The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley

by Shaun David Hutchinson

Death is ahead of me, and I almost lose her. It’s because I don’t recognize where we are—and that’s saying a lot. I know this hospital—I own this hospital—but Death veers into a hallway that I’ve never been down before, and I’m lost.

  It’s another unfinished section of hospital. Where drywall is actually hung, it’s unpainted, gray, and sad. There are strips of plastic sheeting draped everywhere, making it look like a maze inside a maze. I have to follow the sounds of Death’s heels on the concrete floor because I can’t see her anymore. I’d have to creep much closer to keep her in sight, and I don’t want to risk discovery.

  I turn a corner and am suddenly staring into the hospital’s chapel. It’s a somber, cramped room filled with pews, five on each side. From this side of the doorway, I can’t see Death, but it makes sense that she’d come here. She and God probably have an arrangement.

  The wisest course of action would be for me to backtrack and hang out in the hallway until Death is finished here, but my curiosity gets the better of me and I go inside.

  The chapel carpet reminds me of the mud-colored rug at my old high school, and the walls are painted dark maroon. There’s an altar at the front covered with signs of different faiths. Death is kneeling in front of the altar, and a middle-aged man with curly, receding salt-and-pepper hair kneels beside her, whispering in her ear. He’s wearing a long cream robe and reminds me a little of Super Mario.

  The moment I step inside, I realize my mistake and turn to leave, but the chaplain glances over his shoulder and catches my eye and, for some reason, I feel obligated to stay. Death is too busy talking to notice me, so I slip in and sit in the corner pew. I keep my head down, put my sketchpad beside me, and pick up a Bible. I’m on Death’s turf now, and I want nothing more than to run, but that would draw unwanted attention.

  While I wait, staring blankly at the Bible on my lap, I think about Trevor and Rusty and Patient F. Maybe I’ve been unable to figure out what Patient F is supposed to do next because I assumed that everything he had was gone. His family is gone—that’s true—but Patient F is unstuck in time. What if he could bring all the people he loved forward in time—snatch them from the moment before the accident and put them into the bodies of people in Maligant City? Then he could save them over and over again. Patient F could spend the rest of his life saving his family, and they would never have to die. Not really.

  “Hi there.”

  Death looms over me. I didn’t hear her approach. My fear reflexes kick in, and they scream at me to run, run away as quickly as possible. Outwardly, I struggle to remain calm.

  “Hi,” I say, keeping my eyes on the Bible, giving off leave me the hell alone vibes as I fold in on myself.

  “I know who you are.”

  I freeze. The game is over. I thought I was being cautious, but Death has been on to me all along. “You do?” I swallow.

  Death nods. “You work in the cafeteria. Andrew, right?”

  “Yeah,” I say, hiding the insane relief that floods my body. Death sits down beside me. She moves like a dancer, and tear tracks mar her face—wet roads that begin at her eyes, curve around her cheeks, and fall off the cliff of her chin. It shocks me, but I figure that if Death can cry, maybe we all have a chance for redemption.

  “My name is Michelle.” Death offers me her hand, and I take it. It’s warm; her grip is sure. “May I call you Andrew?”

  “Andrew, Drew, Andy. Whatever.”

  Death smiles like I’ve made some kind of joke. “Are you okay, Andrew?”

  I shrug. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

  Death glances around the chapel. She seems at home, like this is her sanctuary. If she lives anywhere in the hospital, I imagine it’s here. “People often come to the chapel when they’re worried about someone.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “God helps me make sense of the world.” She says it so simply that I know, for her, it must be true.

  I return the Bible and prepare to bolt. I feel trapped in this room, even with Super Mario at the front, acting like he’s busy, though he’s clearly eavesdropping.

  “Clarity can’t undo the bad things that have already happened.”

  “No . . . it can’t,” Death says. “What bad thing happened to you?”

  “I have to go.” I stand, but Death blocks my way. If she knew who I was, who I really was, she’d bag, tag, and whisk me away for sure. It was a terrible idea to follow her here.

  “Do you believe in Jesus, Andrew?”

  “I believe in all paths to God,” I say. “Except my own.” I edge past, trying not to touch her. “Thanks for the talk.”

