The Pleasant Reaper

"You're a bloody psychopath."

"High-functioning sociopath... with your number."

In my head, I blow on dandelions, and try to wish myself into whatever show has been playing on the TV for the past two days. I imagine the inane possibility of being able to swipe aside the hair smothering my face, or call for a nurse to turn up the temperature on the air-conditioning. I use every last remnant of my consciousness trying to heave my limbs, eyes, and lips everyday. And everyday without fail, my prayers fall upon the deaf ears of God.

Doors open and close, curtains rattle, families cry. These four walls prison tragedies, confining them for the sake of public safety - for the sake of preserving sound minds milling about outside the ward. The insurmountable cries of friends and family that beg for us to function in ways we simply cannot are enough to crush the average soul. All of us in this ward take the periphery below more sentient beings. We are all no longer unparalleled by inanimate objects. It's only natural that I grow accustomed to unwillingly eavesdropping. Perhaps, I rend a hole in the homogeneous unconsciousness and I am the only one here who hears. I will never know what the others can do.

"You're a bloody psychopath."

"High-functioning sociopath... with your number."

I can barely catch the witty English man's line this time. Deplorable conversations between a family hazes the sound of the show. It is the family of the patient to my right, who I found out is named Ezra. They come on the daily, excluding the day they attended Zara's, Ezra's younger sister's, wedding. They are a supportive family - they speak to and about Ezra with upmost respect at all times, despite his unfortunate state of coma. From their exchanges, I infer they're kind too, considering they bring gifts for the nurses and doctors.

The words they utter stain the stagnant peace in the ward. The words quickly transition into gibberish sniffles and sharp breaths as they start to deviate from their equilibrium. Incongruous to their routine unwavering hope, Zara suggests pulling the plug on Ezra. It isn't easy, but her parents gradually come to the same consensus. The doctors and the ward's assigned nurses are informed the very same day. All of us here teeter on the boundary dividing life and death, and have been doing so for a while. Ezra is starting to tip over, the grim reaper near in his future.

At night, I deduce the doctors and nurses don't carry out the final procedure on Ezra as there is no commotion. It must be a dream then. When the grim reaper first comes, I don't recognise it. It is lanky with a waxen, porcelain complexion. It is draped in pure white fluorescent silk from head to toe like a greek statue. First and foremost, it is a woman - a woman with a face purposefully sculpted to appear soft and feminine. Her opalescent eyes are large and round like a deer's. They naturally squint into crescents that make her look happy without having to smile at all. Her nose is tiny, its tip rounded and soft, not sharp. The grim reaper I'm familiar with doesn't have a face, and neither is he a woman. The only thing that gives her away is the scythe clutched in her delicate hands, which too looks out of place being disproportionately big to her stature.

Her steps slow as she gets closer to Ezra. She stoops, bending over him with her scythe held low. Fine lines form between her eyebrows as she sighs empathetically, as if apologising for the pain she is about to induce. She finally raises her scythe.

"You're a bloody psychopath."

"High-functioning sociopath... with your number."

"I'm afraid Ezra has passed away in his sleep last night. Your family did a very good job at supporting him up till his last breath. You did all that you could," says a grave voice. A cacophony of caterwauls unfolds. It was not a dream. The woman was in fact the "grim" reaper. That concept is strange when you look into it - the concept of the grim reaper. It is merely a hollow construct of misconstrued beliefs of death as the condemner. Religious pablum feeds us such beliefs to digest and take as gospel. Rarely ever is death portrayed as the kind saviour that liberates souls.