Dead is Better (7 page)

The UCLA girl’s friend gets up and walks to the vending machines against the wall. One with sodas and plastic water, one with coffee with a hand-written “Out of Order” sign taped to it, the last filled with snacks and candy. She inserts some coins and returns with a bag of corn chips and a bar of candy, which she eats while her friend pales with pain or nausea. That would have been me—eating was my soporific, my narcotic. Before death and Rose, food was my most reliable and loveliest friend. Especially Happy Andy Take Anywhere Cheddar Cheese Balls—which by the way, one cannot take
anywhere
—especially not into the other side.

Then the place, excuse the expression, comes alive. The swinging doors of the ambulance entrance fly open and two black-uniformed EMTS, hands in blue latex gloves, trot in pushing a gurney on which Father Time seems to be strapped. Rose makes a swift turn and glides after them. I follow Rose through the closed electronic door into the treatment area where the EMTs stand at a desk and speak to a middle-aged nurse in dark purple scrubs wearing a pin that says “Nurses ? Patients.” She types on the keyboard of a computer. The old guy lies with his eyes closed, the gurney pushed against the wall.

“He’s 54. Abdominal pain. Intermittent and severe. No fever. BP normal. 130/80,” the tall EMT, a young, trim guy with blue eyes and very short-cropped black hair explains.

54? This guy looks 85 at least.

“Address?” the nurse asks.

“Transient.”

The man on the gurney groans and the nurse nods toward an empty cubicle. The EMTs push the gurney inside. The narrow space is outfitted with oxygen tubes, monitors on wheels, plastic containers, and other equipment whose purpose I do not know, except that if one needs them, it can’t be good. Rose and I park ourselves about 4 feet above the patient’s bed, right below the fluorescent light fixture, like two empty cartoon bubbles.

Inside the cubicle the EMTs release the straps and slide the man from the gurney onto a narrow bed. The nurse in purple follows, carrying a printout.

“Let’s try to make you comfortable—” She looks at the paper, “Mr. Haffer? Jonathan Haffer?”

The man nods, then groans. The nurse’s gloved hands unbutton the man’s sweat- and dirt-soiled denim work shirt, pulls a sheet and blanket up to his thin shoulders, then attaches a blood-pressure cuff to the man’s bony arm. The man, his eyes open now, returns the nurse’s look, but says nothing. I see now that the man is filthy—his chest, neck, face, down to his fingers that end in long, black broken fingernails. His long gray hair is stringy. Dried snot flecks his beard. I suspect that he smells, but my own condition prevents me from confirming this.

A small, beautiful young woman with honey-colored skin, large brown eyes, and dark curly hair pulled back into a ponytail enters the cubicle. She wears a blue t-shirt, blue scrubs and black wooden clogs.

“I’m Doctor Branford,” she says to the man and nods at the EMT who smiles. She looks too young, too pretty to be a doctor, but the ID tag around her neck says, “Elizabeth A. Branford, M.D. Emergency Medicine.”

Too bad. This is not my Dr. Miller. I wonder about the nurse. Was she with me when I died?

“Where was he picked up?” the doctor asks the EMT as she glances through the printout.

“Downtown. San Julian Street.” the nurse––smiling wearily—offers before the EMT can answer.

The other EMT nods. He’s also young, but blond and short. “Yeah. The transport was from Wings of Hope.”

Wings of Hope—wait, I know that name. It’s a Skid Row rescue place for homeless alcoholics and drug addicts. They offer beds, meals, and drug and alcohol counseling. AndyCo. (Really my shit brother Mark) made a tax-deductible donation to it a few months ago, a check for a grand and hundreds of cases of just-expired “product” from the warehouse in Vernon—Happy Andy Candy, Happy Andy Cereal, Happy Andy Yogurt, Happy Andy frozen Mac & Cheese.

Could rotten Happy Andy food have sickened this poor man?

Rose descends, until she’s right on the man’s chest, then stretches out, her head on his neck, her paws on his shoulders. I expect him to cry out, but if he feels the presence of a dead dog on his chest he doesn’t show it. In fact, his groans subside and the taut muscles in his face relax.

Is Rose trying to tell him something? Or trying to find something out?

The doctor snaps on a pair of beige latex gloves, and bestows a spectacular smile upon the man as she lifts her stethoscope to his chest. “I’m going to listen to your heart, sir.”

