He does not get very far before he runs out of breath and moonlight. They are past the parking lot, on the edge of a meager patch of woods. On the other side of the woods, he remembers, is a defunct strip mall where the nurses used to go on lunch breaks, back when there used to be nurses. They’d return to the facility with huge iced coffees in clattering cups. How he envied the sound of those cups, the sound of the outside world, of free movement, of coming and going, of someone to come and go with. Coop wills the wheelchair into the woods, bumping into trees as he goes, determined to get deeper, where his lack of vision does not matter because it is already too black to see. He trips over roots, jostling Pinky, apologizing, until he can push no more. Safe beneath a scraggly stand of pines and hemlocks, he picks her up and collapses into the wheelchair, drenched, shaking. He holds her tight in her towels and sweaters and rocks her. They close their eyes and breathe and breathe.
When he awakes, she is cold in his lap. He does not know how much time has passed. Goddamn it. He could not save her and he could not even be there with her in her final moment. She was all alone when it happened. He slept through it, as he has slept through so much. He has let her down. He has let everyone down. His daughter. His wife. How could he have missed it? Has he been there for any of it? For the whole universe of being, for the tiny speck of it? What has he done, and what has he failed to do?
The seat of the wheelchair is wet. He curses his body—all bodies—which can only do so much for so long. He has come this far and he does not know what to do next. He can’t go back. He can’t leave Pinky there, exposed, abandoned to the maggots and the scavengers. He will bury her. Yes, he will bury her. He tries to get up but he does not have the strength. He tries to fall to his knees but he can’t do that, either. How do you bury your love? He wants to ask the ElderScreen, but it is dead in his pocket. It would be useless anyway. It would recommend a video about gratitude. “We’re grateful to the administration,” a man would say, “for burying our family so efficiently in this mass grave.” Grateful! Yes, Coop is grateful. At least he’s out of that place. At least she died in the fresh air, his sleeping arms around her.
Coop can’t let go. He cradles Pinky in his lap and gently plucks her feathers, sticking them in the buttonholes of his pajama top and behind his ears, into his pockets and the crevices of the wheelchair, adorning himself with every bit of her. He calms as he does this, over and over. Those magnificent feathers, invisible in the night, their textures alive against his fingertips. Soft and scratchy and slick. She is so beautiful. She is no more.