Leaving the Building

         Tom died last night.
         Well, I suppose he did. I guess he did. That's what I was told. They told me he had died. Called me up and said he had stopped breathing and an ambulance had come and taken him up to the hospital and when he got there he still wasn't breathing. And so he died. Because that's what happens when you stop breathing. Everyone knows that. You need to breathe. You hold your breath and the pressure increases in your chest and eventually your brain tells you to not do such a silly thing and makes you stop.
         That's how it works. Simple. Life at its most elegant.
         Except I was wrong apparently. Because I'm in this room by myself and Tom is there too, lying on the bed, caught in a cocoon of tubes and wires and beeping machines and nobody has come in to tell me that he died.
         I was wrong. I heard them wrong. When they called me I was told that he had stopped breathing. Not that he had died. Just stopped breathing. But he never started again. And yet he's here. We're alone in the room, just him and I. The room seems too small for both of us, but I'm not really sure which one of us isn't supposed to be here. I keep looking at the bland paint coloring the walls, the lights that seem to keep flickering just out of the range of my vision, needles stabbing into my head, daring me to get a headache. Trying to look at anything but Tom.
         But I can't help glancing over at him. Like a magnet he seizes my gaze. I feel like if I resist I'll wrench my neck and wind up looking anyway. He'd probably find my struggle to avoid staring at him amusing. Crap like that he used to find funny. But I doubt he even knows I'm here. He hasn't said a damn word since I got here and I don't expect him to. I really don't expect him to say anything ever again and I'm basically here trying to get myself used to that fact.
         Because he really is dead. Nobody just wants to admit it. Last night they brought him here and rammed his corpse up to a bunch of machines and turned them on and called it life support. And that's not true. That's not life. I'm pacing the room and the only sound is the soft wheezing of his false breath, the humming of the machines, the impossible beeping language of the devices that are supposed to be keeping him alive. I wish there were other sounds, I wish I was wearing those boots I got for Christmas one year that make that God awful tapping noise whenever I walk on solid ground and everyone hears me coming from a mile away. I hate those boots, not because they're noisy, but because they're ugly and they hurt my feet. My girlfriend tells me that I just have to break them in. I don't think so. I don't think that kind of patience exists. But I wish I had them now, because then I could pace and the pacing would drown out these infernal noises and I wouldn't have to listen to them. I could just pace and think of other things and pretend I was somewhere else.
         But I'm not. I'm here in this hospital, in this empty room. There's nobody alive here but me. Tom's just pretending, putting on one last show. Life support. Silently I mouth the words. They feel prickly over my tongue. It's not right. It's not life. This isn't life. There's nothing to support. Not anymore. He stopped breathing and they couldn't get his motor started again and he passed on. Died. Whatever the hell word you want to use. Anything to obscure the truth, anything to make it less final.
         And yet. And yet. I walk over to his bed and goddammit, he looks alive. Emaciated, withered, dehydrated but alive. His chest inflates and deflates, there's some color in his body, I could convince myself. I really could. But he's so thin, oh God. Thin and wasted. His bones stick out, the edges sharp enough to cut my vision even from here, underneath his skin I keep picturing those skeletons they dig up in Africa from prehistory. It's hard to picture them as flesh and blood people, at least I never could, living and loving and finally ending up with their flesh wasting away. Did they gather around the body, clustered around the corpse anxiously waiting for some spark of life to spontaneously creep back into it? Maybe they prayed. Maybe they believed in spirits. Now we call it science and plug people into our machines and try to rewrite Mary Shelley.
         Pushing air into someone dead doesn't make him alive. You could get the lungs to push and the heart to pump and blood to flow and it would all magically work and everyone could stand around amazed at the wonders of modern technology. But there's no wonder here. I could go and dig up some body from the graveyard, move his arms and legs around like some goddamn puppet and toss Tom off this here machine and hook my new dead friend up to it and his lungs would pump and his heart would beat and his whatever liquid sitting stagnant in his veins would flow. And that wouldn't be life.
         Life support. Biggest damn lie ever. I turn away in disgust, trying to focus my attention on something else. Anything else. I want to go for a walk but the hallways are deserted. I'd be totally alone there too, one man aimlessly wandering the corridors. I'd pass all sorts of rooms with all sorts of stories, tragic stories, miracle stories, mundane ordinary stories. Ongoing stories, all of them. But I stay in the room with a man whose story ended last night when he managed to gasp out something unintelligible and keeled over without any grace or dignity or anything. And it's just like me to stick around, long after it's clear that the party is over and everyone has gone home, including the so called guest of honor.
         So I wander around the bed to the window. Light is fumbling its way in, but it's pale, like there's no energy there, no strength. But it's early yet, the day is barely getting wound up. I heard the weather on the radio while driving here, it's supposed to be nice today. Funny how trivial things like that stick in your head. I try to find more to think about as I stare out the window at a city just waking up, grinding its way back to life, people emerging blearily into the new daylight, stumbling back into old patterns, confident that the gears will always align the same way and each day will unfurl in the same fashion. Day in and day out. We never notice the passing days, caught in the coma of our own self imposed neutrality. Except there's a day marked in bright red on a calendar somewhere and each day brings you closer to it and not all the machinery the world can manufacture will set you one more day past it. It's just not allowed.
