There's an ambulance across the street. Everyone hurries to their windows to watch what happens. Under the guise of caring, they collect the event to relate it later, an anecdote proving their compassion told to relieve boredom. But no one is planning on following the afflicted to the hospital. No one that is except for Mr. Pike.
He sees the old woman being carted out of her home, and sighs, "Finally." Not so much in reference to her, but to the fact he can finally get some work done. It's been too long. He can only read so much, watch so much, before his brain starts hissing for distraction. It's his own fault, but still, any port in a storm as it were.
Ducking outside he catches the ambulance driver while the patient is still being loaded. He asks what hospital they're headed to because, he lies, he's a concerned neighbor who would like to visit the ailing woman. The paramedic tells him St. Agatha's. Mr. Pike thanks her kindly, and heads back in his house to get dressed.
He puts on his best suit. After careful consideration he decides to go with a bow tie. Hasn't worn one in years, but it seems to suit the occasion. Why exactly he can't say. Fashion is like that.
Once the ambulance is gone the gawkers soon depart, eyes leave the windows. Let the ghoulish speculation begin: what was wrong; will the old lady be dead soon? Mr. Pike knows. He could smell it like spring rain.
Properly attired -- one should regard such occasions with a degree of decorum, Mr. Pike likes to think -- he loads the trunk of his car. Then he drives to St. Agatha's. He knows the routes to every hospital in town. This time he takes a scenic road, cruising through the forest preserve to take in the Fall foliage. No need to hurry. It'll be a while before doctors feel safe shunting the old woman out of the way, stored in the ICU for whatever comes next. Let a heart monitor worry about her because there's nothing much anyone can do.
Pulling into the parking lot he thinks: "I've been a bit lazy lately. Used to be a time I went looking for scenes. Now I'm chasing what fell in my lap. Shamefully lazy."
But he shakes the shame off. This'll be the jumpstart he needs to get back in motion. When Anne left during the summer... he just didn't feel like working. In a way it's been good for business. The galleries keep jacking up the price of his pictures because, well, supply and demand -- fewer and fewer pieces worth more and more money. Anne used to think Mr. Pike was so talented until he told her how his photos came to be. After that, she regarded him as... a shudder dispels the thought, and gathers his equipment from the trunk.
The camera is bulky, a seemingly haphazard hodgepodge of copper and brass attachments jutting out the sides of a mahogany box. Odd colored wires connecting dim flickering crystals which act like prisms refracting otherworldly lights into a spectrum the living can see. The whole contraption is like an eccentric cousin of the Le Phoebus box camera. Knowing full well he can't just walk the hospital halls with it, Mr. Pike secrets it in a lidded present box. The box under arm he quits the parking lot to enter the hospital.
A kind nurse informs him the woman he's looking for, his grandmother he lies -- "Oh what a terrible thing to happen on her birthday." -- she's in the ICU, third floor, room six. He thanks her, smiles, and walks off in a practiced solemn gait. Can't seem eager to see the dying.
He finds the room. Then cons his way past another nurse: "Is grandma going to be okay?" He's done it so many times before, he almost believes his own lie. The trick isn't to sound worried so much as angry, a 70-30 mix of the two. A nurse, her accent south African, takes Mr. Pike to the right room.
She says, "There's a good chance things will improve, but for now, it's good that you're here."
She smiles, and leaves him alone with the old woman. Mr. Pike sighs. It's almost too easy sometimes. He closes the door halfway. Experience has educated him nurses are suspicious of fully closed doors, so he sets up just out of view.
The smell in the room fills his nostrils. Chance of improvement my ass, he thinks. This lady is done for. It isn't unpleasant, well, not to him. He's used to it the way a gourmand gets used to the smell of certain cheeses. He takes out the camera, aims it, and snaps off a few shots. Mr. Pike always knew about the other side of existence, though it took him years to realize those things, the smells, sights, sounds he caught no one else did, that it meant anything significant; but once he did he went down the rabbit hole. Most people who learn about the visible dead avoid the knowledge. The few who don't... he found them and their work. He didn't invent this camera. He bought from a Frenchman in Japan.
