I Google “Ideas on what to do during your bonus round” and find numerous blog posts with titles like “31 Helpful Tips For Your TCR Experience” and “100 Final Day Ideas! (#23 Will Seriously Blow Your Mind!).” I click around for several minutes, lulled into the glow of the screen, and then it hits me:
I’m nearly two hours into my bonus round—and all I’ve done is check Facebook and click through a couple of Google search results.
This is how I’m spending my final day on earth? This is my grand finale? A sickening feeling pools in my stomach, something between shame, embarrassment, urgency, and genuine terror. No. This isn’t how it’s going to go down.
I need to get out of this hospital.
As if on cue, the doctor arrives to examine me. Finally. Any longer and I might have ripped the IV drip out of my arm myself.
He nods at my chart, listens to my heart, and taps both of my knees with a tiny plastic hammer. He asks if I can stand up, if I can yawn for him and say ahhh, if I remember my name and what year it is. Everything’s all good. Thumbs-up. He scribbles a few notes on a clipboard and then gestures to a table where some fresh clothes are laid out for me to change into. But he’s not quite finished yet. “Just one last thing . . .”
He shows me an app on my phone that will track my movements and send an ambulance in case I need assistance at any point.
“Assistance” is a euphemism for: pick up my failing, crumpling body if I don’t, can’t, or won’t return to the hospital in time for my second death.
“But don’t worry too much about that, OK? Just enjoy yourself,” he urges me. “I hope this special day is everything you, ah . . .” There’s an awkward beat. “Everything you had hoped it would be.”
A flash of pity crosses his eyes, as if he’s just now realizing my “condition.” As if he’s seeing me for the first time. I wonder, momentarily, if he has a son or a daughter and how old she might be. My age? Younger? Older? Does she look like me? I wonder if he’s wondering how much time she has left. Or how much time he has left. Nothing like staring death in the face to abruptly remind you of your own mortality.
“Do you have kids?” I ask.
He nods. “Two.”
“Please tell them you love them. Today.”
His eyes mist over and I know I’ve struck a raw nerve. My eyes fill with tears, too, and I reach out instinctively to take his hands into mine. He doesn’t protest. We say nothing.
The second hand moves around the clock. Full circle. For one minute, we are not doctor and patient. We are not separate. We are two human beings awash with immense emotions—feeling the urgency of life, the unfairness of death, the agony of loss, the mystery of it all.
I want to say something profound but it feels like … there’s just nothing to say. So we just exist there, on the brink of words but ultimately saying nothing. His hands rest inside mine. I can feel the warmth of his skin, the smooth underbelly of each finger pad. The hands of a man who works long hours doing delicate, precise things. I don’t think I’ve ever held a stranger’s hands before. Not since being a kid on the playground.
“OK, OK,” he mutters gruffly after another few more seconds have passed. Pressing away his tears with a flattened palm, he composes himself. “It’s time for you to get out of this hospital. What are you going to do first?”
“I don’t know,” I reply. “I have no specific plans. I guess anything could happen.”
He nods and moves towards the doorway. For a moment, it seems as though he’s gathering his thoughts—preparing, perhaps, to offer me a small piece of advice, or a few words of comfort. But just then, there’s a commotion in the hallway outside.
A stretcher is being pushed frenetically down the slick flooring. There’s a blur of pink, blue, and green scrubs and a voice delivering clipped orders in rapid succession. The doctor’s pager buzzes. He glances at it and then slips into the hallway, speed-walking in the direction of the stretcher, moving along to his next patient—living, dead, or somewhere in between.
I’m alone.
I’m guessing this means my exit examination is over, and apparently I … passed. I gather my clothes and race against the clock, seeing how quickly I can get dressed and get out of this eggshell-colored medical tomb. My shoes are laced and double-knotted, and I’m ready in just ninety-two seconds. Not bad.