  Death grabs my arm before I can run away. She holds me, and for a long, dark moment, I’m sure I’m sunk. She’s going to take me, then she’s going to take Trevor, and then she’ll take Rusty, too, for good measure.

  I’ve failed. Broken all my promises.

  But Death doesn’t take me. She stands up slowly, reaches into her purse, and pulls out a card.

  “God doesn’t always answer his phone. But I do.” She tucks the card into my moist palm.

  I hustle out of the chapel, trying not to look suspicious, though I know I must.

  It’s not until I’m safely hidden in a supply closet near the ICU that I realize I left my sketchpad behind. It’s a casualty of war. I can’t go back for it right now.

  For the rest of the day, I loiter around the ICU. It’s too dangerous to continue following Death, so my fallback plan is to make sure that Death doesn’t come anywhere near Rusty. She knows my name now, which means I have to be doubly careful.

  I’ve evaded Death once. I can do it again. I won’t let Rusty go without a fight.

  The elevator doors open into the warm, moist air.

  “Have a little faith,” I tell Lexi as I wheel out of the elevator, but I’m not sure she has any. She believes in things she can hold, dissect, absorb off of a page. She trusts bridges because she understands the math that underlies their basic structure and keeps them aloft even when they seem to defy gravity.

  But people aren’t bridges. There’s no equation for deciphering human motivations. People are unpredictable. Even when you believe that you’ve managed to figure a person out, based on long and thorough observation, they still manage to surprise you.

  We wheel into the waning sunlight that bathes the roof of the parking garage. A two-foot-high wall marks the boundaries, to keep people from driving their cars over the side. Trevor whistles and rolls right up to the edge. It isn’t the Chick’n Shak or the office buildings or the pothole-filled parking lot below that makes him whistle, that steals his breath and forces him to cough.

  “I haven’t seen a sunset since I got here.” Lexi sighs, rising out of her wheelchair to stand beside Trevor’s. They’re bound fast to each other’s orbits, and neither seems to realize it.

  “It looks like the burning heart of God,” Trevor says.

  I never thought of a sunset like that, but the way it smolders, pink and low, I’ll probably never think of one any other way again.

  “I didn’t bring you sick bastards out here to watch the sunset,” I say. We have just about an hour before the sun disappears below the horizon, which is covered by blue-gray clouds like bruises on the sky. But I know damned well that, if I let them, Trevor and Lexi will sit there and watch every infinitesimal movement of the sinking sun, their own bodies inching ever closer until, finally, their twin orbits disintegrate and they crash into each other. I’d be okay with that on any other day, but that day is not today. Today I have plans.

  “Then why’d you bring us here?” Trevor asks. He’s mesmerized by the sunset, but there’s this undercurrent of anger to his voice, like he’s mad that I’ve reminded him of the world out there.

  I turn from my sun-struck friends and run to grab the supplies I stashed up here this morning. For two days, I watched Rusty and Trevor dutifully, making sure that Death kept her distance, taking breaks only to work my shifts for Arnold—if I stopped show
ing up, he’d worry, and he’d talk, and the last thing I need is for people to talk about me—but today is Sunday, and even Death has to take the day off occasionally.

  “Hockey,” I say, holding three broomsticks, and a tennis ball that I rescued from the lost and found.

  “Dude!” Trevor spins in his chair, the sunset forgotten, and holds out his hand. I toss him the ball, and he deftly plucks it out of the air. The natural athlete still exists, buried under countless layers of chemotherapy and self-pity.

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Lexi asks for about the tenth time since we escaped.

  “No,” I say. “This is probably not a good idea. Nurse Merchant is probably going to flay me alive, Trevor is probably going to wind up so exhausted that he’ll sleep for a week, and you, my dear, are probably going to sunburn your beautiful scalp.”

  “Then let’s go back,” Lexi says. “Before anyone realizes we’ve gone.”

  There’s no talking to this girl sometimes. I pass Trevor a broom. “Go on, then,” I say.

  “Yeah.” Trevor tosses the ball in the air, catches it, and balances it on his fingertips before rolling it down the back of his hand.