The doctor slides the stethoscope right through Rose, then presses it gently upon Mr. Haffer’s hairless chest, listens, then removes the tubes from her ears.

“Sounds fine,” she says and smiles at the man as if she is incredibly happy to be in his company. “Now, Can you show me where it hurts?”

The man points to his gut below the waist.

“Okay. On a scale of one to ten, how would you rate this pain?”

“9.”

“I’m going to examine your abdomen so we can find out what’s wrong. “

Again, Dr. Branford’s hand passes through Rose to expertly palpate the area under the man’s waist and abdomen.

“Jesus! Jesus Christ!” the man bellows when she presses the area below his navel.

“I’m sorry,” Dr. Branford says.

Rose moves her nose close the man’s filthy face, then turns and floats out of the cubicle into the hall. But I’m not done. I want to hear what the doctor has to say. Was it something he ate or not?

“I’ll order something for the pain right now.” Dr. Branford writes something on the chart, then turns to the nurse.

“Rather than wait around to see if his pain worsens, I’m going to admit. Get him bathed and into a clean gown. Let’s start some IV fluids, too.”

Dr. Branford turns toward the man whose eyes are closed again, “I’m ordering a CAT scan, blood and urine test, and a toxicology panel for you, sir. So we can find out as soon as possible what’s causing the pain in your abdomen.”

Then she turns back toward the EMTs and the nurse, “With someone in his situation, there’s no way to know what he might have ingested or when.”

“Even death has a heart.”

—Markus Zusak,
The Book Thief

***

Rose and I drift inside the blue glow that fills the living world before dawn. I’ve never known the source of this blue light—is it from the moon or stars? Or outer space? We move above a sidewalk littered with garbage, shopping carts piled high with plastic garbage bags and nylon suitcases, mummy-shapes on the sidewalk covered in blankets and sleeping bags and boxes from which the legs of sleeping human beings extend. A few blocks away, the high-rise building, City Hall, the new LAPD administration building, and the wing-like Disney Concert Hall begin to shine gold in the emerging sunrise.

In life I avoided—among most unpleasant and difficult things—this place. I banished Skid Row and its people from my thoughts. Sure, every Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Mother’s Day there’d be a TV news story showing famous actors and actresses wearing aprons and serving a holiday meals on paper plates to a long line of homeless people.

Once in a while I’d send a check to one “rescue” mission or another. But as I look around, nobody here looks even slightly rescued. A tsunami of bad luck and failure carried these people here on a wave of garbage and debris.

A black and white police car turns the corner, then slows while the officer inside sweeps a flashlight across the inert bodies and detritus along the street and illuminates a crude mural painted on an old brick wall: “Wings of Hope,” in thick white cursive over a brown doorway, with white angels with pink faces and yellow hair, their wings extended like butterflies, above the W and the H.

In smaller letters, “God is Love! All Are Welcome!” is painted in sky blue. I pass through the closed door first, Rose right behind me, into a dark hallway. We pass a small reception area with a desk, a desk chair and about 10 of those white plastic chairs they sell at Rite Aid; a large meeting room with a dry-erase board up front; a small corner room filled with cardboard boxes of shoes, pants, shirts, underwear, and blankets. I see a staircase leading to a second floor. A sign on the landing says, Men’s/Women’s Dorms.

In the back I find what I am looking for, a large kitchen equipped with a serving station like those in school cafeterias, and long dining tables covered with black and white checked oilcloth and more of those white chairs.

There are no cupboards, just long stainless steel tables and shelves covered with canned, packaged and boxed foods: jars of mayonnaise and jam, cans of tuna, huge shrink-wrapped packages of spaghetti, bags of bruised onions, oranges, apples, hot dog buns; loaves of bread, packages of cookies, clear bags of doughnuts.

I see no boxes or products with the Happy Andy logo.

“ . . . we are all equal in the presence of death.”

—Pubilius Syrus

***

Rose moves from the kitchen area and floats, like a diver slowly ascending to the surface, up the back stairs. I follow, and pass handwritten signs on the landing wall that say “Men’s Dorm” with a left-pointing arrow, and “Women’s Dorm” with an arrow pointing to the right. Other signs announce “Men’s Restroom/Showers,” “Women’s Restroom/Showers,” “No Smoking at Any Time,” “No Alcohol, Medications or Controlled Substances Allowed. No Weapons.” “Quiet Hours from 9 PM to 7 AM.”