         Last night. Twenty four hours ago. God. I'm thinking about Tom and I don't want to and I can't help but do so anyway. Even without looking at him I know he's there. This presence causing indented ripples in the stretched rubber sheet of the room. Gravity pulling my thoughts incessantly downward. God, I can his hear his voice, I can hear him talking. A jagged gravelly sound, all sharp consonants and even sharper vowels, like the accent to an undiscovered country. There was something he always used to say, I remember it. I remember. Tom has left the building. Just before he'd leave somewhere he'd always say that. Thought that was the funniest thing ever, you could see it in his eyes. Hated Elvis but loved that phrase. Thought the man was nothing more than a no talent who got by solely on good marketing and even better looks, translating swooning girls into record sales, shaking his hips and using his voice like a velvet whip to mesmerize everyone into marching to his beat. Tom swore he would have none of that. Useless spectacle, he said, the point of a singer was to sing, damn it all, not act like he's the main show in some kind of circus.
         But, damn he loved that phrase. Even now that's what I remember most about him. I wonder if that was the last thing he tried to say, some trigger in his brain realizing it was the end and trying to think of the perfect exit speech, the phrase that would keep everyone talking. Everyone wants that, to go out with just the right verbal bang. Like it would lend misplaced dignity to our snuffed out flames. But the best we can ever do is grunt and gasp and stop breathing. Our last, best words remain nothing more than unraveled ashes in our heads, blending into the greyness of eternity.
         Tom has left the building.
         I wish I could be ashamed to say that it used to annoy the hell out of me. But I can't because it's true. It did. And it only got worse as I got older, until it was a burr wedged against my eardrum, grating in a way the King never could be.
         So carve it on his tombstone if you must remember him by something but God help me, I'm not going to miss never hearing that damned sentence ever again.
         I'm shivering and I don't know why. I'm thinking about Tom and I don't want to. I barely thought about the man while he was alive and now I can't stop. Like it's been plugged up, wadded up with my own swollen thoughts and now the pressure is too great and I have to let it all out. My palm rests flat on the window pane, the cold seeping into the creases of my hand. The world is outside and I can't touch it. All I get is diluted sensation, filtered pleasure and pain. It's too early for this, too goddamn early. With my other hand I rub the bridge of my nose, squeezing, trying to use the pain to snap my brain awake. Coffee would help, I should have gotten some in the lobby before I came up here. But it would have felt weird, sitting here drinking my coffee with Tom lying there all still, like we had some breakfast date for this morning and nothing was going to keep us from breaking it. I know I would have been tempted to order one for him. And I honestly don't know if I would have meant it as a joke.
         This is awful. I'm trying to think of something pleasant and happy and kind to remember about Tom, something to cause a smile to spring up on my face, a beautiful sunny memory to brighten my day and match the shallow sunlight slowly gaining strength outside. But all I can hear is Tom has left the building. Tom has left the building.
         But, no, he's still here. And so am I. But one of us really isn't here. And I'm not sure who.
         My mother used to say that he never had a thought in his head. She used to laugh when she said that, she would talk to her brother over the phone and at least once per conversation she would say that. But nobody believed her. So when he came here they hooked up an EEG to his skull and ran the readings and it came out all straight flat lines and proved my mother right. I'm sure she's proud. Every thought and every desire and every wish and hope and dream can be reduced to squiggly lines on a long piece of paper so experts can cluck their tongues over it and tell you just where your head is going wrong. Why your thoughts just aren't enough to change the world, providing you'd want to do that. I do, but I doubt Tom did. The rest of the world could go hang for all he cared, as long as everything was right in his small corner of it. That's all that mattered to him, little thoughts like that. Pleasing his wife. Having a cigar with friends and talking about the old days before the city went downhill and still had some magic left in it. Walking to the corner and paying for his newspaper with exact change regardless of how many price hikes there were. And in the end all you're left with is a three pound wrinkled mass of tissue sitting in your cranium that might as well be used for a doorstop for all the use its getting. All brains look the same, even Einstein's was nothing special. Maybe bigger. But his wound up in a jar. With luck Tom will get to keep his, since he was no one special. Just some old guy alternating between treating his family like gold and like utter crap and everyone had to love him because he was family. Damn strange beast, family. I think about my girlfriend and I don't really know if I love her but in some knotted twisted way I loved Tom. And it's okay I guess because it's two different things, right? Love is a many faceted monster.
         I don't know. I wish I did. There a lot of blank spaces in my knowledge, in everyone's knowledge. Tom whispers his rattling breathing behind me and I wonder if he knows everything now, if he's become one with the face of everything. He was taught that and believed it and went to church every week to profess it and reinforce his belief that it was true and right. Maybe it is. I should know, but I don't. And maybe it doesn't matter, really. Because if it's true then it is true and nothing can change that. And if it's not true and there's nothing but oblivion then we can't change that either. All the life support won't extend your days and all your praying won't wish something that's not true into existence.
