by Peg Kerr
His breath clotted in his throat, choking him, and they both froze, staring at each other, panting. And then he shoved her from him violently as if she were a viper. Jerked to a stop by her chain, she thumped to the floor, hitting her head heavily, and then raising it groggily to look at him in astonishment. William’s fury drained away as if someone had unscrewed a stopper in his shoe heel, letting it all empty out into the straw.
How did you make him love you instead of me?
As he stood there stupidly, feeling his hands beginning to shake, she stood and raised her hand to kiss her wedding ring, her eyes flashing fiercely. She thumped that hand against her heart and then swept a finger up to point to the door. The meaning was plain: Go now.
William retrieved his Bible and hat and staggered to the door. He thumped on it until the gaoler came to draw back the latch. Then he stumbled out without looking back.
Eliza sank back into the straw, trembling. She plucked the coats out of the straw and pressed them to her, rocking back and forth. But the familiar comfort they had given her was gone, leaving her thoughts to whirl in painful confusion.
She had believed in her bright messenger, believed in her dream. Now, as she laid the coats in her lap and stroked the fabric, each one more hastily made and ragged than the last, Eliza felt the firmness of her faith crumbling beneath her, like a path dissolving at the very edge of an abyss. She marveled now at her own credulity, her reckless readiness to throw away her life because of something as ephemeral as a warning from a dream. She shook her head as if to clear it and raised her hands to stare at her oozing, blistered fingers. A sudden, cold thought made her heart sink: What good could it possibly do to labor making coats out of nettles? And why did she have to remain silent? Eliza’s hands fell away from the coats. If all her toil failed to save her brothers, and she perished for nothing, what did her silence and suffering accomplish? What were they for?
And yet, if she were wrong, if she spoke and her brothers died for it... Her soul cried out in wordless desperation for surety, for a sign—and then she started violently at the whistling thump behind her. Eliza’s head snapped up, and in the last ruddy light of the setting sun, she saw a swan’s wing beating against the barred window of her cell. Benjamin! The cry remained locked securely inside her, without even a thought of being spoken aloud, and in that moment she understood her prayer had been answered. She flew to the window, thrusting a shackled hand out to touch his feathers, and her heart sang within her even as she sobbed for joy. Hope still remained, even on the very last night she had to live. Her task was nearly complete, and her brothers had found her again.
Chapter Twenty-two
Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character,
and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.
—ROMANS 5:3-5
Even without a job, Elias’s days were full, and frequently seemed to require more energy than he had available. Besides his time spent with Sean, he squandered hours on the phone each week wrangling with faceless, humorless bureaucrats about Sean’s insurance coverage, an exhausting, frustrating process that made him feel as if he were trying to swim in gelatin. He continued researching the newest word on treatments and talking with Sean’s doctors. He began consultations with Patty and GMHC about getting himself signed up with Medicaid. Friends called regularly to keep tabs on Sean’s health and to pass the word along about other people’s sicknesses. At Sean’s insistence, he duly repeated this information when he came to the hospital each day, in a ritual Elias mentally dubbed “the roll call.”
He didn’t like doing it. Sean’s strength was obviously dwindling, and Elias worried that each announcement about someone’s new KS diagnosis or dropping T-cell count robbed Sean of a little more hope.
“I don’t know why he’s so adamant about pumping me for information,” he complained to Rick.
“You’d think he has enough on his mind without worrying about how everyone else’s drug treatment is going.”
Rick looked thoughtful. “I wonder. You know, I remember he loved playing poker in high school, and he was always real sharp about keeping track of other people’s cards.”
“So?”
“Maybe he wants to know because he thinks it’ll give him a better idea of his own odds.”
There might be something in that, Elias thought. Yet there was a reason Elias dreaded the roll call, and finally, he decided to talk with Bill about it.
“Did you really expect otherwise?” Bill asked when Elias explained. “He’s a reporter. He’s nosy. He’s curious. Don’t you think it’s a good sign he’s still interested in what’s going on around him?”