A picture of Jesus is taped to the wall at the landing.

We melt through a wall next to the closed door marked “Men’s Dorm.” Inside, a little light comes from a small street-facing window covered with blinds. The room is crowded with bunk beds and gray metal lockers, stacked one on another. We drift from bed to bed. Most of the men have beards, many with mouths open in sleep, exposing missing, broken, or yellowed teeth and emitting snores. There are a few young guys—a handsome man who appears to be about twenty-five sleeping on his side; a slender young man with his hair dyed purple and tattoos of spiders on his face.

Rose takes me on a tour of the women’s dorm as well: A slender, pretty African American woman whose hair is braided in elaborate cornrows lies on her side, awake, clutching a filthy teddy bear. There are women with white hair, brown hair, black hair, auburn hair. One woman so fat her body seems to melt over the edges of the narrow bunk. Another so small she barely shows under the thin brown army blanket.

A woman about the age my mother would be now sleeps on top of the blankets. She wears just cut off denim shorts, dirty white socks, and a yellow t-shirt that has a picture of a rabbit and the words, “Some Bunny Loves Me.” I see movement in the corner on a lower bunk—then realize that there are two bodies under an unzipped sleeping bag, moving up and down.

“Nothing can we call our own but death

And that small model of the barren earth

Which serves as paste and cover to our bones.”

Shakespeare,
Richard II

***

It seems to take for fucking-ever to leave Skid Row. Rose just hangs, and I mean literally, hangs around.

After our fly-by of the dormitories, Rose and I proceed to the alley behind the Wings of Hope. There are three Dumpsters, two padlocked shut, the third one pried open. I look inside. The risen sun’s cheery beams illuminate twenty or so dented but unopened cartons of Happy Andy Macaroni & Cheese.

Seeing the boxes in that Dumpster and being back here in our little corner of—could it be Purgatory?—is a relief. But I’m confused. Rose, who was clearly sent here—by what or whom—the Void, God, Nature, Karma, Allah, a subatomic particle or a cosmic joke—to help me solve the riddle of my own demise, is doing a lousy job. I suspect sometimes that our excursions to the other side are entertainment—what an evening or morning walk, or a trip to dog park on the other side would be to a living dog—a dog whose life was nothing at all like hers.

And to make things shittier, Rose interprets my frustration as displeasure. For the first time since our strange post-mortal partnership commenced, she lies facing away from me where I sit legs crossed as if I were meditating, which I’m not.

I’m remembering visiting the cemetery (yes, where I am buried, but a different section: “Tradition”) with my mother, to place flowers on my grandmother’s and grandfather’s graves. It must have been about a year after my grandmother died, so I must have been ten. As we walked across the green expanse, I was sure the spring in the grass that I could feel through the soles of my tennis shoes came from the pressure of the dead’s skeletal fingers, their long fingernails clawing the earth below me, the hideous struggle going on right below us. But I said nothing.

My mother dropped to her knees before the flat markers, sweeping the leaves and dried grass off with her hand, then stared quietly. Once the flowers had been arranged—red roses from our house—and she was back on her feet, she turned to me and said the weirdest thing: “If you ever need help, Charlie, ask them.”

Well I need help, now. The dog and I are lost.

“There’s nowhere else to escape to … Except in a wooden box, that is.”

—H.M. Forester,
Game of Aeons: A short novel

***

Rose drifts in the moonlight like a feather above the dull bronze memorial plaque that reads, “Moishe Burnside, beloved husband, father and grandfather. 1914-1992. Rest in Peace.” I hover next to her here with what is left of my grandmother in the living world, a plaque that says, “Ruth Burnside, beloved wife, mother and grandmother. 1916-1995. We will always love you.”

Bubbe, Grandpa, I need your help the voice inside my dead head says.

What am I meant to do? I silently ask, sincerely willing one or both of my dead grandparents to rise from the dark ground and talk to me or stay right where they are and talk to me.

Or send me a fucking sign.

An otherworldly, high-pitched howl tears through the silence and four glowing yellow eyes appear in the distant darkness, moving right toward me, about two feet from the ground. Rose runs off to meet the eyes as they approach.