         Pain, then paradise? Pain, then nothing? Or maybe just nothing at all, a black finger reaching out to flick out the light switch. A car trundles down the street and it could be a tank full of invaders for all I care because I'm not really even seeing it. My thoughts are fractal shapes, pinching the tightness in my head, questions beating fragile wings in too small of a space. What was it like, Tom? What did you feel? Did you feel anything? Did you have time for regrets, did you even know what happening? Or did you assume that when consciousness fell away from you, thick and oily and a deeper black than anything that lurks behind our eyelids, that you would soon open your eyes and greet another day and it would all continue just as it always has? Just an unfortunate break in your daily routine?
         We're keeping your body here, Tom, all safe and warm and it's a little worse for wear, but we're keeping it here in case you want to come back to it. Everything is all ready for you to wake up. But you're not going to. Not ever. You stopped breathing and no oxygen could get to your brain and by the time they hooked you up here it was too late. So we're just marking time until we come to our senses and realize that we're just putting a shell through the motions, watching you breathe in and breathe out over and over when it's all just meaningless pantomime.
         Oh God, I can't feel the room around me anymore. I'm trying to make myself numb so that the desolation of the moment won't penetrate my hard won emotional shell, won't stab my eyes and burn me from the inside out. It's not working. My eyes are closed. I don't remember closing them. Something salty and wet laps the inside of my eyelids like the first licks of a tsunami tickling the shore. And it stings. Stings like hell. I draw in a ragged, rattling breath and my lungs just don't seem large enough to hold it all. My chest quakes with a tightness that can only be self imposed.
         He's dead. Two words. A sentence lasting long than forever.
         Is this grief? Is this mourning. Can you mourn someone when their heart is still beating? I don't want this, I don't want this cold, hollow feeling, this frigid slickness that seems to coat my entire body, like I could just find a crack and slide right down it into some vacant nether region to find God knows what.
         Is this grief? If there's a name of the feelings rummaging through my head like old ladies high on dust and spring cleaning, then that must be it. Why do I feel this way? Tom, you don't deserve this, you don't deserve these tears, as half formed and embryonic as they are. And I try to tell myself that it's not for you that I'm subjecting myself to this but for grief itself. Not even for my mother or anyone else. I'm doing this because grief is nature's way of making us feel guilty for the secret glee that it wasn't us. That some other poor bastard got taken this time and we got a reprieve for just one more day.
         That's what grief is. That's what I tell myself. Because nothing else can make any sense. God, it's hard to breathe in here, I press my forehead against the window, trying to force it out by sheer strength of will. But I can't even cause the most hairline of cracks. I wish I could open it. But I can see why they didn't. Nobody needs air in here. Nobody at all. My stomach feels sick, bottomed out. Even throwing up would be some kind of release.
         Running a hand through what feels like unwashed hair, I spin around, taking two shaky steps back toward Tom, who remains otherwise oblivious. I take a deep breath to calm myself down and push back my sleeve to glance at my watch. For some reason the hour marks look like scars scratched on a too pale face and it takes me a moment to read them properly.
         -Fifteen minutes, I say. Fifteen minutes and then I'm out of here.
         The clock is ticking and time is running out but it's all gone for Tom. Someone just set back the hands on the face, thinking it might make some kind of difference. But once you flee the stables not all your grovelling is going to make them take you back for even the barest second.
         I can hear them coming now. Down the hall, marching two by two, unhurried, exactly in time. Why rush? Nobody is going anywhere. Just taking a short walk down the long mile. Tap tap tap. Echoes as big as the world. I hear them and soon they'll be here and I can leave. Good. I'll be glad to get the hell out of here.
         You hear that, Tom? I'll be gone soon, so anything you want to tell me, make sure you say it before then. Fifteen minutes. This is your last chance. Something prevents me from acting like a moron and saying that outloud. I know people talk to the comatose but generally to give comfort, to be soothing. Provide some peace of mind. Certainly not to impress demands on someone who probably wouldn't carry them out even if he were able. It typically just isn't done.
         But I have nothing comforting to say.
         Fifteen minutes.
         That's too damn long. Feels like a short sliver on the side of forever.
         There's a conversation I keep remembering. The bulb is burned out in the theatre of my head but the soundtrack keeps looping, film flapping endlessly against the body of the projector. Not between me and Tom, but between me and a friend. Well, he's not much of a friend. In fact he's barely one at all. I call him a figment because of that and I don't think he even cares. Which goes to show something. Makes you wonder which of us is the real figment.
         -You could fix this, I told him. You could make everything okay.
         -Maybe I could. But fixing everything doesn't automatically make it okay.
         He lifted that arrogant eyebrow of his and I wanted to go off and hit him right there. But I was upset and angry and not thinking clearly. I know that wouldn't have been a bright idea, would have been like punching a vault door. But I wanted to anyway.
         So instead I tried to pummel him with words.
         -There's nothing stopping you. Nothing stopping you at all.
         -I know there isn't.
         -So why won't you? Tell me that, why won't just do just this one thing for me?
