"When you're standing on the crossroads
That you cannot comprehend
Just remember that death is not the end"
-Death Is Not the End, song by Bob Dylan (but I prefer the Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds cover)
Her mind whirred with the frenetic energy of a swiss-made clock. She kissed him! She couldn't fathom why she did, but there was a moment, brief as it was, that she felt like she had known him for years. There was a vulnerability in him, the layers of bitterness had sloughed away and she could peer into his fractured heart.
She thought that maybe in another life, in another time, they could have worked and she felt such a sudden impulse to test the theory. But she could only think of Raoul as her lips touched his, dry and brittle as aged paper—her theory was shattered into a million disappointing pieces that fluttered away in the breeze of her mind. Then he was breaking away himself and pushing her through one of his impossible gateways as though fate itself was stepping in to rudely scold them like children for making such an error. She sat bewildered and guilt-ridden in her apartment for a confusing stretch of minutes, weighing in her mind the why and how of it all until her phone, buzzing about in her pocket, drew her from her rapid-fire thoughts.
She didn't recognize the number, and for a moment, she considered hitting the red X to ignore the call–robocalls were a dime a dozen–but her finger hovered over the green 'accept' button instead like the spirit-driven planchette of a Ouiji board. Somehow, she knew–before she had even managed a feeble and timid 'hello' , she knew that the person on the other end of the line was a messenger of bad news.
The words seemed too unwieldy for her mind to process, falling apart and reshaping over and over again like wet clay, but beneath the foreign medical jargon and the saccharine, overly-professional sympathy she picked out the important phrases: 'Antibiotic resistant' 'No other options'. 'Actively dying'. 'Must come quickly'. 'I'm so sorry'.
Numbly, she gathered her things together, endured the longest four minute wait as her Uber driver came to collect her and an even longer ten minute drive as he attempted to chat her up while smooth jazz played from the speakers of his car. It was with both relief and dismay that she pulled up to the hospital entrance.
After checking in at the security desk, and absentmindedly applying the neon visitor pass sticker to the front of her wrinkled blouse, she made her way to the reception desk situated outside the waiting room where a too-pleasant nurse was there to escort her to her father's room. He wasn't in the same hall he had been in before, she noticed. The nurse turned left, rather than right, the sudden shift in direction forcing her eyes away from the quick text she was composing to send to Raoul. She was only half aware that she had hit send before the sentence was fully finished.
Walking through the ugly, sanitized halls of the hospital, she felt as if she was disconnected from her body. She fell into a surreal state of mind. Colors seemed wrong, too sharp, and lights too bright, leaving an awful glare on every surface. The anxiety has ratchetted all of her senses into an uncomfortable hyperdrive.
"We have him comfortable," the nurse informed her, "He's on a morphine drip and he's very drowsy, but he's had moments of wakefulness."
They entered her father's hospital room and the garish hall disappeared behind her. The setting in his room was somber. Lights had been dimmed and the steady rhythm of peaceful ocean waves and singing gulls played from some sound machine that she could not place.
"He wanted to hear the ocean," the nurse said by way of explanation. "We use audio therapy to make the process of dying more comfortable. He said it was something that had fond memories for him."
A memory flashed in Christine's mind of a warm day with a light breeze. She and Raoul were on the cusp of teenhood. The trio had taken a day trip to a favorite beach town, full of antique stores and artist galleries. They had a picnic on the sand with take out from a local sandwich shop. It was a day full of laughter, the wind threatening to carry their paper wrappers in the wind and the gulls aggressively harassing Raoul for nibbles of his sandwich until he finally gave in and tossed them the remaining quarter. They walked for hours along the edge of the water searching for beach glass and other little treasures. There was still a repurposed mason jar in Christine's belongings that held all the blue and brown bits of softened glass and rocks that had eroded into the shapes of animals which they had collected on their many beach trips.
