Flash fiction by Daniel Addercouth

Vena Amoris

My grandmother laid her cigarette in the ashtray on the nightstand, then picked up a small wooden box that was on her dressing table. She sat down on the massive bed and patted the quilt. I took my place next to her, smelling her familiar scent of smoke mixed with talcum powder, and watched in fascination as she opened the box. Nested in purple velvet was a silver ring with three diamonds in a delicate casing.

 “This is my engagement ring, Cordula,” she said. “One day, it will be yours. When you get engaged.” 

She placed the ring on the fourth finger of my left hand. The band was loose on my nine-year-old’s finger, and the metal felt cool where it touched the skin. “This is your ring finger.” She traced the pale underside of my digit. “A vein runs from here to your heart.” 

I turned my hand to examine the ring from different angles, thinking how pretty the rainbows would look on my white dress.

When I got engaged, I wanted my grandmother to be the first to know. My heart swelled with joy as I drove to her house. The sunlight burst through the leaves of the trees arching across the road, as if the world wanted to bless our pledge. 

“Who’s the lucky fellow?” my grandmother asked as she served Darjeeling from a china pot.

“It’s a woman, actually. Nicola. She’s training to be a doctor.” “How wonderful,” she said, after a pause so slight I wondered if I’d imagined it. She transferred her cigarette to her other hand so she could clutch my arm. “We must celebrate.”

 I waited for her to mention the ring. But when I left, three cups of tea and a glass of real champagne later, the walnut box was still on her dressing table.

I was busy preparing for my PhD defence when my grandmother got ill, and I didn’t visit as often as I should have. But Nicola had developed an unlikely affection for the old lady during our occasional visits, and made the hour’s drive from our university city to see her whenever she could. When I came with her, I watched as she changed my grandmother’s dressings and helped her go to the bathroom. I couldn’t have done it. I shuddered whenever I glimpsed the coin-sized lumps through her thin white hair. Nicola said the ones on her back were worse. “It’s in her blood.” But Nicola did what needed to be done without hesitation; that was one of the reasons I loved her. It was Nicola who cleaned up my grandmother when diarrhoea stained the bed, and it was Nicola who persuaded the nurses to install a morphine drip when the pain made her cry out.

One afternoon, Nicola and I were sitting by the bedside in silence. The only sound was my grandmother’s strained breathing. The smell of disinfectant mingled with the stale reek of the cigarettes that she refused to give up. My grandmother no longer had the energy to speak. She’d lost so much weight she looked tiny in the huge bed with its stained quilt. “It’s her time,” the nurse told us in a low voice. “But she won’t let go.” 

 We’d been sitting there for a while when my grandmother said something to Nicola, so quietly that Nicola asked her to repeat it. With a great effort, my grandmother lifted her stick of an arm to point at the walnut box on her dressing table. “Give me that.” 

Nicola looked mystified. “Go ahead,” I whispered. Nicola fetched the box and tried to give it to my grandmother, but she closed her hand around Nicola’s wrist.

“I want you to have this.” Her voice was barely audible. “You deserve it.”

She laid back on the pillows and closed her eyes. Her breathing became heavy, then she let out a massive sigh and became very still. When Nicola bent over and pressed her fingers to my grandmother’s neck, I realised she was gone.

Nicola and I held each other for a long time. When she pulled away, I assumed she was going to call the doctor or take care of one of a hundred other practicalities. But instead I felt her slip something onto my finger. I traced the smooth contours of the three diamonds. I was tempted to keep it, but I knew it wasn’t mine.

I took the ring off and put it on Nicola’s finger, feeling her soft skin. “She wanted you to have it.” I held her hand and rocked it slightly from side to side, watching the diamonds sparkle, and imagined how it would cast rainbows on her dress on our wedding day.