         -Because there's no need, and you know that. If your head was clear, you'd know that.
         -No. No.
         -And besides, why do you care anyway? You never liked him. You told me that. Just the other day, you said that to me.
         Did you hear that Tom? We debated it right over your empty body without even asking your opinion. How about that? And it turns out I never really liked you anyway.
         Which is true, by the way. I never did. I tried but any brief flickerings of closeness I felt toward you were always blown out by some uncaring, selfish action of yours. I'm not perfect but I try to think that I care about someone other than myself. Because you have to, in this world. You have to. But you came from the old world, where it had to always be about you. Even when you helped other people, it was always about you. I could read the actions like a litany of accusations, spin anecdotes like a mad storyteller until the moon rose and in the end it would only prove what we already knew.
         But, I have to be honest, that doesn't mean I wanted you dead. I don't want anybody dead, even the people who deserve it. I wish I had the power to stop the motor and erase all the death in the world. Not because it'll wipe out suffering or bring about sort of global utopia, those things aren't possible and even if they were, a flawed gemstone reject like myself, cracks and all, isn't going to make it happen.
         No, in the end we all at least deserve one more day. I look out the window and I see the sun slowly climbing the net of the sky, its daily exercise to reach the summit and already I can see it's going to be a beautiful day. A beautiful day you won't ever experience. And later I'll grab the newspaper and I'll probably read about some miracle of science or something advancement to make our lives better, an advancement you'll never take advantage of. And that's not fair. Even a miserable old man like you deserved the chance. And you'll never get it. You can try to claim it's fair because it happens to everyone but just because you cheat everyone equally doesn't make it cheating any less.
         I tried to explain that. I tried to explain that to my figment friend but he refused to listen. Or maybe it was me refusing to hear him.
         -It's only a small thing, I told him, trying not to let frustration raise my voice. In the long run it won't make any difference.
         -You're right, he replied coolly, not even bothering with that crap accent he seems to like so much. It won't make any difference. Certainly not one man. And certainly not in the long run.
         -Then why you won't you do it, dammit?
         -Because there are ways and there are ways. Because life isn't the opposite of death. And because you don't want me to do it.
         I'm standing at the edge of the bed, feeling the crisp coolness of the steel wrapping tendrils around my hands, watching a dead man breathe, thinking about Tom alive, thinking about Tom dead and realizing that my friend was right. You were right. Okay? Happy now?
         I think I knew it then too. I knew it but I didn't want to admit it. Slowly I walk over to the side of the bed closest to the door. They'll be starting to stride down the hallway now, it's almost like an inverted pressure I can sense right behind my eyes. Right where the worst headaches grow.
         On an impulse I move quickly to the doorway, poking my head out into the hall for just a second. Left and right, there's no one there. But the air seems still, sodden with a moisture that not even your best twisted efforts can wring out and dry. It clogs my nostrils and condenses into fear, leaving me cold. Scenarios play like wargames on the rickety stage in my head, one right after the other. Hitting every possibility. Every possibility except reality. Except what's going to happen.
         About five minutes now. I glance at my watch again and consider saying something, anything, something to break the silence with my cracked voice. But there's nobody to hear, I'm just the tree in the forest, unable to even hear myself. No sound no noise not even a shadow. I'm just like Tom, when we leave here, neither of us will leave any trace.
         I didn't like you, dammit. But I didn't want you dead. I hope you know that. I hope you see. You probably didn't care what the hell I thought but I just want you to know that.
         I didn't want you dead. But nothing I can do will make you live again. All the king's horses and all the king's men. Tom has left the building and let the door swing in the wind behind him, and even that motion won't speak any words on his passage.
         -You could have offered at least.
         -What?
         I don't know why I said that, even now I don't know. Maybe I felt guilty, like my dislike of you had somehow contributed to your death, to where we are now. But I don't have that power and if i did, if my dislike could cause harm and pain, I don't think I'd waste something so terrible on you. Not when there are so many other deserving targets. People who kill and rape and maim, vicariously or not, and laugh while they do it and do it because they can.
         You never did any of that stuff. Just some old guy. That's all you were, right? Nothing to be afraid of.
         -I said you could have offered.
         -Why would I have bothered? You would have refused. I know you would have. It's the kind of person you are.
         -But you still could have asked.
         -I'm afraid I don't follow you.
         And I'm just some young guy. Trying to do what's right. Arguing with my figments about diving into a pool of circular logic I've created and still don't understand. Staying here with you until the executioners come to hand you over to us.
         -I would have had the satisfaction of saying no. Of being tempted and knowing I was being tempted and making the right decision anyway, no matter how much I wanted it otherwise.
         That's all I wanted. Just to know that I could make that kind of conscious decision, that I could weigh right and wrong and still choose what I felt was right, even if it wasn't the easy way out. Who wouldn't want to be faced with ultimate temptation and come out feeling that they stood firm, that they refused to waver even as the wind tried to strike them down?
         My mother cried when I left the house this morning. She didn't even see me leave. Cried for her brother who was dead in spirit and soon would be dead in body. Cried for the brother that she only saw at holidays and funerals but who she grew up with. She saw him far better than I ever could, saw the warts but even the blemishes could make her smile. She was your sister, Tom, and she loved you.