  Lexi huffs, sits down in her wheelchair, and pushes herself a couple of feet before I say, “But don’t act like you’re leaving because of rules and regulations. We know the truth.” That stops Lexi cold.

  “The truth?”

  “The truth.”

  Lexi slowly turns, her face framed by the red-hot embers of the setting sun. I’ve awakened the sleeping dragon. She’s the goddess Kali now. The destroyer of worlds and young men’s hearts. “And that is?”

  I allow a smile to settle slowly across my face, enjoying each second of Lexi’s indignation. “That you know I’m going to kick your ass in hockey.”

  For a minute, I think that Lexi won’t rise to the bait. Trevor has stopped playing with the ball. He’s watching Lexi for signs that her nigh-invincible armor might actually crack. There’s silence up here. No beating hearts, no breaths. Just a trio of kids who should all be dead.

  “You’re toast, Drewfus,” she says, flashing me that rare smile. “Prepare to be annihilated.”

  Trevor whoops. Game on.

  We play until the sun is but a memory to the sky. Lexi surprises me and Trevor, proving that she’s more than a bald bookworm with an acid tongue. She handles the wheelchair expertly, pivoting with jaw-dropping skill. In the end, she manages to score more goals than me and Trevor combined.

  Trevor tries his best. His eyes gleam with a predatory energy that says it doesn’t matter that we’re friends, or that he’s harboring a titanic crush on Lexi: He will devour us both for dinner.

  Unfortunately, Trevor’s body doesn’t have the strength to back up his convictions. He sweats through his white T-shirt, which sticks to his bony chest like damp tissue.

  I should call the game, but Trevor is determined to score on Lexi. She lounges in her wheelchair like a lazy scarecrow, holding her broom across her lap, using her feet to roll the chair back and forth in front of the blue-lined parking spot we designated as the goal.

  “I’m gonna get you this time, Kripke,” Trevor says. His voice is scratchy. It jumps in his throat like a needle on a damaged record.

  “Let’s just can this,” Lexi says. “You need to get back to bed.”

  I flinch. That’s the worst thing Lexi could have said. But she’s in an impossible position. If she continues playing, he’ll never score, and this will go on all night. If she lets him score, he’ll know it and never forgive her. And if she doesn’t play at all, Trevor will feel cheated.

  “I’ve got some sodas over here,” I call, but they’re not listening to me. I don’t exist anymore. Not to them.

  Trevor toys with the ball, sweeping it with his broom, containing it to an area just to the side of his wheelchair. His movements are sluggish, his arms limp. “This one is mine,” he says. He said that about the last three.

  I can’t allow him to fail. If Patient F were here, he’d see the future. He’d know that Trevor is going to hit the ball and that it’s going to fly wide. He’d know that missing again will shatter Trevor’s pride, leaving him with one less reason to open his eyes in the morning, causing Trevor to spiral down, down, down, until he simply stops. Stops caring, stops fighting, stops waking up.

  “Prepare for humiliation, Lexi.” Trevor pulls back on the broom. His muscles have atrophied. So little of their former strength remains that they strain under the slight weight of the broom. In the night, under the light of the universe, Trevor’s scars shine like constellations.

  It’s pretty clear that Lexi understands her predicament. She knows that letting Trevor win would be worse than defeating him, so she prepares to destroy him. Her face hardens into a rigid mask. It’s the same face she wears when she’s studying, the same face Trevor wears now. Death before defeat. Sports or academics, they’re opposite sides of a fiercely competitive coin.

  Trevor swings.

  The broom hits the ball, but the head is turned slightly, and it begins to veer.

  I’m already moving. I was moving before Trevor made contact.

  Lexi wheels herself into position to protect her goal, knowing full well that she won’t have to. She’s done the math.

  But she didn’t figure me into the equation. I throw myself into the path of the ball. I snatch it from the air and twist my body, using the ball’s momentum to throw it over the edge. I stumble against the wall and catch myself before I tumble over. The ball sails in a graceful arc, disappears into the dark abyss. The out there.

  “What the hell, Droopy? I totally would have made that shot.”

  “You wish,” Lexi says.

  I lean against the wall and fold my arms over my chest. “I’m bored. And I brought snacks.”

