“Part One: The Shouting”

 

I

 

Bedpans have never been a comfortable topic, yet they have somehow managed to leave an indelible mark upon the history of mankind. Some may say that the bedpan is a sensible upgrade from the chamber pot, redesigned with practical ergo dynamics to accommodate the modern hospital recumbent. With sleek and sporty edges the contemporary bedpan can make even the most unpleasant call from nature, a collect one; the collection being at the same time both relieving and mortifying. It has been the perpetual errand of the human race to find a way to collect wasted things into a tidy bucket, as if all dreadful indignities could be tucked away and disposed of without so much as troubling the universe with a single reverberation of suffering. Yet suppressed suffering reverberates nonetheless, building friction between the tectonic plates of sensibility, and quaking the precarious fault line suspended between truth and delusion.

 

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“Marge? Marge, I love you, sweetheart, but I think you may have fluffed this pillow into its eternal rest.”

Marge paused her bustling around the hospital bed, a hand still lingering on the pillow she had been rearranging repeatedly over the last minute.   An old woman was peeking out from a rumpled mess of covers, revealing a face with wrinkles to match her bedraggled cradle. Marge noticed the subtle wheeze that escaped with each exhale from her patient’s undulating chest.

“I’m sorry, Peggy, I just want you to be comfortable.”

“If you make me any more comfortable you’ll kill me,” Peggy said with a chuckle.

Marge frowned. Jokes like that were not so amusing in a cancer hospital. Peggy slid her furrowed hand across the bed, dragging the IV tube with it, to give a reassuring pat to Marge’s forearm.

“I’m fine, dear. Stop worrying. I know you have plenty of other patients that need some of that sweet attention of yours. You realize I have a new roommate, right?”

A curtained wall divided the room, obscuring the adjacent bed, but the sound of muffled music resonated across the expanse of tepid air and exposed the presence of another person.

“Don’t fret, Peggy. I’m on my way to check on her. “

Marge nudged the curtain back to reveal a slender girl, no more than twenty years old, sitting cross-legged in the bed. A pair of large headphones crowned the top of her head and she was staring out the window with a melancholic intensity.

“Rachel? Hi. Is there anything I can do for you, dear?”

Rachel reluctantly rolled her eyes across the simply furnished room and rested her gaze upon Marge; her icy glare contrasted the warmth of the room. Without removing her headphones she said in a loud voice, “Can you make my cancer go away? No? Well, no then, Marge, there is not really anything you can do for me.”

Marge swallowed and attempted to brush off the comment by turning her attention to the chart hanging from the bottom of the bed. Without looking up, she said, “Well, I’ll be just outside if you need me. Use the call button if you change your mind.”

The nurse turned to leave the room, exchanging a sympathetic expression with Peggy. And then the patients were suddenly left alone with their cancers, like prisoners sharing a cell on death row, their own biological cells wrestling in the trenches of their inward battlefields.

“It’s Rachel, right? I’m Peggy.”

Peggy had perched herself at the edge of her bed where she then attempted a series of repeated scoots, inching little by little until she could successfully reach the IV pole. Hearing no response from her roommate, she fumbled her feet into a pair of fluffy, pink slippers and stood up. Leaning on her pole for support, she began the shuffle toward an armchair positioned evenly between the two beds. The five-foot distance expended an equivalent five miles of energy from her wilting body. Peggy collapsed in a weary heap on the seat cushion.

“I have cancer, you know.”

The silence persisted.

“Are you from around here? I grew up in Seattle but ended up following my husband down here to Oregon. It sure is beautiful, that’s for sure.”

“A beautiful place to die, you mean.”

Rachel slid her headphones down around her neck but continued to stare out the window. “It rains a lot here,” she continued, “but today it’s sunny. I can’t quite figure out why. I mean, how can the sun shine in a place like this?”

