The Chrysalid

When Fatima Alfarsi checked into the hospital for the third time in as many months, her doctors and nurses privately agreed that she would not be leaving again. As during her previous stays, Fatima Alfarsi’s three daughters and their husbands gathered inside the pale blue curtain that cordoned off her bed from the rest of the room. On the first night, her breathing was labored but steady. The doctors told her daughters and sons-in-law to call it a night early. She would be fine until the morning, and they would need their strength soon enough.

For the next four days, the family rotated through Fatima Alfarsi’s room, telling stories about her late husband and, when none of the grandchildren could hear, speaking in clipped voices about her sister back in Riyadh, whom Fatima Alfarsi hadn’t seen in close to fifteen years. One of her daughters asked if they ought to call the sister, but her husband told her to be realistic: even if the sister could find it within herself to make peace with Fatima Alfarsi for all those years of silence, it would probably be too late by the time she managed to make the journey all the way to Boston.

With each day, Fatima Alfarsi grew quieter and slept more. Even when she was awake, the bedside conversations included less and less of her. She took on an appearance of peaceful contentment, as of someone who has just finished a large and satisfying meal. On the fifth day, one of her daughters asked her a question—something innocuous about the pillows—but Fatima Alfarsi did not respond, even though her eyes were open and she was breathing gently. The daughter placed a hand on her mother’s knee, then looked down at the blankets in confusion. She ran her hand gingerly up and down Fatima Alfarsi’s leg while her puzzled sisters watched. Then the daughter tore off the covers and all three of them called at the same time for the nurse.

Fatima Alfarsi’s legs were bound up to the knees with thin, white strands. The material was tightly wound; her feet and ankles were completely covered, and only small snatches of her shins could be seen through the crossing fibers. The daughters tried to tear the strands away, but whatever they were made of was uncommonly strong, and the daughters could barely get their fingers underneath them.

The nurses attacked the material with scissors, scalpels, and a cast saw to no avail. Over the course of the afternoon, the wrapping began to grow denser along her lower legs and started to creep up above her knees. All the while, Fatima Alfarsi remained peacefully stoic, her breathing and heart rate calm, her eyes languidly tracking the frenetic movement in the room.

The daughters demanded answers, their shrieking drawing curious visitors out into the hallway from other rooms. A steady stream of doctors and nurses, including the chief of surgery and the president of the hospital, flowed in and out of Fatima Alfarsi’s room. By early evening, the strands had wound their way past her hips and bound her hands against her thighs. The hospital staff had removed themselves from the room while the daughters clustered around their mother’s bed, stroking her hair and tugging vainly at the strange fibers. Their husbands sat in three chairs arranged in a semicircle at the foot of the bed, like a panel waiting to deliver a verdict.

Mama, are you in pain?

Mama, can you hear us?

Mama, we’re here. We’re here, Mama.

Mama.

By nightfall, the staff in the hall had been joined by several lawyers. Even though they had no idea what was happening to Fatima Alfarsi, the doctors could see that by the next morning at the latest, she would be completely encased, and the president of the hospital knew this put them in a bad position with the family, legally speaking. She paced the hall outside Fatima Alfarsi’s doorway, watching the display on her phone tick further and further past the start time of her son’s soccer game.

As the fibers started to spider across Fatima Alfarsi’s face, the doctors suggested inserting a breathing tube so that she wouldn’t suffocate. The old woman herself was unresponsive (although apparently still awake), so they came to the oldest daughter with the request.

She won’t suffocate, the daughter said.

Excuse me?

She won’t suffocate. Look at her. She is calm. Don’t jam that thing down her throat. It’s obscene, barbaric. Look at her.

They did, all of them. Through the remaining gaps in the strands across her face, Fatima Alfarsi appeared to be smiling. She looked at each of them in turn. The doctors sighed and left the room.

The fibers surrounding her legs and torso had begun to harden. They were no longer a jumble of individual strands, but one tough piece, like papier mache. This meant the family could no longer see her chest rising and falling reassuringly, but her eyes, surrounded by the encroaching white strands, remained open, hovering on one object—a chair, the curtain, the sharps box, her daughter’s face—for minutes at a time before drifting off and landing somewhere else.

As they grew tight and stiff, the strands snapped off all the tubes and wires that had been connected to Fatima Alfarsi, and without any of the monitors or drips, the room was now completely silent. Shortly after three in the morning, the final gaps over her face knitted together and all that was left was a hulking white shape in the bed.

One by one, the daughters and their husbands stood up to lay a hand on the object about where Fatima Alfarsi’s chest had been. They encircled the bed, three on each side, and shared a breath in unison.