The Afterlife of Emerson Tang

by Paula Champa

  I tried to shake her hand firmly in goodbye, but the vodka-smeared expression on her face told me she was not going to tolerate defeat.

  8

  THE HOSPITAL JOHNNY was math-paper gray from being endlessly laundered, but Emerson approved of its softness and its faded starburst pattern. The new slippers given to patients in the blood unit were another story.

  “Beth, please tell me they do not expect me to wear green foam slippers with happy faces on the toes.”

  I looked down to where he stood, beside his unlaced sneakers. “Your feet won’t fit in them anyway. They’re too puffed up today.”

  “But the floor is cold.”

  He stood on top of the foam and shuffled his way over to the transfusion bed, one of five arrayed around the room, ringed with curtains for privacy. At a central station, a nurse was indulging in discreet bites of lunch from an aluminum pie plate at her side.

  “That smells incredible,” I told her.

  She waved her plastic fork in the direction of Broadway. “Take-out Ethiopian.”

  I sipped from my can of ginger ale, depressed to feel the liquid burning all the way down to my stomach, stoking the ulcerous flames there. Emerson hadn’t been allowed to eat since midnight, and I expected him to be more interested in her food. But he was busy examining his transfusion bed, a mattress of black rubber covered with a sheet stamped MANHATTAN GENERAL HOSPITAL.

  “It’s not comfortable,” he complained.

  “You were fine last time.”

  “You’ve probably lost some body fat since your last transfusion,” the nurse said.

  She brought a portable scale to the side of his bed and helped Emerson swing his legs over and stand up.

  “Eighty pounds,” she announced.

  Emerson snapped to attention. “Did you say I weigh ninety pounds?”

  His voice was shaking. His body began to shake along with it as she helped him back down onto the bed.

  “No. You weigh eighty pounds,” she repeated, glancing over sadly at me.

  He sat forward. “That’s not good. That can’t be right. I want to do it again.”

  The nurse helped him back onto the scale. I leaned over to check for myself.

  “Can you see the number?” the nurse asked.

  He crashed back onto the bed and proceeded to stare in silence at a neutral point a few yards away, seeming to rifle through his brain for a weapon to hammer down the reality of the number.

  “I’ll put some blankets under you for padding,” offered the nurse.

  His hospital bracelet was little more than a plastic credit card embossed with data. I checked where it listed the attending physician for the name Gary Hertz, and showed Emerson.

  He perked up enough to give me an appreciative smirk.

  “Excuse me, who is Dr. Hertz?” I asked the nurse.

  “Never heard of him,” she said, tucking a blanket around Emerson’s legs.

  “That’s disturbing,” said Emerson.

  “That name is always on his bracelet,” I said. “Every time we come in here. But that isn’t his doctor. His doctor is Carol Albas.”

  “Dr. Hertz is the head of the unit,” said a resident taking the blood pressure of a woman in the next bed. “They use his name on everything.”

  “You realize it’s a terrible pun?” Emerson asked.

  The resident frowned. “It’s the man’s name.”

  Outside, the buildings of the Upper West Side stood like dark cutouts against the flannel-gray sky. Every television in the unit was tuned to the coverage of what Emerson called “the Death Watch” for a celebrated socialite going on across town. According to the news reports, the woman’s illness was more advanced than Emerson’s, and a crowd was keeping vigil on the streets below her apartment on Fifth Avenue.

  Emerson was transfixed, his interest no doubt colored by one fact Dr. Albas had made clear to him: By continuing to insist on transfusions, he was also increasing his own pain. But since the new blood was prolonging his life, she could not refuse him. The outcome was inevitable; the choice of how to get there was his.

  Emerson shifted his hips and winced.

  “Are you all right?” I asked him. “Zandra mentioned that you were asking for me last night.”

  “Yes. You were out, apparently.”

  In the fluorescent light of the unit his eyeglasses shone eerily at me, so fine, almost invisible, the frame just a glint of silver around his small face. The fragility of his body made everything else seem so fragile.

  I pulled my chair closer to the transfusion bed.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I’ve been thinking about what to do with that car. The one Hélène Moreau wants.”

  “The Beacon?”

  It was eerily coincidental that he was prepared to reveal his plans now, after being so close-mouthed on the subject. I could not suppress my mild paranoia: Was he trying to guess where I had been the previous evening?

  “When I asked you about it before, you wouldn’t say,” I reminded him, feigning indifference. “So what are you going to do with it?”

  “It’s personal.”

  “Oh.”

  I knew better than to try to drag it out of him, but his tricks and secrecy could be infuriating.

  “So—what did you want to talk to me about, if it’s not that?”

  His misery increased visibly as he remembered. He pulled open the gap in the front of his johnny to expose the tube leading to his nutrition pack.

  “Dr. Albas called yesterday while you were out. I was kind of woozy, but . . . she definitely said that pretty soon she’s not going to give me this stuff anymore. She said I can’t have my food, Beth!” His voice began to tremble as more of the conversation came back to him. “You have to talk to someone—another doctor—”

  “She’s not holding out on you,” I said, gently closing his gown. “She explained to us—remember?—at some point your system won’t be able to handle the liquid food anymore, just like right now it can’t digest real food. It’s not that she doesn’t want you to have it.”