The old woman stirred. The heart monitor went from a steady beat to something chaotic, the unpredictable jazz of impending death. Mr. Pike quickly loaded another roll of film then snapped off several pictures just as the flat line stretched across the screen. He returned the camera to the its hiding box as a doctor and nurses hurried into the room. He feigned the appropriate amount of resistance when they asked him to leave then casually, while they struggled to save the dead woman, left the hospital.
Driving home he unintentionally thought about Anne.
That time she said, "What you do is inhuman."
His counter, "Maybe it is inhuman, in a way, but what's wrong with that? Sometimes you have to be inhuman to see humanity; realize when to capture a moment that shows the reality of a situation. Take Nick Ut's picture of Phan Thị Kim Phúc. He watched a little girl running down the road in terror, covered in burns, and his first reaction was to take a picture. Another person, a more human person, would've run to help her."
Anne dropped the argument after that, but not her stance. Mr. Pike saw the gulf widening between them. She packed her things. He said nothing. She left. He said nothing. The summer passed... now he sat in the dark room in his basement developing film.
The images emerged crisp and clear -- HD eat your heart out. A few fuzzy out of focus disappointments, but then he saw silver and gold. Amidst the series taken right around the flat line he saw the old woman, her physical face still, somewhat slack, while her incorporeal self, like a grey greenish mist, drifted away from the dead body. The look on her spectral face a stunning mix of joy melting into confusion and terror, the pure truth of dying: the happiness of continuing to exist juxtaposed against the realization of death. In one photo he saw her trying to clutch at her own corpse as she floated away. The panic on her face so over the top, reminiscent of silent films, Mr. Pike laughed.
He decided to put together a kind of triptych, the old woman in a hospital bed, the ghost rising, and the panicking specter clutching at the corpse as it drifted off to whatever is beyond. His camera never could catch that. Sometimes he wondered if the ectoplasmic mist simply evaporated, people dying twice as it were -- the body then the consciousness. Granted, he'd caught a few ghosts on film, wandering the streets and houses, but that didn't mean everyone managed to live on.
Setting aside the photos he planned to use in the triptych he went upstairs. He felt delight for the first time in months, until he realized there was no one to share it with. So he got in his car, and went looking for more ghosts. Thankfully, it didn't take long. The dead and dying are everywhere, he thought, It's the living who are hard to meet.
He sees the old woman being carted out of her home, and sighs, "Finally." Not so much in reference to her, but to the fact he can finally get some work done. It's been too long. He can only read so much, watch so much, before his brain starts hissing for distraction. It's his own fault, but still, any port in a storm as it were.
Ducking outside he catches the ambulance driver while the patient is still being loaded. He asks what hospital they're headed to because, he lies, he's a concerned neighbor who would like to visit the ailing woman. The paramedic tells him St. Agatha's. Mr. Pike thanks her kindly, and heads back in his house to get dressed.
He puts on his best suit. After careful consideration he decides to go with a bow tie. Hasn't worn one in years, but it seems to suit the occasion. Why exactly he can't say. Fashion is like that.
Once the ambulance is gone the gawkers soon depart, eyes leave the windows. Let the ghoulish speculation begin: what was wrong; will the old lady be dead soon? Mr. Pike knows. He could smell it like spring rain.
Properly attired -- one should regard such occasions with a degree of decorum, Mr. Pike likes to think -- he loads the trunk of his car. Then he drives to St. Agatha's. He knows the routes to every hospital in town. This time he takes a scenic road, cruising through the forest preserve to take in the Fall foliage. No need to hurry. It'll be a while before doctors feel safe shunting the old woman out of the way, stored in the ICU for whatever comes next. Let a heart monitor worry about her because there's nothing much anyone can do.
Pulling into the parking lot he thinks: "I've been a bit lazy lately. Used to be a time I went looking for scenes. Now I'm chasing what fell in my lap. Shamefully lazy."
But he shakes the shame off. This'll be the jumpstart he needs to get back in motion. When Anne left during the summer... he just didn't feel like working. In a way it's been good for business. The galleries keep jacking up the price of his pictures because, well, supply and demand -- fewer and fewer pieces worth more and more money. Anne used to think Mr. Pike was so talented until he told her how his photos came to be. After that, she regarded him as... a shudder dispels the thought, and gathers his equipment from the trunk.