Rachel’s hands were wringing the blankets that covered her lap, but she didn’t seem to notice. Her mind was in a different place; it had to go to a different place. Her thoughts could not be trusted otherwise. Ever since she had gotten her diagnosis six months ago she knew that she would end up here. This was the end, and yet, she couldn’t really decide what was ending. What was her life? What was the point? These cells that struggled against a rampaging cancer in her body were just that, cells, ignorant of their own futility in the grand, organic scheme. This old woman sitting in the chair was just another human being that happened to be decaying faster than the average person in her presence. Life was really nothing but a one-word oxymoron, for every second of life was simply one second closer to death, and though Rachel knew that life could be measured in seconds, she didn’t believe that she would ever get seconds at the table of life.

 

II

 

The lilting chatter of the birds sounded against the frosty windowpane, like a last, lurching effort of positivity leaning into Rachel’s dismal hibernation of despair. She had opened her eyes with a dejected resignation, surrendering herself to the deluge of anxious thoughts that christened her every waking moment. The machines beeped with cadenced certitude as the amber flecks of the rising sun scattered patterns of light upon the tile floor. Peggy was still slumbering in that envious place of other realities; whether entangled in the suffocating throes of a nightmare or reclining in pleasant reveries, Rachel did not know, but she suspected it was a happy dream that Peggy was having. She looked strangely peaceful in the twilight of the morning.

The harmonious rhythm of sounds was broken suddenly by a violent cough that erupted from Rachel’s chest. She reached to her bedside for water to quell the attack, and Peggy began to rouse from beneath her flimsy, quilted blanket.

“Are you ok, dear?” she croaked in a fractioned morning voice. “Do you want me to call the nurse?”

Rachel dabbed her mouth with a paper towel, hiding the trickles of red that moistened her lips. It seemed ironic. A bloody indiscretion had marked the beginning of both her life and her womanhood, and now it was marking the ending of it all, like a mocking, sanguineous circle of life.

“Don’t bother. It doesn’t matter anyway.”

“What doesn’t matter?” Peggy pressed.

“All of it. Everything. I’m dying. I was dealt some shitty cards and that’s all there is to it.”

“Of course things matter. You really think your life doesn’t matter?”

“That’s easy for you to say, you’ve lived a full life.”

“And haven’t you?” Peggy responded. “What? Do you think that youth is simply life on a diet? Fullness of life doesn’t come from age! It comes from your soul! You know, your soul, that nagging piece of eternity that swells against your chest and screams in your ears that you don’t want to die? You don’t want to die because somewhere in there you know that life is still good, even if there’s pain sometimes.”

“That’s a great speech,” Rachel said, “but I don’t have pain sometimes. I have it all the time, one hundred percent of the time. Do you know why I’m here? I’m here to consult one last time with the doctor about getting some life-ending drugs. I want to die in peace. I want to die soon. I don’t need your platitudes about beauty and the heavenly gates. Like I said, I was dealt a shitty hand. Sometimes when that happens the best thing to do is to end the game.”

“What’s this about games?” The doctor entered the room and approached Rachel’s bedside. “Am I interrupting a competition of some kind?”

“Believe me, Dr. Wells, it’s no contest,” Rachel replied.

“That’s because it’s not a game,” said Peggy.

Dr. Wells looked from one patient to the other, sensing the awkwardness of the atmosphere.

“Ok, I’m just going to close to curtain for a little bit of privacy.”

 

III

 

It seems strange to schedule your death, like it’s a game of squash or a hair appointment. The element of surprise is usually death’s modus operandi, but Rachel intended to be one step ahead. This would happen on her terms, in her time. She may not have had a choice to be created, but she could certainly control her existence from that moment onward. For Rachel, control was the only thing that gave value to her life.

She was pondering how and where she would like to die as the doctor was speaking, but her thoughts were frequently interrupted by episodes of coughing and more blood. She struggled to listen as Dr. Wells explained the rules and the risks.

“You need two witnesses to sign off before I can prescribe you the medication. If your nurse is willing then she can be one of the witnesses but you will need a second person.”

“A second person, huh?” Rachel asked. “Could you open the curtain for a sec?”

Peggy, who had been listening intently, scrambled to hide her eavesdropping by reaching for a book to read. A janitor emptied a trashcan in the background.

“Peggy,” Rachel said, “I know you could hear us. Listen, I know we got off on the wrong foot, but I would really appreciate it if you would just sign as a witness so I can get my medication. What do you think? Can you help me out?”

