And selfishly, now that it’s done, now that we’re atthe endas Beckett says, all I want is more time with him. Another week. Another month. I just want more time.
“Didn’t run from this fight either. Just fought it my own way.” His gaze begs me to understand. Even though it kills me, Ido. I understand living and dying on one’s own terms. “Wanted to spare you both this part,” he says. “But now I don’t know if I can. I don’t think I’ll have the strength to—” He stops and swallows, a muscle twitching beside his mouth.
“Is there anything we can do for you?” Maggie asks. “Anything we can get you?”
“You can get me the hell out of here. Don’t want to die in a hospital.”
Her nostrils flare as she continues to fight tears. “We’ll talk to Dr. Beckett about taking you home.”
“No.” He shakes his head against the pillow. “Don’t want to die at the cottage either. That’s a place for life, not death.”
“You wanna go to the swamp house.” I say it as a statement, not a question. I recall what he told me when he stayed there with me the night his father died. I didn’t think much of his words at the time. Reckoned he was being introspective and a bit fanciful. But now I know better.
This place is so calm,he said.Peaceful. A person could die happy out here in the cool and the quiet.
Now he searches my eyes. “Would that be okay?”
It’s hard to speak past the lump in my throat, but I manage a raspy, “Yeah, man. That’s okay.”
Wetness pools in his eyes as he squeezes my hand. “Thank you.”
Maggie loses the battle with her own tears. A giant sob escapes her.
“Maggie.” Cash turns to her. “Don’t be afraid. It’s okay. I’m okay. I—”
Something strange passes over his face, and then his eyes roll back in his head. When he starts convulsing again, I run for the door, yelling for a nurse.
Chapter Eighty-nine
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Maggie
No one tells you how horrible—and yet oddly mundane—it is to wait for someone to die.
It’s been nine days since we moved Cash from the hospital to the swamp house. Nine days of him never regaining consciousness. Nine days of him lying in that big, brass bed slowly slipping away. Of hospice caretakers going in and out. Of sleeping with Luc in a tent on the front porch so Jasmine, the night nurse, can have the couch. Of breakfasts and lunches and dinners. Of laundry, work, errands, and all the details of life that must go on despite the looming specter of death.
Talk to him, one of the nurses told us on the first day.Hearing is the last sense to go. Talk to him about anything and nothing at all.
That’s what we’ve done. We’ve said all the things,allof them, until we’ve run out of words. We’ve reminisced about the good times and absolved each other for the bad. Luc has played his guitar, all of Cash’s favorite songs. And I’ve read aloud each of the letters I wrote to him and those I wrote to Luc too.
For the first few days, I couldfeelhim in the room with us. Even though he never opened his eyes. Even though he never smiled or spoke. His life force was there. Big and powerful. Apresence.
But as the days have worn on, all the big and small things that made himhim, that made him special and wonderful and unlike any other, have slowly drifted away until all that remains is the husk of his body and a yawning Cash-shaped chasm in the center of my heart.
I’ve watched Luc hold his hand for hours. Sitting there, keeping vigil, as if he doesn’t care if he ever does anything else. Giving all of himself. Nothing held back. And my love for him has grown in direct proportion with my sadness.
You really get toseea person in times like these, past all the hooey and hogwash to the heart of them. Even though I’ve always known Luc’s heart is a wonder, I didn’t realize what a miracle it truly is until these past nine days.
Then there’s Cash’s heart…
“It’s strong,” Jasmine told us only yesterday evening after listening to it through her stethoscope. “It hasn’t skipped a beat.”
“I’m not surprised.” Luc sighed heavily. “It’s always been his best quality. Now maybe it’s his curse. It’s keeping him hanging on even after the rest of him has given up.”
“Do not go gentle into that good night, but rage, rage against the dying of the light,” Jasmine quoted Dylan Thomas, having picked up on Luc’s love for poetry. “I didn’t know Cash in life. But in death, he’s a rager.”
That made Luc smile. If nothing else, even if she hadn’t been so kind to us and so gentle and attentive to Cash, I would have loved her for that.
