If you get cancer during the virus
Koal looks over May as she plays the piano in the middle of the barn.
“What are you missing?”
“The song.”
“No, May. You’re missing the people.”
“I’ll call them once I’m done with this part.”
But how much will they see you?
“I have to finish the song, Koal. With it, I’ll be happy.”
“But what about them?”
“What about them?” I’m the one who’s dying.
“They miss you.”
They don’t know me.
“May, give them a chance.”
“I can’t.”
“Why?”
“The only way to know me is through the song. Whatever I feel, I embed into my art.”
Koal looks at her, his lower lip slumped beneath his chin.
“I need this more than they need me.”
Koal bends to check on her vitals, but May stiffens. Koal presses his arms on her shoulder and gently pulls May’s hands apart from each other.
May pushes him away. “Leave.”
The sky turns black as the windows cave in. The music chords strike; May writes a rift. She misses a note; she records again. The sky darkens as Joane comes in.
“Your mother is crying.”
What does that matter to me?
“You’re hurting people, May.”
“I am hurting nobody. If I aimed to hurt people, I’d kill myself by now.”
Joane looks down. Please don’t say that.
“I just need this song.”
“Which song, May?”
May takes her hands off the keyboard. “It’s my last one, I promise. But I have to make it a good one.”
Joane’s nostrils start to quiver.
“It’ll never be goon enough. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be good. Right?”
“You won’t stop until you’ve died.”
May grins. “That’s what makes my life worth living.”
“And what about moments with people?”
“They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“Seems you’re excluding a lot those moments right now.”
May massages her neck. “You don’t understand.”
“And who does?”
“Friends who can’t be here because their borders shut. With them, I’d keep writing my song. The difference is that I’d feel better about it because they’d care about me and what I can become.”
“Even if you lived in the same town, you know the new virus policy: no visitors allowed.”
May looks down at the keyboard, fine-tuning the beats. Please leave, her chords play as fingers tap fingers to be free.
“Okay, don’t call your parents. But call your friends.”
“It’s different because I don’t need to talk. I just need to be with them as I write my song.”
The barn door shuts behind her. May taps on another note before she curls up and weeps. Rain patterns the wooden barn. She looks at the piano, but she can’t hold onto a fleeting song.
May wakes up to blood. She tries to wipe it off, but the stain refuses to go. May picks up the sheets and hauls them over her back. She opens her door. She doesn’t look back.
The farm is still as May ambles through its halls. Her feet touch the grass. She’s never felt as light before. Spider webs fly as dusk settles forward. Forest leaves build a canopy.
May looks at her surroundings with aesthetic formulation. She spreads the bedsheets on the grass, imagining a picnic simulation. May sits down in the middle of a semi-rural forest she calls home. She closes her eyes and stays there until Koal comes crashing forth.
“May!” Koal pants. “Someone’s here for you. They’re waiting at the gate.”
May perks up, stretching her toes as she stands up.
And as they make it to the gate, relief gushes through May’s face.
“Nitcia, you came.”
“I would never let you die on your own. It took a while convincing my president, but you know how things go: I’d do anything for you.”
May’s eyes wrinkle to a smile. Two other friends lunge forward, hugging her without risk of contagion.
“I thought you two were in Damascus.”
“But now we’re here. And we’ve heard you’re writing a song?”
May nods, tears radiating warmth onto her pale face.
“Awesome job. We’re researching on climate action for envir-19. Do you mind if we do that besides your piano?”
“That sounds perfect.”
But Koal never crashes out of the forest. No one shows up at the gate.
May opens her eyes in the middle of fluorescent lights and plastic gloves. She looks at the walls: grey and anesthetic, detoxified and barren.
May stands at the end of a hospital bed, looking at the spray of blood, pressing down the five keys shooting out from the palm of her hand.
Sunday arrives, and May can’t get out of her bed. Her head quivers; her hands shake. Her family comes into her room.
“Get me to the piano,” she tells them.
But her parents look at her as if she hasn’t said anything at all. Her mouth thinks, but her brain can no longer speak.
“Help me,” she yells.
Joane takes her temperature, and Koal changes her bed.
“Did she say anything as she died?”
“She played,” she yells.
But the doctor shakes his head, “No, she didn’t say anything.”
Her parents leave the room. Koal and Joane leave the room. May, or what’s left of her, stays.
She reaches for her piano, but she fumbles, and she coughs, and she can only see her hands. She plays the chords, tapping one finger on each other: her piano a hundred miles from her many distant homes.
She didn’t finish the song, but she got real close.
