Tony's Horror

On the day of horror,
Tony was teaching at MIT.

“Can anyone tell me the answer?
No? How astonishing!

Will any of you ever do any work?”
Tony said to his first years

(well, tried not to shout-
they should have done it).

They gaped at him, mostly.

Some scowled.
A couple looked away.

“You don’t get a Fields Medal
from doing nothing.

If you want to achieve what I have,
you’ll need to work.

Not play online chess.
Looking at you, Tia.”

Tia frowned, closed her laptop.

Tony sighed, adjusted his
red and white bowtie.

Forty-five years.
He was forty-five years old.

Forty-five years devoted to
mastery of mathematics.

And this was his thanks?

He should have started
his own YouTube channel after all.

“If you want to grasp greatness,”
Tony continued, trying, mostly successfully,

to keep his voice even,
“you’ll need to sweat for it!

When I won the medal, well,
do you think it happened overnight?

No! Of course not.

No, it came after years of effort.
After building a life.

With a beautiful wife.
Two small children.

A nice house.
And a Fields Medal.

Don’t you all want that?

Don’t you want to tell
your children you tried?

That you did the work,
didn’t waste your brains on Tetris?”

More of the class were
frowning and scowling, now.

He hadn’t driven his point enough.

“I think that’s the problem
with your generation,” Tony sighed,

more loudly than he meant.
“You don’t know the value-”

A knock on the classroom door.

“Saved by the bell,” Tony muttered,
then wandered to the door.

The University Dean.
Who didn’t seem his usual.

Almost seemed… Sad.

Tony frowned.
Opened the door.

“Well?” he said.

“I have some bad news,”
the Dean said softly.

“About your wife.”


A few weeks after the accident,
Tony clasped Jemima’s hand

in the hospital.

“Honey, hold on,”
he whispered, softly,

maybe it was softly.

“Honey, keep fighting.
We need you too much.”


He spent his days at home.
Never working.

He just waited for news
from the hospital,

the news that Jemima
was back, even stronger.

He would sit in his office,
in his three-storey house.

Glance at the phone.
Not pick it up.

Open a book.
Usually, one on math theory.

Look at it.
Wonder what it was saying.

Glance at the phone.


beep beep beep

It had happened.
It had finally happened.

Had only been a matter of time.

Was a mercy.
In a way.

Tony stared at her green eyes.
Eyes that had always gleamed.

Up to now.


Three nights later, he sat with
his kids, Bessie, and Layla.

They ate dinner.
In theory.

More accurately,
they stared at it.

Finally, Bessie said:
“Do you think…”

Then stopped.
And gasped.

And started to softly sob.
And wept, and wept, and wept.

She wept in shudders.
Layla started too.

Without knowing he was,
Tony started to hug them.

And enclosed them in an embrace,
unlike any he would have before.

“I know, I know,” he murmured.

He would later be stunned
at how gentle his voice was.

“But there’s nothing we can do.
Now, we only have each other.”

And he began to weep, too.
Soft at first.

Then, like his children,
his two companion survivors,

long and shoulder-shattering.