The Clock-- a short story

The Clock

The ticking clock assualts his ears as he sits waiting, always waiting. The path of his constantly roaming toe is clearly visible in the faded green carpet, physical witness to his seemingly endless vigilance outside the thick oak door. A steady muted hum carries through the hall from some appliance downstairs, and he tries to capture it in his ears to drown out the ticking clock. It doesn't work.

He's sat in this same chair, in this same hall, every afternoon and evening for the past three months, always waiting for the moment to arrive, always taunted by the passing time lauded over him by the ticks and chimes of the old Grandfather to his left. He jerks his head from his hands, and peers at the closed door again. His hands clench in a sweaty grasp and he raises weakly from the chair. He pauses, suspended between sitting and standing, and sits heavily back down, head weakly crumpling back to his waiting hands.

The clock ticks steadily on and the day is falling into night, and the moment has again eluded them. He peers to his right through the darkened window at the end of the hall, and his conscience struggles against his cowardice. It screams for him to rise and enter the room before it's to late,before she's gone. He wants nothing more than to see her, to hold her frail body to his breast and ease the pain, and comfort the heart that so comforted his own, but his weakness wins, and he sits, and waits, and the clock continues to tick away the moments of a life that meant so much. A life that meant so much, that he cannot bear to see it slip away, and he hates himself for it, and he hates the fates for making him such a coward through their theft of life.
And he sits and waits, the clock ticking away the day.