Toe tags and the Reluctant Puppy

I run into Donna on the stairs.  She's hurriedly tying up the back of her smock halfway between the second and third floor.  "What are you doing here?" She asks as she slides her protective mask over her head and affixes it to her face.

"I want to help," I say and motion towards the second floor.

She pulls back her mask long enough to scold me, "Trust me.  This isn't anything you want to see."  Before she can escape through the doors, I retort "Trust me, I've seen worse."  Before she can holler back at me, someone else on the stairs throws me a smock and a mask -- and a moment later we are all headed toward the infirmary.

"Don't talk to them.  Don't make eye contact.  We're simply in there to remove the dead," says the same guy who threw me the mask.

Before I have a chance to respond, we are through the doors.  It's quieter now than it was earlier.  Donna uses some sort of battery operated light to give us a clear view of the place.  It's a long narrow room with rows of beds on each side.  It houses at least 100 bodies.  Donna moves swiftly from one bed to the next.  When she is certain they are gone, she toe tags them and moves on. 

I stare for a moment at the body beside the man who was just tagged.  She moves ever so slightly, and so I take a step closer.  I can see her badly boiled skin and know that she is in a lot of pain.  Her eyes are closed, and she trembles -- like Mildred did near the end.  Her hair is mostly gone and her mattress is soiled with sweat and urine.

"I'm sorry," I say to her before the darkness takes over and I'm forced to follow the light. 

After a couple of hours the dead from today are removed, and a caravan carries them out behind the hospital for cremation.  I follow the young girl's body out when I see that she is the last from today to be tagged.  Because she is close to my age, I have an overwhelming sense of guilt.

"How long do they suffer?" I ask Donna who stands there stone faced as she watches the last of the bodies burn.

"We only put them in there if they will be dead within a day or so -- past the point of healing.  Everyone else, we try.  Some are lucky.  Some not so much," she says without turning towards me.

I watch the colour of the smoke change from black, to white, to grey as it consumes each and every body.  None of us seem too disturbed by the odor -- our penance perhaps for not being able to help.

I stand there longer than everyone else.  I stand there until the embers turn to ash white and the stars twinkle brightly in the black of night.  I stand there, humbled to be alive but at an existential loss.

In my former life I had a purpose.  Here, my soul has been dismembered.  It merely follows me like a reluctant puppy; with no where else to turn.

I sit there letting the cool of the night air wash over me.  In the morning, there will be more bodies to burn.  So for now, I cling to the placidity of the night and what little comforts it offers to a girl with no purpose, in a flowerless garden, barely existing -- in a world with no name.