One Last Song

by S. K. Falls

  “Sure,” I replied. “I’d love to meet Jack.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Jack Phillips lived in a middle-class neighborhood with Victorian-style homes and cheap vinyl siding. I pulled up behind a white Ford Focus in the driveway and turned off Zee’s car. My hands were sweating; I wiped them on my jeans, hoping Drew was too busy getting out of the car to notice. What the hell was I doing here? Was I seriously going into a dying guy’s house under the pretense of being ill like him? I’d done a lot of fucked-up things in my life, but I was still sane enough to realize that this was a first, even for me.

  Drew waved at me from outside the car, a sort of “let’s get going” gesture. It was too late to back out now. It’d raise too many questions. Besides, there was a small part of me that thought, I’m not here to laugh at or belittle them. I was there because I wanted to be like them, because I worshipped the mutation in their genes, the stutter and stumble of their limbs. Wasn’t imitation the highest form of flattery?

  I got out of the car. “Sorry. Just had to check something.”

  At the door, Drew knocked and stood back. “Jack’s parents take care of him.”

  I nodded, not sure why he said that. Later I realized it was because he wanted to prepare me, in some small way. “Jack’s parents take care of him” was code for what I was about to witness. Though Drew didn’t know I was a complete liar, he did know that I was relatively new to the world of terminal illness.

  The woman who opened the door was short and fat, her dirty blond hair greasy and graying at the roots. “Drew, honey. Hi.” Her face broke into a genuine smile, and she reached up to hug him before stepping aside. “Come in, come in. He’ll be so happy to see you.”

  She seemed to notice me once I was inside. We smiled at each other tentatively, waiting for Drew to make the introductions, for us to know each other.

  “This is Saylor,” Drew said, extending his hand out toward me. “She’s new to TIDD. She actually helped me get our first signatures on the petition today.”

  “Oh. Oh, I see.” Jack’s mom came forward, and took my hand between both of hers. “Thank you for doing that. I’m Jeannie, Jack’s mom. You have no idea how much it means to me.”

  “Uh, you’re welcome,” I said, that feeling of guilt and self-revulsion lurching up in my chest like some sort of bile. “You really don’t have to—um, Drew did it all. I was just along for moral support.”

  Jeannie stepped away and patted Drew on his lower back. “Well, I know Drew’s a sweetheart. Always has been, since Jack getting diagnosed seven months ago.”

  Seven months? That was it? Seven short months since the dude had been diagnosed and already he was sick enough to want to die? And here I was, clinging to the parapet of life, not quite ready to let go, but not quite ready to clamber on and live it either.

  “So where is the big guy?” Drew asked. I had a hard time imagining any man Drew would consider “big,” let alone a sick and dying one. “In his room?”

  “Resting,” Jeannie said, the smile slipping off her face. “He’s been resting a lot lately. He’s just so tired.”

  By the look on Drew’s face, I could tell this wasn’t good news. Not that I couldn’t guess that on my own.

  We made our way down a narrow hallway into a bedroom that wasn’t any more than ten feet by ten feet. It was dominated by a hospital bed that was bordered on the side closest to me by a chair for visitors, and on the others by a wheelchair, a giant tank of oxygen, and some other IV drips and machines that I had no idea what to make of.

  The boy lying in the bed was easily as tall as Drew, if not taller, but he couldn’t have weighed more than me—about one hundred and thirty pounds. His skin was the color and consistency of wax, and his bald head reminded me of that kid Carson I’d met at TIDD. I couldn’t see much of his face because it was dominated by what must’ve been an oxygen mask, though it looked different from the ones I’d seen on TV. I had a vague recollection of it being some sort of medicine dispenser, one I’d seen in a medical catalog once.

  Jeannie stepped up to him and caressed his cheek. “Hey, Jackie. Look who’s here to see you, son.”

  His pale, veined eyelids fluttered open and he looked at his mother’s face blandly. Then his eyes roved over to Drew and I saw a small spark of happiness. He motioned weakly to his face mask, and Jeannie pulled it off, swiftly replacing it in a series of magician-like coordinated moves with a nasal cannula. Once the little buds of the tube were in his nostrils, Jack fumbled for the switch by his bed that’d raise him up to a better level for conversing.