The memory faded like fog on a hot day and she approached her father. His eyes were closed to the world, set deeper in his pallid face, made more haggard by the unkempt appearance of his beard. The machines in the room only hummed loud enough to be heard with the crashing sound of waves and screeching gulls. He was so he took in a breath and it was as if he was a fish out of water, desperate for air. His face looked so calm, but his chest shuddered with the harsh gasp.
"Why is he breathing like that?" She asked in a rush.
"It's agonal breathing," the nurse beside her gently explained. "He isn't getting enough oxygen. This is very common and he's not in any distress or pain. It looks scary, but this is very natural."
"Why doesn't he have any oxygen?" She could feel the silent anger welling up in her at the lack of care. Why wasn't he given help breathing? The only thing attached to her father was a clear line running from his arm to an IV bag suspended on a hook and half a dozen sensors running under his gown to his chest.
"Your father declined oxygen," the nurse gently replied and the sympathy in her words was so thick that it further enraged Christine. "He didn't want to be connected to any more machines, he said. It's important for us to respect his end of life wishes. He's competent to make decisions for himself."
And just as those terrible words–end of life–entered her mind with all the terrible droning of a midnight church bell, her father opened his eyes, with a patient calm Christine had not expected, just as one of those terrible gasps erupted from his chest.
"Hey papa," Christine managed. Her words were feeble, forced things that only barely squeezed through her grief tightened throat.
"If you need me, the call button is on the remote attached to his bed." The nurse softly said before turning to shuffle out of the room before Christine could thank her. It was difficult to know what to do in this moment which was too profound and huge to register. She felt like a mere mortal looking into the maw of some incomprehensible mythical creature of demise with nothing but her flimsy, clumsy coping skills to weather her through the battle.
Before the cancer, her father seemed invincible. He had immigrated to a country without knowing the language, lived his entire life doing only what he loved, weathered the death of her mother and raised Christine with a gentle hand. He had been her confidant and friend, always there when she needed him. His soul was amber warm. Never had she seen him lose his temper or raise his voice.
She couldn't bear to see him now in such a perilous state, the life leaking out of him with every painstaking moment. A part of her wanted to run out of this room, afraid this memory would taint all the others like the memory of her mother on those blood-soaked bathroom tiles, but he was looking at her with such need. His glazed and dazed eyes bore into her. If she left, she would regret it for the rest of her life. A moment of pure cowardice would haunt her and she didn't need any more ghosts in her life.
So, with false courage, she pulled a chair as close as she could and sat down. She collected his age spotted hands gently in her's. His fingertips were forever calloused from his daily violin playing and she found comfort in tracing their familiarity with her fingertips. Scars of past injuries marred a few places on his left hand–an old wound from a slipped kitchen knife, a little circular mark from an ancient oil burn. Every little spot or line or winkle on his body was a souvenir of a life well-lived, like a pair of worn leather boots that no longer hold their shine but remain in the closet because they are so loved. Our bodies are just memory maps of mistakes and delights.
His eyes, which had been so lucid one moment, began to close like the petals of a flower at dusk. She couldn't tell if it was sleep or a slip of consciousness, but he didn't seem to be in any state of anxiousness and it gave her a very small measure of comfort.
Not knowing what she should do, she decided she should just start talking to him.
"Remember that day we saw that dog chasing the crabs?" she began, the tale spinning from her like she was trying to embroider a design of happiness in this room of death. "The tide had moved out and the tidepools were accessible. He was obsessed. I can't remember what kind of dog he was, but he was scrappy–probably a weird little street mutt. They were too fast for him, like quick little spiders scattering into their holes before he could get to them. He was so frustrated. And then, he shoved his nose far into one of those cracks trying to get at one and when he started screaming. He pulled his nose out and one of those little crabs had taken hold of it and wouldn't let go. He shook and he shook and it wouldn't come off and his owner just watched as though it was the most common thing in the world while we all started rushing to help him. Then the crab flew off his face and into a tidepool and the dog, he just went back to searching for more like he hadn't just been hollering his tail off in pain. And you said, 'He's doing it all wrong, you're supposed to cook them first'. It really wasn't a good joke, it was terrible, actually, but I always laughed because you always laughed like it was a world class comedy."
