You can read Chapters 1 through 4 here.CHAPTER 5
Over the phone, Neal said, "Always trust evangenitals to make God seem unattractive."
"Look," I said, "I
know it's ridiculous. But talking to her is very—I dunno.
Comforting. She has a coherent worldview."
Neal said, "Of course, she does. So did the Nazis. So do Scientologists."
"Well, I mean, it
is refreshing. You have no idea what it's like in there.
Nobody has any idea. It's fuckin' chaos, but somehow, we're supposed to normalize it. It's
demoralizing."
Neal said, "I know when
I'm demoralized, I always look to the Old Testament for the wisdom of barely literate scribes who knew that the sun revolved around the earth and thought goat sacrifice protocols were the apex of moral philosophy. That must be why today's Christianists are so forward-looking."
"You know what?" I said. "I can talk to whomever I want without your permission."
"But, see, you don't always do what's best for you. Just an observation."
“Maybe you and my therapist could just start talking to each other directly,” I said. “Circumvent the middleman. Leave me out of it.”
"You don't have a therapist."
"That's right! I don't!"
And then we started bickering about whether the N95 masks you could buy at Home Depot used the same filtering mechanism as the ones they distributed to nurses in the ICU.
###
That was one kind of friendship. Debbie Reynolds was another—situational, impersonal, the other end of the spectrum from the highly personal connection I had with Neal.
You can feel a great deal of affection for the people with whom you have impersonal relationships. But the essence of the relationship is transactional, the boundaries are clearly marked. You walk away from these interactions with a pleasant glow and no particular urgency to repeat them. Once we finished wrecking our lungs for the afternoon, I never thought about Debbie Reynolds, and if I were to quit my job suddenly, she would never, ever cross my mind again, except maybe as a tag to an amusing anecdote I'd find myself telling to someone I got stuck next to at a continuing education seminar.
We were work best friends. Everybody needs a work best friend, right? Somebody you can roll your eyes at during staff meetings when middle managers justify their employment by droning on and on about CYA disguised as new protocols. Someone with whom you can indulge in forbidden pleasures at the end of a long shift.
As spring turned to summer, the days grew longer, and work seemed to get harder. Any other year, the summer would have been luminous, but now it just stretched aimlessly in front of us like house arrest. After a claustrophobic day in the ICU, we scuttled home, locked the door, pulled down the shades, as though somehow that would keep COVID at bay.
At the end of our ICU shifts, Debbie Reynolds and I had taken to chain-smoking. Two cigarettes back-to-back instead of one. We'd light that second cigarette from the still-flaming butt of the first, almost as if we saw our matching smokers' coughs as an act of defiance, a Fuck You to COVID:
You want coughing? I'll give you coughing.One afternoon, Debbie Reynolds exhaled smoke, began coughing, and couldn't stop. Brought her hand up to her throat, gasped for air. Coughed some more. I watched, wondering whether there was something I should do. I couldn't think of what that something might be.
She reached into her Marlboro pack and fished out a third cigarette.
"Maybe you shouldn't," I remarked pleasantly.
She shot me a WTF look and clicked her lighter.
"Ever think of giving up smoking?" I asked.
She was coughing again. Dry cough this time. She held her hand up, motioning,
Wait. Took a deep breath. Held it.
"Why the fuck would I want to do that?" she asked finally.
I shrugged.
"I don't want to be old," she said. "I can't think of anything less appealing than living past 70."
"No?"
"Why? So I can become more and more invisible? So I can break my hip, get diagnosed with lung cancer? Develop dementia, get shut up in some Memory Acres where, if I'm really lucky, they'll serve red, green,
and orange Jello and one of the staff will speak English? No, thank you!"
So much for my career as a motivational smoking cessationist.
Next day, she wasn't at work. I didn't think anything of it. We may have been BFF in the Land of Code Blue, but we weren't joined at the hip. We didn't go out of our way to sign up for the same shifts, and we seldom shared details about our lives outside of work. If Debbie Reynolds decided to go on vacation, I'd only know about it if I noticed a tan under her PPEs when that vacation was over.
