He always wondered what it would feel like to slowly fade away. Now that he was in that position, he just felt that it was boring. All he could do was lie in his hospital bed, his body fully paralyzed. From what he could tell, it must have been midday. The nurses had not shown up yet, and he felt the warm sunlight gently touching his chest. The window must have been open as well, since he could feel a faint breeze on his bare feet.
But that was the extent of what he could sense. He had no control over his muscles and extremities. He could not open his eyes. He could not even get an erection, as if that would make it better. He was nothing but a vegetable, wasting away in slow motion. All he could do was think.
“If only I could speak,” he thought to himself. With his mind imprisoned in his lifeless body, all he could do was receive and listen. All he could feel was the pain when the nurses lifted him up and turned him around. But even the pain was dialed down, almost faint, as if he were experiencing a copy of a copy instead of the real thing.
Yet this pain was all he could look forward to, since it connected him to his world. He could only feel the sun because it must have been quite strong and was burning into his chest. He only felt the wind on his feet because they must have been too cold. Pain was all that connected him to this world. When his mother and father came to visit, he did not feel anything. They might have been touching his hand, but they were likely so gentle that he could not sense it.
Once, his mother accidentally sat on his arm. He felt that. And it was such a beautiful feeling of human connection—something he had lost for so long—that he would have cried if he could.
“How fitting,” he pitied himself. Pain was all that his life had to offer. No goals, no vision, no mission. Just pain. If it was not painful, then it was not real.
But he was worried. He had been feeling less and less over the recent months. Every day, the nurses lifted him up and turned him around. At first, he was surprised by how painful it was. But as time went on, he felt less and less pain. He thought that he would have gotten used to it, but the pain had become so faint that it seemed as if his nerves were fading away.
Still, he could feel the sunlight and the wind every once in a while—warm and cold. Maybe he could feel them because they were connected to strong temperature changes, he wondered. But who knew. It was all the joy he had left: pain.
The doctors could never figure out what was wrong with him. When he was 15, he started getting sick more frequently. Sometimes a fever, sometimes a gut infection. The doctors at the time said it was normal, but then each illness lasted longer. What was a day became a week. What was a week became a month. And what was one month became many months.
Persistent fevers. Persistent pain. Persistent everything.
The doctors were clueless, but it got worse. When he was 18, he would collapse on a weekly basis. His body would just go limp, even though he had a very fit and healthy appearance. His muscles would start shaking, even though he was very athletic and well trained.
But he endured. He kept living his life, and he lived it well. The collapses were not frequent enough for him to stop living his life.
When he was 20, he would collapse daily. This was when it became serious, since he had to be careful where he went, what he did, and who he was with every second of every day. He could not drive. He could not ride a bicycle. And he could not walk on hard surfaces without protection, since one collapse could make him lose all his teeth on the asphalt.
Life had become an obstacle course. His parents were taking turns being with him and driving him to doctors, to university, to the gym. As soon as he had become an adult, he was back to being treated like a toddler.
But his parents were right, which was the worst part for him. They were right to worry about him. They were right to help him. Without them, he would have probably drowned in a puddle somewhere or in his own blood after smashing headfirst into the sidewalk. They were right to be scared. He was scared too.
The doctors kept commenting that they had never seen anything like that. It was not epilepsy, which was the obvious choice. It was not nystagmus or any known nervous system disease. It was no brain tumor or any kind of tumor for that matter. They could not find anything wrong with him.
They kept repeating that it was as if his body would simply shut down at random intervals. His brain would just turn off, and his muscles and bodily functions were gradually fading as if his genetic code had given the command to shut it all down. The grand closing. Buy everything at a discount—it all must go! We are liquidating!
That was how he ended up here, in his comfortable hospital bed. He was hospitalized when he was 22. At least that was the last thing he could remember. The daily collapses became more frequent until they were hourly, and then they came so often that there was no point in getting up anymore. He would only lift his upper body at times, just to fall back down.
But he could still move and talk. He could still see. Yet all that went away shortly after.
He just remembered hearing his parents arguing. It was about providing him with proper care.
“He should be here, so we can take care of him!” his mother shouted.
“We are both working and the nurses are better equipped and trained for this,” his father quietly responded.
Jack could hear his father’s voice trembling. “This is rare,” he thought. His father was usually composed at all times. Jack could not remember a single time he had heard his father cry or even laugh out loud. He was always calm and collected.
But he knew that his parents loved him. Both of them were working. His father was an astronaut, and his mother worked at a large investment bank. They had great careers and also managed to be great parents on top of it. But with a son who had turned into a full-time burden, they did not have much of a choice.
