Nor this. Well, this was hospice. There was too much time to think. Let the mind roam. She could pull out her phone and read or check her mail, sure. She could listen to music on earbuds, or bring in a little speaker box if he wanted to listen too. But also, she could just sit there. Rest. Think. Run over in her mind the conference that had ended, and everything else: their last hike in the Alps; those wild creatures up there living their lives. Those creatures too must die in pain, with some of their kin huddled round them seeing them out, presumably. Or just alone out there. Tatiana. Martin, the hospice he had died in. There was a tendency to range widely in these situations, she had found, as if sitting on the edge of a cliff, with a view out to the edge of the world, like at the Cliffs of Moher but even higher. The sidewalk over the abyss, as Virginia Woolf had put it: sitting on the edge of that sidewalk with one’s feet kicking in the empty air, staring down into the abyss or out at the horizon, or back at the sidewalk that had seemed so important as they walked it, now revealed as a gossamer strip through careless air. No, life— what was it? So deep and important and full of feeling, so crucial, then suddenly just a blink, a mayfly moment and gone. Nothing really, in the grander scheme; and no grander scheme either. No. A vertiginous perch, the bedside chair in a hospice.
Certainly it was impossible to avoid the realization that this was going to happen to her too, someday. Usually one could dodge that thought; it was a distant thing, one could avoid thinking of it. Take it on, get used to it in small theoretical doses, forget about it again. Live on as if that would always be the case. But in a room like this one the real situation obtruded as if out of another dimension. Thus the vertigo, the sense of scale. A great reckoning in a little room, indeed. This phrase was supposed to be Shakespeare’s reference to Marlowe’s death, which was generally understood to have resulted from a drunken fight over a pub bill. Sudden and stupid eruption of hospice reality into mundane reality.
That first visit right after the conference, he never woke. She left with a little guilty sensation of relief. She knew very well it would be hard to talk with him in any comfortable way. He had not ever been one for mincing words or papering over a situation with some kind of comforting nostrum. He had not ever been comfortable with her visiting him. It had been like punishing him and she had done it anyway.
The next time she visited, she found his ex-partner and her child in the room. The girl was now a young woman and looked miserable. Youth was no protection from the exposure of a room like this, indeed for youth it might even have more of an impact, being perhaps new, or at least unusual; the calluses had not yet formed, the reality of death was more shocking, less buffered.
His ex looked unhappy as well. They sat on the chairs upright, twisting their hands together, looking anywhere but at him. He regarded them with what Mary thought was a kindly look, full of regret and love. Seeing it was like a needle stuck in her heart; she had thought he was beyond feeling, that he had dismissed them somehow. But of course not. A mammal never forgets a hurt; and they all were mammals. And here these two were. They were afraid of him, she saw. Not just afraid of death, but of him. She wasn’t sure he saw that. Maybe he did and loved them for coming anyway. The young woman would remember this for the rest of her life. All her anger would have to include this too. The one who lives longest wins. But then has to carry the burden of that victory, that horrid feeling of triumph. It would never be good to feel that.
I’ll come back later, Mary said.
We were just leaving, the mother said. The daughter nodded gratefully. We were just leaving. He may be tired.
Frank’s little smile belied that, Mary thought. Thanks for coming, he said. I appreciate it. I’m sorry you had to come. Sorry for everything— you know.
No no, the woman said, tears spilling down her cheeks all of a sudden. We’ll come back again. It’s not far.
Thank you, Frank said. He reached out a hand and she took it and squeezed it. Then his daughter lunged forward and put her hand on the back of her mother’s. For a moment they held hands like that. Then the young woman rushed out of the room, and, weeping, the mother followed.
Sorry about that, Mary said to Frank. I didn’t mean to intrude.
That’s all right. They wanted to leave.
No.
It’s all right. They