  But Drew held up his hand. “Don’t worry about that, man. I can talk to you just fine how you are.”

  Jack dropped his hand down, apparently grateful. Every movement of his reeked of deep, deep exhaustion, the kind I was keenly aware I’d never experienced.

  “How’s it going?” he asked, his voice raspy.

  Drew sank into the chair next to Jack’s bed. At first I was confused about what the chair leg was touching. It looked like a yellow plastic bag. Then, with a whoosh of realization, it came to me. It was a plastic bladder. Jack was catheterized, and his urine was collected in this bag. I looked away.

  “Look what I got,” Drew said, handing the petition to Jack. “It’s not much yet, but we’ll have a lot more signatures soon, man. I guarantee you.”

  With some effort, Jack held the papers up and looked at them. “Thanks,” he said. Then, looking at me, “Who’s the hot chick?”

  I noticed Drew’s brief look of disappointment at Jack’s lack of enthusiasm, though he covered it up so quickly I had to wonder if I’d imagined it. “This is Saylor. Saylor Grayson, meet Jack Phillips.”

  I waved in a sort of awkward little circle. “Hey. Heard a lot about you.”

  “Have you…” Jack began, and then exploded into a series of coughs, dry and crackling. Jeannie came back into the room but he waved off her help. When she was gone, he looked at me as if nothing had happened. “Have you heard my phone number? It’s even better.”

  Drew burst out in guffaws that sounded only a little bit forced, and I obliged with a small laugh. I wondered if this was really happening.

  After some idle chatter, Jack raised up his bed and Drew and he played a video game for a little while. They asked if I’d like to play, but I declined. I’d never been one for video games, and anyway, the longer I stayed in Jack’s house, the guiltier I felt. I wanted to engage with him as little as possible.

  Finally, when Jack fell asleep midround, Drew looked at me. “We should go,” he said. “Take Zee’s car back.”

  We walked back out to the living room, where Jeannie came bustling up and rerouted us by grabbing and pulling us gently back to the sofa. Pointing to a tray of brownies, she said, “You’re not leaving without eating those.”

  Nausea rolled in the pit of my stomach. The thought of eating anything made me want to hurl, and the thick smell of sugar and butter wasn’t helping at all. “No, thank you. I’m good.”

  “Oh, come on,” she said. Then, looking at Drew. “I know these are your favorite, so you better eat up.”

  She didn’t have to ask him again. He picked up a big piece and shoved it in his mouth, crumbs showering down the front of his shirt. When he saw me watching, he grinned, teeth blackened by chocolate. “Hot, right?”

  Jeannie slapped him lightly on the arm, laughing. “Don’t scare her away.” She sat beside me and, taking both of my hands in hers, shook her head. Tears glittered in her eyes. Even in my fevered state, I was taken aback by her openness, the way she gave of her affection and emotion so freely. “Thank you for visiting. Every friend Jack has who knows what he’s going through… it helps him. I just know it does. So thank you.”

  If I could’ve offered anything at that moment—a kidney, bone marrow, blood—I would’ve, without question. I hadn’t suddenly become a philanthropist. It was just that the guilt weighed on me like a thousand boulders. It crushed me, cracking and snapping my bon
es like they were little, brittle twigs. I wanted to be worthy of her tears. I wanted to be the girl they saw when they looked at me.

  But the truth was, I had nothing to offer. I was empty inside, devoid of everything but the infection I had put there myself.

  Chapter Twenty

  Outside, I watched as Drew’s breath and mine mingled in a misty tangle. It wasn’t actively snowing, but the clouds were brooding and low, and I could smell it in the air.

  When we got in the car, I blasted the heat at full. “You know, he doesn’t seem so out of it.”

  Drew raised his eyebrows in question.

  “I mean, Zee said she didn’t like the idea of physician-assisted suicide for Jack because the cancer had affected his brain. But he didn’t seem… off to me at all.” I began to back out of the Phillipses’ driveway.