They had tried everything they could. Both took months off from work. They spent almost all of their life savings on medical fees and treatments. They never hesitated to find a solution, and Jack knew they would both have given their lives for him in a heartbeat. But they were exhausted now. It is hard to imagine how much of a toll this can take on a parent—to see their only child die before their eyes and to throw all their resources into the world to find a solution, only to get a legion of shrugs back.
His parents had aged decades in just a few years. They looked tired. They looked as pale as he did, he remembered.
The doctors told them they did not know if he was conscious or not. To them, he was nothing more than a warm pillow that needed to be fed through a tube, washed every few days, and have its feces drained occasionally. This was not what an astronaut and an investment banker should be doing. And even though they were arguing, they both knew it. And even though they both loved him dearly, they both knew they had to let him go.
Life was not fair. But it never claimed to be. It just was.
Shortly after, his parents decided to move him to the hospital. And that was where he lay now.
They visited him often—first every day, then every week. His mother still visited him weekly, every Sunday. She would never miss it. When she came to visit, he usually only heard her say, “Hello, honey,” followed by silence and then weeping. Every Sunday.
He kept thinking how hard Saturdays must have been for her. He wondered if she needed the Saturdays to prepare for the gut-wrenching and soul-ripping experience every Sunday held for her. To see your son die in front of your eyes—his lifeless body that could not move, speak, or even look at you. To not know if that thing in front of you was your son anymore.
But she never gave up. She started holding his hand the second she entered the room and kept holding it for at least two hours until the moment she left. That was love.
His father did not visit as frequently. He was an astronaut, so he would be in training camps or on space missions most of the time. Jack was immensely proud of his dad. He was among the first manned Mars missions and had been to the planet twice already. He was now preparing for the third time.
Jack always begged his father to bring him a Mars stone. Since he was 12 years old, he had nagged his father for it constantly. What did he want for his birthday? A Mars stone. For Christmas? A Mars stone.
Maybe Jack was an unusual child, but he did not remember ever asking for any other present. Maybe it was because he was so proud of his dad. Maybe he just knew he would never be able to get it. Or maybe he just enjoyed the discussions about Mars with his dad. Whatever it was, he must have been very persistent, since his father once lashed out at him, telling him to never ask again.
“Well, I guess he can be emotional,” Jack thought to himself. It was not that his dad was coldhearted. Astronauts were not allowed to bring any objects back from their Mars missions and could risk their job or even prison if they were caught.
He heard his parents talk about the third Mars mission when they visited him together. She wanted him to stay, but he said there was nothing for him to do anyway. They argued a lot about it.
“My silly father,” Jack thought. “Mom doesn’t mean that you can help your son but that you can be there with them.” But fathers can be blockheads sometimes. Both were placed in an impossible situation. Jack’s mother just did not want to be alone while his dad simply could not bear to be with them.
But Jack had infinite love and empathy for them. Maybe it was the silence of the hospital room or the sensory deprivation of his numbed body, but he just felt at peace.
Jack was sentenced to a life of passivity. “How ironic,” he thought. All his life until the age of 22, he had been nothing but active, even with all his health troubles. He had started an online business when he was 17 and dropshipped pet toys all over the world from warehouses in China, India, and Russia. He became very savvy when it came to marketing and had a beautiful website with excellent customer acquisition strategies.
He used advertising tools on all major platforms and was very engaged in content marketing for organic traffic. He became obsessed with viral marketing tactics just as his health started to decline drastically. “What a shame,” he thought to himself. He was about to hit it really big.
He was young when he started, but within six months, he generated $5,000 in profit every month. By the time he was 19, his monthly profit had reached $40,000, and he was generating almost half a million dollars in profit per year. He was a skilled operator but was still young and had so much to learn.
Unfortunately, that was as far as he went. When he was 20, his business had declined drastically, and he was barely breaking even. He did not have the time or attention to save it. His parents had excellent careers and good salaries and were more than happy to pay for all his medical bills, but Jack funneled all of his own money into traveling to the best doctors and experts all over the world. He would do every test and follow every single lead. But to no avail.
He also loved working out. When he was still able-bodied, he trained in mixed martial arts almost every day. Brazilian jiu jitsu was his favorite discipline, and he could roll around the floor all day with his friends.
He even got an athletic scholarship to play football at one of the top three universities in the country at one point. But this scholarship quickly disappeared once his health started to decline visibly.
He did not excel in everything, though. He would fail many subjects in school that others found easy. English, History, and Social Studies were his worst. He just could not focus on learning any of these subjects. It was like his brain refused to let the knowledge in.
“Well, guess I’m not perfect after all,” he thought to himself while his body was being explored by a fly that had snuck into his hospital room.
And here he lay in his hospital bed, all alone and without any connection to the outside world—trapped within his own body.
Fading away.