Peggy blinked much longer than is usually necessary, summoning some sort of inward resolve, and took a deep breath before responding.

“I do want to help you. I want to help you so much that I almost can’t stand it. And because of that, my answer has to be, it must be ‘no.’ I could never participate in your death, Rachel, not even for one second. Not when you still have a beautiful sliver of life to live.”

“Fine, Peggy, I’ll just get the janitor to do it.”

The janitor acquiesced, with only a brief signal of reluctance. After signing he mopped the floor where he had been standing, as if to erase any sign of footprints that might leave evidence of the transaction.

“It will be a few days to get the paperwork in order,” Dr. Wells said. “Try to rest in the meantime.”

“Oh, good,” Peggy chimed, as the doctor departed. “We still have some time then. I’ve so liked having a roommate to keep me company.”

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“Part Two: The Silence”

 

I

 

The nightmare came every night, well, almost every night. There were times, in extreme moments of anxiety, when Rachel was too afraid to sleep. She simply floated around the edges of her consciousness, trying to keep from drowning into nothingness, and not truly knowing what reality she was fighting to surface in.   But tonight, despite her struggles, she could not resist the impending slumber.

 

There was a chair. On the chair was a book. Rachel examined the furniture’s pillowed contours from afar as a singular, impatient desire simmered within her. She wanted to sit in the chair with every pulsing of her being and knew that she must do it at any cost. The chair was calling to her in an intimate way, like it knew her, inviting her to succumb to every longing, every fascination. But there was an obstacle. Rachel also greatly feared the book. For some unknown reason she felt that this manuscript would somehow be her destruction, the undoing of her entire mental framework. It would show her something she wasn’t ready to see. She didn’t know how she knew this, but it was evident (as she ached frantically for the chair), that she must dispose of the book.

“Just throw it away,” she said to herself, “don’t let this book impede everything you want.”

Mustering her determination, Rachel rushed to the chair and thrust the book aside with tightly clenched eyes. It slid across the floor, stopping in a corner of the room where it was still able to quietly observe her. It seemed it would patiently endure her defiance.

 

Rachel exhaled, smiled, and then sat, shifting her weight from side to side until her body was wrapped in the chair’s cushioned embrace–and yet, despite having everything that she wanted, she wasn’t at all comfortable. She was unable to shake the question that ruthlessly gnawed inside of her: “Why is the book looking at me?” She chided herself to stay put, but the question tormented her like a raging thirst. At last she could stand it no longer–Rachel had to retrieve it. She was ready to read.

Rachel attempted to stand but was halted. The armrests had come alive to restrain her, as if commanding her in dramatic irony to rest her arms. She looked pleadingly at the book. Its gilded cover was torn open as a sudden gust of wind filled the room. A soft glow emanated from the binding as the pages flipped in the rising whirlwind, but to Rachel’s dismay she could not see a single word of writing.

“Let me go!” she shouted, squirming in desperation, but her screams became muffled. Her body was slipping farther and farther into the depths of the chair. She tried to take a breath, but was suffocating in the softness.

And then the darkness came.

II

 

Rachel woke in that frightfully panicked state that follows a bad dream. It was still dark in the room. Her heart was pounding against her chest wall, trying to escape. And something else was pounding, a terrible, dreadful feeling pressing against the walls of her heart, demanding entry inside–indistinguishable yet frightening. It seemed strange that she was so afraid, because Rachel was exceedingly confident that death was finality: no tunnel, no clouds, no cherubs. If she was still able to feel terrified then that was good news, it meant that she was still alive. Except for Rachel, the act of living was a nightmare in itself, a nightmare she could never wake from.

Water. Swallowing. Deep breath. A sound? Gentle crying–soft but unmistakable. Peggy’s bed was empty. Still operating at a low threshold for panic, Rachel threw off her covers, grabbed her IV pole, and crossed the room. She found Peggy on the floor leaning with her back against the wall.

“Oh my gosh, Peggy, are you alright?” Rachel asked, crouching down beside her roommate.