  “Yeah. He was having a pretty good day today.”

  “Really? So that wasn’t normal?”

  Drew made a “meh” face. “It’s not like he’s usually a rage machine or anything, but his personality goes through this intense change. At the beginning, when I first met him, he was really easygoing and happy, in spite of his diagnosis. When he has his bad days, you can’t see any of that Jack anymore. I guess that’s what Zee was talking about.” He paused. “But see, when he’s alert and mostly with it like he was today, he still says he wants to have a choice in when he goes and how he goes. That’s what makes me fight for his right to die.”

  We were quiet for a moment, and then Drew reached inside the zippered compartment of his messenger bag. “Mind if I put this on?”

  I glanced at his hand and saw a Carousel Mayhem CD. Smiling, I waved toward the stereo. “Go for it.”

  “I knew you had good taste in there somewhere,” he said. “You know, buried under the Carly Rae Jepsen stuff.”

  As I laughed and turned to mock-glare at him, I noticed his fingers reaching to feed the CD into the drive. But instead of lining the disc up with the opening, Drew kept smashing it against the part of the dashboard that held the dials for the heat.

  Thinking he was being goofy, I chuckled. “What are you doing?”

  But he didn’t answer. When I looked up at him, his eyes were red-rimmed, his jaw hard. He let his hand go limp against the gearshift. “Would you mind doing it for me? Please?” I had to strain to hear his voice; it was barely audible against the whoosh of the heater.

  I took the CD. “Um, sure. No problem.” I stuffed it in without incident and the music began to play. When I plucked up the courage to look at Drew again, five minutes later, he was asleep. His head lolled against the headrest, his lips parted as if in a sigh. There was something upsettingly, terribly vulnerable about him in that moment. He reminded me of a five-year-old, spent after pitching a tantrum and not getting what he wanted. Of course, if Drew had pitched a tantrum, it had been internal, a silent raging. No wonder he was exhausted.

  * * *

  When I pulled into Zee’s driveway, I was feeling sick. My body hurt all over, and I knew my fever had to be creeping higher. Drew stirred in his seat. I didn’t have the nerve to check on my abscess when he might wake up any moment, though my fingers tingled with the need to pull down the neckline of my sweater. I turned the CD off and his eyes fluttered open.

  “Tired?” I asked.

  He didn’t answer me, his mood still ruined from what had happened with the CD player earlier.

  “We’re here,” I said.

  He pushed the eject button on the stereo, and grabbed his CD—this time without any problems—when the thing spit it out. Opening the car door, he used his cane to get out and stretched his legs in the snow-pregnant evening.

  I followed him out.

  The woman who answered the door was thin and bespectacled, with a head full of crazy, dark curls that stuck out every which way. I felt a pang of sympathy. I’d thought my loose curls were bad, but hers were the tightly wound, kinky kind I’d always been secretly thankful I’d been spared.

  She smiled when she saw Drew and me. “Hi. You must be Saylor. Zee’s told me all about you. I’m Lenore, her mom. Thank you for getting her home safely the other night. Come in, you two, get out of the cold.”

  We followed her in, Drew dragging behind me. Zee was propped up on the living room couch, watching a rerun of Santa Barbara, a soap opera with dramatic women with big hair I remembered my mum watching when I was much younger.

  “How’re you feeling?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes. “Fine, though Mom won’t let me so much as go take a leak without badgering me about it.”

  “Language,” her mother warned, but without much mettle. “And if you didn’t want me badgering you, you shouldn’t have danced till you almost passed out.”

  “Mooooom.” Zee threw her head back against the couch pillow, but I could see she didn’t mind too much.

  Her mother picked up a batch of laundry she’d been folding. “All right, all right. I’ll let you visit with your friends. Holler if you need me.” And with a quick pat on my arm, she bustled out.

  I sat next to Zee on the couch and Drew took the chair next to me. “You look better than the last time we saw you,” he said.

  “Just needed to get on my oxygen for the night,” she replied. “It was still worth it, though. Pierce is a hell of a dancer. Tell ya, if he wasn’t gay, I’d be all over that.”