  “But—then what?” He pulled miserably on the tube.

  “Be careful!” I pushed his hands away. “You still need it now.”

  He pushed back at me in frustration, then dropped his hands onto the bed. He sat quietly after that, collecting his thoughts as the first bag of blood drained into him. When he spoke again, he sounded as matter-of-fact as if we’d just been discussing the weather.

  “Beth, did you know they’re developing other things for cars to run on, besides gasoline?”

  “Cars? I guess. Isn’t there one that runs on electricity?”

  “Yes, but that idea is really old—they were doing electric a hundred years ago. They’re looking at all kinds of other things now . . . developing things.” He frowned at the tubes for blood and food running into him. “Engines get replaced, reconditioned, moved between cars. But people are imagining them now in completely new ways. Completely different.” He plucked at the feeding tube. “I wish I could run on something else.”

  “I wish you could, too.”

  “I feel like I didn’t get to do anything with my life.”

  I pulled the curtain around his bed.

  “You’ve barely turned thirty. Who has?”

  “A lot of people. Alexander the Great.”

  “Violence and conquest?”

  He rolled his eyes. “Which spread classical Greek ideals across the known world. Valuable ideas about city planning, and art, and education, all before he—Omega—at thirty-three.”

  “So, just a minor act to follow.”

  He raised his hands and shrugged.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked.

  “Incredible things! There’s so much . . . but I’m leaving.”

  “What if what you’re doing now is one of the things you’re here to do?”

  He hung his head. “That doesn’t seem fair.”

  I didn’t know how to answer him
.

  I could not say I envied his privileged upbringing per se; it was the ease of being he’d always seemed to possess. He had a slot firmly booked on life’s appointment calendar—a sense of what he might achieve—yet he was being forced to leave and I wasn’t. The slots were all confused. It made no sense to me either.

  A pinkish color came back into his skin on the second pack of blood. On the third, he flushed beautifully with sweat and his eyes grew clear and wide open—it was a remarkable transformation, as long as they kept the blood pumping through. When the last bag was empty he slept for a while with his head propped against the bedrail. As he drifted off, his right hand came up to his chest and made a shaking motion, as if he were salting a plate of food.

  I dozed in the chair next to him until the movements of the nurse woke me. Emerson was twitching. A foul smell from his fitted briefs cut the air.

  “Urine slightly tinged with blood,” the nurse reported.

  He was bleeding somewhere internally, she said—most likely his stomach.

  “Could you give us a few minutes?”

  In the entry hall of Emerson’s loft stood a nurse I didn’t recognize. Her ginger hair and fair complexion reminded me of an English princess, but there was a brittleness in her bearing, an aloofness that was not royal but merely vocational. I assumed she was there to take the blood samples Dr. Albas had ordered. Instead, she reached into the leather folder under her arm and pulled out a piece of paper, a white sheet printed with bright red ink.

  Visiting Nurse Association of New York City

  —CONFIRMATION—

  DO NOT RESUSCITATE ORDER (DNR)

  ORDERS:

  THIS PATIENT HAS AN UNREMITTING, INCURABLE MORTAL ILLNESS; THE PATIENT AND FAMILY, OR LEGAL GUARDIAN, AND PHYSICIAN AGREE THAT CARDIOPULMONARY RESUSCITATION IS NOT TO BE INITIATED.

  “Could you give us a few minutes?” she asked again.

  I stared at the paper until the lining of my mouth went dry and the husk of a single word fell from my lips.

  “Okay.”

  Even as I left them alone in his bedroom, I could see Emerson was not going to give her an easy time. She spoke loudly, as she assured me she would, so I could monitor their conversation from the hallway.

  “What a Do Not Resuscitate order does—a DNR—it’s a document you sign,” she began. “As your doctor has explained to you, we keep one copy on file, and we keep one here with you. If you’re . . . moved . . . for any reason, it travels with you. And it says—in the event that you stop breathing or your heart stops—you do not want to be resuscitated.”

  Silence.

  “What this means is, if you don’t sign a DNR, medical teams will make an effort to resuscitate you. Do you understand?”

  I could hear Emerson kicking his legs around on the bed, but he said nothing.

  “Do you think you want to sign a DNR?”

  There was no sound from the room. As I stepped forward to peek in, I was startled by Emerson’s voice, booming through the loft. “You know, I used to be a very healthy, active person!”

  To demonstrate his strength or his displeasure, or both, he lifted his arms and propelled himself to his feet in front of her. He didn’t bother to pull the blanket around himself as he took aim at the portable urinal. From the doorway, I could see his naked hipbones shaking.

  “I’ll give you some privacy,” said the nurse.

  She followed me to the kitchen, where one of the healthcare aides, Brian, was packing up sheets for the laundromat across the street.

  “Do you want a cup of coffee or anything?” I asked her.

  “Some water, please.”

  “Dr. Albas has had this conversation with him,” I said. “He may still be processing things. Can you come back another day? He’s probably tired.”

