Dead is Better (14 page)

“You’re doing great!” the nurse says again. “Just lie still.”

Peace moans a little, then shouts, “I’m hot. I’m burning up!”

“That’s normal,” Dr. Justing says. “Don’t worry. Sometimes the dye makes people feel warm. It’s nothing to worry about.”

Peace is quiet then starts to squirm. “I feel sick!” His face is turning gray, and his eyes wide open in distress. “My throat! I can’t breathe!”

Peace gasps, then wheezes.

“He’s reacting to the contrast,” Dr. Justing shouts. “Call a code! “Give him Epi 1 to 10,000. 0.1 CC.”

Fuck! Fuck!

Is Peace dying? Suffocating right in front of me?

Without thinking I call out, “Rose! Rose!” then marvel at my stupidity. Who the fuck do I think Rose is? Lassie? And if she were here, what could she do?

“No BP!” shouts the male nurse, just as Rose appears beside me—yes, just like a ghost. Now both of us float together over Peace, Dr. Justing, and the nurses around his bed.

“Open up the IV line. Run the IV fluids wide open! And elevate his legs!”

The other nurse produces another bag of liquid from a cart and connects to the IV line in Peace’s arm. The male nurse tips the table up so Peace’s head is lower than his feet.

More nurses have entered the cath lab now, with carts and equipment.

“Start 100% oxygen,” Dr. Justing orders, “and a Proventil mask.”

A nurse straps a mask onto Peace’s gray face and attaches it to a nebulizer.

“Tachycardia of 140!” the male nurse says.

“I can’t get a pressure!”

Rose drops close to Peace. I think he’s unconscious now. I can’t tell if he’s breathing or not behind the mask.

A monitor next to the bed begins to emit a long beeping sound.

“Death is a natural part of life. Rejoice for those around you who transform into the Force.”

—Yoda,
Star Wars Episode III

***

“Peace!” I yell. “Peace!” I hover close to him as he lies naked on the bed, tubes in his arm and groin, a mask on his face. Rose drops to his chest and licks his cheek, his forehead, then emits three loud, sharp barks.

“Peace!” I yell again. “Breathe!”

Rose keeps barking, frantic now, and paws his chest.

Then the room becomes terribly quiet, as if the living earth itself took in a sharp intake of breath.

Peace opens his eyes, but Dr. Justing and the nurses don’t seem to notice.

Is he breathing? I can’t tell. But he must be. He must be alive.

With his free hand, Peace pushes the nebulizer mask from his face, sits up, and scans the room, then, as his wide-eyed gaze settles on something above his bed, he screams.

“Death—the last sleep? No, it is the final awakening.”

—Sir Walter Scott

***

“You!” Peace screams, “And that dog. What the fuck are you?”

Who is Peace addressing? Is it possible someone brought a service dog in here? And why are the others so fucking quiet?

“Get that dog away from me!” Peace yells again, and cowers.

Rose and I float above Peace like Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade balloons. We wait for the doctor and nurses to calm the patient they have just so miraculously revived. Now Rose’s tail wags and she paws the air.

“Back off!” Peace yells again. His voice is hostile. Maybe after some tranquilizers he’ll be himself again, I think. Jesus, after what he’s just been through, it makes sense that he’s disoriented.

“Fat man!” Peace screams wildly and looks right up at me. “I mean you!”

“We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream: it may be so the moment after death.”

—Nathaniel Hawthorne,
American Note-Books

***

Rose descends over Peace’s hospital bed, but he shrinks away, crazy now and hissing, “No fucking dogs! No fucking dogs!”

I lower myself slowly, too, confused.

What did he mean when he said “fat man”?

Wait.

Peace can see Rose.

Peace sees me.

Which can only mean one thing:

Peace is dead.

“Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing—a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.”

—George Bernard Shaw

***

We’re still in the Cath lab, but Peace has left his bed.

