by Janis Thomas
His eyes red rimmed and puffy, Colin finally drags himself away from Josh and comes to me. He speaks to me as though I am a very small child.
“Emma. Do you need something? What can I do for you? Shall I get another chair? You can sit over here if you like.”
“I don’t want a chair, Colin. Thank you.”
He is surprised by my steady tone, the calm in my voice. “Okay. We should talk. When you’re ready.”
“We don’t need to talk. You and I both know what we have to do.”
A sigh of relief. My husband is glad that I’m the first to say it.
“Dr. Sadal said his . . .” He stops, clears his throat. “Josh’s organs could help a lot of people.”
“I don’t care about other people,” I say.
Colin looks confused. “But we agree about what to do.”
I nod.
“Because we can’t let him go on like this.”
I nod.
“It’s the right thing to do, isn’t it, Em?”
“You need to call Simone’s mother and have her go to the rec center to get Katie. I don’t want her driving. But she needs to be here to say goodbye.”
Colin’s tenuous hold on his emotions loosens, and a sob escapes him.
“You have to be strong, Colin.” For possibly the first time in your life.
He sucks in a few breaths then sets his jaw. “I’ll make the call now.”
When the door closes behind him, I turn back to Josh. On legs that feel disconnected from my body, I approach the bed. I gaze down at my son, my beautiful, brilliant, lovely baby boy. He is no longer who he was yesterday, nor is he who he was the day before that, before my wish. Even though his eyes are closed, I can see that the spark, the energy, the intangible remarkable essence that made him who he was—in both incarnations—is gone.
As I watch his chest rise and fall, rise and fall, false memories of new Josh encroach upon my thoughts. I block them.
In my mind, I see him as he was: an infant struggling to orient himself in his crib, unable to roll over, unable to crawl; a toddler who could not walk, whose arms and hands could not grasp the stuffed animals and building blocks, who couldn’t feed himself or potty train; the child stuck in a wheelchair, watching the kids play ball in the street; the adolescent who busied his mind by learning as much as he could about a world with which he would never be able to fully connect. A boy whose smile lit up a room, whose humor surprised and enchanted everyone he met, whose ability to forgive other people’s cruelty was immeasurable, who loved me desperately and trusted me implicitly.
The boy I betrayed.
I sit down hard upon the chair beside the bed. I ease my hand over the bed rail, then close my fingers over Josh’s left hand. A small part of me hopes for a reaction, a twitch, a flinch, a slight hitch in his breath. Nothing. His skin is cool to the touch.
I have the power to wish this away. I could delete the accident, remove the car from my son’s path. But within me lies a cold certainty that no matter what I wish, my son will be taken from me. I can erase a bicycle accident, an overpowering riptide, a stray bullet, an overdose. The dark specter will come for Josh. Again and again. And I will have to replay this scene. Again and again. How many times can I endure his loss? Once is already too many.
“I’m sorry, Joshy,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry.”
I know this boy in this bed in this hospital room can no longer hear me. But perhaps my words will be carried to wherever he is now. I pray.
I feel the threat of tears. They burn like acid in my eyes. I force them back.
With my free hand, I reach for the ventilator. My fingertips brush against plastic. I lay the pad of my index finger over the small black button on the bottom of the machine. I squeeze Josh’s hand, then press the button until I hear the click.
The ventilator pump rises and falls. The heart monitor beeps. For a moment, nothing changes.
And then.
The space between the beeps lengthens. The pump rises and falls lethargically.
My own heartbeat quickens as Josh’s heartbeat slows, slows, and finally stops. The pump deflates to the bottom of the shaft and stays there. The heart monitor blares angrily.
I stare at my son as his last breath leaves his body.
Aye luh y’, Maah.
“I love you, too, Josh.”
Josh is gone.
Colin walks into the room, and his face goes white at the sound of the alarm. I remove my hand from Josh’s lifeless fingers and gain my feet as my husband rushes to the bed.
