david macwilliams

barrel of monkeys

The pediatrician laid the clipboard on the table in front of Cheryl and her husband. “We just need your signatures.” Patting Cheryl’s shoulder, she rose from her seat. Cheryl noticed the design on the doctor’s lab coat was a pattern of colorful plastic-looking monkeys like those her three-year old son played with. A barrel of monkeys. 

The doctor stepped out of the grieving room, closing the door behind her.

In her mind’s eye, Cheryl saw the plastic monkeys, their C-shaped arms linked in a long chain, rising and wriggling from the yellow barrel. Red, yellow, and blue. What a stupid thought, she told herself.

 She grasped her husband’s hand, wanting his strength, but he didn’t grasp back. He merely stared at the wall. He looked grey and frail, much older than his forty years.

 “Bill?”

 “They’ll cut him open.”

 “It’s not like that, Bill. In a way, Alex will go on living. Playing. Growing older.”

 “He’s been through enough already.” He folded his arms atop the table and lay his brow upon his forearms. His shoulders rose and fell.

 Cheryl grasped his hand again and pressed her cheek against his arm. “I want him to live too.”

Bill raised his head. His eyes, rimmed in red, looked straight into hers. “But he’s not going to, Cheryl.”

 With her arms across his neck and shoulders, Cheryl hugged him long, then released him. She stood up. “His eyes will still see. His heart still beat. Isn’t that a good thing, Bill? Isn’t it?”

 He didn’t look at her.

 Cheryl went into the hallway. The pediatrician leaned over the lobby desk, on the phone, but lowered it to her shoulder when Cheryl appeared. Staff in turquoise and teal padded up and down, and other pairs of parents seated in the lobby glanced at her face and turned away. She saw a young couple, the mother crying, the father embracing her. He had his chin upon her head. His eyes fell on Cheryl’s for an instant. She had a thought, that maybe they or a family like them would get to keep their child now.

 She remembered their son at Christmas, cross-legged in front of the tree, mouth round and eyes wide, how she and Alex took turns linking the monkeys one after another from the barrel, teasing them up and up until they tumbled down, only to rise again, red, yellow, and blue.

David MacWilliams earned an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Ashland University in 2011. He is a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His essays have appeared in Pilgrimage, Mason’s Road, Apple Valley Review, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. He has only recently begun writing flash fiction for those stories where nonfiction cannot tell the whole truth. He lives in Cloudcroft, New Mexico with his wife and two children.