Sixty-Two

The night was cold and very quiet outside. Inside the room, large fans kept turning with the same heavy sound. Music came faintly from somewhere nearby, but no one else was awake with me.

I looked at the clock.

Four hours remained until morning.

The number was not large, but at that hour it seemed enormous. Four hours meant four more hours inside the same walls, listening to the same fans and waiting for darkness to weaken.

I had gone through the night without cigarettes. At the time, that mattered to me more than I would like to admit. My hands remembered a habit that the night would not allow.

Mostly, I thought about home.

There was a family holiday I had always been able to return for before. This time, life there was continuing without me. People would wake, eat together, visit one another, and repeat the familiar morning. I was elsewhere.

The strange thing about missing a place is that the place does not stop. Home does not wait in darkness until you return. Morning comes there too.

I looked at the clock again.

The second number was sixty-two.

Sixty-two days remained until the end of military service.

Everyone learned to speak in numbers. How many days? How much longer? A person with ten days left seemed almost free. Someone with a hundred still had a mountain in front of him.

I had sixty-two.

There was nothing to do with that number except reduce it by living through each day.

The fans continued.

The music stopped.

Outside, the black sky slowly became less black.

I watched for the first sign of morning. Dawn was not beautiful that day. It was practical. It meant the watch would end.

Four hours would become three, then two, then one.

Sixty-two would become sixty-one tomorrow.

That was enough.

When you cannot control where you are, subtraction can feel like progress.