The sudden voice in the darkness had startled Peggy and she quickly wiped the tears on the sleeve of her gown. “Oh, Rachel, hi. I’m so sorry; I didn’t mean to wake you, dear. It’s just…oh look at me, such a mess! Really, I’m ok though. I promise.“

“Did you fall?”

“Well, yes and no. I’m kind of down here by choice. It’s the bedpan’s fault you know.”

“The bedpan?”

Rachel wondered if Peggy had hit her head on the way down.

“It’s funny the things you take for granted when you are well, things like being able to walk to the bathroom. I just wanted that so bad, to be normal, that feeling of doing my business without making it anyone else’s business. But my legs just don’t have the strength anymore. I’m human too you know, Rachel. Just because I accept my situation doesn’t mean I always like it. We all have our own crosses to carry, and mine is that damn bedpan! It’s part of who I am now, I suppose. We’re joined at the hip, or well, pretty close to the hip if you know what I mean.”

Peggy began to laugh, slowly at first, as if testing the tension of her own feelings, but then the sensation grew into a wave of mirth that overtook her whole countenance. Rachel smiled uneasily for a few moments but then couldn’t seem to resist Peggy’s sudden outburst of contagious joy. Before long the both of them were engulfed in hysterics with tears of quite a different emotion streaming down their faces.

“I don’t even know why we’re laughing,” Rachel said, dabbing her eyes. “This is terrible.”

“Oh, every situation depends on the lens you look through,” Peggy replied with a wheeze.

They had quieted down at last and now the only sound Rachel could hear was the unbroken rattle of Peggy’s exhales.

“Well, it’s easy for you, Peggy; you seem to always have on rose colored glasses.”

“And you, dearest Rachel, seem to always have gray ones.”

Peggy lifted her hand to Rachel’s chin, turning the young girl’s head until their eyes were aligned. Then Peggy smiled at her, and the parapets of Rachel’s heart crumbled. In an overwhelming moment of intimacy she felt seen, perhaps for the first time in her life. Her arms crossed reflexively over her chest as if responding to an unconscious sensation of nakedness.

“Why were you crying?” Rachel asked, averting her eyes in embarrassment and rotating her body to match Peggy’s against the wall.

“I may be an overly positive old coot but I’m still human,” Peggy said. “Death still scares me a little bit, not because I am afraid of what comes next, but because I’m afraid to let this all go–this beautiful, comical life that I love.”

“But you’re suffering so much.”

“The whole world is suffering. Who am I to try and escape it when others have nobly died before me?”

Peggy had fixed an unflinching gaze on the crucifix reclined upon her bedside table. She spoke again in a shaky voice, “Please listen to me for a minute, Rachel, just once, for me.”

Rachel swallowed, hesitating momentarily, but then she nodded.

Peggy continued.

“That yellow brick road we travel on is sure full of trouble, dear. Life a’int easy but you can have a picnic almost anywhere if you choose to, even here on this hospital floor.” She took Rachel’s hand as she spoke. “Do you ever just turn everything off and listen to the sound of the nighttime chirping? It’s like the whole world is groaning and calling out for something more. There’s more out there, Rachel, and there’s more here, just you wait. That’s the honest to God truth. I know that I’m a nobody to you right now, just a stranger you met in your bedroom one day, but I think I may have come here to die with you, so that we wouldn’t be alone after all. But you got to stick it out with me, honey. You’re so beautiful and my eyes could use a little bit more beauty while I’m on my way out. It’s okay to suffer, you know. Nothing good ever came from pushing away the plate you’ve been given—or what did you call it? Your shitty hand?”

“But I guess this is just the world we live in, a world where pain has become inhuman. But gosh, isn’t it the most human thing in the world to pull your hand away from a hot stove? Sometimes it’s the bite of pain that let’s us know that we’re truly alive! You can’t keep all the good sensations and get rid of the bad ones. It doesn’t work that way. We need contrast or we’d never enjoy so much as a sunrise. Back in my day, people used to dig their shovels into that rocky dirt every time they wanted food or shelter or work or love. Now the world’s just gone soft and it feels like quicksand every time I put a pair slippers on these wrinkled feet.”