I grab my phone and head for the door. The rancid taste in my mouth has finally dissipated. The jolts of pain are gone. No more paralysis. My body is my own again. I feel electrified. Better than I can ever remember, actually. Sharp. Alert. Intensely alive.
I walk past the registration desk. Nobody stops me or asks me to sign any paperwork or anything, and everyone looks very busy, so I just keep going. I walk quickly through the waiting room filled with the scent of anxiety and impatience, through the double-paned glass doors that part automatically, and into the stark brightness of the city.
I have no idea what happens next.
I guess it’s all up to me.
Hour Three
When was the last time you looked at the sky?
I don’t mean “to snap a photo for Instagram.” I don’t mean “to check if it’s raining.”
Can you remember?
I almost don’t remember how to exist without a phone attached to my hand, hip, or ear.
I almost don’t remember how to experience the world without needing to document, upload, or comment upon every waking moment.
For a few minutes, I try to remember.
I sit on a bench outside the hospital and just look at things. People. Clouds. Cars. Gurneys being wheeled in. Wheelchairs being wheeled out. Couples reuniting.
A girl on crutches hobbles out with her tall, lanky boyfriend’s arm around her waist. He supports her as she fumbles like a newborn fawn, hesitantly hovering her bandaged ankle above the ground. Her face twists into a mask of concentration. She’s doing her best not to trip over her crutches or place any pressure on her injured leg. Her boyfriend—or husband, whatever—is looking at her with the most intense look of adoration I’ve ever seen on a human face. He loves her. He loves her so goddamn much. It’s obvious.
She hobbles over to their car. He helps her into the passenger seat, stores the crutches into the trunk, hops inside and leans over to kiss her. Long, slow, and deep. His fingers rummage through her hair. She smiles with her eyes closed. They drive away, and I get the feeling he’s driving extra-slowly and cautiously because he wants to demonstrate that her safety and comfort are his utmost concern. Precious cargo onboard. It’s such a subtle thing, such a small gesture of thoughtfulness and care, but it kills me.
I feel a violent, stinging pang of loneliness in my chest—so sharp and unexpected, I almost cry out in pain.
Watching this couple drive away from the hospital cul-de-sac, I’m hit with an overwhelming desire to toss my phone into the garbage.
I know it’s odd. I know it’s careless and rude. I know I won’t be trackable by the hospital—which will be highly inconvenient for them in, oh, about twenty-one hours when I expire for the last time and my body needs to be collected. I know, I know, I know.
But it occurs to me that I haven’t been more than twelve feet away from my phone in about twelve years. I literally sleep with it less than a foot from my face. I always have.
These are my final hours on earth. I want to be untethered. I want to feel free. Most of all, I want to feel completely awake. No digital distractions. There’s a garbage can right by the entrance to the hospital and so, down it goes. My $999 iPhone X lands on a crumpled sandwich wrapper and that’s that. Bye.
I stand up and stretch my arms into the air—one of those big, epic stretches like when you’re waking up after a long nap. I feel like my fingertips could touch the sky. I feel strangely light, almost like I could float. Probably because I haven’t eaten anything since … well, since the day befo
re I died.
You know what?
I’m getting that cheeseburger after all.
Hour Four
“Oh my god,” I mutter to nobody in particular, closing my eyes and swooning in ecstasy. Best. Cheeseburger. Ever.
It’s a soft pretzel bun—perfectly buttered and toasty—piled with crisp lettuce that makes that pleasant crrrunnnch sound when you bite down. A perfectly grilled hamburger patty, scorched around the edges, medium-rare inside, nestled atop some kind of garlicky, creamy, miraculous sauce. Pickles. Tomatoes. Caramelized onions. Plus sharp cheddar cheese and (because screw it, I’m already dead) three strips of thick-cut bacon.
I arrange myself in a booth near the window. The waitress brings my burger along with a side of sweet potato fries dusted with chili powder and salt.
“Refill on your drink?” she asks.
I nod and smile like a kid on Christmas morning, reveling in the perfection of this moment.
