The ward is dark. From my bed I can watch the last of the daylight seep away, draining the ward of what little colour and joy it possessed, leaving it bathed in shades of grey, relived only by the blue-strobe flicker of the television in the nurses’ station.  I don’t mind that the light has gone.  I would have preferred to have seen the sunset from outside, maybe in a park somewhere; that would have been nice. Instead I’ve had to make do with the sliver of window I can see from my bed and most of that view is obscured by my neighbour’s pull-around screen.  Yes, I would have liked to have seen that sunset from outside.  What with it being my last.

The ward is dark, yes, but not silent.  Sure, the nurses’ television is muted so as not to disturb us but we manage to fill that particular void with our own brand of nightly entertainment.  I don’t know what other wards are like – never having spent much time in hospitals before – but up here in the lost causes wing we mutter, moan, cry and scream the nights away.  The whole repertoire of human pain, misery and despair is repeated night after night.  I don’t wonder that they only let visitors up here during the day; it wouldn’t do to expose loved ones to the nightmares of mortality which grip us in the long hours between sunrises. It’s not peaceful this process of waiting to die. Not peaceful at all. 

I guess I hear the sounds my ward-mates make more than anyone now that I’ve given up sleeping.  Oh sure, I doze a bit here and there but I can’t remember the last time I slept properly.  The thinking keeps me awake.  Seems there was never much time for thinking during my life; always too much to do to spend time on anything as sedentary as thinking.  Not now, though.  Now I have nothing but time and so a lifetime’s worth of thinking keeps me awake. 

That and the pain. 

Of course I don’t have to have the pain.  The doctors have been real clear on that.  They don’t understand why I want to be in pain when with just a few pills they could cure that little problem.  But then they don’t understand that I spend my days surrounded by the results of their work, the nodding, dribbling zombies so wacked out of their minds on painkillers that they don’t even know where they are let alone what’s happening to them.  Not that I think the doctors here are doing anything wrong by helping those who want it, but they don’t seem to understand that it’s just not for me.  Anyway, I don’t mind the pain, really.  It’s the only thing I’ve got left.

It’s that welcome pain that causes me to wince and add my own soft groan to those emitting from the sleeping forms around me as I reach into my bedside locker for a pad of paper and a pen.  I try to make myself more comfortable. I could use the remote control to raise my bed but I’m worried the noise will wake one of my ward-mates or cause a nurse to come by.  This place is no prison but the sight of somebody crouched over scribbling a note in the dark is bound to raise a few eyebrows, and I don’t want any busybodies looking over my shoulder trying to see what’s so all fired important that a man would need to write it down in the dark.  So instead I shuffle around till I find a spot a bit less painful than the others and lift my pen to start writing.  The blank page mocks my ability to say what needs to be said, but I sigh and begin anyway.

Some say suicide is cowardly.  That it’s the last refuge of the weak.  Well now, that might be true for those who are young and fit, who ail only in the mind and lack the will to tackle life head on.  Life is pain.  Life is suffering.  Those who acknowledge these obvious truths but fail to get on with it anyway are cowardly and they get no pity from me.  But those of us who are old and used up, sick and diseased beyond redemption, we, the detritus on the spring tide of life, we deserve the right to choose the manner of our passing, without being judged by those whose lives remain un-blighted by time and nature.

I pause to re-read what I’ve written.  Damn, I hadn’t intended to come across so confrontational and opinionated; I’m here to say goodbye for the final time, not to rant and judge.  I sigh again; perhaps a lifetime of holding back emotions can’t help but turn to flood once the dam walls are eroded so thin.

I don’t expect you to understand.  In fact I hope like hell you never do.  I hope your end; however it comes, is fast and unexpected.  I hope you don’t linger.  I hope you don’t have time to think. 

Damit!  This isn’t what I’m trying to say at all. I clench the pen tighter in my fist as if by strength alone I can make it do my bidding. 

I’m sorry, this is not going well.  It’s harder than I thought to say goodbye.  I guess I do want you to understand after all.  Understand that although I’m leaving you I’m not doing it to hurt you.  Although I know you’ll be sad that I’m gone I’m doing it to save you more grief in the long run.  Does my decision make me a martyr for sacrificing myself or a sadist for causing you pain?  I honestly don’t know - and I’ve had plenty of time to think about it.  Perhaps it just makes me selfish and maybe that won’t surprise you much.

It’s true, what I’m writing.  They come to see me often, my son, my daughter, my grandchildren.  They make the long trip to stand by my bed and smile and talk of happier things.  But I can see the shadows that lurk behind the smiles, the hopefully-unnoticed glances at the watches, the pent-up restlessness of the children for whom a sunny afternoon trapped in a dull hospital room with a dying old man is as  painful for them as it is to me.  So I’m going, and in my going I will release them from their duty as much as I release myself from an existence in which I no longer see the point.  Martyr or sadist?  Perhaps it’s the right of those who remain to judge.  

I hope they go easy on me.

Now listen carefully, I don’t want you to blame the people at the hospital for anything.  They’ve been good to me here.  It’s not their fault that I’m not so long in the tooth that I can’t still pull a fast one over a bunch of college educated kids.