  “Too much information,” Drew said, but his voice was limper than usual.

  I chuckled and let my head fall against the back of the couch. My eyes closed without me asking them to.

  “Are you okay?”

  I forced them open again and found that Zee was staring at me. “Yeah. Fine.”

  “She’s been sort of out of it since we left downtown,” Drew said. “Won’t say anything to me, though.”

  “You look like you might have a fever. I’d hold my hand up to your forehead, but my hands are always cold now,” Zee said. “Drew. You do it.”

  I felt my face heat up even more, and not from my fever. He bent over me and put the back of his enormous hand against my forehead. “Yeah, I’ll say that’s a fever.” His breath smelled like mint. “She needs some ibuprofen.”

  “Mom!” Zee yelled, looking toward the doorway where her mom had disappeared minutes before.

  “No, really, don’t wor—”

  “MOM!”

  “What? What is it?” Her mother came bustling back in, her face creased with worry. “Are you okay? What do you need?”

  “Do we have any ibuprofen for Saylor? She’s got a fever.”

  “No, really, it’s okay,” I said again. I tried to lift my head off the couch, but it felt like it was filled with lead. And it was beginning to hurt, as if it were made from little splinters of glass.

  “You don’t look so great, honey,” Lenore said. “Here, let me take your temperature.”

  I closed my eyes and opened my mouth when I felt the cold nib of the thermometer touch my bottom lip. When it beeped, someone took it out of my mouth.

  “101.5,” I heard Lenore say. “Do you need to go to the ER, Saylor?”

  Uh-oh. No. No ER. They were familiar with me, and I couldn’t risk Drew or Zee finding out. “No, I’m fine. Just need to rest, I think. I have an appointment with my doctor on Monday.” The lie slipped out easily, without much conscious thought on my part. It was as if my survival instincts kicked in, which, if you thought about it, said a lot about the kind of person I was.

  “Okay. Well, here’s some Motrin for you, then.”

  I took the pills from Lenore and swallowed them with a cup of water she brought me.

  “Here’s a blanket, too,” she said, spreading out a chenille throw over my knees. “You just let me know if you need something else, okay? Would you like me to drive you home?”

  I smiled. “No, thank you.”

  “Mom, you’re hovering,” Zee said.

  “I don’t mind,” I replied, thinking, If only you knew. To Lenore: “I promise I’ll let you know if
I need anything.”

  “All right, hon.” She squeezed my hand gently, refilled my water cup, and left us alone.

  There was silence for a full minute, and I kept my eyes closed. I wanted to open them, to see what Drew and Zee were up to, but I could’ve sworn someone came along and pinned fifty-pound dumbbells to my eyelids.

  A moment later, I felt someone tucking in the blanket around me. A big hand, cool and slightly callused on the fingertips, brushed my arm. I held still; I could barely breathe.

  Across the couch, Zee snorted. “I think she’s warm enough now, jeez.” Drew chuckled a little and I felt his weight shift, like he was sitting back down. “So, how’d the petition thing go?” Zee continued.

  “Really well. We hit about twenty-five shops today. Saylor was a rock star.”

  “You walked to twenty-five stores? How did your legs do?”

  Just the slightest breath of a pause. “Fine. No issues.”

  I opened my eyes then, just a slit, to stare at Drew’s face as he said it. I believed there were things you could tell about a person by looking at their face mid-lie that you might not be able to tell after ten years of friendship. Drew’s face was impassive for the most part, but the tips of his ears were fuchsia. Not as calm as he wanted to portray after all. I thought about him sprawled on the sidewalk as people passed him; fumbling with the CD in Zee’s car.

  I started to say something when I realized with a great big stab of horror that I was going to throw up before a word ever left my mouth. At least I had time to lean forward so the mess went on the floor and not on Lenore’s Laura Ashley–like floral couch.

  “Mom!” Zee yelled, and Lenore came back. When she saw what had happened, she made an about-face, only to return armed with industrial-strength cleaners and a mop and bucket.