Kill Me

by Stephen White

  She didn’t ask. “Oh God,” she whispered.

  “Yeah.” I reached out and held her.

  “What do we do?” she wanted to know.

  “We go on,” I said. “We just go on. We watch it.”

  “We do,” she agreed after a few seconds of indecision, but her inflection was unclear, and I could easily have attached a question mark to the end of her two-word declaration.

  I realized something then that provided me with no solace: If she and I were running toward a finish line, and the most terrified would have been judged the winner, we would have broken the tape together, tied for that dubious prize.

  Was the aneurysm going to kill me?

  Depended on whom I asked.

  I was being treated by some fine doctors, but I didn’t trust anybody’s opinion much. I had spent enough time in academia that I was a subscriber to the belief that experts are actually people from out of town, and since I was fortunate to be in a financial position to be skeptical, I took a few side trips with Mary and Trace, flying around the country getting second opinions from the nationally recognized aneurysm gurus. And then I got second opinions to the second opinions.

  Presbyterian in New York.

  Mayo.

  The Cleveland Clinic.

  Mass General.

  UCLA.

  Multiple strategies were discussed. Some of the wizards preferred to clip the thing, others felt a surgical bypass was the way to go. A minority felt I was a perfect candidate for endovascular embolization, or coiling.

  The whole time, I was checking the professional literature myself to translate everyone’s advice into English and to learn what I could about my bulging artery.

  The best data I could find showed that the five-year survival rate of people approximately my age with aneurysms like mine wasn’t great. The percentage of people with similar arterial bulges who didn’t suffer a leakage or rupture during that period was low. Too low for comfort.

  I didn’t love those numbers. Any of them.

  Not too surprisingly, Thea and I interpreted the risks differently.

  She had asked me this: If I were standing on my skis on the top of an impossibly tough cliff in known avalanche country, and God himself told me that my odds of making it down alive were twenty percent, or thirty percent, would I go? Would I point those two boards down that hill and push off?

  Thea’s question was born of her point of view: She believed that with that aneurysm, fate had dealt me a bad hand. The odds I faced weren’t good. And I had no choice but to rue that hand.

  Fight like hell, yes. But rue that hand.

  I had begun to look at my dilemma slightly differently. In the weeks since my diagnosis I had begun to see the whole game, the big picture. With that long lens, I actually liked my hand. I’d lived forty-something interesting and satisfying years, had managed—against odds—to mature during those years, had a great family, a terrific wife, and more money than anybody had the right to ask for.

  I’d had a career that was mostly a joy, one that had made a difference in a few lives. I had some terrific friends.

  And now I had an aneurysm, sure. That part of the hand was certainly a clunker. With that turn card flipped up on the table, I granted Thea that it wasn’t a perfect hand I held. But play it I would. After all, the river card could still change everything.

  In my game, life always has a river card.

  I thought about the question she had posed for a long time before I answered.

  I finally explained my perspective like this: “If I were standing on my skis on top of that same impossibly tough cliff in known avalanche country, and God himself told me that my odds of staying alive and healthy were piss-poor unless I skied down, would I go? Would you want me to point those two boards down that hill and push off? Would you?”

  Thea’s mouth opened about a centimeter. Her eyes opened a little wider than that. “Is that your version of optimism?” she asked finally, just the slightest cushion of affection in her tone.

  “It is.”

  “You believe you can beat this, don’t you? Defy those odds?” she said. “Don’t you?” Her eyes were tearing up when she asked me, her voice cracking from the pressure of my peculiar strain of optimism.

  She was querying me about hope. She was praying that she had enough for me, and that I had enough for her.

  I said, “I have three reasons to believe I can beat this.” I pointed to her belly. “Make that four. How much motivation does a guy need?”

  I never told her, of course, that my risks were limited. If the aneurysm ruptured but didn’t kill me, I had already hired some professionals who would complete the job.