And now there are two men who look just like him, one motionless in the bed, surrounded by frantic hospital staff, and this one, standing naked except for the paper cap. There’s an orange swath of Betadine on his groin, and some blood at the catheter site. An IV tube still hangs from his forearm.

I move back and nudge Rose back, too.

Give the poor man some space, I think then, and search my muscle-memory for an inoffensive smile. Suddenly I feel embarrassed about my weight, my bare feet and bloodstained shirt, the hole in my neck—and about being dead.

“Peace,” I say calmly and try to smile, “I’m Charlie. And this,” I pat Rose on the head, “this is Rose. She won’t hurt you. I promise. She’s a good dog. A really sweet dog.”

Rose wags her tail as if to demonstrate to Peace how sweet she really is.

“What’s happening?” Peace asks.

Good fucking question. I wish I knew.

“I’m not exactly sure,” I say, “And I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I’m ninety-nine percent sure you’re dead.”

“I’m dead?” Peace is incredulous. He stares at me, at Rose and down at his own naked body with suspicion.

“We’re dead, too. The dog and I,” I say. “It’s not too bad,” I lie. What an ass I am. What a stupid fucking thing to say.

“Shit. What happened?” Peace looks frightened again and turns toward the nurse bending over his other body on the bed. “Nurse! Nurse!” he yells, “Help me!”

The nurse, of course, does not react at all. Peace tries to grab her shoulder but his hand dissolves.

“Something went wrong during the test,” I say.

“Sims promised!” Peace yells. “He said nothing would happen.”

“I’m sorry,” I say. “But I think Mr. Sims fucked you over. And Brian.”

Hearing Brian’s name infuriates Peace. He paces back and forth about a foot off the hospital room floor. Now a new nurse has arrived. She pulls the gown open on Peace’s chest, clasps her hands together and begins CPR compressions.

“Look,” I say, hope in my voice, “They’re trying to revive you, to bring you back to life.”

Then an insane idea occurs to me.

“Listen to me. Can you, Peace? Listen? Right now,” I’m serious now, grim. “There’s not much time.”

Peace nods but I can tell he is confused.

“Peace,” I say, desperate now. “I don’t have time to explain. But I need you to listen carefully to what I’m going to say and to remember it. All of it.”“

Peace listens.

“I think Sims is running some sort of medical billing scam. I’m not sure how it works, but I think he convinced Brian to fake chest pains, just like you.”

Peace looks at me, suspicious now. “How do you know about that?”

“I can’t explain now. I’m sorry. I think Sims is working with a man at this hospital. His name is Nilsson. N-I-L-S-S-O-N. 22282 Circle Drive, Carthay Circle. 22282!”“

Peace’s expression clouds and I realize that he has no idea what I am talking about.

Shit. Another nurse removes the mask from Peace’s face and pushes a tube attached to a plastic breathing bag into his mouth, then begins to squeeze it rhythmically.

“Peace!” I yell. “You must come with me and the dog right now, please! I’m begging you!”

“I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted

To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.

How free it is, you have no idea how free—

The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,

And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.

It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them

Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.”

—Sylvia Plath

***

The rain falls in black torrents, submerging the sidewalk outside Nilsson’s house and washing away his lawn. Rose is the first one to pass through the locked wrought iron gate, then Peace, who hesitates at first, then I follow them through. We sail quickly past the drowning ficus trees and the almost-overflowing pool to the area in the back, then through the low wooden fence.

When Peace sees the dog, he moans.

The dog is still tied with rope to the metal pole, its ribcage visible under the wet fur, matted with mud. The water bowl overflows with dirty rainwater, but there is no food and the dog shivers violently in the cold. Turds slowly disintegrate around him in the rain.

I look at Peace. “The monster who did this is a friend of Mr. Sims. All you have to do—if you live—is to remember the address here and make sure someone calls the police right away. 22282 Circle—”

Rose’s crazy barking interrupts me. She’s jumping up and downin the air, then scratching the wet ground right next to the dog.

“Rose,” I say, as if she can understand me, “Quiet. This man will help the dog if you are quiet.”