         That's why I'm here now, Tom. Because she said her goodbyes last night when they brought you here and decided to make you an exhibit on mimicking life. Even then she knew you were gone. It just took her the entire night to realize that saying goodbye wasn't enough. There has to be final step. There has to be an end.
         I didn't come here for you. I didn't come here to say goodbye. I never said hello. I just want you to know that. It was never about you. It's about stopping something from becoming wrong. About stopping you from becoming some kind of sick parody. Because wherever you are, you aren't here anymore, not in this place, not in this body.
         There are footsteps in the hallway now. Not slow and measured, stepping to an invisible drumbeat but swift and light, like the way people really walk. I hear them, but I don't take my eyes off Tom. He seems to have wasted away even more in the last half hour I've been here, some black hole parasite siphoning off what's left of his useless vitality.
         This isn't living. This isn't supporting life. But I can't make him live either. So in the end we only had one choice. And it really wasn't a choice at all. Not the kind of choice you expect to make.
         Softshoe steps outside the door, shuffling just before they prepare to come in. I still don't turn around. I soak my eyes with the sight of you, of the halted decay and the joke we're calling life right now. I stare at you and burn your image into my brain like I could absorb every facet of you like this and nobody but me would ever have to think about it again. I didn't want my mother to come back here and see you like this, I didn't want any of my family to have to witness the aftermath of a decision they had to make. I can spare them that much, Tom. I've seen death, slow and insidious, bloody and brutal, in more forms than I ever imagined. I hate this, I hate being here I hate the idea of watching you die by degrees.
         But I can stomach it. And maybe if your father was here, my grandfather, maybe he could do this too. In the war death gibbered its insane laughter right in his face, tried to take him and just barely he escaped. He would understand. He would know. About how death, no matter what face it wears, how it always looks the same.
         So I stare at your drawn, pale face, at your leathery skin, at your sunken features and realize it's nothing I haven't seen before. Nothing I won't see again.
         Something rustles in the doorway like dry leaves in a cold wind. Someone coughs. I don't turn around. I don't need to. I know who they are and I know why they're here. They won't say a word until I turn around, they'll think I'm just paying my last respects. God forbid they ruin the moment. But there's no moment here. If we had any kind of special bond, I wasn't privy to it and when you died you must have taken it with you.
         I'm thinking about you, Tom. But mostly I'm thinking about death. And how close I've come to it. How many times I've nearly been killed because I was stupid enough to throw myself willingly into danger. Yet you just lived your life for some ninety odd years. Ninety goddamn years. You live that long you think the good times are going to last forever. Nobody was probably more surprised than you when they finally ended. I heard you had a dentist's appointment this week. I'm sure you weren't looking forward to it. I know I never do. And yet now you don't have to worry about it ever again. Funny how we never know. Funny how we never see what's coming.
         Funny how I'm still here and you aren't. I know I don't deserve to be, all the times I've asked for it. I take solace in the fact that I'm helping people, that if I die it'll be because I was trying to make an honest difference out there. And it scares the hell out of me, Tom, it really does, what I see out there. Just the other day I walked past a shadowed bundle in an alley that I swear to God moaned just like a baby. When I doubled back to find it again, there was no sign of it. A woman down my street had her house broken into, and now I walk past and the doors are sealed tight and the shades drawn. I hear they tried to rape her. Her sister moved out because of the neighborhood but she stayed and this is how life rewards her.
         There's a sickness out there in the world, in the venom of our words, in the poison of our actions. You were no saint, but there's a class of bastard out there that could chew a tough nut like you and grind you into nothing. I see them and I know they could do the same to me. And there are days I just want to blink and walk away as fast as I can.
         But I can't. And that's why I do what I do. And that's why there's nothing else I'd rather do.
         -Excuse me, sir says a voice at my shoulder, oddly passive, oddly hesitant.
         I turn a little to see a man in a white coat, with another man standing on my other side, dressed similarly. I catch a faint scent that reminds me of something antiseptic. But this whole damn place is drenched with that stench. The light glints off their ID tags and so I don't catch their names right away. Not that I need to. Chances are we'll never see each other again.
         -Yes? I ask mildly.
         I suppose I could say the same for you as well, Tom. But we really never saw eye to eye in the first place.
         -We, uh, we just wanted to know, if you were, ah . . .
         -Yes, I answer tersely, knowing what the question already is. I'm ready.
         I step back out of the way, feeling like some unwanted phantom and the two men go to their task like machines, checking the devices, reading the secret language of the blips and beeps, finding faith in the obscure electronic scrawls of vital signs, their hands knowing just how to check you. They appear very gentle, Tom, which is funny considering what they're about to do. But they're very efficient, which I have to admire.
         -Everything is ready, one says to the other, not even looking up.
         More and more I feel like a bystander. Something clenches in my gut and I try to look casual to hide my discomfort. Even though I know you're dead, this still feels like I'm killing you. Like we're killing you.