###
Three shifts passed with no Debbie. At the end of each shift, I'd wander over to the NO SMOKING sign, but found I had no real desire to smoke alone.
Then I had three days off in a row. I spent them binging the first three seasons of "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" and doomscrolling celebrity deaths on Facebook. My apartment smelled like old coffee and stale food delivered cold in paper takeout boxes, but Dead Pool options were practically limitless, thank you, COVID!
She still wasn't back when I returned to work. The charge nurse intercepted me before I could push through the ICU's double doors. "You didn't get the email?"
"What email?"
The charge nurse sighed. "I told them they should call you. You shouldn't be inside the hospital. Go to the ER and take a COVID test. Phone me with the results."
"Why?" I asked.
"Just do it," she said.
I knew better than to make a face. There was only one reason they sent ICU staff back outside.
Ten minutes later, my nose was burning, and the test was negative. I called the charge nurse and was summoned back to the unit. She watched me in the dressing room while I gowned and gloved.
"When's Debbie back here?" I asked.
The charge nurse sighed and looked grim. "I'm not supposed to say this because medical confidentiality, but you guys are pals, that's why we needed that COVID test. Debbie's here. In the hospital. As a patient. She's got it."
When I got done with work that day, habit took me wandering toward the New Millennium Kingdom table. Today's sign read
Pestilence Brings Hope For the Faithful, and the flaxen-haired girl had backup: the tall, stooped man I'd seen a couple of times before.
Her eyes brightened when she saw me. "This is the one I told you about," she said to the man as though I wasn't there. "The one the Lord keeps guiding our way."
"Not the Lord," I said. "My Prius. I walk past you because my car's in the lot behind you."
But the man's eyes had fixed upon mine. "The Lord is as likely to work through the random placement of an automobile as He is through a burning bush."
I supposed that could be true, assuming one believed in the Lord.
"What you're seeking to discover is a thing you've always known," the man continued. "There are no coincidences. There are only signs. Signs that lead to the one true destination if you follow them. I know you know that—" he leaned over to peer at the name badge still pinned to my scrubs—"Grazia." He mispronounced it.
"Signs, huh?" I said. "The universe needs clearer handwriting."
"Hard day?" the girl asked sympathetically. "You work in the ICU. They all must be hard."
And suddenly, my eyes welled up with tears.
"You need fellowship," the girl said softly. "I'm Sister Penury. This is Brother Malachi. We have dinner every night. We break bread together at a big table, like a family. We laugh. We talk about what God is doing. You don't have to go back to your empty rooms. You don't have to be alone."
"Thanks," I said, "but I have a frozen pizza and a clinically significant relationship with Bravo waiting for me at home."
Brother Malachi's smile was pitying. “You hide behind jokes. It's a dissociative behavior. Did you know that? I used to be a therapist. I recognize it." He leaned in closer. "You joke because you’re afraid. You know that, don't you? You see death every day. You know the world is ending. And that's the world you picked to be in.”
"I have to go now," I said.
It was all I could do not to weep.
This is the difference between crying and weeping: When you cry, you're enjoying it; when you weep, you're not.
###
"What if they're right?" I said to Neal on the phone that night.
"What do you mean, 'What if they're right?'" he snapped. "They're
not right."
"But what if they are?" I said. "What if we choose the lives we lead?"
Neal snorted. "You mean, back in Bardo? 'Gee', you tell that reincarnation broker, 'what I'd
really like to be is a veterinarian in the Yorkshire Dales circa 1938!'
"'Nah,' she says. '
You should consider becoming Cassandra while Western civilization collapses around you! But mind the trigger warning:
This material contains themes of intense sadness, depression, hopelessness, and emotional despair.'"