Light pours through the glass, and the ice cubes in my drink twinkle like stars. The fizzy sweetness reminds me of being a little girl, riding my bicycle with my dad around the lake in Loring Park. We had a Saturday morning routine: bike ride followed by deep-fried cheese curds—my favorite snack as a kid, because they squeak in your mouth—and ice-cold Dr. Pepper. After that we’d usually browse through stacks of twenty-five cent comic books—all laid out in bins on the boardwalk. He was a DC comics guy. DC all the way. Not Marvel. He was my real-life superhero, so obviously I was a DC girl, too.
We’d have long, intense discussions—well, as “intense” as a conversation between a six-year-old kid and a thirty-six-year-old man can be—about who would win in a battle: Batman or Superman.
“Batman would lose!” I’d insist. “He doesn’t have any superpowers. Just a bunch of fancy cars and stuff.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” my dad would wink. “You’re forgetting that Superman has a fatal weakness.”
“Kryptonite?” I’d say.
“Not Kryptonite . . .” he’d say. “Kryptonite weakens him, but there’s always an antidote. That’s not his biggest weakness.”
“So what is it then?”
“Love.”
Superman loves Lois Lane, and he will do anything to keep her safe. Love makes him strong, but it can also bring him to his knees, ruin him, make him insane and irrational, compel him to bend the laws of science and defy the natural order of things. To save Lois Lane’s life, he’ll do anything. Even put the fate of the entire human race in peril.
I remember one issue where—after Lois dies—Superman uses his super-strength to turn the earth backwards and reverse time to find her so that he can change history to prevent her death. It works. But there’s a cost. I read the issue so long ago, I don’t remember how it all plays out. My dad would remember. He remembers details like that.
Remembered, I correct myself. Past tense.
The final quarter of my burger is looking less and less appealing, and the fries have gone cold. I push the plate to the edge of the table.
Yes, dad died. Yes, I could have spent more time with him before he passed. No, nobody could have predicted that he only had six weeks to live when the doctors said six months. No, it’s not helpful to punish myself for not being at his bedside to hold his hand at the moment he passed. Two different shrinks, one life coach, and basically every single issue of O: The Oprah Magazine told me that in order to “live my best life,” I need to forgive myself and move on. But hearing that advice from seventeen different sources doesn’t make it any easier to follow.
Tears splash onto the Formica table, and I fight to keep myself contained. No sobbing. I don’t want to make a scene. I rub my eyes with the back of my hands, and my hospital bracelet scrapes my skin.
I flag down the waitress and ask for a pair of scissors to slice it off. The waitress nods like it’s not a peculiar request in the slightest, certainly not the worst one she’s heard today. She brings over a pair of scissors along with my check.
I cut myself free. Leave her a twenty-dollar tip. Collect myself. Step outside and resolve to do something I should have done about four hours ago.
Call my mom.
Hour Five
There’s a pay phone outside the restaurant that’s so neglected and grimy, it looks like it’s been pulled from the depths of a prehistoric tar pit.
I have serious doubts about whether or not the phone is even going to work. It probably hasn’t been used in about seventy-million years. I’m stunned when I pick up the earpiece and—miracle of miracles—hear a dial tone. The thing is alive. I insert all the loose change that I have, dial one of the only phone numbers that I’ve ever committed to memory, and wait.
Seven rings, and finally . . .
“Yes?”
The voice on the other end sounds hesitant and unnerved, as if she’s not quite sure whether she just received a call, whether she just called somebody else, or whether all of this is a dream.
But beneath the fog of dementia, there’s a fierceness and fire that is unmistakable. It’s the fire that got my mom through the loss of her first child, my older brother, whom I never got to meet. It’s the fire that got her through my dad’s cancer and the financial ruin that came in the wake of his illness. It’s the fire that compelled her to throw a glass of water directly in my first boyfriend’s face after he brought me home from a date three hours late. He ran from our doorstep, sopping wet, mumbling ineffective apologies. I have my suspicions that it may have been rubbing alcohol, not water, in that glass. She did not confirm … nor deny.