  Death Angels or no Death Angels, I planned on beating the aneurysm. It was that simple. Although some people lost their fights against the same foe, I knew that a few other people had lived long productive lives with conditions like mine. The neurosurgeons I consulted early on didn’t talk much about odds. One of them, a particularly cold prick in Rochester, told me in response to my question about probabilities that the outcome for me would be binary. He explained that if I chose to avoid surgery, I’d either survive the aneurysm, or I wouldn’t. “Odds are for Vegas,” he went on. “I went to Harvard Med. I didn’t go to Caesars Palace.”

  The surgeons all preferred to talk about minimizing risk. After listening to their opinions, I decided that there were three possible outcomes for me. The preferred outcome? Easy, the thing doesn’t blow; it stays stable. The second best outcome? Intervention. Successful surgery. But even the most optimistic surgeons warned that because of the unfortunate location of my aneurysm I would suffer some, hopefully tolerable, amount of brain damage during the procedure. The third option had two parts: (a) The thing blows on its own and I suffer a massive stroke. Or (b) the thing blows during surgery and I suffer a massive stroke.

  Not surprisingly, I never developed any real fondness for 3a or 3b.

  The minimizing-risk argument screamed at me to go for the surgical option. But I wasn’t like other patients; I’d never been inclined to settle for a life without risk. I was less risk-averse than most people and tougher than most people, and therefore, I was going to find a way to live life my way whether or not I had a flimsy artery in my brain. To do that I would be a better patient, a more diligent patient, a more optimistic patient.

  I would wait and watch and I would beat the fucker.

  Since I was going to beat it—and also because I couldn’t stand the thought of people treating me as though I was as fragile as a Ming vase—Thea and I both agreed we would keep the news about the aneurysm to ourselves. What was the point of announcing a silent battle against an enemy that would ultimately be vanquished? After some period of time, some period long enough to prove that I could indeed be victorious over some silly bulging blood vessel in my brain, she and I would throw a kick-ass party for all of our family and friends to announce to the world what we’d been able to overcome.

  It would be a hell of a bash.

  Yeah.

  That was the plan.

  Right from the beginning, I did my part. Fighting many instincts to the contrary, I became a patient par excellence. Positive attitude? I was Mr. Optimistic. Good patient? If they gave one out, I would have gotten the Golden Gown award. Healthy lifestyle? Exercise and fiber, vitamins and essential oils. I gave up red meat. Yes, I even did meditation and … yoga.

  And massage, of course. Massage.

  Offhand massage.

  My wrist bones eventually healed. The cast came off. But I kept the secret of my illness from everyone. I made up excuses for the absences I took from work; I explained away my continuing symptoms—the headaches and the nausea—as this stress or that virus.

  In the meantime, I was convinced that we could convince everybody I was still healthy.

  To complete the ruse, I continued to live my life the way that I’d always lived it.

  I called it “fully.”

  Thea still called it “reck
lessly.”

  Didn’t matter.

  I was going to beat this thing silly.

  That was the plan.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Ironically, or not, I didn’t give much thought to the Death Angels during the days and weeks after I was diagnosed with the aneurysm. Dying was on my mind, most definitely, but still as an abstract, eventual thing, not as an impending danger. The previous year, at the time I’d completed my enrollment on the side of the road outside Ridgway, I’d been assuming that the arrangements I’d made would never prove necessary, and if they did, that I’d be in my seventies or eighties before I was debilitated enough to need them.

  The presence of the aneurysm didn’t change anything, not acutely. I didn’t wake each morning thinking that the day had come that the vessel in my brain was going to blow. That just wasn’t my mindset about life.

  The Death Angel insurance I’d purchased wasn’t a policy I’d ever deluded myself into thinking was going to protect me against dying. And no one—not one of the many doctors I spoke with in those months after my diagnosis—had any confidence that he or she could predict when I would suffer a life-ending event or any near-term disabling impairment from the bulging artery they’d found. There was the a-hole in L.A. who thought I’d be dead before Christmas. I’d asked which Christmas. He’d said, “This Christmas.” And a neurosurgeon in Boston who said he’d be surprised if the weak-walled vessel lasted three years. Another one guessed five. One sweetheart in New York said she’d probably die before I did.

