Corrosion
By J. L. Young

He was a vibrant man of twenty-three when he suffered his first symptom of a terrible disease. He was giving a merger presentation when his life fell apart. Shortly after he began the speech, words wouldn’t come out of his mouth, only halted mumbles. The members of the board looked to him and were stunned, as he was an accomplished orator. He tried to take a step and he saw the room streak upward.

His wife and fellow board member shot to his side, “Claudius, are you alright?”

Claudius’s vision cleared, he saw Mrs. Rasmussen reaching for a phone out of view. Her voice was lost in the cacophony that erupted in the room. He doesn’t remember losing consciousness.

For him, morning had arrived after a long restless sleep. His loving wife, Willa remained at his side. Worry had not tarnished her beauty. She was asleep in a chair beside a medical bed. He touched her knee and she awoke suddenly, but the shock quickly turned to glee. Her smile was so big her nose scrunched to fully present her teeth and dimples, and they embraced.

Willa completed the merger her husband had begun which granted them a hefty bonus she put toward his medical expenses. After some time, he acclimated with the world he had been away from for the last year.

The doctor came in one day told him the bad news. “Claudius, you have a degenerative brain disorder which is most likely Pitman-French disease. The cause is only speculative at this time. Over time your neurons are necrotizing. As each neuron ceases to fire it rapidly corrodes, preventing it from ever firing again. Eventually, the disease progresses into the brainstem and shuts down the lungs, heart, and the other organs. The only thing we can do is keep you comfortable for the time you have left.”

“How long does he have left?” Willa asked.

He stroked his beard, “Judging from the rate of corrosion we could see, a year, maybe two at the most.”

One year, almost to the day from when the doctor gave his prognosis, Claudius slumped over and fell from his chair and suffered a seizure. That day, the disease had taken the use of his legs. Shortly thereafter, the paralysis climbed his body and took the use of his arms. He laid there and watched the color wash from Willa’s face. Each night, she put Claudius to bed and read to him from his favorite authors. After he fell asleep, Willa retreated to her own room. She climbed onto her bare mattress and cried herself to sleep.

The mornings, days, evenings, and nights, blended. Willa’s work wasn’t to her usual standard. She learned her insurance allowed the use of a twenty-four-hour nurse to aid in Claudius’s day-to-day care. She welcomed the help.

After many candidates were sent, Willa settled on a thirty-six year-old man named Valdr. She was curious about the name and looked it up, it was Norse name for ruler. He was gentle and took great care of Claudius. Her work picked up.

She continued to read to her husband, but she still cried herself to sleep every night.

One night Willa woke with a thought she couldn’t shake. Quietly, as not to disturb Claudius or Valdr, she took to the kitchen. She unwrapped a syringe and plunged it into a vial of Bromocriptine, pulled the plunger. Then, then she pushed the needle into another vial marked pseudoephedrine as she knew, they were going to the park the next day. Claudius tended to get a little stuffy during their outings.

Behind the bulwark of trees, sat a man entrapped in a wheelchair, legs wrapped in a crocheted Afghan blanket. His head against a pad on the end of an arm attached to the chair. He watched longingly as children played catch with their aunt. The green grass has, at that moment, become mutedly gray. Alas, it was the last of the color to slip away from him. Valdr administered the injection.

Valdr called out and drew Willa’s attention. She ran to Claudius’s side, pressed her fingers to his carotid, and called 911.

It had rained earlier the day of Claudius Wallace’s funeral, but now the sun’s disk shown brightly in the southwestern sky, but they were shaded by a large tree. Willa was seated, her head against her father’s chest.

Willa returned home after work. The apartment was dark as usual. She sat on the couch, opened her tablet, and checked the local news. One of today’s headlines read: ‘Local Cemetery Vandalized, Body Missing, Perpetrators Unknown.’

She remembered that tree and performed a reverse pinch gesture on the supplied image. The image expanded. The stone placed there before the empty hole had Claudius’s name engraved on it. A pair of vials bounced on the cushion beside her and rolled against her leg. She looked around and the apartment was empty, lifted them into the light, Bromocriptine and Pseudoephedrine.

“I recognized the taste of each of them,” a long-missed, but not forgotten voice found her ears. Its timber was deep and mellow.

Willa feared for her life. She dropped off the couch and crawled to the bookcase. She put her fingers on a reader and a shelf dropped open revealing a pistol. After she snatched it and slipped a magazine into the frame, Willa chambered a round and ordered, “Show yourself!”

Claudius stepped around a wall partition, he looked as good as could be expected considering. He held his palms forward, “Willa, I don’t know how much time I have, but I had to come back to tell you….”

She lowered the pistol to the carpet, “You might not want to say it once you know the truth.”

“I know it was you, Willa. It was an act of mercy, not malice. An act of pure love. Thank you, Willa. Live life in peace.” His body dispersed into nothing.

She whimpered and reached, “Claudius.”