“Emma, no!” Colin cries. “What have you done?” He grabs me by the shoulders and shakes me, his bloodshot eyes boring into mine. “How could you do this? How? Why?”
I cannot find the words to explain it to him. He wouldn’t understand.
I had to do it, Colin. It was my punishment. It was my privilege.
The auburn-haired nurse enters and hurries to Josh. “Oh, dear,” she says, stricken. She shuts off the heart monitor, and the sudden quiet is as loud as thunder.
“He was my son, too, goddamn it! I wanted to say goodbye. And Katie. What about his sister? You stole our goodbyes, Emma.”
His anger finds nothing in my expression upon which to feed. I step out of his grasp.
“He was already gone,” I say.
Colin looks at me for a long moment, clinging to his indignation for as long as he can, perhaps hoping to stave off his grief. It doesn’t last. His shoulders drop in defeat and his chest spasms as he tries to hold back his sobs. He pushes me aside, then throws himself over Josh.
“Josh, Josh, I love you. I love you so much. You were a great kid. You are a great kid. I’m so proud of you. So proud.”
The door to the room opens again. Dr. Sadal walks in, and the auburn-haired nurse immediately crosses to him.
“Mrs. Davies turned off the ventilator,” she tells him in a hushed whisper.
He looks at the floor. “We weren’t able to alert the transplant team.”
The nurse nods and leaves the room. I walk over to the doctor. He is trying to conceal his disappointment. He can’t bring himself to look at me.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Mrs. Davies,” he says quietly.
I don’t respond. The walls are breathing. The ceiling is pulsating. I have to get out of here. I move past the doctor, out the door and down the hall, gaining speed with each stride. Past the long counter, past the doctors and nurses and orderlies, the curtained areas, past reception and through the wide double doors of the ER entrance. Out into the open I go, finally free of that treacherous place.
On the other side of the parking lot is a wide green belt, lush and bucolic and so at odds with the stark hospital interior that it almost seems like a mirage. I run toward it, stagger, lose one shoe, kick off the other, the soles of my feet scraping across the pebbly macadam. The pain is an abstract. I reach the sidewalk and keep going until I am in the middle of the grass. I stand, my feet throbbing and bleeding, my head pounding. I look up at the sky, at the blinding sun that burns my pupils to pinpoints. Anguish rises from my belly and escapes my mouth as a scream and goes on and on until my vocal cords are raw.
“Please!” I rage at the universe. “Change the rules. Let me take back my wish. I take it back. I take them all back. Please!”
Suddenly, what’s left of my strength, my sheer force of will to remain in control, abandons me. I drop to my knees, then fall face forward onto the grass. Wrenching convulsions rack my body. I submit to them, allowing the hurricane of grief to take me.
Colin and Kate are given time to say their goodbyes. My husband has chosen not to tell Katie that I turned off the ventilator before she could arrive, and although I should be grateful, I’m ambivalent.
Katie is distraught and disbelieving, in turn. She doesn’t know what to do with her hands. Her mouth opens and closes like a guppy’s. She blinks rapidly and repeats the phrase Oh my God over and over again. She hiccups in order to breathe. Her grief is like a br
anding iron fresh from the fire stamped upon my flesh. To temper the searing heat of guilt, I fill my head with questions. How would Katie be acting if she were confronted with the death of old Josh? The same? Would she collapse with utter despair? Would she be screaming like a banshee? Or would her pain be so excruciating that she could only survive it by containing, suppressing, and compartmentalizing it?
I have no answers, and when I run out of questions, I excuse myself from the room. I can’t bear to listen to Katie’s last words to Josh. I want to tell Colin to give her some privacy, but he denies me his attention, averting his eyes whenever his gaze lands too close to me.
I stand sentinel outside the door. Hospital staff members come and go. Some grace me with expressions of sympathy. Others glare at me accusingly. I am the woman who let others, strangers, die by letting go of her son. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. Josh is gone. Old Josh. New Josh. Both gone.