“In the past, mankind has exterminated people to try and cleanse the world and euthanized people to try and save the world, but no respectable person suggests that anymore. It’s inappropriate. No, now they just empathize you. They tell you it’s ok to leave by your own choice if that’s what you want, like your voluntary exit won’t rip a hole in the heart of the world. (It’s true that potholes happen, but we shouldn’t put ‘em there on purpose.) Well, either way, you end up dead on the doorstep of someone’s feelings. If feelings really deserved to have that kind of power I can tell you that there’d be graves just full of the idiot drivers I’ve wished dead in my days. No, they are trying to be nice to you, tell you that they care about your pain, as if they could understand even a little bit of what you’re going through. It’s that damn softness again! Everyone has gone soft and the world a’int a better place for it.”

“Have you ever thought about truth, Rachel? I’ll tell you what–truth isn’t a fuzzy blanket. It’s the burn in your muscles that let’s you know they’re working. You won’t find it at the bottom of that bottle, sweet girl. I promise it won’t quench that thirst.”

She squeezed Rachel’s hand.

“Listen, I need you to promise me something….”

 

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“Part Three: The Echo”

 

I

 

The air was crisp and uninviting as it swelled in spurting currents, lifting the blanket of deadened leaves for a spiraled moment of ecstasy before releasing them back to their mass grave upon the ground. They loudly crunched underneath Rachel’s feet as if to cry out in their final moment of composure that they still were; they would not be ground quietly into the bowels of the earth from which they came.

Rachel pulled an oxygen tank like a loyal pet, guarding her heels from the eager pursuit of death. Death was everywhere. It surrounded her in leafy piles, and beneath those leafy piles there were headstones, remnants of death’s address book, marking the resting place of human beings that once were, and now were not. She paused at a mound of freshly disturbed earth. A chill crept down her spine at the sight of the flat, embellished stone–and it wasn’t from the cold.

 

 

PEGGY WILSON

August 21^st, 1935-October, 5^th 2017

“Life’s a book–don’t ruin the ending.”

 

Rachel’s left arm was crossed in front of her chest, securing a tightly wrapped bundle. She stomped her feet to warm up and then, with caution, began to speak.

 

II

 

“Well, Peggy, I’m here. I promised I would come and here I am. I’m not sure why I’m even saying this out loud, it’s not like you can hear me, but I wanted you to know that I stick to my promises. Weird, right? I guess there is honor both among thieves and among those being robbed. It sure feels like we’ve been robbed, doesn’t it Peggy? Robbed of so many things, so many things taken from us without our consent, and the one thing I am actually able to consent to you want to take away from me.”

“You asked me before about truth, and I’ve been thinking about it. You want to know what the truth is? The truth is, I think death is the only certain thing we have. I mean, look where you are right now! Just last week you were living in absolute agony, and now it’s over, just like we knew it would be. And God, Peggy, how I envy you! You’re decaying in the warmth of the earth and here I am, decaying in the icy prime of my life.   What the hell is the prime of life anyway? Whose decision is it to label the best part? You would probably have called these last few weeks the best of your eighty-something years, even though you were defecating in a bucket and having to put up with my cynical ass. That reminds me, I brought you this, just like you asked.”

Rachel unfolded the bundle and placed a shiny bedpan down upon the pile of loose dirt. She knelt down and began to dig a shallow grave, tucking it in like a snug blanket over Peggy’s remains.

“What kind of a crazy person wants to be buried with their bedpan? Who wants to remember something like that? I don’t understand you, Peggy. How could you be so happy even though your life was being chiseled away with every single breath? You suffered all the way to the end and for what? Now I’m standing over your grave, tidying up for the grim reaper, and there’s nothing left of you! You’ve been snuffed out, your memory already decomposing in my mind.”

She sniffed and brought a hand to her eye to stop the tear that was rapidly forming. A smudge was left on her face from the mix of earth and water; the biting wind and fire blazing in her heart seemed to round off the raw, elemental tone of the moment. Suddenly something broke inside of her.

