It is a Thursday night when things begin to worsen.
It happens like the most expected of things that take nothing away from the fear of living them; the same way people dread the night when they know it's coming.
Theo's world had already become smaller by then; stifled down to the beeping of the heart monitor and the low humming of the TV on the rare occasions it was on; confined to the bed with no longer the hollow guarantee that she might leave soon. Anna would visit every day after work—twice with Lauren in tow. She'd bring a book with her, as well as the cheerfulness and the laugh that would make Theo crack a smile. Elsa would try her best to visit just as much, during the few days that she was off and on the breadth of time she found lodged in between emergencies and inpatient visits.
She is moved to an Intensive Care Unit in the middle of the night, while Elsa is checking in on a patient recuperating from a heart attack. Breathing was starting to overwhelm her, one of the nurses tells Elsa when she finally makes her way over. The cancer had been spreading to her lungs like shadows creeping overnight.
Elsa feels as though she were hiding from everything and everyone when she finds herself inside the break room pressing with a hesitant finger the dial button on her cellphone. She calls Anna, who answers groggy and still half asleep after the fifth dial tone. She doesn't apologize for calling because she knows that Anna would have done the same. She gives her the news in a soft voice, each word measured by a steadiness she doesn't feel over the rest of her body. It pains her when Anna grows silent, but it breaks her heart when she hears a shaky intake of breath that she recognizes as the beginning of Anna's tears.
"So what happens now?" comes the whispered question.
"We take it one day at a time," she whispers back.
The other side of the line grows silent. "There's something you're not telling me..."
Elsa's eyes flutter shut, recognizing her inability to lie to her.
"We should be ready, Anna."
She spends the next few minutes wishing she could be on the other side of this city, consoling Anna's quiet weeping.
On Friday, she gets to visit Theo during her brief lunch break. They've placed a mask over her nose and mouth to help her breathe, and the first thing she does is reach for Elsa's hand before she says, "Don't I look hideous with this thing on?"
She doesn't look hideous, Elsa tells her with a bit of a laugh. She pats the back of her fingers as she says this, careful to avoid the venous catheter placed on the back of her hand. Theo's palm is soft, if a little bit damp from the fever she's been fighting, but it is warm and alive, and that on itself is enough to overwhelm Elsa with a myriad of emotions.
It is enough to force her to hide in a bathroom stall many minutes later, resist the sobs that threaten to break through her chest, and press the heels of her hands against the back of her eyelids. She feels the end already, choking her with all the goodbyes she has not yet said.
Gaby arrives some time in the afternoon. She keeps her posted, tells her that Theo has been falling in and out of sleep, that she watches a couple of shows on TV without saying much. She also tells her that Theo asks about her, and that she asks about Anna too. It takes everything in Elsa to focus on work; on the lives she can still save. She tries not to think of anything else at all.
The next time she has the opportunity to stop by Anna is already there, sitting vigil with shoulders that perk up when Elsa enters. Theo has her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling with rhythmic slowness. She does not stir when they start to speak.
"Gaby just left," Anna says, "And I just got here."
"How is she doing?" Elsa asks.
"I'm not sure. Gaby told me she's been restful for the most part." A frown mars her brow. "I don't know if that's good or bad anymore."
Elsa no longer thinks twice about touching her. She cups her cheeks gently so that Anna will take her gaze off the floor. "She's not in pain," she tells her, but somehow that barely feels like a good enough answer.
"She says she doesn't want to be intubated," Anna suddenly whispers.
Elsa nods in despair, unable to fight against Theo's wishes any longer. "That's okay."
"Is it?"
"If that's what she wants, love."
The term doesn't catch her off guard. Not here, not in this room where they are both vulnerable and worn down by grief. Not when Elsa knows she means it in every sense of the word.
Anna rests a hand over hers before she nuzzles her palm. Under the light, Elsa catches a lonely tear make its way down her freckled cheek.
"I just want her to be okay," she breathes against her skin.
"She will be," is all Elsa can bring herself to say. One way or another, she will be.