I have to chuckle to myself over this.  It feels good to laugh and I wonder if that’s it.  Was that the famed last laugh or do I have another in me before the end?  Did I really do a lifetime’s amount of laughing already? Ah hell, don’t let me get all soft in the head now.  To break the maudlin feeling creeping over me I concentrate on recalling my last in a long line of triumphs over the system.  At any other time it would have been child’s play lifting that bottle of pills, but not since they got me in here.  For a start I’m old and bits don’t work too well anymore and those that still did, well, the cancer pretty much finished off most of them as well.   The hardest part was getting mobile.  I’ve never been one to shirk a challenge but I thought this one was going to beat me for a while.  Of course it would have been easier if the doctors had left me my feet but they’d taken those not long after I got here.  Bad circulation from years of smoking they’d said.  Not that I cared overly much, I knew I wouldn’t be walking out of here.  No one leaves this ward on their own two feet - still attached or not.  I’ll admit though that it made things tricker and maybe just a bit harder than I truly needed them to be.  

It was one of the nurses, Sarah somebody or other, that saved me.  Bless her soft soul and inability to resist the twinkle in an old man’s eye.  I charmed her; poor girl.  Does that surprise you?  That an old fart like me, with a body riddled by cancer and no feet to even stand up on, could still charm the pants off a young filly like her?  Well, if it does then you know nothing about women.  They love a rogue – every one of them.   She saved me and that’s why I don’t want my family kicking up a fuss against the hospital.   Was she to blame that I got her – against doctors’ orders – to wheel me about the place so I’d not get bored?  Was she to blame if they are so understaffed around here that it was inevitable that she’d have to leave me alone in the corridor while she rushed off to some emergency or another?  Was she to blame that sooner or later that spot where she left me would be close enough to the drugs trolley to allow me to reach on in and swipe some pills?  No, the only thing she was guilty of was trying to make an old man’s last days a bit more comfortable than they would have been otherwise.  Of all the trouble my going will cause people I hope she gets the smallest dose.  

Of course it wasn’t quite that easy.  For a start she’d park me out of the way somewhere or call an orderly to take me back to my room but after a while, when it became obvious that I wasn’t going to run away anywhere (ha!), she’d just leave me be.  Then it was just a matter of time, and time, as I’ve said before, is pretty much all I’ve got left now.  Even when the drugs trolley was near enough for me to make a grab I had to be quick ‘cause there was always someone coming and going.  Hell, I didn’t even know what was in that pill bottle till I got it smuggled safely back to my bed, but I was determined to take the lot even if they were laxatives and I had to shit my way through the pearly gates.   As it turned out I got lucky; hit the jackpot. The bottle contained enough Fentanyl to see me and the rest of the ward on our merry way.  If I’m being honest I even thought about that briefly; making my way around the ward and putting some of these other poor bastards out of their misery as well.  In the end though I wasn’t sure that would be a fair thing to do, after all some of them might even have reasons of their own to hang on a bit longer.  Plus getting around is a bit more difficult since they took my feet and I’m not sure even I could charm my pet nurse enough for her to wheel me about while I knocked off half the terminal ward.  Nope, if they wanted to go they’d have to find their own way.  I’ve got enough going on taking myself out.

I’ll miss you all, you know.  I’ve got a few regrets in my life but god knows my children are not one of them. If anything I feel blessed that I’ve been lucky enough to go first.  It’s the natural order of things for the young to outlive the old. Remember that when you’re putting me in the ground. It’s just the natural order.

It’s funny but I’m feeling tired for the first time in ages.  I haven’t even started to take the damn pills yet and already I can hardly keep my eyes open.  I guess it’s the strain of saying goodbye and the relief of knowing I finally have the means to put an end to things.  I suppose I’d better get started, the pills are bound to take a while to work. Now, where on earth did I put that water?

Well, I could sit here all night trying to explain myself away but I’m getting very drowsy now and I think I’m getting a bit confused. I just want to tell you that I love you all and that you are the single thing in an otherwise middling life of which I can be unashamedly proud.  I don’t know where I’m going next but I hope wherever it is your mother is still waiting for me.  She said she would and I figure I’ve kept her long enough.

Cry if you want to but remember … that it’s … the natural … something … very … tired … now …

Sarah Mathews was just clocking off from her shift when a fellow nurse entered the room.

‘Sarah, I’m glad I caught you. Bad news, I’m afraid, your favourite patient, Mr. Klein, has passed on.’ 

‘Oh…I see.  Did he go peacefully?’

‘Well, to be honest it was a bit strange.  When we found him he had an open bottle of Fentanyl in his hand, but you know what a big fuss he made about not taking painkillers’

‘Perhaps the pain had gotten too much even for him. Had he taken many?’

‘That’s the thing; he hadn’t taken any at all.  And there was another strange thing. He had a piece of paper held tightly in his other hand, like it was important.  But when the doctor pried it away, there was nothing on it’

‘That’s odd’

‘Yeah, and something else…’

‘What?’

‘He looked like he was smiling’