“Dammit, Peggy! Why’d you leave me here? I’m not like you, you know. I can’t do this. I can’t bear the pain anymore! I don’t have your strength! And now I have no one left.”

Rachel’s voice resonated across the cemetery as her volume increased; the sound of an echo made her feel like she was getting a response. It was somehow comforting to scream. Her frigid shield had melted under the relentless buffets of grief. Rachel crumbled into gulping sobs, broken by the rasp of her deep, drowning breaths. She pulled her oxygen tank closer and turned the knob to increase the flow of air. Then she continued.

“You would say that I should soak up every moment, that even in the midst of this misery I can find meaning. But what does it mean, Peggy, when I can’t get out of bed by myself? What does it mean when someone else has to wipe my ass and bathe my body and feed me? What does it mean when I’m totally dependent, like a leech sucking at the charity of others? What does that mean, Peggy? You’d want me to tough it out. But you see, Peggy, I can’t. I’m not like you. And despite the certainty and even comfort (that damn comfort) of death, I still don’t want to die!”

She bent over and supported her weight on her elbows, her fingers threading the long, brown strands of her now disheveled wig. Trembling palms covered her ears in agony as the echo of her cry bounded across the landscape.

“God, Peggy, you were right, I knew you were right. So tell me what the hell I’m supposed to do with this!” She thrust her hand into her pocket and pulled out a glass container.   It was her prescription.

“This is my liquid death, Peggy. Surprise! Well, should I take it? Should I pour it out? I don’t know what to do, but I can’t live like this anymore. How can this be the master plan for my life? I’m no saint, but I never did anything to deserve such an excruciating death.”

As if on cue, she was overcome by another coughing attack.

“Of course, it makes it easier to die if you think there is an afterlife. Well, is there? Are you somewhere now, Peggy, singing jingles with the seraphim? Because if you are then I need you to tell me how a loving God could subject me to such hell here on earth.”

“You know that night on the hospital floor when you grabbed my face and looked into my eyes? No one’s ever looked at me like that before. It’s like, well, it’s like you knew something, like you have some sort of secret power in your eyes. In fact, I think you could probably have convinced even a vampire that he had a soul. I mean, everyone wants a soul, even if they don’t believe in its existence. Everyone is longing for the promise of forever.”

Rachel’s face was streaming with tears as she twirled the vial between her fingers. She caught her reflection in the bottom of the bedpan: cheeks were sunken; darkened circles lined crestfallen eyes that frantically searched for meaning; lips were kissed with the rosy red remnants of oxygenated blood. She was teetering on the edge of life and death, trying to decide which way to jump. Finally, she began to gain ground on the horizon of her sanity. The clouds over her heart seemed to lift. She smiled and placed her hand one more time on Peggy’s resting place.

Then she uncorked the bottle.

 

III

 

Squirrels have a knack for relentlessly pursuing their desires.   One such agile creature darted up and down the crested edges of a tree, undeterred by the gusting breeze, when it suddenly noticed a glinting shine upon the grassy landscape. Without a second thought it raced toward the light to investigate. It was an unfamiliar object, a small glass vial, empty and discarded upon the ground. The squirrel pawed it carefully and, when nothing happened, it tested the bottle with its teeth. Nope. It wasn’t food. Not one to linger long in contemplation, the squirrel abandoned its quest and scampered away in search of the next craving.

A short distance away a figure lay prostrate across a fresh grave, weeping, separated from the great veil of death but flickering in and out of its oscillating proximity. Her fingers combed the soft mound of earth until she held two fistfuls of dirt in a death grip. She squeezed until her knuckles were white, transforming the soft, loose clay into a solid clump.

And then she let go.

 

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The morning dew sparkled upon the metallic surface of the bedpan, now partially covered with dirt after enduring a night of the shifting wind. Suspended at a jarring angle, it seemed to be attempting a methodical creep toward the bowels of the earth, discreetly returning to the dust, retiring at last from the relentless accumulation of waste and surrendering to the layered untidiness of decay.

“Let me be touched

By the alien hands of love forever,

That this eye not be folly’s loophole

But giver of due regard.”

Richard Wilbur, “The Eye”

THE END