“What about this one, Ms. van Deijck?”
“What about her?”
“What’s she like?”
“She’s fine. Easy. Normal. There’s only one thing I wonder about a little. According to her papers she has a son, but I’ve never seen him here. His daughter comes with her mother, but he never does. Pretty strange, isn’t it? What could have happened between them?”
“Did you ask her?”
“She couldn’t talk. She didn’t want a prosthesis.”
“Maybe she was a terrible mom. Maybe she mistreated her son. Or maybe she was just a pain. There was a boy in my class at school who cut things off with his father as soon as he turned eighteen. He said why should he care about the bastard when he never cared about him. The things his dad did were terrible. There are times you just have to get away from someone completely.”
The Wlibgis in the air knows her time has come. No rhythm, no pulse, no singing. Just anger, solitary anger, the crystal-clear sign of departure.
The older nurse checks the cannula attached to the back of the hand of the Wlibgis lying on the bed and then turns to leave. The younger nurse follows her. At the same moment, an electric blue waxy glob disengages from the base of the lava lamp and begins to rise. The Wlibgis in the air waits for the glob to reach the center of the lamp—no rhythm, no pulse, no singing, no luxury for her. No one helps, and she doesn’t ask for help. She waits for the electric blue lump to be in the right spot, like the bubble in a builder’s spirit level; it’s a signal, a signal to her.
And when it does, she leaves, alone, in the way of her choosing. She sort of sits on the side of the bed, sort of tumbles onto herself, onto the mattress, as if going to sleep. The Wlibgis on the bed below wheezes. The Wlibgis in the air grimaces and swipes the hole in her throat with the back of her hand as if cutting her neck with a guillotine.
The Wlibgis in the air disappears.
And in their shock, no one has the time to say goodbye.
DEATH REHEARSAL NUMBER 3 (HOW TO CLOSE UP A CORPSE IN A COFFIN)
When a person becomes a corpse, others treat her differently than they did a moment ago, during life. A dying person is at the mercy of others, whether she’s conscious prior to becoming a corpse or in a state of unconsciousness, as Wlibgis was believed to be. Being an experienced nurse, Xaliimo had seen some things in her time. One of her former colleagues, Maritje, once made a mustache for a coma patient using the patient’s own shoulder-length hair, just because it happened to amuse her. Then there was Tessa, who had a habit of commenting after washing patients’ intimate areas, although thankfully only after leaving the room. Xaliimo didn’t feel good about that either. “You gotta have a laugh sometimes,” Tessa replied angrily when Xaliimo asked her to stop. “That’s the only way to survive this.” Xaliimo spent the whole night mulling over how a glans swollen with balanitis or a vulva spotted with lichen ruber could be amusing to anyone.
With time Xaliimo became hardened and stopped noticing certain things. She did her work well, and people liked her, but she didn’t always have the energy to pretend to be diplomatic when treating patients who were already somewhere else, already halfway on the other side. Xaliimo also became familiar with the temptation to do inappropriate things. To shove a finger in a patient’s mouth and make a popping sound with his cheek or do like Maritje and make a mustache under a sleeping woman’s nose with her hair. Just because it was possible. No one ever trained the young novices starting in the ward in the darker sides of nursing, in the shame that the unpredictable urges aroused by the helplessness of others could create. If you didn’t stamp out that shame, it would start to sting, and if you gave in to it, it would poison your mind; if you contemplated it, you’d grow despondent; and if you denied it, the patient’s life might be put in premature danger.
But Xaliimo didn’t give in. She didn’t fold a diaper package into a dunce cap and put it on anyone’s head, and she didn’t stick her fingers anywhere without a medical reason. She discharged her work better than before and turned up the warmth in her voice when speaking to patients. She stopped scolding her immoral colleagues, but inside she deeply despised them, their ribald talk and insufferable gestures, which would have offended the patients if they had been awake. “I was raised to give other people respect,” Xaliimo said to herself time and time again, and that was enough, she believed. She knew that the dying had their own indisputable value, even though sometimes watching their protracted struggle with death was so exasperating that keeping her malicious thoughts in check was difficult. Why hadn’t they arranged an honorable end for themselves in time?
But something happened when the dying became the dead. A person, who only a moment before had received if not brusk then at least routine care, magically became nearly holy, deserving of solemn respect—sometimes also, strangely enough, a risk of infection. Some nurses put on full safety gear: the aprons, masks, gloves, and long coats that were usually used with special patients, as if death were catching, and only then would they touch the corpse, which a moment before they had been willing to turn over with