"You weren't there," I said. "You didn't see his face—"
"And I'm glad I wasn't," Neal said, "because I probably would have slugged the asshole, and then the Bar Association would have to put me on probation. Let me preemptively explain my motivation: I hate and abominate the assertion that people chose to be rounded up, stripped naked, starved, and shoved into gas chambers."
"You didn't hear his voice," I said. "The absolute certainty in his voice—"
"Oh, for God's sake." Neal sounded really angry. "He's a hustler, Grazia. That's what hustlers sound like. He's got your number. What? You think all hustlers are Nigerian princes writing flowery emails?"
"Don't you dare condescend to me!"
"I
will condescend to you if you persist in letting assholes crawl into your head—"
Very coolly, very gently, I depressed the disconnect button on my phone.
For the first hour and a half, I was determined not to pick up the phone when he called back.
At the two-hour mark, I decided I'd pick up the phone, but I'd be icy, punctiliously polite.
After three hours, I decided he was my best friend. When best friends hurt your feelings, you're up front about it. You clear the air, so communication can improve.
Only he didn't call back.
Not that night.
Or the next night.
Or the next night.
Or the next.
###
I started parking my Prius two blocks away so I wouldn’t have to walk past the New Millennium Kingdom table. Without a work best friend to commune or commiserate with, even telepathically through layers of PPE, the hours in the ICU dragged. Each moment felt like Sisyphus's rock. Suction, prone, re-diaper, hang IVs. Repeat. Talk to anxious loved ones on the phone. Come up with fifty ways to say, "Gee, I don't know," when someone asks, "But they
are improving, right? Aren't they?"
Debbie Reynolds was on the third floor. Visitors were not allowed, not even visitors who worked elsewhere in the hospital. I talked to her a couple of times on the phone. Mostly, she was pissed because there was no way she could smoke. She could barely speak a complete sentence without spasming into strange, raspy, COVID coughs.
"This sucks," she'd say. "They're not doing anything for me—" And then her words would sputter into coughing.
"Well, they must be doing
something—"
"Remdesivir." The final "r" of the word rode out on one long wheeze. "So they have to check my creatinine fifty times a day. Fuck this place. They keep trying to force me to drink
Ensure—"
"Nine grams of protein in an eight-ounce bottle!" I'd say.
Then we'd run out of things to talk about.
One morning, I tried to call Debbie Reynolds, but I couldn't get through. "Transferred. She's being transferred," the third-floor charge nurse told me fretfully.
Thirty seconds later, the motorized doors swung open, and Debbie Reynolds was being wheeled into the ICU on a gurney. Her skin was grey. Her eyes had that panic of someone who has forgotten how to inhale.
"Pulse ox 89% with rebreather on 15 liters. Acute hypoxic respiratory failure," shouted the ICU attending. The crash cart was right by the double doors. He reached for the tray.
Rapid sequence intubation. I knew the drill—and so did Debbie Reynolds. Between wheezes, I could hear her gasping: "Hail Mary, full of grace—" in time with the cardiac monitor's beeps.
The overhead lights exploded into full brights. The attending hesitated for a moment, laryngoscope in hand: "Anyone know her MOLST status?"
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Pellegrini," I hissed. "She doesn't want to die."
The intubation seemed to go smoothly. At first. Nurses shot her up with etomidate and succinylcholine; Pellegrini slid the tube between the cords and into her trachea on the first try. I was the team member charged with monitoring vitals and pulse oximeter stats: "Heart rate 130. Pressure 150 over 90. Sats 92% on 100%—"
Then her pressure tanked. MAP in the 60s and falling.
"Fuck," said Pellegrini softly.
Monitors exploded into alarms. Pellegrini barked orders. The nursing brigade scrambled with pressors and fluids.
It took us an hour and a half to stabilize her, and when we were finally done, I looked down at Debbie Reynolds shrunken within a tangle of tubes and lines, motionless except when the ventilator moved her chest, jaw slack, mouth taped open around that endotracheal tube, the sour funk of antiseptics radiating off her, and I asked Pellegrini, "She's not going to make it through the night, is she?"
