“Okay,” Maya said.
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“They did an MRI and an EEG. There’s almost no brain
activity at all anymore.” The words rubbed at her throat. She saw a jagged sadness in the eyes of her friends, reflecting her own. “I think I’m going to throw up,” she said suddenly. “I
need water.”
She stumbled over to a water fountain in this strange body
of hers. Cried as she drank. Tears mixed with the splash. She wiped her mouth, her eyes. Turned to her friends behind her,
looking for hope, finding only more sorrow.
“I just need a minute,” she said. She had to pull it together before she saw Henry. She was so afraid that he would sense
her fear, that she would cause him distress. The doctors would say this was impossible. It worried her anyway.
“Do you want to maybe go to the chapel?” Renee said. “It’s
quiet. Might be a good place to think.”
Hannah nodded, wiped new tears at the fleeting, absurd
hope that she could pray this away with magic words. That if
God existed, he might somehow…
They located the chapel behind a simple white door, a small
wooden sign above it. Hannah hesitated. “I don’t believe,” she said. “In God. I used to…”
“You don’t have to,” Renee said. “It can be whatever you
need.” She opened the door and Hannah entered.
The room was small and dim, quiet as a cave. Rows of
benches lined up in strict formation, electric candles cast their muted glow on the walls.
Hannah slid in beside Blue, Maya beside her, Renee on
the end. A bubble of silence surrounded them, the room a
held breath. The profound stillness evoked in Hannah a pri-
mal sense of being supported, if not by a deity, then by a hu-mankind that understood the need for places like this. Places East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 329
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to contain anguish. Built across thousands of years to carry
people through.
Hannah closed her eyes, falling into the deep quiet, letting
herself be held by it, tender and raw. She became aware of a
dense grief in the room, the reverberation of all the desperate prayers that had been issued from these benches. She listened, tuned to the frequency of universal despair. To her surprise, it felt like love and her chest filled with it. She felt love for all the hurting strangers who had preceded her here, for the humanity that had brought them to their knees. And somehow
their love echoed back.
She leaned into the love and the grief. Got down on her
own knees, called to do so by her need to surrender to her
helplessness—to send an SOS into the void and hope that it
would land in the right hands. Her friends kneeled beside
her. Their eyes met. They bowed their heads. Maya’s shoul-
der brushed against hers and Hannah edged away to give her
space; but a moment later she felt Maya lean into her again and she realized it wasn’t a mistake. She leaned back.
Hannah paused, trying to find the words for her prayer. To
find an answer to her question. How could she be asked to
give up hope? How could anyone know when it was time to do that? To pull the plug on a person? On a life?
She took a breath and in her head she began. “I’m not per-
fect,” she said, “but I’m trying. I know I don’t deserve any
better than anyone else. And I know you have other things,
other people, to worry about. Bigger problems. But…” She
paused, the thought unbearable. “Please don’t take anything
more. Please don’t ask me to do this. I can’t. I can’t.”
Even as she prayed this, prayed as hard as she could, she
heard a voice in her head just beyond her own. It was Maya’s
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voice, small, offstage in her mind, telling her that she would be giving up a hope, not all hope. Giving up the hope that Henry would get better, that he would get to have a real life and that she would get to share that future with him. And in
that moment Hannah understood how she, just like Henry,
had been stuck in a holding area between life and death. How
maybe she’d conflated her aliveness with his. Maybe keep-
ing Henry here was selfish, her way of avoiding that awful
in-between place where one hope had died and another had
not yet been born. Perhaps all this time she’d been keeping
him stuck as well, preventing his passage to somewhere bet-
ter. Was there somewhere better? Somewhere they would meet again?
She knew Renee believed it. And though she was inclined
to disagree, she also knew that her perspective was as limited as any other creature’s, as limited as that of the octopus who knew nothing of the craggy fisherman above him, nothing of
planes swimming sharklike across the moon at night, of giant
trees whose branches bobbed in a breeze.
She thought now of the Henry she knew when they were
younger, his warm, safe hugs and the way he smelled like
laundry detergent and how he absently stroked her arm when
they were together. The boy who used to put an extra packet
of cream cheese in her bag at the bagel shop when they first
met, who moved her out of the rain to kiss her, who gazed
at her with such soft, loving eyes that she came to see herself through them. She asked this Henry, the Henry in the before,
what he would have wanted if he knew what was coming.
Twelve years kept alive. How many more would be enough?
How long would he ask them to hold on? And she knew the
answer clearly. It had already been too long.