From behind Anna, Theo remains sleeping. The heart monitor goes on beeping, the noisy but steady woosh of the breathing machine continues to operate. A creeping yawn travels up the back of Elsa's throat that Anna notices despite her weak attempt at suppressing it.
"Did you get to go home last night?"
"No."
"Go," she tells her. "Get some rest."
"But what about you?"
"I think I'll stay for a bit longer. Just in case she wakes up."
Elsa accepts this with great reluctance and only begins to leave at the instance of Anna. She asks her to call her when she's home too, no matter the time, and Anna agrees with softened eyes and a sad smile on her lips.
After one last look over her shoulder, she walks down the quiet hallway with a heavy emotion pressing down on her chest. She did not approach Theo's bed this time. She did not want to say goodbye and leave thinking it would be the last. But she hopes, and hopes, and hopes. From the hospital all the way home, she hopes that she will get to see her again the next day.
When Saturday comes around, Elsa starts to feel the first traces of exhaustion before midday. A nagging headache forces her to take an aspirin while she continues to work for a couple more hours, almost losing, somewhere down the line, a middle-aged woman to ventricular fibrillation. With a face turned bluish like an old bruise and eyes rolled up in her head, the woman had slumped over in bed. Elsa had to shout for an external defibrillator and apply the metal paddles to her bony frame. She could feel the sweat sticking to her forehead as her mind went in circles: not today, not today, not today... She'd shocked her back to life and with two coughs and eyes wide open, the woman had dared look sheepish; puzzled by the commotion. More traumatized than anyone else in the room, her roommate had asked Elsa to draw the curtain closed.
She visits two more of her patients before she manages enough time to walk over to the ICU. It feels like a breath of fresh air to see Theo sitting up with her eyes open and fully aware while Anna sits in a chair, reading out loud in a way that has Elsa leaning against the door frame so as not to interrupt.
"... And Sabina," Anna says, "what had come over her? Nothing. She had left a man because she felt like leaving him. Had he persecuted her? Had he tried to take revenge on her? No. Her drama was a drama not of heaviness but of lightness. What fell to her lot was not the burden but the unbearable lightness of being.
"Until that time, her betrayals had filled her with excitement and joy, because they opened up new paths to new adventures of betrayal. But what if the paths came to an end? One could betray one's parents, husband, country, love, but when parents, husband, country, and love were gone—what was left to betray?"
"Yourself," Theo mutters.
Anna lowers the book.
"She's right," Elsa says as she takes a step farther inside, "I think." From the bed, Theo's smile hides behind the breathing mask.
"You'll agree to anything she says," Anna teases with a smirk.
"So would you."
"Children," Theo weakly reproaches.
Anna pokes a playful tongue Elsa's way.
"You look tired, honey."
She accepts the hand that stretches out to touch her. "You can say I look like crap, it's okay," she jokes.
"You've never looked like crap," quips Anna with an honesty that turns her bashful even if Elsa knows that she must look exactly how she feels: fatigued, downhearted and out of sorts.
Sleep had been scarce, after all, the night before. She'd had to stand at three in the morning eyeing the rats that scuttled from one black trash bag to another as she waited for a taxi to arrive. She'd been paged; was needed to do an echo on a woman who had become acutely short of breath. The echo led to a drainage needle making its way to the heart. She'd helped save that woman's life before she went back home, slept for less than two hours, and returned to the hospital when the sun was already peeking through the buildings.
"Want me to get you a coffee?" Anna asks.
Elsa turns around to face her. It is then that she finally notices Anna wearing her old Columbia sweatshirt. A banal little thing that has her swooning.
"I'm okay," she answers, "but thank you."
"Here," Anna says, extending a hand. "I'll give you my last Kiss."
She has to bite her lip to keep herself from smiling at the double entendre before she takes a step forward to accept it and tucks it inside one of the pockets of her scrubs.
Theo asks: "Are you on your break?"
"Not exactly. I'll manage to get some food but that's about it." She doesn't confess that the last thing she feels like doing right now is eating.