“Yes, but why does it have to be this? Why does he want to know about other people dying?”
“I don’t think he thinks of it that way. I think he wants to know about how other people are fighting against dying.”
“Hmm.”
“On the other hand,” Bill added, “maybe he’s probing because he doesn’t want to come right out and ask you what he really wants to know.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What do you think?”
Elias sat for a long moment, kneading his hands together. “Every time I tell him something I’ve heard about somebody,” he said softly, “Sean’ll ask me, ‘Is there anybody else?’ And I... just haven’t figured out a way to tell him ‘I’ve got AIDS, too.’ ”
Bill nodded. “I’m sorry, Elias.”
“I’ve known for a while.” Elias gave an embarrassed shrug. “I’ve got people to talk to and everything.”
“Except Sean, right? Elias, when I finally told people I was gay, you know what the biggest surprise for me was? It was that so few people were surprised. People often know more than you think they do.”
Elias thought back on the months before Sean had told him of his own diagnosis. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“So what’s keeping you silent? You’re not going to make me sorry I did that union ceremony, are you? What do you think together in sickness and health means?”
He went to see Sean afterward. The phlebotomist had just finished drawing Sean’s blood for the weekly complete blood count. She trundled the little cart of equipment out the door as Elias came into the room. He went over to the bed to kiss Sean gently on the forehead. Sean, drowsing, didn’t look up. Elias ran his fingers slowly from Sean’s neck down to the tips of his fingers, trying to recapture the tactile memory of strong muscles under smooth skin. All gone now: instead, Sean’s skin felt hot and slick with clammy sweat, fragile enough to split at the slightest pressure over the sharp edges of bone. A prickling rash covered his forearms, worsening into open lesions over his hands. An IV dripped into his arm, and a purple bruise showed above the edge of the dressing at his inner elbow. The sheet laid over the rest of his body did little to hide the wasting underneath. Sean’s lips were cracked and bleeding, and the fungus in his mouth gave his breath a sour stench.
“Sean?”
“Mmm.” Sean shifted wearily, his legs moving restlessly, as if trying to find a position free from pain.
“How did you ... how did you find the nerve to tell me you had AIDS?”
“You told me to just blurt it out, so I did. That’s what you’ll have to do, too.”
“Is that so?” Elias said, eyes stinging.
“Mmm-hmm.” Sean looked up at him with dim, sunken eyes. “Come on, now. Blurt.”
Elias swallowed. “I have AIDS.”
Sean nodded. Tears trickled slowly down his face. “I’m sorry, Elias. So sorry I won’t be there to help you when you go through this yourself.” He batted at the moisture on his cheeks, as if too weak to wipe it away. “But I’m glad you’ve told me.”
Elias got a tissue and mopped him up, and Sean dozed off soon afterward. Elias stumbled over to the chair and gratefully surrendered to oblivion.
When he awoke again, the doctor was conducting an internal exam. Sean’s sheet had been pulled back, an
d the doctor was bent over the bed, percussing Sean’s withered body with light taps, his face serene and intent. Thoom, thoom, came the sound from under the swift, strong fingers over Sean’s lungs, thoom, thoom. Elias watched, rapt, to see his lover’s body manipulated like a great, bony xylophone being played by a virtuoso. The sound changed over the abdomen to thunk, thunk, and then tup, tup. Sean grimaced. “My intestines keep going out of tune. How come there’s never a pitch pipe available when you need it?”
The doctor didn’t laugh. He put the stethoscope to Sean’s skin, over the jutting ridge formed by his ribs, and listened. Elias tried to guess whether he liked what he heard. It was hard to tell; the doctor had a good poker face.
Finally, he pulled the earpieces out of his ears and raised the sheet over Sean’s chest again. “How is the eating? Better?”
Sean shrugged, apparently not quite willing to lie out loud.
