I got the call around 2 AM. I’m surprised I even picked up. “Can you come in?” the voice said. I couldn’t say no. So here I am. Bedside. Hands folded. Lots of silence. Lots of time. Nothing to do but think.
The last time I sat in a hospital room was more than thirty years ago, when Claire died. I was just seventeen. She’d been my grandfather’s girlfriend and caretaker until he’d died of emphysema at his home in Florida, on Sanibel Island. Claire volunteered at the local used-book store, recited the poetry of Emily Dickinson, wrote murder mysteries about the island, and somehow managed to soften my stubborn grandfather’s calcified heart to the point where he would bow his head for prayers at family gatherings, after first shutting off the low-humming machine that pumped oxygen through plastic tubes into his nostrils. For Claire everything was always “Wonderful!” and “Marvelous!” and I got the impression that she meant it. The first night I sat at her bedside in the hospital room, she awoke around midnight, turned toward me, and whispered conspiratorially, “Come in close. Listen: ‘I heard a Fly buzz — when I died. . . . With Blue — uncertain — stumbling Buzz.’ Buzzzzz, Miss Emily, Buzzzzz.” Then she laughed. On the night she died, after what had been a long and difficult day of trying and repeatedly failing to summon the strength to expectorate, she reached out and gripped my wrist with surprising force. “It’s like being born,” she said intently, her gray eyes glassy and wide.