I stare at my bare feet and think back to that first morning when I fell on the uneven bricks of the cobblestone path in front of my house. The memory is washed out, faded, with a layer of new memories obscuring it, but when I concentrate, I can clearly see the path and the tree and the roots and the abrasions on my knees.
I want this to be a dream. I don’t care whether I’m crazy or sane. If I’ve lost my mind, so be it. I don’t mind being insane if the trade-off is a living son.
There was a movie many years ago about a Vietnam vet who came back from the war and his life was filled with lunacy and horror as he struggled to make sense of it. But none of it really happened. The whole of his coming home was only in his mind as he lay on his deathbed in a medical tent in Vietnam. Deep down, I cradle the hope that this is my story as well. I wouldn’t mind dying. Especially now.
But lunacy or dream or deathbed vision, I can do nothing but go forward. Now without Josh.
I hear a familiar voice and glance down the hallway. There she is, pushing an older man in a wheelchair toward a curtained area. The image of her hasn’t faded since I eliminated her from our lives. Lena.
My feet move toward the young woman of their own volition.
“Lena,” I cry. “Josh is gone.”
She turns her head sharply in my direction, then narrows her eyes at me. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?” The man in the wheelchair moans.
I shake my head, then look at the floor, the walls, the man in the wheelchair. He moans again. Lena looks at me as though I am a problem to be solved. A hint of recognition passes over her features, then is gone. She averts her eyes and continues into the cubby. A nurse tears the curtain closed behind her with a squawk.
I fall back against the wall and take a few deep breaths to steady myself. A moment passes. I withdraw my cell phone from my purse and bring up my search engine. I type in my zip code, then funeral home. I force myself to disassociate, to pretend I’m playing a role in some black comedy, to pretend that this isn’t really happening.
Then I make the call.
Colin decides that he will stay at the house. This isn’t a suggestion, and I don’t bother to object. It wouldn’t do any good. He says he’ll sleep on the couch, and I nod.
Simone’s mother, a reserved Asian American woman with worried eyes and jet-black hair, offers to take Katie, Colin, and me home. She doesn’t speak a word the entire ride. Her skin is blanched from her cheeks to her chest, and she bites her bottom lip to keep from crying. She didn’t know Josh, but she is a mother, and this death is too close to home. Who knows when the dark specter might come for one of her own? She pulls away from the curb a split second after we alight from her car, as though having a dead child might be contagious if she were to linger too long at our house. I don’t have a chance to thank her, but I probably wouldn’t have. My voice has abandoned me again.
Katie walks sluggishly to the porch. She is not speaking, either. Her tears are silent but copious, two steady streams that cut across her cheekbones and drip from her chin. She swipes at them absently. I open the front door and watch her move to the stairs and climb them, slowly, painstakingly, as if every step is a monumental feat. I realize how very alike my daughter and I are in grief. Every cell in my body weighs a hundred pounds. But I have to keep moving. I am the fish at the bottom of the ocean. If I stop moving, the leviathan will swallow me whole.
I go to the kitchen. Colin follows me. The house looks different. Not different in the way in which my wishes affected it. The light is different. Everything—the walls, the furniture, the countertops—looks gray. A veil of sorrow skews my vision.
Colin falls into a chair at the kitchen table as I move to the coffeemaker. I feel his eyes on me as I go through the motions of filling the carafe and measuring the grounds. I hear him sigh and shift in his seat.
“We have to decide whether we want an open casket or closed,” he says. His words taste like chalk in my mouth. “When do we need to get his clothes to the funeral home?”
I depress the button on the coffeemaker and think of the ventilator. “Friday.”
“Should we give them his suit? He didn’t wear it very often.”
Josh never owned a suit. Old Josh never owned a suit.
“Maybe we should take his favorite Dockers and that flannel shirt he always wore.”
I intuit that Colin is trying to make a joke, but I’m not in on it because I have no idea which clothes he’s talking about. A correlating memory presses against the corners of my mind, but I push it away. I want to remember my Josh.