The doctor sighed. “We’ll wait for the results of the blood count. Then we’ll talk further.” Slowly, he pulled the stethoscope off his neck, coiled it up, and put it into the pocket of his coat. “Meanwhile, I must ask you to make a decision.” He pointed to a piece of paper lying on the table, which had been pushed to the side during the exam. “New York law stipulates that, unless a patient signs this form—it’s called the ‘Do Not Resuscitate form’—every in-house cardiopulmonary arrest must be immediately treated with a full-scale resuscitation attempt.”
“Meaning CPR?”
“Mmm-hmm. CPR and more. Regardless of the chances of success.”
Elias felt queasy. They both knew what that meant. Sean’s last roommate, another AIDS patient, had suffered a code blue the previous week, and the frenetic, violent flurry of people and equipment around the bed had terrified them both. Elias could still vividly remember the sickening crunch as the man’s breastbone and ribs broke under the force of the physician’s assistant pounding on his chest. His eyes had bugged out, body jerking violently from the pressure of the pushes, as vomit oozed out from underneath the edges of the bag mask the nurse used to pump oxygen into his lungs. Eventually, they had moved him down to the ICU, still barely alive as far as Elias knew. He wasn’t sure if it was a life worth living.
Sean stared at the piece of paper on the table as if it were a snake that somehow had wriggled onto his dinner tray. “So we’re at that decision point already?”
The doctor hesitated. “A good doctor tries to prepare for all eventualities.”
Sean made a face. “Especially the most probable ones. So does the good little patient, I suppose.”
The sarcasm in his voice stung.
“Do you want to sign the form?” the doctor prodded gently. “Or do you want everything possible done to keep you alive?”
Sean looked at Elias. “I’m tired, Elias,” he said, his voice cracking. Elias did not misunderstand him. Tired of the pain. Tired of dying. “I know,” he replied as soothingly as he could. “You’ve done the best you possibly can. I... want you to do whatever seems right for you to do. I’ll support whatever you decide.”
Without hesitation, Sean picked up the pen and weakly scribbled his name to the form. The doctor had to hold the paper steady for him. When Sean was done, the pen dropped from his fingers as if he were too weary to hold it upright anymore. Looking relieved, the doctor picked up the paper and tucked it under the clip on his clipboard. He thinks Sean did the right thing.
“I wonder,” Sean said in a small voice as the doctor left, “how much time I really have left.”
Elias tried to smile. “The same that all of us have. You’ve got the rest of your life.”
“Ah. Then I’d better make it count.” He shifted again, painfully. “Smuggle up some Guinness the next time you come, okay?”
But the next time Elias came, obediently bearing Guinness, Sean was in no condition to drink it. He was unconscious, breathing in fitful jerks. A newly erupted red rash with a white, ashy coating covered his yellowing skin.
“That’s the Candida, the same fungus that’s causing the thrush infection in his mouth,” the doctor said.
“The main problem is the neutropenia, as I feared. But his kidneys are shutting down, too. And there are other infections that we don’t entirely understand. The antibiotics aren’t—”
“How long do we have?” Elias asked numbly.
“I can’t say exactly.”
“Of course not.” Elias closed his eyes, hearing the sarcasm in his own voice, but he couldn’t bring himself to care in the least.
But if the doctor noticed, he didn’t seem to take offense. “A few days, I think. A week at the most.”
Elias nodded. “All right.” He went to call Patty and Sean’s parents.