No! she thought, a howl in her chest. Please no.
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She couldn’t take it. It was too much. God help me, she thought . The primal wail. Her body wracking. I can’t. Please God, I can’t. Her pain was a universe, her whole being made only of sorrow.
She felt a hand on each shoulder. Maya on one side, Blue
on the other. And she wanted to say, Please make it stop, please if you love me, please help me. But she understood that this was what was happening, what had to happen, and no one could
change it. She sat up, wiped her cheeks, forced her breath to slow and regulate. “I have to go,” she whispered. “I need to
see him.”
She walked out, moving down the hall as fast as she could.
Her grief was giant and unwieldy, like airplane wings careen-
ing and crashing into everything she passed. She could almost feel the strangers walking by sensing what it was, stepping out of the way of it.
They took the elevator up to the fourth floor. Buzzed into
the ICU. Entered the awful theater of urgency, of patients
tubed and wired like aliens in purgatorial rooms, the beeps and sighs of machines, the low murmur of doctors and nurses talking over the terrifying undercurrent of the lottery, of maybe life, maybe death.
Vivian was standing at the nurses’ station. She turned and
saw them, her shoulders sagging with exhaustion, an almost
ancient sadness in her eyes.
Hannah ran to her and Vivian held out her arms, hugged
her tight.
“I get it,” Hannah said into the cloth of her shirt. “I un-
derstand now. We have to let him go.”
“Yes,” Vivian said, and Hannah could hear the choke in
her voice. “Yes, sweet girl, we do.”
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She stepped back, took Hannah’s face in her hands and gave
a determined nod, as if summoning courage for them both.
Then she held out her hand to the others. “My girls,” she said,
“I’m so glad you’re here.” She hugged them all. “I think I’m
going to go to the chapel for a bit. Take as long as you need.”
But I need forever, Hannah thought.
Together the girls walked to Henry’s room.
She looked at Maya, saw the helplessness in her eyes.
“He’s still here,” Hannah said. “Right now. That’s what I
keep telling myself.”
But she knew that soon there would be an empty bed, even-
tually taken by someone else’s loved one, another set of fam-
ily and friends gathered around. How could it be? Her brain
wanted to shut it down and so she did.
She went to Henry, took his hand in both of hers. She
watched as each of her friends bent down to him, put their
lips tenderly on his forehead, told him goodbye. Maya put her hand on top of hers. On the other side of the bed, Blue and
Renee added their hands, as well.
They sat like that for a few moments, quiet and sad and
together.
“Did you know sea otters hold hands while they sleep?”
Renee said. “It’s so they don’t float away from each other.”
“I like that,” Maya said, squeezing.
“Me too,” Hannah said.
“We’ll be right outside if you need us,” Maya said.
Hannah nodded, watched them go with the awful under-
standing that it was time. She sat alone with Henry, the sky
at the window dressed in mourning black, the room mostly
dark but for a soft shell of light over Henry’s head, the dull glow of machinery. A hollow, sterile quality to the air, as if East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 333
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life had already been suctioned out of it. She took in Henry’s beautiful face, the way his hair, in need of a trim, curled near his ears. She traced his big hands, put her head on his chest—
the safest place she had ever known.
He was her first love, her first experience of tenderness and also of ecstasy. He had taught her how to drive, fixed her computer when it broke, listened to all her sorrows and dreams.
He was her person, her one. After that nightmare night he’d
become even more her safest place, in some way her imaginary
friend, the one who never got mad, who never hurt her, who
would never leave, a benevolent and steady presence in her
life like Renee’s Jesus. Without him she would be untethered.
She climbed into his bed, lay on top of him. Sobbed qui-
etly so that he wouldn’t know. Just in case. Just in case he was still in there, she didn’t want to frighten him. She wanted to scream, Why? why? and Fight! fight! And against those words another voice in her head said, Maybe this happened because he knows you’ll be okay now, maybe he was waiting for that, maybe he sensed that it was time for both of you to let go. She didn’t want that and yet she understood. Even as she grieved, she understood.
She stayed like that for a long time, touching and pressing
her body against his, memorizing the feel of him, his strong
and steady heart, still here, still beating. She was ripped. She was full of love. She held on and held on and held on. She
kissed his cheeks, sniffed for the sleep smell at his neck, but it was already gone, replaced by something medicinal.
It was too much. Too much. He was all she knew.