Her father's breathing continued in that discomfiting way, with the gaps of time between exhales extending further apart. And with no other means of coping, she continued to replay memories to him through her own recollection. An hour stretched by that way, with tales of trips and silly mishaps, until she knew what she needed to say.
"I need to tell you something;I wouldn't trade my childhood for anything. I couldn't have asked for a better father. You were there in all the ways that mattered. You gave me your time, your attention. You sat with me when I cried and you laughed with me when I was happy. Sometimes, I feel like you blame yourself for my problems, for mom's death. But she was sick, papa. She made her choice and it didn't have anything to do with us. I think she just needed to escape whatever secret pain she was trying to hide but couldn't. For so long I thought that it was my fault too, that if she had loved me more that she wouldn't have left us.I didn't know how to come to terms with that grief. I turned to self destruction for a while–the food stuff–it just made me feel like I had control. But I'm going to be okay. I've seen some things these last several weeks that I can't fully explain, but it's made me believe that mom's somewhere peaceful and I know you're going to see her soon–I have to believe that. I can't imagine my world without you, but I need you to know all the good things in me are because of you."
And then, Raoul came through the door, just as she felt herself inching towards a spiraling vortex of unmanageable feelings. His face was almost as ashen as her father's, his sun-kissed golden-boy glow melted by anticipatory grief and it further brought the ugly reality closer into focus. The dread grew swamp-thick–despite her words of comfort to her father–she knew was going to drown in it.
"Hey pop. It's, me, your worst violin student" he managed to say in a wafer-thin voice that attempted light humor as he touched his fingers to her father's forehead. Her father did not respond, continuing that unsettling cadence of breathing. Raoul left the bedside to drag a chair closer where he positioned it beside Christine. He took her hand in his. It felt like a lifeline, a tether to sanity in this moment that felt so insane, a shifting reality that she was losing herself to minute by minute as her only parent moved away further and further to some unknown place. His breathing had come more intermittent, agonizing in each pause that stretched further and further in time. It felt like he was gone already, that his breathing was delayed merely because he was so far away, like starlight needing to travel through infinite space to illuminate the day.
"Tell him a story," she whispered bleakly. "He can hear us wherever he is."
"I feel," Raoul said with a rough voice, "I feel like I need to say something first. I don't know if you realize this Viktor, but you always gave me a warm place to exist. You acted like more of a dad than my own. I think you saw that. You always encouraged me, even when I tried to do something that I was terrible at–I've never mastered the violin, but you always gave me positive reinforcement even when I was making that poor instrument sound like a cat being strangled." Tears started to fall from the corners of his eyes as he spoke and he pulled up the collar of his t-shirt to wipe them away. "You never made me feel like I was any better or less than anyone else. My dad is the most entitled ass on the planet and he expects his sons to act like it, but not you. You taught me so much about humility and love. My time with you and your daughter have been the most golden parts of my life. I just–I needed to thank you for that."
And then he took in a shuddering breath and he started to recount the story of a time they went camping. A skunk had managed to rifle into their food on their last night and had dragged half of it away by the time they realized what was happening. When they had opened their tent, they had caught the skunk red handed with a torn open bag of cheese flavored Doritos, but nobody was willing to confront the skunk which had turned its tail towards them like it was going to spray. They closed up the tent and waited until they thought the coast was clear while they brainstormed names for the skunk. 'Nacho Chips' won when Raoul explained that Nacho Chips sounded like 'Not Yo' chips' and it was only fitting since they were Doritos.