“The suit is more appropriate,” I say.
I stand at the counter, waiting for the coffee to brew, waiting for the nightmare to end, knowing it won’t.
“I forgive you, Em,” Colin says.
I tear my eyes away from the filling carafe and gaze at my husband. He stares at me, almost tenderly.
“I know why you did it. I’m not saying I’m happy about it or that I wouldn’t change it if I could. But I understand and I forgive you.”
I shake my head. “Don’t forgive me, Colin. I don’t deserve it.”
I push away from the counter and head for the stairs, leaving Colin alone with a pot of coffee and his forgiveness.
I stop at the top of the stairs and listen for my daughter. Soft mewling comes from behind her closed door. I go to the master bedroom and sit down on the bed, then open the nightstand drawer and pull out my journal. I open the book to the last entry, then grab my pen and begin to write. About Josh. My Josh. I may have lost him, but I refuse to lose the memory of him.
When I finish, the bedroom is almost dark. I gently place the journal back in the nightstand, then curl up into a fetal position and close my eyes. I don’t make any wishes.
Josh comes to me in my dream, as he was, a beautiful boy burdened by a terrible disorder and a wheelchair, but little else. He smiles his crooked smile at me and reaches out to me with his clawed hand, but says nothing.
I awaken to the sound of steady breathing on the other side of the bed. I roll over to see Katie lying next to me, facing the far wall. I scoot over to her and lace my arm though hers, clenching her middle tightly. She stirs but doesn’t wake up. My breathing soon slows to match hers, and a short while later, I fall asleep. This time, I don’t dream.
THIRTY-FOUR
Wednesday, August 10–Friday, August 12
Over the course of the next three days, I am more camera than person. I take snapshots of the events around me, but I do not connect to them emotionally in any way. If I do, I will completely unravel. I can’t let that happen. I made a wish that killed my son. It is my duty to see that he is properly laid to rest.
Louise Krummund is the first to appear at our door Wednesday morning. Spencer and Steven trail behind her, and between the three of them, they carry two casseroles of indeterminate nature, two loaves of bread, and a large plastic container of salad. I don’t know how she found out about Josh. I don’t ask. It doesn’t matter. I summon as much grace as I can and allow her to bring the food into the kitchen. She titters nervously,
looking to and fro like a frightened squirrel and talking incessantly. I understand her unease. What does one say to a grieving mother? The cliché bears truth. We are not meant to bury our children. She has three. She can’t imagine one being taken.
On some level, I recognize that Louise is a good person, that she has a big heart, that her simple mind and simple beliefs about the world around her do not preclude her from caring. I think we might have been friends, not best friends or bosom buddies, but companions. Another sailing ship.
I thank her for the food, then gently dismiss her. She takes no offense.
Val and Wally come together. They bring no food, thankfully, but they hand me an envelope full of gift cards from several nearby eateries, the local market, Trader Joe’s. They tell me the office staff at Canning and Wells pooled funds to purchase the cards. There is a goodly amount represented. I thank them and invite them to the service on Saturday. I don’t invite them in. I don’t inquire about my status at the firm. I don’t inquire about anything. They take the hint and graciously leave.
Colin and I make the arrangements together, but with as little interaction as possible. Neither of us can believe this is really happening, that we are hosting an event that is neither birthday party nor graduation, but instead the burying of our son. We go to the funeral home and discuss with a somber gentleman our desires for the service. He assures us that the chapel can take care of everything we need. Casket, flowers, memory cards, programs, guest book, boutonnieres for the pallbearers. My marketing brain seizes upon an ad line: One-stop shopping for all your funereal needs.
We choose the words we want spoken by a pastor who has never met Josh. Generic, complimentary, full of elegiac verbiage about the tragedy of a promising life cut so short. Josh was a terrific young man (questionable), a good student (lie), excelled in sports (did he? The trophies prove it), had wonderful friends (were they wonderful, or were they shits?).
