get it back to you. She’s been saying I shouldn’t see people, that it hastens my decline. But if you want to come, even if I’m not responding—I think I would like to hear you reading, still.”
    “I’ll be back to read it to you,” she said. “I promise.”
    He took her hand and squeezed something into it. “I know you will. In case you need it—” His voice grew faint, and she saw he was falling asleep.
    Looking down at her hand briefly, she saw a door key.
    “Thank you. I’ll come back.” She put it in her pocket—later on she would put it on her neck chain—and got to her feet, still stiff from her bruises. Gently she laid her hand on his forehead. His lips moved, but he didn’t speak again. Her eyes traveled over the untidy and inexplicably dirty room, and she wished she felt safe enough to stay and clean it more thoroughly. How did the nurse stand it?
    She got down on her hands and knees again and picked up the used tissues, bits of plastic wrappers, and paper scraps that littered the carpet, and put them into the overflowing wastebasket. She packed it down to keep it neater, and while doing so found a medicine bottle, white with its label missing. It wasn’t empty—there were two ordinary looking white pills in it. At first she thought it had fallen from the cluttered bedside table, but as she looked at the medication and vitamins there, she could see this bottle was different from the others. Perhaps the white bottle was some sort of pain medication he had been taken off. After some hesitation, she thrust it into her pocket. When I see my mom again, I’ll ask her, she thought fleetingly. Then, Mom has no idea what’s going on with me now.
    Quietly she let herself out of the room. Alone, she