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F F F #10

This is my flash fiction effort this week. I am late (it seems to be a pattern, but it is not) because I just arrived back from Deer Camp. For those interested, I will write more about it tomorrow. But here is the story for this week:

Kodachrome Roaming

The old camera had been in a box for decades, the pictures never developed, and now with the prints in his hand his blood ran cold from looking at the images that came from it. They were pictures of Professor Creighton.

With a furrowed brow, Mike took the stack of images over to his desk and sat down in his brown leather office chair. Reaching into the pocket of his corduroy jacket, he took out his pipe and absently began to fill it while looking with disdain at the film images splayed out on his desk like a deck of cards.

“Damn, him.” he muttered, “All these years later, and I thought I had forgotten and forgiven him for what he did.” The film was a roll he had taken and forgotten after visiting Dr. Creighton at Harvard University one day, so very long ago.

Mike’s full name was Michael Rotham-Keeler, and he had been a Professor in the Department of Neurobiology for a helluva long time. His beard and moustache, once a variegated range of chestnut and other hues of brown, had grown into a salt-and-pepper display with distinctly more of the hypertension-inducing salt than pepper.

His years at the university had been good, but they definitely had not been what he had planned. Striking a match against the hard surface of the red brick he had on his desk, he proceeded to light his pipe and then shook out the flame on the wooden stub of the stick before tossing it into the orange and yellow, splotched, ceramic ashtray his daughter had made long ago for him when she was in 3rd grade.

He was a newly minted Ph.D. way back when Creighton hurt him. Dr. Creighton worked at Harvard, and had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology two years earlier. Mike had big plans and hopes to make a significant contribution to science, and he kept his fingers crossed for months as he waited to hear about his application to work as a Post-Doc in Dr. Creigton’s lab. To do so, would give him the experience of a lifetime that would help him find how he could best serve science through his own research.

After his graduation with his doctorate, Mike moved back in with his parents during that Summer while waiting to hear about his Post-Doc applications. It had been quite a while since Mike had been at home, and it was bittersweet. It was wonderfully sweet to see his parents and younger siblings with such a great depth of time again, but it was bitter to see how harshly his parents had aged, especially his father. His father just looked tired.

The two letters arrived on the same day. The first, one from Harvard, was an acceptance and invitation to Post-Doc in Dr. Creighton’s laboratory. The second, however, was not so pleasant. It was a letter from Dr. Niacini, informing my father that he had inoperable mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is a rare cancer of the pleural lining surrounding the lungs, and is caused exclusively as result of exposure to asbestos.

Mike’s father had worked hard all his life. He was a welder, and a damn good one. Unfortunately his skill lead him to be sought after in difficult welding situation. This is how he landed his job a the Wickes Foundry where he welded together from the inside, huge, room-sized industrial boilers, each of which was LINED with heavy layers of asbestos.

Mesothelioma is a death sentence, with the execution set for 3-4 months hence. No one recovers.
I wrote and explained my situation to Dr. Creighton, and asked him to please allow me to delay my arrival from September to December or January. He flatly refused, saying, “Science waits for no man.”

Surely he was not serious, I thought, and ferreted out his phone number to try to speak with him on the telephone. Perhaps he did not understand the gavity of the situation. But unfortunately, he was serious. I had to make a decision, go to Harvard in September, while my father succumbed to this wretched disease, and my mother was left to cope alone, or give up on the idea of the position as a Post_Doc at Harvard in the lab of the Nobel Prize winning Creighton.

That Summer, we all cried, tried to laugh, and worked to enjoy the remaining minutes together. But all too quickly my father grew bedridden. First, he could no longer stand. Then he could no longer sit in a wheel chair. Very harshly, in a matter of days, he could no longer eat on his own, or even go to the bathroom without help. My mother, stalwart in her efforts to care for him, was stooped over and wilted from the physical and emotional effort. I stayed and became the braun to help my mother meet my father’s needs, or else she would not have been able to keep him home. Mesothelioma robs a person of so much. I stayed and helped care for my father. He lasted until the middle of October before the Mesothelioma strangled him by forming a thick crust of cells around the lining of the lungs. The cancerous tissue was so thick and dense, it would not allow his lungs to expand, and he suffocated. Both my mother and I were at either side of his bed that morning when he breathed his last.

It was cold the day of my father’s funeral. Yet, I did not feel as cold as I did at seeing the images of Creighton once again.

* * * * *

There is my effort. Sorry for the delay as always. I strive to become better.

PipeTobacco