Theo shakes her head slowly, as if the movement required too much effort. "This girl," she breathes, lifting a couple of fingers to point in Anna's direction, "has been sneakily munching on a sandwich since she got here."
"That's not a lie," Anna says sheepishly. "I'd offer you some but it's got tons of mustard and I know you hate mustard."
Elsa says no, of course, right before she agrees to hang around while Anna goes to the restroom. She sits on the edge of the bed, eyeing the book that's been left on the chair and recalling seeing it once, all those years ago, in Anna's apartment.
She turns her full attention to Theo afterwards. "How are you feeling?"
"I can't lie to you, honey. I'm not feelin' my best."
"I understand," she murmurs. "Is there anything I can do to ease things up for you?"
"Look at you," Theo says with a weak smile, "Talkin' to me in that doctor voice of yours."
"It's the only one I have," Elsa replies. She wishes she could make her laugh again; that raspy, hearty laugh of hers that Elsa doesn't know if she'll ever get to hear again.
"You been busy," Theo then points out.
"I wish I weren't. I wish I could be here more often."
"Nonsense."
"It's true."
"Anna's been readin' to me a lot," Theo comments as if she hadn't heard her. "It's soothing."
Her chest swells with affection. "I think it's her way of dealing with this. She wants to keep your mind off things as much as she can."
Theo's eyes close at this as she goes on breathing for a while without saying anything; calm. In peace.
Elsa watches her for long enough time that she begins to feel as if she were looking at someone else. Without the colorful scarfs, she fails to recognize the thinning gray hair that sits atop Theo's hair. She cannot recognize the ashy skin of her face, the downcast lines of her eyes that used to be tugged upwards at every smile. She refuses to cling to this image of Theo until she finds herself reminiscing instead. And she realizes then, all those times the family members of her patients have sat studying the faces of their loved ones. Diseases turn them into strangers, forcing us to cling to our memories until we end up living in them.
"My time's coming, baby," Theo whispers. "I can feel it."
The pain comes, but so too does acceptance.
Elsa says nothing to this. Instead, she cradles Theo's hand with devoted care, brings it up to her face, and closes her eyes. She wills herself not to cry: it is not yet the time.
When Anna arrives, she smiles, and then knows. She is able to read it in her face, Elsa is sure of it. But still, she beams and still, she raises her hands and asks who's ready for another reading session. She wears her courage as closely as if it were a second skin and Elsa doesn't know if she could ever love her more than she does in that moment.
She leaves after this, telling them that she should grab something to eat when in reality it is because she cannot breathe. She wonders if she is a coward all the way to the small garden of the hospital, where the crisp cold of late October is enough to bring her back to the present and not the future, in which Theo is no longer there.
Sasha texts her asking for her whereabouts, reminding Elsa that she was supposed to meet him at the cafeteria. She fiddles with her phone for a few minutes, deliberating over whether she should tell him the truth or not. She sends a quick reply, opting for the former.
He finds her, all blue scrubs and smiles and a stubborn strand of curly hair that keeps falling over his forehead. He sits next to her and says, "I brought you this," as he pulls out of his pockets a Yakult and a chocolate chip Clif bar.
"I also have a sandwich in my backpack in case you're hungrier."
"I think this should do," Elsa mumbles as she begins to remove the wrapper off the bar.
"How are you feeling?"
She sighs heavily and, soon enough, tears are beginning to sting her eyes. It has been this way for the past couple of days. One nudge and she's crying. They come without announcement; sit, patiently, right on the edge of her sorrow.
Elsa wonders how pathetic she must look right now, nibbling at a Clif bar with a runny nose and tears rolling down her cheeks. But if Sasha thinks this too, he doesn't say it. He wraps an arm over her shoulders and pulls her closer before he whispers, "You're not alone," with so much sincerity that she cries harder. Because suddenly she wishes this embrace were Anna's, and Theo's, and her cousin's, and her parents', and every other person she's ever loved.
Because suddenly there's a whisper of a thought going through her head, that they're all living the remains of their time.