  Every last doctor, though, reminded me that the thing could blow in the next five minutes.

  I used the inconsistency as evidence to convince myself that they didn’t really know what was going to happen with me and my aneurysm. And then I convinced myself that was a good thing.

  The one facet of the whole Death Angel enrollment that I did consider during those days—but only briefly—was the fact that I had crossed the threshold that rendered my policy noncancelable.

  The rule that Lizzie had stressed that day at Papaya King was that once an enrollee had received a diagnosis of a potentially fatal or disabling illness, or had suffered an event—the Death Angel euphemism for a stroke or a heart attack, I think—or received injuries that were likely to result in serious disability or death, the agreement with the Death Angels became irrevocable. My memory was that we’d discussed it a little, maybe even argued about it a little, and that I’d ultimately agreed without too much thought, and without any determined protest.

  In the natural course of aneurysms like mine, a significant proportion of people die from rupture. Another significant proportion become severely debilitated from rupture. The ones who choose surgery on aneurysms in awkward locations, like mine, inevitably suffer deficits. Those simple facts meant that I had probably crossed the line into the domain of the irrevocables. I had no choice but to accept that reality.

  But it wasn’t a big thing to me. As a Death Angel client, I had always thought that I was in for life.

  Or death.

  I just never expected the issue to become real so soon.

  I knew the only line left to cross was the one that would put the target on my chest.

  And that was a line that I had drawn myself during that impromptu meeting on the side of the road outside Ridgway: the line that marked the client-derived parameters and initiated the provision of end-of-life services.

  When, oh when, would I exceed those parameters?

  Something else I had never thought about much was exactly how the Death Angels would complete their end-of-life activities. The specifics, I mean.

  The mechanics.

  How—exactly—would they kill me once I’d suffered a threshold event?

  Think about it. How would someone make a stranger’s death appear accidental, not too unexpected, without raising suspicion from the victim’s family, or the police, or … ?

  I guessed that back when I enlisted them, and I figuratively signed on the figurative dotted line, I was assuming that the logistics of causing my life to cease were their problem, not mine.

  But soon enough, it seemed, it might be mine.

  How the hell were they planning to kill me?

  Damn good question.

  What was most surprising to me, however, during those post-diagnosis weeks and months was that the presence of a Death Angel on my shoulder didn’t provide much comfort. I didn’t find myself with any inclination to drop to my knees and thank some deity for my prescience in signing up for the quick-exit plan.

  THIRTY-SIX

  Once the shock of the news had worn off, Thea and I were both glad that we had a reason to focus our energy on the bulge in her belly, and not the one in my brain.

  Amniocentesis had revealed that we would soon have two daughters, not just one.

  Cal was almost five then.

  Her older half-brother, Adam, was seventeen.

  Death wasn’t done begging for my attention, though. Connie’s death came suddenly late in 2004, interrupting my cross-country quest for second opinions. Adam took the train north from Cincinnati to join Thea—who had just entered the final trimester of a difficult pregnancy and shouldn’t have been traveling—and his sister, Berkeley, and me for his uncle’s funeral in New Haven.

  Connie had been a converted Quaker, and the funeral was a traditional Friends send-off that consisted of a zillion people jamming into a New Haven meeting hall sharing reflections and stories about Connie’s remarkably generous life.

  The service was much more spiritual than it was religious. I found it comforting.

  Adam, I thought, seemed stoic.

  Felix spoke in Spanish when he chose to stand and reflect on Connie’s life. While Felix talked, my son leaned over and placed his lips near my ears and translated every word for me. Adam’s warm breath on my flesh felt like a caress. It was so distracting and so comforting that I remembered almost nothing that Felix had said.

  Late in the service I spoke, too.