Time began flowing strangely. Janet and Jim came from Boston to wait with him. Patty was suddenly there beside him, pressing a mug of stew into his hand and making him eat it. He shoveled it into his mouth absently without tasting it, only vaguely aware that the heat of it had burned his tongue. Leo, Nick, Kiyoshi, Frankie—a parade of friends shifted in and out of his peripheral vision like the flickering images of a kaleidoscope. He thought he heard Irish music once; had someone brought a tape recorder? The room darkened, lightened, and darkened again. People came and went, and he forgot that they were ever there, for all he saw was Sean, dimly, through a shifting scrim of tears. And Sean couldn’t see him at all This couldn’t be the end, he thought over and over again. If only they had more time! Time enough for a new treatment, a cure ... and worse, he hadn’t even had the chance to say anywhere near all the things he now desperately wanted to say. How could you pack a lifetime’s worth of words to the person you loved the most in all the world into just two or three days? Impossible: the very thought choked him, and so he said nothing at all as he sat, holding Sean’s hand, hour after weary hour. Gradually, the sound of crying penetrated his consciousness, a thin, animal wail of pain. He recognized it, for something inside him was making the same sound. Blearily, he tore his gaze away from Sean’s face and looked up. Janet stood at the foot of the bed, clutching a rosary, her weeping muffled on Bill’s shoulder. He bent his head, whispering something in her ear. Jim sat perched awkwardly balanced on the windowsill, his eyes bleak as the barren winter landscape outside as he stared at his dying son. Janet raised her head, tears streaming down her face. “But how?” she choked out. “Why? I’ve held on to God, believed in him all my life. How could God do this to him? What has he done to deserve this?”
Bill shook his head. “No, Janet, don’t. That’s the trap Job’s friends fell into, thinking that suffering comes only as punishment for the guilty.” He gripped her shoulder, gave it a little shake. “This is AIDS. It’s a disease, not a punishment. It takes down the innocent and the guilty both.” His red-rimmed eyes glistened as he looked down at Sean, lying on the bed. “And even the guilty could never deserve a death as ugly as this. It’s our failures and our fears that have spread it. Not God’s vindictiveness.”
She shook her head, a trembling hand wiping away her tears.
Sean’s voice came suddenly then, a ghost of a whisper that startled them all. “Rafe.”
“What?” Janet pulled away from Bill and leaned forward. “What did he say?”
Sean’s head lolled on the pillow. His eyes were open now, but didn’t seem to see them. “Jerry.”
Elias leaned forward, too. “Jerry’s not here, Sean.”
If that penetrated, Sean gave no sign. “Ian.”
“Who is Ian?” Jim whispered hoarsely, coming over to stand by the bed. “Does he ... does he want us to call him, or something? Bring him here?”
“We can’t,” Elias said. “Ian died of AIDS.”
“Harry. G-Gordy.”
Realization came slowly. “They’re all people he knows who’ve died of AIDS.”
Sean mumbled something, another name perhaps; Elias didn’t catch it. His eyes shifted to a point above Elias’s shoulder.
Janet stared at Sean, wide-eyed. “Can he ... can he s
ee them? Is that what’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Elias breathed. His skin prickled with awe. He had no trouble believing it though, the gathering of unseen friends around the bed, come to help ease the soul’s journey from the body. I’ve fought so hard for you, Sean. I never understood until now that the hardest thing of all to do would be to let you go.
Sean breathed more slowly and fitfully now, releasing each lungful of air with a low moan, like a woman laboring to bring forth a child. Dying looked like hard work, Elias thought, but then Sean had never been afraid of hard work. He hoped Sean wasn’t afraid now. He lifted Sean’s hand and kissed it with infinite tenderness, savoring the warmth that ebbed from his thin flesh, like the last flicker of a dying ember.
“Philip.”
Elias raised his head. “I didn’t even know Philip was dead yet,” he said numbly, his tears falling on Sean’s fingers.
“Last rites,” Janet said suddenly. “Can we get someone to come here to do the last rites?”
“Do you think he would want them?” Jim said.
Janet looked at him with surprise.
“I mean because of the problems he had with the church, maybe he would prefer not to... ?” His words trailed off uncertainly. Janet looked stricken.
“I don’t know,” Bill said slowly. “We hadn’t talked the decision through yet. I thought we would have more time.”
Elias thought Janet was going to protest, but then to his utter surprise, she turned to him instead.
“Elias? Would it be all right with you?”