         -Mm, then we'd better do this now, the doctor notes, his thick eyebrows furrowed over his head, hiding his eyes.
         -Damn shame, someone mutters.
         I think someone hits a button. I didn't know it would be that simple. My stomach flops around like I've just unfastened the seatbelt in the middle of a roller coaster and I know right then that I won't be in this room much longer. That I won't be able to watch.
         The world seems to hold its breath and I think I hear a slow winding sliding its way toward the undetectable end of the sound spectrum.
         Right then the room goes utterly quiet. I think I hear a sound that reminds me very much of someone letting the air out of a spent balloon.
         -Blood pressure dropping, a voice murmurs from what seems like a very far distance.
         -Breathing slowing, comes another accusation.
         I gulp back a deep breath and spin on my heel to whirl out of the room before pressure stings my head again and I won't be able to move. I don't want to see this, I don't want to hear doctors give a blow by blow litany of a body shutting itself down, I don't want to hear them call out the time, take your name, sign the certificate, finally confirm what we all already knew.
         I plunge down the hallway, my lungs screaming for air, any kind of air, like I've been holding my breath the entire time in the vacuum that you create. I feel like I'm bursting. I want to apologize to no one in particular. I wish I didn't have to see or hear any of that. But I had to. I know I had to. Because it was the only way, Tom. I'm sorry. But it was. You were dead and they weren't going to let you admit that, so we had to go and pull the plug.
         I don't bother with the elevator, instead vaulting down the stairs two at a time. I nearly trip trying to avoid a nurse on the way down. Damn fool. Stupid fool. Going to break your fool neck and get killed and then they'll just give you Tom's room and we'll have to go through this all over again.
         You wouldn't have wanted this, I tell myself. The way it was. Your departed body wasting away, melting into the mattress until there was nothing left. You weren't there anymore, you had moved on to wherever the hell we go when the lights flicker out and you weren't coming back. I know you weren't.
         And yet my face feels hot and my head feels light and I keep remembering reading about someone being executed and I remember feeling the same way until I had to put the newspaper down and go take a walk to blow the grimy sensations out of my head. I want to think that I've seen too much, that all the experience in the world has jaded and corrupted my view, but damn it all, I haven't seen enough. I want to see it all. The good and the bad. Just like everyone else.
         But we had to let you go, Tom.
         The doors beckon, the double paneled gateways to an outside where I can forget about this entire sordid morning.
         I want to think that you would have wanted it this way. My mother says you would have and that should be good enough for me.
         Except I don't know. Not for certain. I really don't.
         And that uncertainty keeps me moving.
         If they didn't slide open at my approach I think I would have walked through the doors, pulling glass out of my shoulders as I moved, just trying to put distance between me and you, letting my blood grease my passage through the streets.
         Soiled air greets my lungs and I pull it in gratefully, anxiously, not even minding the fit of coughing that threatens to erupt in my chest. Too fast. It reminds me. Tells me that I'm still alive. I always forget, I forget how much death can change you, especially when you're living. Maybe it only changes the living. Someone once said that there isn't any intrinsic difference between a living and a dead body. They have the same number of molecules.
         -Ahem.
         I stop in my tracks. A man who thinks he can count every molecule is standing against the wall of the hospital, right outside the door. For a brief second, I think he's holding the wall up. It certainly looks like that. My friend, my little figment. I didn't even notice him there, we might as well be twins some days. But we don't look anything alike. I look into his face and keep telling myself that. He's got his hands in his pockets and one foot planted against the wall. If I hadn't come out that door, something in his posture suggests that he could have waited forever.
         -What are you doing here? I demand.
         -Waiting for you.
         A dead body. A live person. They are two different things, Tom. I know you weren't into philosophy but I think you'd appreciate the difference. Having someone put you through the motions isn't life, breathing isn't life, moving isn't life, a heartbeat isn't life. Living is life. Whatever the hell that means. But just because I can't define it doesn't make it any less true. Everything else is just theatre. Nothing more.
         And I'll tell myself that, scream it until I turn my thoughts bloody and raw, until I start to truly believe it.
         I start walking down the street, my feet instinctively finding the path through a landmine field of strained grass and cracked sidewalks. My figment follows me. I know he's there, like a black star I can only discern him by the outline he leaves behind.
         -Did you come to apologize? I ask him.
         -No. I don't need to. You know that.
         His voice is flat, stern. Like he's rebuking me for something I had no control over. I should be yelling at him, part of me really wants to, just to release all of this wired tension sending electric ripples across my body. But I can't. I don't have it in me today. Let the tension simmer, smolder. Right now, I really can't bring myself to care.
         So I walk down the street, hands in my pockets. Cold air jackknives into my lungs crisply, there's still a hint of snow in the air, even though the sky looks clear. For a long time the only sound is the dry crunch of my shoes on the cement ground. It really is going to be a beautiful day. Right now there's just no need for talking.
         -Are you angry with me?
         Breaking the silence like glass cracking, the voice sounds almost concrete, hanging a heavy drop of pleading right from the tip of his words. Almost like he cares about what I think about him. Like it really matters. The strange part is that it just might.