In the midst of life comes death.
People say it's as natural as the continuity of the days and the passing of the seasons. That it comes for all of us, one way or another, the same way flowers wither and die; the same way the snow melts under the sun. But the sophistication of years does little to teach us about the weight of mortality as an experience rather than a concept. And we take for granted, and we choose to forget—that death not only comes for us, but for the people we love, and that this is, ultimately, that which hurts the most.
We are faced with the fate of having to live without them. And we weep. We howl at the sky because a piece of us is suddenly missing and no longer can we hear the voices that once used to bring us happiness. No longer will they ever pick up the phone, or prepare something for us simply because we are visiting, or be there, in our arms, warm and steady and loving.
Sometimes we get to say goodbye. Sometimes we don't, while all the things we wish we could have said turn into thoughts and prayers; into words we whisper to ourselves hoping that somewhere out there they'll get to hear us.
Sometimes, we are ready; when the pain of watching them suffer is consumed whole by the selfless act of letting them go.
It happens that Sunday, late at night. When things are moving slowly and the halls have quieten down not without the promise of picking back up.
Elsa is on the other side of the hospital, checking in on a young man who had been admitted the night before. He's reading Proust from one of those books without a printed cover. For school, he says with a smile teasing his lips and an incorruptible hope reflecting on his eyes.
She tries to mirror it with one of her own—knowing that it is placid at best—before she tells him to make sure to get some rest whenever he's done reading. He says Yes, m'am with so much seriousness that it makes her feel old in a rather silly kind of way.
The inexorability of age... When does it stop being amusing?
Things become a measured commotion after she steps out into the hallway. Ms. Miller, a nurse she's become more and more familiar with in the past couple of weeks, pages her and lets her know she should come to the ICU. Her voice is gentle as she says this, a voice that leaves room for Elsa to make a decision about whether or not she should go. But she recognizes that tone as one she has used herself before. And she knows. Deep down in her soul, like the most unfathomable of sensations that could never be explained, Elsa knows it's time.
Every step that takes her forward is a wave of sorrow that she must swallow down. She wipes the tears that don't make it past her cheeks, thinking that if she can control her breathing she will be able to keep herself from breaking.
Anna is the first person she sees. Standing in the hallway, the moment their eyes meet, they move to fall into each other's arms. Elsa holds her close, cradling the back of her head with her hand, burrowing into the warmth of her neck.
"She's been asking for you," Anna whispers without moving.
"I'm here."
They walk into the room and are left alone by the doctor and the nurse. Theo lies in bed with eyes that register their movements but change little in their expression. The breathing mask is off and she is on morphine. Ready, Elsa thinks, in a way she finds a hard time being.
She falls into the chair, registering Anna stand close by with a hand on her shoulder.
"Hey, you..."
"Hey, baby girl."
"I'm here now," she says, "We're here."
Theo inhales nothing but a wisp of air before she moves a hand that Elsa meets halfway. With some more effort she beckons Anna closer to giver her the other. Her voice is weak and almost slurred when she finally speaks.
"I'm very tired."
"It's okay. You can get some rest now if you want."
"You two take good care of yourselves, okay?"
Elsa doesn't quite know whether she nods or not. Her vision is blurring. She cannot breathe. And somewhere behind her, she can hear Anna whisper, "I wish we'd had more time."
But all Theo does is give out one last smile before she closes her eyes.
Elsa lowers her head, touching with her forehead the skin of Theo's hand. She gently rocks back and forth as the tears finally come and she whispers 'I love you' over and over again. It is all she can bring herself to say, all she can bring herself to think. Everything she'd wished to murmur into Theo's ear disappears like ashes in the wind, but she clings to her, the same way she once clung to her mother, hoping that in the heavy silence that surrounds them Theo will know just how much she means to her. She wants her to hold onto this love unspent and take it with her, wherever she goes.
She doesn't know the moment Theo slips into unconsciousness, but she knows that death comes, eventually, when Anna touches the back of her head.
A sob breaks through her chest then, before she seeks refuge in Anna's arms.