  Trevor wheels to the edge and peers over. “Can’t you go get it? I would have scored that time.”

  Lexi wheels herself beside him. “I would have blocked it.”

  “You would have tried.” Trevor is breathing so hard that his whole body shakes and shudders.

  “The ball is gone,” I say. “Let’s grab a drink before I take you two crazy kids back to your rooms.”

  I feel the pull of gravity, the pull of the world beyond these walls, the catchy three-chord siren song attempting to lure me to the other side. I step away from the edge, fall back into the safety net of my reality here.

  Lexi is the first to follow me, and I hand her a Coke. It’s lukewarm now, sweat beading the outside of the can, but she cracks it open and gulps it down. “Come on, Trevor.”

  Trevor is still gazing into the abyss, and I worry that it might be gazing back.

  Everyone will leave this hospital at some point in time—one way or another—except me. But I’m greedy to keep my friends here. To stop Death from taking them. It isn’t so much to ask. I only want three: Rusty, Lexi, and Trevor. Death can take the rest.

  “I would have made the shot,” Trevor says one last time. He wheels around and doesn’t look me in the eye when I hand him a Coke.

  “Yeah, but only because I was tired,” Lexi says. She tosses me a yeah, right glance on the sly.

  “It was a good shot,” I say, and Trevor grumbles something unintelligible. But I can tell, by the slight smile crouching at the corner of his mouth, that he’s already rewriting the memory, convincing himself that the ball really was on a trajectory for the goal.

  “Hell yeah, it was,” Lexi says. She holds out her Coke can and waits for Trevor to clink it. I clink it too. “To Trevor!”

  “To Trevor!”

  I toss Trevor a packet of sour-cream-and-onion chips, which he tears into like a crazed piranha. “Where’d you get this haul?” he asks, spraying chips down the front of his shirt.

  I sip my Coke and eat some M&M’s, the chocolate mixing with the aluminum zing of the soda into some kind of crazy acid swirl. “Vending machines.”

  “Mom doesn’t let me have cookies,” Lexi says. She�
��s been eating the same tiny cookie for the last five minutes, nibbling at the edges, licking the chocolate with the tip of her tongue. “Food is the enemy, every meal a war, and the battlefield is my ass.”

  “Your mom’s crazy. You’re beautiful.” Trevor flushes the moment he voices the words, and they hang out there between us all like a rudderless zeppelin. I’m waiting to find out if they’ll burn up like the Hindenburg or somehow manage to stay aloft.

  Lexi holds the cookie in front of her eyes, avoiding Trevor’s gaze, and then she pops the whole thing into her mouth. She chews, her face a study in ecstasy. It’s uncomfortable to watch someone enjoy something so much. I eat another handful of M&M’s and look away.

  After that, the silence is too awkward, so I tell them my idea about Patient F plucking his family from time and putting them into the bodies of people in Maligant city.

  “It sounds like purgatory,” Trevor says when I finish. “Patient F, trapped in Maligant City, being stalked by the Scythe, trying to atone for his sins by doing good so that he doesn’t end up in hell. Totally purgatory.” Trevor coughs and sips his Coke. I should have brought him water.

  “You don’t believe in all that, do you?” Lexi asks.

  “All what?”

  “God, heaven, hell.”

  Trevor shrugs. “Sure. Don’t you?”

  “No way. When I die, I die. There’s nothing out there.”

  “That’s sad,” Trevor says. “I have to believe this isn’t the end all of everything. Otherwise, this pain, this bullshit, life, isn’t worth it.”

  “You think this purgatory place is real?” I ask Trevor.

  He nods. “Sure. Good people go to heaven, bad people go to hell, and sometimes the people who aren’t ready for either—they hang around in purgatory until they are.”

  “Nonsense,” Lexi scoffs.

  “It’s not nonsense, Lexi,” Trevor says. His voice is scratchy and low. “When I die, I sure hope that I’m going to heaven.”

  Lexi doesn’t respond to that, and neither do I. How can we? Lexi wants to—I can see it in the twitch under her eye. The scientist, the rational heart that pounds in her chest, wants to tell Trevor that there is no God; there is no heaven or hell or purgatory. There is only this. But she bites her tongue, unwilling to murder his hope.