Forty blocks away, a young man with an old scar on his stomach holds a Chinese woman in his arms, her forehead resting against his chin. The stitches in his temple will come out soon. She bathed afterward and happily wrapped herself in his warm bathrobe, and they have spent the night talking and being together. She had to kiss him a few hundred times, everywhere, just could not help herself. She is asleep now and dreams of her grandfather and the apples he gave her. The man listens to her breathing and wonders if the people in her dreams speak English or Chinese. He will ask her when she wakes up.
Downstairs, the retired NYPD detective has told the hospice nurse what she must do. He has said this to her many times, pleading, begging, ordering, but, she reflects, they all say that. She knows there is a time that is too soon and there is a time that is right. It is better that he has lived this long. Good things happened that otherwise would not have. Though his friend, the other detective, was killed. But now this man has suffered enough. She sees that the cancer has invaded his eye and the roof of his mouth. Chances are very good that it is through his brain. He doesn't have much time left as a human being, but he could be a dying animal for many days to come. She loads the Dilaudid machine, punches in the right code, and, softly pressing the button every minute, takes him down. His last movements are the nervous system's misfiring response, which causes the man to jerkily wave his arms, as if conducting a great symphony. His eyes are closed, his mouth open, white head sunk into the pillow. But his skeletal arms wave wildly, with passion. This eerie sight would be disturbing, but she has seen it before and finds a beauty in it, the last moment of the life force being released. She presses the button again, and again, and soon his arms softly fall to the blanket, and if the man thinks of anything as he dies, it is of his son. The nurse gently kisses the man on the forehead, as she does with all of them. She wants to believe they feel this last benediction. Then she removes all his tubes and arranges him in the bed. She will read her Bible until his son comes downstairs.
A typhoon three hundred miles wide spins across the sea to Indonesia, soon to flood a hundred villages. Relief workers from around the globe will fly in as quickly as they can. They will find that they are needed. They will find death and they will find life.
A New York City fireman holds a Chinese girl.
The world is old, the world is new.
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Document version: 1
Document creation date: 27.09.2012
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