The Red Queen

I had read that the concept of the Red Queen as a biological murderer was lifted from Lewis Carroll.  At first it was a metaphorical figure for sexual dominance in a hierarchy, but then also (more appropriately) a figure for the victory of the battle in life over life.  Step by step, life over arches and consumes life.  Bacteria, viruses, animals, humans: the small usually fall to the large, but then also the most minute fragments of life can devastate the most complex organism.  Even in our polished and high tech, high touch, twenty first century world, healing cannot hold, wrongs cannot be righted, the sick cannot be made well.  Death comes for us all.

The doctor's eyes were hidden and pained.  "We have done everything we can.  Your husband is on every antibiotic, and yet his white cell count continues to rise."  The nurse slides morphine into Bill's veins and does not tell me; he murmurs to my friends.  "She is emotional; his son will set her straight".  When I hear that, I laugh, since the son is as variable and inconstant as the breeze; I have somehow been managing to hold things together since the Red Queen came roaring in and toppled the walls of my husband's mind.

He put up a hell of a fight; the struggle was mighty.  Behind bags of cipro, zyvox and daptomycin, primaxin, flagyl and rifampin, cellular death and warfare roared.  In the end, the host was overrun, the castle burned to the ground, beaten back by fever, incomprehensible pain and fatigue.

Tonight, it is clear the end is near.  His eyes roam restlessly under his eyelids, sometimes staring deeply into my gaze, sometimes fixed in the corner of the room where the dark man waits, but always as blue and as transluscent as the northern sky.  My tears fall down on his face and he flinches from the pain.  I love you so much.  You are my best friend, my companion, my buddy, the warm hand I touch in the night, the guitar string that resonated to my restless energy.  I did my best, but in the end, my best was not good enough to keep you here. 

Vaya con Dios, Bill.  Go with God.