But Rose won’t stop. She’s going nuts, barking, jumping and flying around the dog.

“She wants to show you something,” Peace says.

“I thought you were afraid of dogs,” I say, but move closer to Rose, just to see if I can calm her down.

“Dogs are trained to hate black people,” Peace says. “But your dog seems okay.”

As soon as we approach, Rose gives me a serious look, then sinks, rear paws first, into the cold wet ground right under the suffering dog. We watch her as she disappears.

What the fuck?

“Where’d she go?”

“I don’t know,” I say, and wait for Rose to rise up again from the mud.

“I know death hath ten thousand several doors

For me to take their exits…”

—John Webster,
Duchess of Malfi

***

The tethered dog trembles and the rain comes down.

Peace and I stand staring at the ground where Rose just was.

“Maybe you should go find her,” he says.

He’s right. Any second now the pressure being applied to the heart inside that body on the hospital bed will startle the muscle back to life, and the lungs, forced full of air, will breathe on their own. And there will go my only chance to save the dog.

“You have to come, too,” I say. I can’t risk losing him now. Peace nods, realizing, I think, that not much more can go wrong for him now.

We sink below the ground facing one another, a dead fat white man and a dead naked black man, as if we’re riding in an express elevator to the netherworld.

Down we sink through the black wet earth, through a network of gnarled dead roots, through rocks and shards of glass, through slugs, chicken bones and colonies of worms. About three feet below the surface I see Rose waiting beside a transparent plastic storage box, the kind people store sweaters in to keep the moths away. She is overjoyed to see me, and licks my face, then licks Peace’s foot.

The box has been wrapped in plastic, but without my glasses and because it’s so dark down here, all I can make out are small grayish packages piled one upon another.

“What’s inside?” I ask and Peace peers into the side of the plastic box.

“Shit,” he says.

“What do you see?” I ask.

“They’re bundles of bills,” Peace says as he disappears, “A shitload of money.”

“I hope the leaving is joyful; and I hope never to return.”

—Frida Kahlo

***

Peace is back on the Cath lab bed, which shakes under the pressure of the CPR compressions he’s receiving on his chest. The mask lies next to his head. A breathing bag is in his mouth now, and a nurse is squeezing it.

Rose stays close to him, so close that he’d feel her warm breath on his cheek—if he could feel anything and she had breath.

“80 systolic,” a nurse shouts.

“Stop CPR.” The doctor says.

No! Don’t stop! Don’t give up! Don’t give up now!

But the nurse stops the compressions on his chest and stands back from the bed. Then the breathing bag is removed from Peace’s mouth.

Peace lies there, eyes closed, his bare chest exposed. Is it rising and falling?

“We have a pulse.”

“If I die, where does Time go?”

—Sean Jones, “Esperanto”

***

We stay with Peace in the Cath Lab, then in the ICU, where he’s given an EKG and connected to monitors and to a fresh IV. His eyes sometimes flutter open, and from what I hear the nurses say, he should recover quickly and fully from his rare reaction to the angiographic dye.

But Peace doesn’t seem fine at all. He hasn’t spoken. Not even a grunt. Not even a murmur. And the longer he’s silent, the closer that dog comes to death.

Will Peace remember what happened? Will he remember what he saw? Me? Rose? The dog? The buried stash of money? Or does a return from death to life require the survivor to relinquish his special knowledge to forgetfulness?

Rose floats above his bed; I keep close to the electronic monitor. A nurse I haven’t seen before—a tall, graceful African American woman in her fifties with short gray hair and red-framed glasses—enters the glass cubicle and touches Peace’s hand. “Mr. Peace? I’m Diane. I’ll be around for the next twelve hours. Are you awake?”

Peace opens his eyes. Diane smiles. “You must feel pretty drowsy from all the meds they gave you,” she smiles and checks his IV. “I hear you had a pretty wild night.”

Peace seems to hear her. The pupils in his dilated eyes contract. “Where am I?” he asks thickly.