         -No. Disappointed, I answer. Upset, maybe. And just a little bit tired. It's been a long day.
         I can almost hear a smile curve along the timbre of his voice.
         -Already? With the day so young?
         -Yeah. That's what happens as you get older, your stamina just goes right to hell.
         I try to say it as loftily as I can, but my banter was never that great. Instead of trying to delve further into my depths of wit, I find myself stopping and glancing up, at the rows of glass that make up the higher floors of the hospital. Reflections of angled clouds float in their lazy way in the reversed images. I think I know which window was Tom's room. Even though they all look the same, I think I know. It looks dark. From here I can't see anything. Maybe there's nothing to see.
         A shuffling sounds to my right. I don't bother looking over. I hate looking into a flesh mirror.
         -He was dead, you know. Before he even got here.
         -I know, is all I say. I really don't want to talk about this right now, but I don't want to tell him that. I just keep staring up, trying to leech all expression from my face and probably failing miserably. It doesn't matter, I'm sure he can read the faintest twitches, the ones I'm not even aware of.
         -There was nothing you could have done. It was too quick.
         -I realize that now.
         -Because I just want you to know that. That there was nothing you could have done.
         The last concrete image of Tom I have is floating in my brain, like he's taken up temporary residence there. A ninety year old man in a ninety year old body. Everything has to end someday. Every time might be the last time. I think about the next time I'm going to see him, at a funeral, half shrouded by a coffin, done up by a mortician like girls at a slumber party so that he looks in his aged prime and everyone will ooh and ah and comment on how good he looks. Like he never died. Like this is just some exhibition.
         I'm not sure what image I want to keep. The reality or the comfort. Eventually I'll have to decide.
         But not now.
         -What about you? I suddenly ask, letting the words wriggle from my lips. Was there anything you could have done?
         A long silence. For some reason I savor it.
         -There is nothing I would have done, my figment answers evenly.
         -But could you have done something?
         -Perhaps. Strangely there isn't any pause this time.
         -Hm.
         -I thought you weren't angry with me.
         -I'm not, I say, turning to face him. I wish I could read his expression but he might as well be molded from the softest clay. Almost unbidden a smile creases my face.
         -But I just think that's good to know. I tap my head with one finger, not sure if the inherent sarcasm is lost on him or not. I just wanted you to know that.
         -Oh, he replies. It's all he says.
         Then he vanishes.
         I stare at the empty space for a long time. There's no trace that he was ever there. Typical. Across the street two people are staring at me, like I'm in some zoo and they're deciding whether to break the rules and feed me or not. When we make eye contact they glance away and shuffle off. No need for that sort of thing here. It's just not wanted. I don't even think about what I must have looked like. Shaking my head slightly, I turn to walk away again, trying to fit the conversation into my head, into my life, trying to figure out what it all means.
         Not surprisingly, no answers readily spring to mind.
         Just more questions.
         What the hell just happened?
         Questions and answers. Figments and friends. The living and the dead. It all settles like rotten snow around me, trying to pile up around my ankles, freeze me and entangle me. God, sometimes my world is crazy. Most of the time it's just insane.
         The imposing brick edifice of the hospital gives way to the lush openness of a small park. I pass a bench where a woman is sitting, a stroller parked right next to her, a baby nearly buried in blankets inside. She meets my gaze and smiles thinly at me. I'm not sure how to take that.
         At the next bench I consider sitting down, but instead I stand over it and look out at the park. Trees create a canopy, an illusion of isolation, an island floating just far enough away from the outside world, from a city where the horns screech dueling with the people yell for no reason, where the summertime heat simmers like a sun planted at your asphalt feet, where the plows streak by and create ten foot high drifts of dirty snow simply to make the streets clear, where two blocks in the wrong direction could cause you to see sights that even the seamiest documentary won't cover, where you can lay on the roof at night and let the cool breezes massage you and watch the stars and simply wonder, letting your imagination take you someplace far away.
         No matter how many times I walk somewhere I never see the same thing twice.
         This is my city, this is where I live, this is the place where I can walk the same route every day and never see the same thing twice. Tom, you used to live here. But you don't anymore.
         I have two uncles who used to take me to this park when I was a kid. If you ever bothered, I don't remember it. But I don't hate you for it. I don't even dislike you. It's not worth it.
         Instead I remember. I remember the last conversation we had. It was three days before you died. Three days ago.
         Three days ago you called my mother and I happened to be at her home for some strange reason and I picked up and told you that she was in the bathroom or something. I'm pretty sure that you weren't interested in talking to me but you didn't feel like hanging up and calling back in fifteen minutes. Waste of a call, you probably thought. That was just like you.
         So you were polite and asked me how school was going.
         -Fine, I said. I'm getting there, a bit at a time.
         -Well, you said, you'd better finish soon. I think your mother could use a new car, don't you think?
         I chuckled politely but probably not convincingly. Your last firm memory of me was probably my insincere laughter. Somewhere I'm sure there's small irony in that.