  Without answering, she asked me to direct her to the bathroom. When she returned, she collected her waiting glass of water without comment and carried it back to his bedroom.

  From the hallway, I overheard her speaking more patiently to him. “Are you comfortable?” she asked. “Do you need anything?”

  “I’m fine,” he insisted.

  “As I was saying,” she began again, “a Do Not Resuscitate order is a document you sign. It’s also called a DNR . . .”

  She was a woman with a job to do. She repeated her script exactly, like a telemarketer who had been coached by a lawyer. He listened wordlessly until she arrived once more at the critical question.

  “Do you want to sign a DNR, Emerson?”

  I could hear the cars and taxis rattling down Bleecker Street. A mundane accompaniment to a mortal decision. It did not escape me that, if I’d had that document, I would have been free. Yet he would rather do anything than face that piece of paper. Once again the slots made no sense.

  “Emerson?” asked the nurse.

  “I don’t not want that,” he answered miserably.

  I found a carbon copy of the form, signed with his scratch marks, taped to the wall in his bedroom after she left. He was still propped on the bed pillows, but I wasn’t sure if he was awake until he spoke:

  “She’s a death nurse.”

  “Did you make up that term?”

  “No, she shook my hand and said, ‘Hi, I’m a death nurse.’”

  I was relieved to hear his sarcasm.

  “What did she want?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I sat on his bed. “Did she tell you the same things Dr. Albas said, about the DNR?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did you tell her you knew all that?”

  “No.” He stared up at me, his face etched with self-doubt. “Beth, would you have signed it?”

  For a few minutes, I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know what to say or how to explain myself to him. During our conversations in recent weeks I’d had to silently acknowledge that, despite my own high regard for the state of being dead, the only death I knew was my own. The question entered my mind: What if the experience of death was fundamentally the way each person required it to be? In essence, this was possible—no more impossible than any other belief; in fact, it was a tenet of some belief systems and corresponded with the very existence of so many.

  “What if there’s something you want on the other side?” I suggested to him.

  He gave me a blank look. “And what would that be?”

  “Well, you talked about going to a cave that day, at Golden Hands. Or—I don’t know. If your afterlife fulfilled your highest desire, what would that be?”

  He looked at me now with curiosity, but this time he did not hesitate with his answer:

  “Staying alive for another fifty years.”

  People named their heaven all the time. There was no reason to doubt them, no reason to assume that the afterlife they anticipated did not materialize just as they believed it would. There was a change in state, that much was beyond question. After that? Perhaps those who expected to sleep for eternity would continue to sleep, and Emerson had always counted himself among them. But now he had named a different heaven, as paradoxical-sounding as it was. His version of heaven was what had happened to me: I had survived death. He could have his heaven, I realized—another fifty years on earth, maybe more—by taking over my life.

  I became distracted with this thought, exciting and slightly frightening as it was, like stepping into the racecar with him. But in any belief system there was a point when everything came down to faith, and this was what he lacked. He had long ago dismissed the pronouncements and traditions of the major religions as legends. Beyond this, he professed no curiosity about less mainstream beliefs concerning the afterlife—what he called “pseudo–science fiction.” As he’d insisted in our previous conversations, his faith encompassed nothing beyond his last breath. Still, faced with his dejected expression, I couldn’t help wishing he would consider an expanded view of his own situation.

  “What if some part of you wasn’t going to be part of your death?”

  “What do
you mean?”

  Before I could lose my nerve, I began to tell him about that night at the hospital with Dr. Forza in 1969, describing the events around my resuscitation in more detail than I had to Hélène Moreau, but omitting the complications I had experienced, for I had no desire to upset him.

  He listened attentively, like a child being told a ghost story, without a sound, his hands resting on the blanket over his legs. Encouraged by his interest, I went on to explain what had happened as best I could.

  “And now I’m here. Some—something—must exist in both states,” I concluded, “or there would have been nothing for them to bring back. Anyway, that’s how it was for me. You can choose whatever metaphor you want.”

  He considered this. “I can choose my own afterlife?”

  “What if you could?”

  Instead of answering, he asked me to turn on the television, where the Death Watch continued on all the network channels. He pulled his knees up to his chest and turned away. “I hate the way the news isn’t real hard news anymore,” he said.

  How many times had I read or heard about people passing over the threshold and then coming back? How many dramatic reenactments had I suffered through on TV? With each overlit, Vaseline-smeared account came a renewed frustration, a sadness at the way those shabby dramatizations turned death into a cliché.

  Maybe because I have the soul of an archivist, my experience of death was echoed in the sensations I came to feel whenever I entered a magnificent museum or library. In the silence, the immense silence of those vaults, there was not a nothingness but an encompassing orderliness—a clean, systematic transfer of data, the movement from artifact to archive. And within the vast halls of that ancient, etheric library resided the great metaphysical archive, the record of every thought, action and utterance impressed upon the ether. The immortal being of every human being. It was more than complete. It was the absence of any lack. In this perfection, the experience of peace was total. I cannot say what my feelings were, for I had no sense of myself as a separate being. There was nothing to fear, no plot to fulfill, no sense of a single record or piece of information missing. Everything that could ever be needed or desired was present.