Rocío Grimaldo

Deathbed scene with life writing incorporated

Loud wheezing interrupts my thoughts. Someone rushes in the room.

I blink. I recognize the sound of sneakers. It’s a nurse. My neighbour is in trouble. Maybe it’s his time.

I don’t know much about him, but what I know is enough. He was here already when I got here. When I could still walk I checked his chart. He’s got emphysema and a heart condition. Five heart attacks in less than six months. He’s a big man, I guess he can take it.

Behind the curtain an IV is being set up. The sudden commotion has made my pain and ramblings go away. For a while.

I’ve caught glimpses of him, of my neighbour. Of his red spotty face and small eyes, of his flabby butt and his yellow and white feet. His unkempt ear hair is woven into what is left of his white head hair. He breathes shallowly now. The nurse leaves.

He has never received a visit.

We’ve talked some. We can’t speak much now. When we do speak, it’s mostly him. An endless monologue that makes me doze off like some auditory morphine. I know about morphine. It is what I live of these days. Sometimes the monologue irritates me, like fire ants, and it makes my pain seem more acute. It is strange how he has these contradictory effects on me.

I have no pity for him. Will I go to hell for that? Do deathbed sins count as regular sins? Does it matter at this point?

I guess he makes me live. I forget my losses and my regrets. He makes me think about his life and how shitty it is and I forget how shitty mine has become.

When he’s awake he pretends to read the newspaper. He has it on his lap all the time, but at least twice a day he calls up the nurse and quickly picks it up.

The nurse usually shows up with an annoyed but hopeful look in her eyes, hoping there’s some real emergency. I guess she wants him to die too. And soon.

I grin.

After the nurse checks him and realizes he is fine – he asks to be accompanied to the toilet. And the show begins. He complains about not being able to walk, she helps him up while he leans into her, holding her by the waist as they wobble towards the bathroom door. Sometimes his hospital gown flaps open and I see his flabby buttocks. Sometimes I wish they would stumble and fall. Who would call for help, I wonder.

He repeats stories. His daughter Diana, the biologist who is doing her second PhD, and “doing very well”, “and when she comes and visits him I should meet her”…

The first time he told me about her he said: “She’s your age. And my girlfriend’s age!” he burst out laughing like it was an amazing feat. He has this clownish expression when he laughs, extending his mouth from ear to ear, showing his yellow teeth and throwing his head back.

That girlfriend hasn’t shown up either. And she doesn’t have a name.

He’s a surfer and has some beads around his neck. Those have stories too. The green pendant he got in Thailand where he had sex with teenagers, the white thin one in Australia where he was almost eaten by a shark, and the orange one from Hawaii has a volcano painted on it. He says he almost fell in. He’s going there, to Hawaii, next week. Waves will be great, he keeps repeating.

I was transferred here, a month ago. We talked.

”What do you have?” he asked, after I had settled in my bed.

“Cancer. Incurable.”

“Why?”

I furrow my brow and just stare at him. He is lying on his side, facing me, leaning on one arm, as if he were on a beach. He appears to ignore my silence and goes on to say he has emphysema but it is temporary.

"Why?" But then as soon as I said it I realised I shouldn’t have encouraged the conversation.

“Too much fried chicken, cigars and girls,” he giggled. His voice is deep and raspy. The giggles triggered a cough that seemed to have no end. A cough that would accompany my dying for the next month.

“Ahuh,” I nodded.

“You won’t wear a wig?” he continued questioning me.

I looked at him. “No.”

“You really are a bag of bones,” he adds as he looks me over.

“You have ugly feet,” I answered back, picking myself up.

“Yeah, I like to go barefoot,” he said. He didn’t seem insulted.

“I don’t feel like chitchat.”

I felt his eyes on me again…what is left of me, I closed my eyes …I hate that I’m in pain, concentrated on dying… and he meddles in my dying, in my self-pity, in my unattractiveness, in my truth… I cannot take his stare, I turn away, annoyed…hoping he will just stop.

”Where’s your family?” he starts again.

“Don’t have any.”

“You should meet my daughter Diana, she’s a biologist and she’ll be visiting me soon in a couple of weeks…. How much time do you have left?”

I open my eyes again. The truth.

“Weeks, I think, it’s spread through all my guts.” I feel the pain extending itself as if echoing my words. It’s spreading.