On that very same trip, when they had been driving home, they managed to get two flat tires on the side of a mountain. AAA took six hours to reach them, but they had a stunning vista to look at while friendly travelers occasionally stopped to offer them food and water. At the time it was the world's biggest hassle, but it made for a fond memory. The wildflowers were in full bloom and Raoul mentioned that he would pick them into a bouquet but he was uncomfortable with ruining their beauty and her father had pulled out his violin three hours in to compose a majestic song devoted to their view.
Two hours and a multitude of stories later, Raoul went to the cafeteria and brought back coffee and a sandwich for Christine, but the sandwich tasted like ash and she found it dry to the point of being unswallowable. Raoul picked up where he left off and began another silly tale about the time Viktor went onto the Spaceship ride at the County Fair after eating too much funnel cake and fried pickles. He got so sick that he was practically green. He had only managed to get off the ride before releasing his guts on the exit ramp, much to the mortification of the seven teenagers waiting in line two feet away. And Viktor, insisting he was perfectly okay, suggested they go on the Ferris Wheel next.
Towards the end of the story, her father sounded different. Each extended breath rattled wetly and she knew. She knew it to her marrow that he was nearing the end. She looked at Raoul, struck dumb with fear. He clutched her hand tighter in his own.
"Pop," he gently said with little attempt to mask his own tears. "I know you're really tired. It's okay to go to sleep. I'm going to take care of her, don't you worry about that. We love you."
He nodded towards Christine, as if he knew she needed encouragement to say the words she knew needed to be said. How would she have ever been able to do this without Raoul leading the way?
"Yes," she breathed. "You can let go, papa."
It didn't happen immediately. The rattle continued to come in torturous repetition, tearing her heart apart each time it came and went, like the rushing waves of the ocean still playing from the speakers of the room. Until it came and went one last time, the minutes stretching out like saltwater taffy in its wake. A gentle beeping of his monitors was the only real verification that it had really happened.
Then, the doctor was there a minute later with a team of nurses. They made their assessments while writing down numbers and medical stats onto a clipboard while another nurse talked to Christine about end of life arrangements. She felt like she was hearing everything while sitting at the bottom of a swimming pool, the words didn't register and she couldn't breath. There was too much for her to process, her father had just died and she was being asked about a funeral home.
"I don't know," she numbly replied, she couldn't feel anything, too stunned. "He never made a will. I don't know what he wanted."
The nurse leaned forward, placed a sympathetic hand on Christine's shoulder and calmly said, "I'm so sorry, I know this is overwhelming. We're going to give you some time alone with your father and we will just leave the paperwork you need to fill out at reception. We'll keep his body here until you and your family make a decision."
After several minutes, the medical staff scuttled out of the room like the world hadn't just ended for the daughter of the man laying in the hospital bed. Christine took a shaky breath and stood. It was only one step to her father, but it was the most difficult step she had ever taken. She placed a hand on his forehead which was still warm but cooling and leaned over to press a kiss to his cheek. It was all she could muster.
As she stood back, for a moment, she thought she felt the weight of a hand on her shoulder, so gentle that she questioned whether it was really there, but when she turned around Raoul was still sitting in his chair with a faraway expression on his tired face. In some hidden place inside her, she could swear she felt her father was still there for a moment. And as she closed her eyes to soak up a brief moment of love, she felt like she was embraced, like she was giving one last gift from the man who raised her. It happened so quickly, it was there one moment and gone the next, leaving behind a cold emptiness inside her.
She turned back to look at her father again. The sight was uncanny. He didn't truly look like her father, but a surreal imitation of him, as though he had been removed from the bed and a wax-hewn imposter was put in his place. She sat with the body, nonetheless, even while Raoul quietly left the room to collect the paperwork she would inevitably need to fill out. She sat in numb silence until Raoul came back into the room to gently collect her into his arms and lead her out of the room. Only then, when she was no longer in the presence of her father's empty vessel, when she and Raoul had returned to the safety of his loft, did she finally allow herself to fall apart.
But she wasn't alone, for Raoul was falling apart with her and in that quaking realm of despair she knew she was not alone.