My mom is the strongest woman I know. Twenty times stronger than me. But all the grit, spit, and vinegar in the world couldn’t save her from the suffocating onslaught of Alzheimer’s.
A few years ago, she and I both agreed that putting her into an assisted living retirement facility was the best option for both of us. She always wanted to retire near the ocean, not be landlocked in the Midwest, so off to California she went. Her mental state declined steadily after moving into the Sunset Palms Senior Living Center in San Diego. I call weekly, and the odds are fifty-fifty that she remembers who I am. “She has good days and bad days,” as her caregiver puts it.
“Hey mom,” my voice cracks with emotion. “It’s me.”
“Sweetheart!” she says.
I choke back a sob. Today is a good day.
“How are you?” she asks me, and I can imagine her sitting in her favorite silk kimono, her hair in those rollers that she’s used for the past sixty years of her life. I’m guessing the white peonies that I sent over for Mother’s Day have been arranged in a vase by her bed. Her nails are probably painted peach-pink, not a single chip or ding in the polish, because a woman’s got to have her standards, after all. She taught me that.
“Good, mom, I’m good,” I say. In this moment, it feels mostly true.
“And how is that sweet boy? The professor?”
I shake my head. This. Again. The storyline she cannot keep straight.
“Mom, Kevin and I broke up over two years ago,” I repeat calmly, for probably the millionth time.
“Oh,” she says, her voice saturated with surprise and concern. “He was such a nice young man. I’m sorry things didn’t work out.”
“Yeah, mom, actually … I broke up with him,” I say. “We just weren’t compatible. But we’re still friends, sort of, I guess. It’s all good.”
“All good,” she repeats, as if the combination of words feels strange on her tongue. Her voice shifts into a saucier tone. I can practically see one eyebrow cocked.
“So,” she continues. “I suppose there’s no possibility that I might be getting a grandchild for Christmas this year?” she asks coyly. “Not even just one?”
I laugh. When it comes to her desire for grandkids, she is absolutely shameless.
“Mom, I . . .” I pause, rea
lizing the finality of what I’m about to say. “That’s definitely not going to happen.”
“Well, ohhhkay,” she sighs theatrically. “Go ahead and break your mother’s heart.”
I wince. Bringing even a single minute of suffering into my mom’s life is the last thing I want to do. Which means, obviously, I shouldn’t tell her the real reason I’m calling.
“You still there, darling?” she asks, and I realize I’ve been silent for several beats.
“Yeah, momma,” I say, trying to swing into a change of subject. On impulse, I ask:
“Mom, looking back on your life, what has been your greatest regret?”
There’s a long pause. I hear the sound of violins in the background. My mom’s favorite classical music station—the one she keeps on practically 24/7 these days. It’s Vivaldi’s Four Seasons. One of her favorites.
“I … I don’t understand,” she half-stutters, and her tone is like a child lost in a crowded shopping mall, asking, “Have you seen my mommy?”
I sense her slipping away from me. The disease rolling in like a bank of fog across the shore.
“Yes? Who’s calling?” she says. “Hello?”
No no no, mom. Don’t disappear. Stay with me. Panic seizes my gut.
“Mom, it’s me. It’s your daughter. It’s Nora. I wanted to ask you … I know this is a weird question, but, if you only had a few hours to live, what would you do? Like, what would you do with your time?”
There’s another long pause, and I drum my fingers nervously along the spine of a battered phonebook. Come on, come on. Don’t leave me, mom.
“Chocolate cake, champagne, and multiple orgasms,” my mom replies confidently. “Possibly all at once if time is running short.”
She’s back.
I laugh and press the mouthpiece of the phone close to my lips and cheek, as if somehow I can press hard enough to transport myself to her room.
So This Is the End Page 2