Finally, reluctantly, she climbed off. She sat beside him
again, watched him breathe, memorizing each rise and fall of
his chest. Stroked his arms, his hair. I love you, I love you, I love East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 334
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you. She raised his hand to her forehead and pressed it against her, imprinting its warmth there.
From the doorway, Vivian’s soft voice. “Hi,” she said.
Hannah looked up to see her enter. “Hi,” she whispered
back.
“Are you okay?”
Hannah shook her head, no, new tears brimming. “Are
you?”
Vivian shrugged, gave a sad smile as she moved into the
chair across from Hannah. “We’re setting him free,” she said.
Her eyes welled. “I don’t want to. I don’t want to.” She looked so old in the fragile light, as if loss made gravity stronger, stretching faces, casting shadows. She caressed Henry’s face
and Hannah imagined how many times she must have done
that when he was just a newborn in her arms.
“The doctor will be in soon,” Vivian said.
“I can go,” Hannah said, though it was the last thing she
wanted. “If you want to be alone.”
Vivian reached across Henry’s chest. “Stay,” she said, grab-
bing Hannah’s hand and squeezing. “He would want you here.
I want you here. It won’t be much longer.”
A nurse came in quietly, double-checked if they were ready.
A morphine drip and sedative were added, explained. The
nurse’s kindness brought on fresh tears. They waited. Han-
nah clung to each moment, even as she suffered in the terri-
ble anticipation, it seemed better than the finality. She forced herself to watch when the nurse unplugged the respirator, to
bear witness to the end of everything that mattered to her. It was suddenly strikingly quiet. Her hand left Vivian’s, found
Henry’s again. She watched his peaceful, undisturbed face. I East Coast_9780778309499_TS_txt_277098.indd 335
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love you, Henry, she thought. It’s going to be okay now. His body gave a small shudder beneath her hand.
“He’s going,” Vivian said.
They each kissed his face and Hannah clutched his hand
tight so he would know she was there.
“Goodbye, Henry,” she whispered.
Goodbye.
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EPILOGUE
They buried Henry on a quiet blue day in July amid mourners
whose grief had been suspended for so many years it became
relief. The four of them seemed to inhabit their own atmo-
sphere, private and removed. Maya did not recognize herself
as she moved through the ceremony, how subdued she could
be. Beside her, Hannah was stoic, her shoulders pushed back as though she were once again at the bow of that whale-watching
boat, at war with a fear that extended in every direction and beyond the horizon. Blue and Renee were calm, quiet presences throughout and, like Maya, watchful as spotters should
Hannah fall apart. She did not.
When it was Maya’s turn to say goodbye, she approached
the casket, put her hands on the wood and imagined it as a
small ship taking Henry on an adventure into another world.
An ache of grief, pure and uncomplicated, filled her, felt not entirely bad, somehow
satisfying in its truthfulness. It was
as if memory had finally attached to some free-floating tor-
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ment she’d been wrestling with, made it into an enemy more
knowable and defined. For twelve years Henry had become
something bigger and more nebulous in her mind, lived in-
side her as a formless accusation, an abrasion of guilt on her conscience. Now that he was gone, she could remember him
as more than the constant quiet reminder of that night; she
could remember him as her friend.
There would be no return to innocence. If she’d hoped,
which of course she had, that the damage those men had in-
flicted would die with him, she was quick to realize it would not. It would never be fully gone for her, for any of them. It would sometimes be bigger and sometimes be smaller, but it
was impossible to remove the psychic shrapnel of that singular bullet. Their bodies absorbed it, functioned around it.
And maybe innocence was overrated and resilience the op-
posite. Maybe there was beauty, not in suffering itself, but in the depth of intimacy it fostered with other people. Maybe
that was the trade. She could tell herself that anyway. She
could make it be real.
That night after the funeral, they crashed at Hannah’s apart-
ment and stayed up late sharing warm, funny memories of
Henry. Maya tried not to think about anything but the pres-
ent—not the eviction notice awaiting her, not Andy back in
Montauk, not the yawning future or how little she under-
stood of what she would do about any of it. For the next few
days at least, she’d be staying on with Hannah to make sure
she was okay.
The following day the four of them woke up late to the
sun banging at the windows. Blue and Renee brought their
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bags down to the rental car and hugged Maya and Hannah
goodbye.
Blue was, more than anything, relieved to be going home.
It had all been so much and she needed time alone to process.
Still, she was happy to have the company of Renee for sev-
eral hours as she drove her back to Connecticut. She’d send
a service to pick up Renee’s car at Nana’s, have it delivered to Renee’s house. They were both too drained to take on the
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