The camera is bulky, a seemingly haphazard hodgepodge of copper and brass attachments jutting out the sides of a mahogany box. Odd colored wires connecting dim flickering crystals which act like prisms refracting otherworldly lights into a spectrum the living can see. The whole contraption is like an eccentric cousin of the Le Phoebus box camera. Knowing full well he can't just walk the hospital halls with it, Mr. Pike secrets it in a lidded present box. The box under arm he quits the parking lot to enter the hospital.
A kind nurse informs him the woman he's looking for, his grandmother he lies -- "Oh what a terrible thing to happen on her birthday." -- she's in the ICU, third floor, room six. He thanks her, smiles, and walks off in a practiced solemn gait. Can't seem eager to see the dying.
He finds the room. Then cons his way past another nurse: "Is grandma going to be okay?" He's done it so many times before, he almost believes his own lie. The trick isn't to sound worried so much as angry, a 70-30 mix of the two. A nurse, her accent south African, takes Mr. Pike to the right room.
She says, "There's a good chance things will improve, but for now, it's good that you're here."
She smiles, and leaves him alone with the old woman. Mr. Pike sighs. It's almost too easy sometimes. He closes the door halfway. Experience has educated him nurses are suspicious of fully closed doors, so he sets up just out of view.
The smell in the room fills his nostrils. Chance of improvement my ass, he thinks. This lady is done for. It isn't unpleasant, well, not to him. He's used to it the way a gourmand gets used to the smell of certain cheeses. He takes out the camera, aims it, and snaps off a few shots. Mr. Pike always knew about the other side of existence, though it took him years to realize those things, the smells, sights, sounds he caught no one else did, that it meant anything significant; but once he did he went down the rabbit hole. Most people who learn about the visible dead avoid the knowledge. The few who don't... he found them and their work. He didn't invent this camera. He bought from a Frenchman in Japan.
The old woman stirred. The heart monitor went from a steady beat to something chaotic, the unpredictable jazz of impending death. Mr. Pike quickly loaded another roll of film then snapped off several pictures just as the flat line stretched across the screen. He returned the camera to the its hiding box as a doctor and nurses hurried into the room. He feigned the appropriate amount of resistance when they asked him to leave then casually, while they struggled to save the dead woman, left the hospital.
Driving home he unintentionally thought about Anne.
That time she said, "What you do is inhuman."
His counter, "Maybe it is inhuman, in a way, but what's wrong with that? Sometimes you have to be inhuman to see humanity; realize when to capture a moment that shows the reality of a situation. Take Nick Ut's picture of Phan Thị Kim Phúc. He watched a little girl running down the road in terror, covered in burns, and his first reaction was to take a picture. Another person, a more human person, would've run to help her."
Anne dropped the argument after that, but not her stance. Mr. Pike saw the gulf widening between them. She packed her things. He said nothing. She left. He said nothing. The summer passed... now he sat in the dark room in his basement developing film.
The images emerged crisp and clear -- HD eat your heart out. A few fuzzy out of focus disappointments, but then he saw silver and gold. Amidst the series taken right around the flat line he saw the old woman, her physical face still, somewhat slack, while her incorporeal self, like a grey greenish mist, drifted away from the dead body. The look on her spectral face a stunning mix of joy melting into confusion and terror, the pure truth of dying: the happiness of continuing to exist juxtaposed against the realization of death. In one photo he saw her trying to clutch at her own corpse as she floated away. The panic on her face so over the top, reminiscent of silent films, Mr. Pike laughed.
He decided to put together a kind of triptych, the old woman in a hospital bed, the ghost rising, and the panicking specter clutching at the corpse as it drifted off to whatever is beyond. His camera never could catch that. Sometimes he wondered if the ectoplasmic mist simply evaporated, people dying twice as it were -- the body then the consciousness. Granted, he'd caught a few ghosts on film, wandering the streets and houses, but that didn't mean everyone managed to live on.
Setting aside the photos he planned to use in the triptych he went upstairs. He felt delight for the first time in months, until he realized there was no one to share it with. So he got in his car, and went looking for more ghosts. Thankfully, it didn't take long. The dead and dying are everywhere, he thought, It's the living who are hard to meet.
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