Читать книгу As If Death Summoned - Alan E. Rose - Страница 9

Friday, February 24, 1995

10:20 p.m.

Providence Hospital, Portland, Oregon

“I was hoping I might just sit with him. I realize he’s unconscious.”

The nurse is kind. “I’m afraid it’s not possible. He’s still in critical condition and being actively monitored. I’m sorry.”

She seems genuinely sorry, so I offer a smile. “Well, no harm in asking.”

She gives a warm smile in return. “No harm at all.”

I start to leave for the waiting room, then turn back. “It’s just that . . .” I’m struggling for words. “If he regains consciousness, even momentarily, it’s very important I speak with him. Very important, if only for a couple of minutes.” We have some unfinished business, I want to tell her. Business that needs to be finished before he . . .

“It’s really not my decision,” she says, “but I’ll see what I can do once he comes out of the recovery unit.”

“I would be ever so grateful.” It sounds strangely formal in a Jane Austen kind of way, but a simple Thank you doesn’t seem adequate for what I’m feeling.

I return to the empty waiting room, settling into one of the chairs, groggy and thick-headed, and glad Sandy went home to care for herself and Fernando. I would make miserable company tonight. By now, I’ve gone more than twenty hours without sleep and am badly in need of caffeine. Unfortunately, the hospital cafeteria is closed. There is vending machine coffee, but I’m not yet that desperate. My preferred sources of caffeine are Pepsi and Coke, I don’t care which— I always failed their taste tests— but the soda machine is out of order.

There was a time, back in Melbourne, when these vigils were happening with such regular frequency that I kept a daypack in my car with essential items. You never knew when you’d get the call. (“He went into the hospital, we think for the last time. Come if you can.”) By then, I had it down to a science: No-Doz tablets, thermos to fill and refill with strong black coffee, two novels (in case one was a dud), notebook and pen, change of shirt, toothbrush, toothpaste, razor (some vigils went on for days), energy bars, a couple of apples, extra tissues— not for me but for the others who would come by to sit a while and who needed to talk and maybe to cry— and finally the list of phone numbers when it came time to make “The Call,” notifying family and friends the vigil was over.

But this time I was caught unprepared. Rushing in from the airport, I don’t even have a book and am now left with nothing to read but old issues of Bon Appetit! on the waiting room table. Apparently, the selection of magazines depends on whatever the staff brings from home. So, I scrunch deeper into the chair, feeling bereft without my life support system and with only my memories to occupy myself.

I already know this vigil is going to be different. But then, they’re all different. Unlike the memorial services, which over the years begin to blend and blur together, merging into one montage of loss, the vigils remain distinct in my mind— this specific time, this specific place with its own emotional atmosphere, contoured to fit this individual now dying. Memorial services are communal events; vigils are deeply personal. Often, I’ve been left by myself, after family and friends depart, choosing to remain to keep what the writer Paul Monette called “the last watch of the night.”

No need for you to stay, a kindly nurse or hospice staff person will say. He doesn’t even know you’re here.

But I stay anyway. There’s this sense that much more than a life is ending. An entire world is coming to an end, a multitude of experiences, millions of moments and memories, hopes and goals and desires and dreams, all reduced to this: a biological organism slowly releasing its hold on life, a vast network of physiological processes gradually shutting down. Seems like someone should be here to witness it. You sense the presence that was this person has already departed, a presence no longer present, and not for the first time wonder who or what is actually dying.

With each vigil, a part of my soul died with that person. I seem to have less and less soul left. This vigil will be no different. I close my eyes and pray, Don’t let him die before we make peace, forgetting that I stopped praying years ago.