Thirst

Her hometown belongs to a big stream. Like a spiderweb this stream has conquered everything in the city, the center, the suburbs, big streets and small ones, plazas, the shopping mall. The people living here think they built bridges and canals and dams, but all they really did was civilize the stream. Everyone hears its echo, including her. They hear it all the time, all the time, trickling over stones, fishes jumping in and out. Its ongoing gurgling has long found its way through their skins.
The stream is called Thirst and so is the town.
She always wanted out. She always longed for silence. Please, she thought, please just stop. Just for a moment. Please.

Why, she thinks, why do I think about Thirst now? She is drinking one cup of water after the other under the alarmed eyes of her doctor. Almost thirty years ago she left Thirst and never returned. But the polite and quiet voice of her doctor brought the stream back, with one big splash, grabbed her and threw her in the stream and now it's inside her again as if she never went away.

Suddenly, and it is always sudden when a doctor tells you the inevitable, suddenly she sees how it will go. It doesn’t matter if it's one year, six months, one day, couple hours, it all comes down to the question “why?” followed by “why me?”
I am not even a smoker, she thinks, and I've been eating biological the last seven years, I’ve done nothing wrong.
But it doesn't matter. She has one day left or one month or one year. At the most.

Her doctor likes to explain. He talks and talks and all the time she doesn't listen. She drinks another cup of water and listens to Thirst, the stream she left behind, flowing into her once more, claims her blood, accelerating her heart. Even feels its spray on her cheeks. Slow and steady and wet, not sweet and pure, but grey and dirty. The doc is still talking. Words in capital letters are landing on her. MEDICATION. ONE WEEK MAX. HOSPITAL.
They fall on other words in capital letters. Words swimming against a wild current. WHY? WHY ME?

She is flooded by memories. Lost chances. What ifs. Fast, faster rewind pictures in her head. His clear eyes. Him and her. Only Vernell days. She wants to stop. Wants to pause. Just a moment. Please. Fast, faster, the pictures seep away. Unpleasant. Disastrous. MEDICATION. WHY ME? WHY?
She has always thought: now. Now is when I will encounter something truly beautiful, now I will find the way to happiness. But then now disappeared without a trace. She stops. Yes, I want to live.

“I'm thinking about the stream in my hometown” she says.
Her doc looks at her bewildered.
“The stream?”
She wants to laugh. He didn’t see that one coming.
“It is really astonishing,” she continues. “I feel Thirst as if I’ve never left it.”
“Thirst?”
She laughs. “Don’t worry. I'm not cracking up. Time is like a stream. Whatever he takes will be lost forever.”
Her doc wants to get up. He is struggling for words, holding his pen real tight. She just smiles.
“Give me my medicine. I’m not staying. I’ve decided. I’m going home.”