He glared at me. This was one of those questions you're never supposed to ask.
But as it turned out, I was wrong about making it through the night. She didn't even last through the end of the shift.
###
The charge nurse made me leave early.
"But my shift doesn't end till 4," I said.
"Just
go," she told me.
I couldn't tell whether this was compassion or disapproval.
Outside the hospital, it was the most beautiful day in the history of the universe. Lambent blue skies. Birds singing. Purple butterfly bushes and lavender hibiscus trees perfuming the air. Squirrels on treasure hunts scampered across the lawns that bordered Wiltwyck Hospital's historic old wing. Even the patients in the makeshift ER tent waiting to be processed for COVID seemed to be having a good time, their voices wafting merrily on sun-kissed summer breezes. Someone was laughing too loudly at a punchline I couldn't hear.
The details of this glorious present tense tried to paint a mural on my brain, only my mind was a no-stick surface, everything was sliding and jumbling. I'd forgotten where I'd parked the Prius. I found myself walking past the New Millennium Kingdom table.
Today's sign:
Everyone Thinks They Have More Time. But Are You Sure You Do?"
There you are," Sister Penury said as if this chance encounter was a rendezvous we'd set up earlier that morning.
I knew then instantly that the universe had organized the entire day around this moment. The entire day? My entire life. I had paused in front of the table because pausing in front of that table was inevitable; it was going to happen, it was happening, it had already happened. Time was no longer a factor.
Sister Penury had been packing up the pamphlets as though she'd already known I would be the last customer of the day. Brother Malachi materialized at her shoulder, holding out a crinkled paper cup filled with a pale liquid he had poured from a thermos. "Chamomile tea," he said. "You look like you could benefit from some soothing."
"It's lasagne night!" Sister Penury bubbled. "I do love lasagne. When I prayed to God to divest me of all human alliances, He left me with lasagne! Funny, huh? He works in mysterious ways!" She chuckled and shook her head fondly.
"Our house is a sanctuary where warriors rest," Brother Malachi said. "No cell phones. No computers. No televisions. No alarms. A break from the battlefield. A place for sleep, and when you're ready, fellowship with other warriors. When you're ready."
The chamomile tea tasted good. Sister Penury had rolled up the banner; still laughing, she struggled to fold the table's legs.
"I want to go home," I said. Though when I pictured my apartment—the unwashed dishes, the wilting plants, the bed I hadn't made in three days—I wasn't sure I wanted to go
there.
"Of course, you do," Sister Penury said. "Of course, you do."
"But what about my car?" I asked.
Sister Penury's laughter was heartier than ever. "Pick it up tomorrow."
The car Sister Penury loaded the displays into was a silver Honda hatchback with a mismatched hubcap, maybe 10 years old. There was half a case of bottled water on the back seat and two rickety-looking folding chairs bungee‑corded in the cargo area. SpongeBob stickers from another life decorated the dash, and behind the steering wheel sat Brother Malachi. "It's a short ride," he told me as though that was the main reason to get into the car.
The sun slid lower as we left the hospital grounds. Two sharp turns and then we were on Broadway, where Neal and I had tromped together so often. We passed the Old Dutch Church. "Calvin Vaux designed that," I said.
"Calvin Klein?" said Sister Penury. "I didn't know he was an architect."
The car angled right onto a side street. I recognized the crumbling Italianate row houses. We were in the Roundout District, where the ghost of the old canal still haunted evenings with the unmistakable scent of brackish water.
When the car finally stopped, I recognized the house it had pulled up in front of, too. The derelict mansion with the steeply pitched roof and the wraparound porch. That day in October when I'd seen it first was the day I'd first met Neal. Then it had been grim and bare. Now vines threaded the decaying balusters, and nettles, briars, and crabgrass choked the formal garden. It was still grim, though.
Brother Malachi made an elaborate pantomime of opening my side of the car.
"Welcome home," he said.
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