         Internally I was trying to listen for my mother, hoping that if I was silent long enough you would assume I had hung up. I really didn't know what to say. I'm pretty sure it was mutual. It wasn't that we didn't like each other, we just nothing to offer the other.
         -How's that girlfriend of yours? he blurted out suddenly. Still with her?
         The question took me by complete surprise. Frankly I think you were just as taken aback. I don't remember ever telling you about her. Probably one of my parents. I'm just surprised you remembered. I was so caught off guard that I probably stammered something neutral, the usual stuff, we're doing well, life is good. Petty neutral stuff, the kind that never has any meaning. I didn't know what else to say. Honest. I didn't.
         -So, you said, when's the wedding?
         -Wedding? Let's not rush things.
         -Well, you are going to marry her someday, right?
         -I have no idea. I don't plan that far ahead. And besides, it's not really all up to me now, is it?
         And you made some sort of clicking noise with your tongue that sounded like an empty gun trying to fire.
         -Well, you said, you better bring her to your way of thinking, and soon. Life's too short to dally.
         At which point my mother came to rescue me and I mumbled some kind of obscure goodbye and left. We cut our connections so suddenly that you don't even feel the slice of the scalpel.
         And then three days later you were dead. And the morning after I watched them remove your life support and finally declare you dead. Funny how the past turns on itself like that. I'll never understand it. Even if I live to your age, Tom, I never will.
         This early the sun feels good, it counteracts the chill of the air. If I stand here too long I'll get too cold and I'll want to duck inside. But I don't mind feeling a little frozen, if the wind suddenly picks up and cuts red scars across my cheeks, if my ears turn to solid ice and my hands feel stiff and wooden.
         At least it's a feeling. At least I can still feel.
         Three days. That's all it takes. Less than that. And you never saw it coming. The world is awash in texture, sounds blending with sight blending with the acrid scent of a city thrashing awake after a long night. If I had three days and I knew it, would I do anything different? Would you have, Tom? I doubt it. I doubt it very much.
         I'm walking down the street, like an invisible man in a too solid world, cutting a path fades as soon as I pass. It's too early to call my girlfriend, she'll scream at me for waking her up. She's not exactly a morning person. I probably should anyway, just to annoy her. In a caring way, of course. But I'll call her later and maybe make plans for tonight, dinner or something. Wing it. I slide out of the way for a couple holding hands and walking a dog, letting them squeeze past me. Fine particles of dog hair tickle my nose and I barely shove down the desire to sneeze it out.
         I want to walk and keep walking, until I pass every road and meet every person and see everything there is to see. Then maybe I'll be satisfied. Maybe. One city isn't enough, this country isn't enough, this world isn't enough, all the lifetimes together aren't enough. But in the end we all get the same thing. It's not about having a long life or a short life, or whether one is more fair than the other. It adds up to the same deal. One lifetime. That's all you get. That's all anyone ever gets.
         I look up at the sky, almost seeing the moon, the stars, hidden behind the curtain of sunlight lit blue sky. I want my kids to see the stars, to go to them. I want to live to see it happen. I don't know if I will but I'm certainly going to try.
         My foot catches a raised crack in the aged sidewalk and I stumble forward, nearly falling on my face like an ass. Contorting my body ridiculously I manage to remain upright but the end result isn't one of my finer moments. I try not to notice if anyone is watching. Last thing I need is an audience.
         -About as good a dancer as I'll ever get, I note sardonically, laughing to myself as I turn to continue walking.
         And even if I had fallen, I would have picked myself up and kept right on going. Because that's what you do, until you can't pick yourself up anymore. But you let life decide that for you. Tom went until he couldn't do otherwise and life yanked away his permit. I can't begrudge that, no matter what I feel. He did exactly what I would have done, lived until you aren't able to anymore. Go down swinging and damn dignity. There's none in dying anyway and once you get that delusion out of your head then nobody can take it away from you without bracing for a long hard fight.
         That's just what you did, Tom.
         I don't think I expected any less.
         I take a deep breath of sharp edged air and let it out slowly, savoring the gritty taste. The day stretches before me, and the night and all the days after that. I run my hands through my hair and move a little faster. A lot to get done and never enough time. There's just never any time.
         Hopes and fears and dreams swirl around me, all vying for my attention. You can't face them all, can't fulfill every dream. And no, it's not fair and yes, it's a bum deal, I won't argue with that. But it's the only deal we get and all told, I don't think we have much room to complain. Given the alternative, I'll talk it. Gladly.
         Walking down the street, silhouetted in brisk sunlight, legs pumping without pause, distance spiralling out before me, trying to see where it'll all take me, I look up at the sky again, jam my hands in my pockets and think about Tom.
         Tom, you see, was my uncle.
         My mother's brother.
         Someone I didn't see that often. That I wasn't that close to.
         Still, he was family. And I'll miss him. Not because we were close, but because he's family and now that he's gone that part of him that was in us is gone too.
         Tom was a man who lived in this city. A lot of people were glad to know him. A lot weren't. I don't think he cared either way. I really couldn't say. It was never for me to say.
         He was born at the turn of the century.
         Tom died last night.
         Still, I think it's going to be a good day anyway.