Salty Taste by Daria Voshchatynska

The sparse black hairs on my arms stood on end,

sending another shiver through my body. I only noticed it when I grabbed the handle of the door that led to the cold, unpleasant hospital corridors. At that moment, the doors seemed unbearably heavy and massive, even though they were made of lightweight plastic. And yet, I had to go inside.

Everything here was just as always: brochures with unreadable text and bright pictures flickered on the walls, large and overly clean tiles underfoot (which only made the terrible thoughts in my foolish head even more unbearable), a sense of sorrow and disappointment lingering in the air.

I don’t like being treated. Once, I asked the Almighty to spare me from illness, and since then, I’ve only had the occasional cough and a mild fever that never rose above 37 °C. But my loved ones get sick. Is this the punishment for my selfishness?

I’ve hated hospitals, it seems, all my still-only-thirty-two years of life, and at this moment, I was grateful for only one thing: that I had returned to these white textured walls as a visitor, not a patient.

I’m standing outside the ward. I’m trembling like an autumn leaf about to fall from a cherry branch. My cheeks are turning crimson. Something inside me stings and moans for the first time in ages. The sharp scent of aspirin and alcohol hits my nose—so much alcohol, but not the kind we drink on holidays. This was the other kind—foul, bitter, nauseating even for the drunkards from our block.

A lump of undigested breakfast claws its way up my throat, and I’m forced to swallow — not just it, but the thick, nauseating fog of disinfectants and death. The air is saturated with the sharp sting of alcohol, the sterile bitterness of iodine, the sweetly sickening stench of decay masked by medicine. It’s a choking, clinging miasma that worms into your skin, your mouth, your memories. And there it is — that taste again. Salt. But not from sweat or hunger. Tears? What else could it be?

It was this same suffocating reek that nine-year-old me breathed in, day after day, in this very building, as I watched my mother wither before my eyes. That same sour, sterile perfume of helplessness and slow, quiet dying.

As a child, I thought of her as unemotional—a woman mimicking feelings she had seen in others, parodying human affection, yet truly feeling nothing for me. Such heavy thoughts in a child’s mind were born from her habit of sending me off to stay with our many relatives in turns—while only my father clung to me with both hands, always taking me home, never allowing me to be pushed from the nest for long. How foolish a child can be…

Crossing into adulthood, I realized that I had been my mother’s greatest treasure. That’s why she tried so hard to shield me from what my father—unknowingly, foolishly—exposed me to: the sight of a once vibrant, radiant, unique woman… turning into a skeleton.

Whether I read her my favorite children’s book, held her weak, withered hand, or told her about my magical dreams—she was dying anyway. The doctors and nurses would drive me out of the room when her pain became unbearable, and in a waiting room just like this one, on a chair just like this, I would sit—fending off that creeping sense of doom, dreading the moment a doctor would find me and, with a sorrowful face, say: “I’m very sorry… your mother has passed.”

And that’s exactly how it happened.

The floors in this hospital are painfully alike, one after another…

“Hi,” I said, stopping behind the chair, my hands resting on its back as if on autopilot. “You wanted to talk to me about something?”

Her long fair lashes veiled the depth of her eyes—eyes that, for some reason, gave off a cold gleam of steel rather than the softness of forget-me-nots. For-get-me-not. I would never forget this wondrous girl with the lonely beauty mark beneath her eye and sunlit curls tumbling down her shoulders.

She was my best friend’s girl.

Not mine.

“Yes…” she murmured, momentarily lost in thought—it showed in her eyes. With a faint breath of a smile, Historia glanced at the clock, as if expecting a train to arrive. “Aren’t you going to say, like always, that I look good?”

I swallowed hard, my fingers digging into the back of the chair. My tongue refused to lie.

She was beautiful, yes—but no longer radiant.

And still, my heart trembled in the presence of an angel.

“That’s exactly why,” Historia continued softly, with a trace of satisfaction, “I asked Erik to call you. You understand, don’t you?… That I don’t have much time left… And you won’t lie. You never have. Not once.”

“Aren’t you on the transplant list? Erik’s making these grand plans…”

“Demian, they won’t give me a new kidney,” she said with a sad, quiet smile that sent a tremor through my soul. “The doctors don’t know what killed my original ones. No committee will approve an organ for someone likely to lose it again. There are too few kidneys. Too many people…”

“I’m sorry,” was all I could manage to say.

It scared me to keep talking to her—as if I was draining what little strength she had left, just by making her speak. But it was she who held me, her fragile, bony hand clenching my heart—too brittle to push away, too sacred to break. My blood ran cold, limbs numb, breath too shallow to clear my mind.

“Erik will be back soon,” I said, glancing at the clock in panic. “He has a surprise for you… aside from the dress.”

“The dress is just an excuse,” she replied with a sweet smile, closing her eyes. “I didn’t want… Erik to be here right now… But it is a lovely dress… I have two requests,” she said, mustering her last, fading strength.

“You’re not serious…” I protested, clutching the chair like a hawk. “Don’t. Not while Erik isn’t with you…”

“Take care of him… don’t let him be alone…”

I let go of the chair and stepped toward the hospital bed. My shadow fell over the fragile, fading figure—and I froze. I had no idea what to do. No clue how to help.

“And please… bury me… in that summer dress…” Her gentle voice quivered, a single tear slid down her hollow cheek and vanished into her curls. A whisper floated from her lips:

“That day… he said I looked like the sun…”

The minute hand clicked forward.

A sharp beep pierced the stillness of the room.

I stumbled back from the empty shell—her heart stilled in its bone cage.

I turned to run, but the door swung open before I could touch it, and the nurse who had offered me quiet sympathy in the waiting room stepped inside.

The scent of tears filled the air.

This time, they were mine.