Seymour's Hands

A bright-eyed young man sits at his piano playing a beautiful dark melody in the corner of the room lit by tall windows. Sitting around the room are the sick and the elderly and other patients of St. Anne’s hospital. Most of them are busy reading, playing chess, knitting or watching the TV with the volume turned down. Some are watching the young man play but all are listening, speaking only in whispers so as not to disturb the music.
He stops suddenly, wincing at the sudden jab of pain rushing through his arm up to his elbows. Those watching begin to clap, the others go on reading or doing whatever they were doing.
“That was lovely Seymour, why did you stop?” asks an old lady who was watching.”
“Thank you Agnes. I think it was just a cramp, maybe I should have warmed up first.”
“Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could hear you play while we have lunch instead of just after.”
“It might make it easier to swallow with a little music to take your mind off it” says Philip.
Philip used to be a fireman but he was hurt while on the job, that’s how most of his face got burned.
“Well I would Agnes but I got to work. If I was playing who’d be there serve up the lunch special.”
“Huh, its special all right.” says Philip returning to his chess game.
Seymour massages his hands as he walks down the steps of the hospital t his car. The pain was getting worse. He had an appointment with the doctor again that afternoon. He hoped it was nothing serious.
He flicked through an old issue of TIME magazine while he sat in the doctors waiting room.
“Seymour Bennet.” the receptionist called “The doctor will see you now.”
The doctor examined his hands, twisting and moving each one
“Does this hurt?” the doctor asks,
“No, I don’t think so. It’s more like a constant pain but it comes and goes.”
The doctor holds up both of Seymour’s hands, looks from one to the other and frowns.
“Well, there doesn’t seem to be anything broken. We may have to do a blood test.”
“Something I wanted to mention actually. I had an accident recently.”
“What sort of accident?”
“Well I work in a hospital, in the cafeteria I mean, at St. Anne’s. They were moving some boxes from storage one day and loading them into a van.“
The doctor stares at Seymour.
“I dropped one of them accidentally and some glass vials fell out and broke. They had some kind of liquid inside them and when I tried to clean it up after I cut myself on it. I’m worried I might have picked something up from whatever was inside”
The doctor places a finger on his chin.
“When did this happen?”
“Yesterday.”
“Well we won’t know anything until we do a blood test. It will be a few days to get a result though. How’s the pain? Can you manage?”
“I think so, for now anyway.”
“Good, I’d like to hold off on prescribing any pain killers until I know more.
Seymour’s is playing Chopin’s “Raindrops“. He likes to have his piano by the window of his second floor apartment so he can gaze out of it while he plays He’s mastered all the classics, Bach, Chopin, Beethoven but he likes to pick up new pieces all the time like Michele McLaughlin or Ludovico Einaudi. Seymour’s love of music began when he was eight years old and he looked through the glass windows of Tim’s Music Emporium, where a man was playing a grand Steinway. His curiosity was piqued by the flowing melody the man played. He knew he wanted to learn to play like that.
He begged his parents to buy him a piano and they protested at first but they eventually bought him a electronic keyboard from a second hand store where the original owner had sold it. Seymour practiced everyday and even though he found it frustrating getting his fingers to go where they were supposed to at first, he continued to play, not giving up like many other children might.
Later he saved up enough money to buy the modest grand piano he now plays. He finished playing and massages his hands with his fingers .The pain seemed to be receding, perhaps its nothing serious after all he thought..
Seymour is awoken in the night by the unconscious feeling that something is wrong. In the dim lit darkness he can scarcely make out his arms. He wonders why they appear so dark…and textured. Alarm begins to creep in until he is now wide-awake. He runs to the bathroom and turns on the light. Staring into the mirror he draws a breath. His hands and wrists have turned black and his skin has taken on a dry cracked appearance.
He paces through the house for hours, turning on all the lights in the hope that brightness will wake him from his nightmare. Three hours later Seymour is still awake sitting at his kitchen table in his apartment eating cereal with tears in his eyes. Staring at his decrepit hands in the light of the morning is enough to confirm that this was not a dream.

An hour later he is waiting in the doctors office wearing gloves and a long sleeved jacket, looking exhausted from lack of sleep. “The doctor will see you now”. He walked into the doctor’s office.
“Seymour, you wanted to see me?”
“There’s something wrong with my hands.” His voice quivering with worry as he removed his gloves.
The doctor’s eyes widened and he immediately approached for a closer look
“My god.”
The doctor’s reaction only worried Seymour more.
“This is serious…. This is very serious.”
The doctor tapped a finger on his chin and frowned.
“What was the name of that hospital where you say you had the accident.”
“St. Anne’s.”
“Ah good, I know one of the doctors that works there. I’ll make a call. You say this happened two days ago, Thursday?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe somebody will know what was in those boxes you were carrying. I’ll tell them its urgent.”
The doctor left Seymour sitting there gazing around the blinding white of the doctor’s office walls. He could hear the doctor speaking with his secretary and then picking up the phone but he couldn’t make out the words. Staring at his arms makes him uneasy but he can’t help glancing at them. They look to him like he’s wearing two long sleeved black cotton gloves on either hand. They don’t hurt and that causes him a mix of relief and worry.
The doctor returns, quietly closing the door behind him. When he turns to face him Seymour knows its not good news and he begins to feel like he might throw up.
“I spoke with the hospital administrator at St Anne’s. They confirmed there was a delivery made last Thursday to a research lab a few miles from there. The vials you found were samples of a tests on a drug called tetrodoxin.”
“What’s that?”
“Well from what I understand they’re working on some kind of cure up there, for what, I don’t know. It’s still only at a rudimentary stage and there are side effects…like the ones your experiencing. “
The doctor bites his lip
“The effects aren’t life threatening but…Seymour, Your skin cells are essentially dying and neither they nor I know how to stop it…unless.”
“What?” Seymour asks with teary eyes.
“We will have to amputate your arms.”
Seymour's throat suddenly felt very dry. He tried to speak but he choked on his words and all that came out was a faint squeak. He imagined himself sitting in front of his piano, his arms ending in stumps at his elbows, unable to play.
Seymour shook his head
“I’m sorry Seymour but It’s the only way. This is going to spread through your entire body if we don’t act now. I have to make the call today to schedule an operation.”
“What will happen if I don’t treat it”?
“It will spread like I told you.”
“But is it dangerous.”
The doctor pauses
“Will it kill me doctor?”
“I can’t…. I mean, I don’t think so…no. There’s no sign that it will.”
Seymour has a different image in his mind now, one in which he sits in front of his piano but when he turns to face his audience…
“Can anything be done? There must be surgeries available for this kind of thing?”
“This is entirely new Seymour and it’s killing your skin. We can only stop it from spreading.”
Seymour looks at his hands
“Its your decision Seymour. “
A beautiful somber melody drifts through the corridors of St. Anne’s from the patient rec room where Seymour sits bathed in sunlight from the tall windows playing for his audience who all listen intently to the young man dressed all in black and wearing white gloves and who’s eyes gleam from behind his plaster mask. He finishes and they clap.
He doesn’t feel so repulsed anymore when he takes off his mask each night and stares at his black decaying face. He knows that for him the pain of living without being able to play would be far greater. So he choose to live with it and it got easier after awhile as he got used to his new face, even dubbing himself the zombie pianist. Maybe one day they’ll find a cure or invent some miracle surgery to give him real skin again but right now he decides he’s pretty content so long as he can continue to play music.