  My brother’s nephew waited to speak until the end, until the room had been quiet for a few minutes. Adam’s eloquence about his uncle, and the depth of his understanding of the meaning of his uncle’s life, gave me chills. He was the last to stand and consider Connie’s life that day; no one in the room would have dared to follow his lovely soliloquy with one of their own.

  My son never cried during the service. Not once.

  I never really stopped.

  In the succeeding weeks, as the birth of his new half-sibling grew closer, Adam mounted a spirited long-distance lobbying crusade from Ohio to continue the nascent philosopher-inspired naming trend that we’d started in our little family. He was advocating that we call the new kid “Wittgenstein.”

  “ ‘Vitt’ for short,” he’d said in a call to Thea, pronouncing the W like a V . “How cool would that be?”

  I’d had to go online and Google the name to learn something about Ludwig Wittgenstein—early twentieth century, Austrian, logician—the particular philosopher who’d inspired Adam’s naming campaign. I spent about five minutes trying to understand anything at all about Wittgenstein’s contributions to the grand oeuvres of anti-metaphysics and the logic of language before I got a splitting headache.

  Although I was half-sure that Adam was only half-serious about the name he was espousing for our baby, I had thought I might find a clue why Adam had gravitated toward Wittgenstein in particular, but ended up just being grateful that he wasn’t lobbying to call my new kid “Schopenhauer.”

  “Schop” for short.

  Thea put an end to what morphed into a rather extended naming negotiation by belatedly admitting that Berkeley had indeed been named after her mother’s alma mater on the gentle rise above San Francisco Bay and not after the late British empiricist. Adam accepted Thea’s change in position graciously; he immediately embraced the idea of college-inspired baby names, and started lobbying to have us call his new sibling “Yale” in honor of his recently deceased uncle Connie.

/>   It wasn’t lost on either Thea or me that Adam had chosen to honor yet another philosopher. And an ethicist, at that.

  Thea had begun crying when Adam made his “Yale” suggestion to her over the phone. I heard her say, “That’s so sweet. I’ll think about that, Adam. I’ll think about it seriously. I will.” Then she handed me the phone. Her free hand was on her swollen belly.

  “He wants to call her ‘Yale,’ ” she said to me, the phone’s microphone palmed in her hand. “He wants to name her for Connie. You talk to him. I can’t.” After she’d handed me the phone, she wiped away a tear.

  I did talk with him. Adam didn’t offer to talk with me too often then. But I loved talking to him.

  He was dead serious about naming his new sister Yale.

  The holidays came and went. The New Year started. When she was born a week early, we ended up calling our second daughter, our new daughter, Haven.

  Nothing for short.

  Adam thought the name was great.

  So did we.

  Cal’s two cents? She thought we were all spelling “Heaven” wrong.

  Later that year, as summer ripened into fall, Thea and I felt the time had come to tell Bella that it would be our privilege to pay for Adam to go to college. Bella, who struggled to connect one payday with the next, was thrilled with our offer.

  Adam wasn’t as grateful. He was even more skeptical about my money than he was about me, and he was supremely skeptical about going anywhere for a formal education.

  “You’ll meet people like your uncle Connie. Inspiring people,” I told him. “And make friends for life.”

  “Yeah?” he’d said, unconvinced.

  “Yeah.”

  He said he’d think about it.

  A while later Bella called Thea and said that Adam had decided to give college a try.

  I was ecstatic. I volunteered to coordinate the logistics of his college search. I was shocked, and relieved, when he accepted.

  For a wondrous few months during what, had he ever attended high school, would have been the winter and spring of Adam’s senior year—he was, he pointed out with mock pride, valedictorian of the Class of 2006 at Bella High School in Cincinnati, Ohio—I was at a strange intersection in my life. I had a daughter starting kindergarten and a son searching to find the right college. In the course of the same week, Thea and I would sit in the small chairs in some kindergarten classroom assessing the fit of a local school for our daughter, and then I would board a plane—an airline plane; Adam still wanted nothing to do with my jet—and meet Adam in some region of the country for a frantic three-or four-day tour of the local elite colleges.