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Feel Better

The first thing that people usually say to you when you’re sick is that they “hope you feel better.” Sometimes I feel better, but I don’t think I’ll ever “be better.” I’ve been in the hospital for about twelve days… this time. I can deal with never getting healthy, since that’s kind of the catch with chronic illness, but I’d rather just be sick at home. At least at home, you get to die on your own terms. In the hospital, you’re never really in control.

I think the thing that disturbs me the most about being in these drab, neutral tone rooms, is how time seems to adhere to different rules. At its best, I can sleep away an entire day, recovering, and don’t have to think about what comes next. At its worst, that one day can feel like a week; the doctor might leave to check a chart, and probably say, “I’ll be right back with the results.” Then, twenty minutes goes by until someone comes in again, and it’s not even the same person.

There’s a lot of alone time where you do nothing but think. Normally, that isn’t so terrible, but the hospital exists in its own realm of physics; on a line where the balance of life and death shakes worse than the old bleachers at Shea Stadium, when Piazza hit that home run ten days after 9/11. People come to visit, and they stay for maybe the same amount of time it took the doctor to check that chart in the other room. It’s never long enough. You know they’re shifting uncomfortably in their plastic seats because they have to look at you while you stare down your own mortality, clad in nothing but backless robes. It reminds them that the world is scary. It reminds them that at any moment, they could be in the same spot, dying in bed. Still, they have lives to live, out there where death is only instant in an accident, and rarely their own faults. Once they leave, so begins another bout of endless hours that blend into a hyperview, despite the caged clock going three times its usual speed as soon as another person steps into the room. I wonder when the line between friend and visitor becomes thinner than I am from eating three slices of bread and two quarts of water a day. Got to be careful not to overdo it.

Recently, I’ve been thinking more and more about what the healthiest way to perceive death is. I believe that you don’t really come to any conclusions about dying until you’re already dead. I confidently say this because, although I am definitely dying, I’m not dead, and I can’t really offer any finality about it without having all the facts. Still, people have been claiming that they understand death since the first of us passed away, and it’s true that no one can prove they don’t understand it. Maybe we just make things up that could happen, because it’s far better than the antithesis, where there’s nothing but void. I see the hospital as the precursor to the void: purgatory is a waiting room. You have to sit there in a white, static space, waiting for your turn to be admitted. Once you’re in, you may never leave, and you have to face that the last days of your life are going to be a spent dismantling the routine you thought would save you. You’ll question the point of it all, your impact on the world, and your legacy, before finally accepting the fact that existence is fragile, and you were born inelegant. When they call you in from the waiting room, you never know what’s going to happen. You just resign yourself to the care of a “higher power,” and hope they aren’t as oblivious and weak as you are.

Since I end up seeing them all so regularly, I’ve found it best to keep things light with every staff member. They choose to be here, aiding the sick, but that doesn’t protect them from the permeation of dread that bleeds out of every patient’s sad story. I figure, why make the whole thing harder for everyone, right? That, too, got me thinking, (as I’ve said, there’s not much else to do when you’re tethered to the spot): Does that resignation apply to death? Do we kick and fight to cling to life, constantly struggling against the pull, because that’s what living means? Maybe it’s because we’re so entangled in ourselves, like this cluster of IV tubes I can’t get free from, that we can’t think of what our kicking and bruising means for the rest of the world? I’m not saying I want to give up my autonomy and resign myself to death so easily, but I won’t make it harder for the people who give their lives to keep mine running for however much longer. Be a model patient, or even just a good person, and show who you are in the face of the doom you could never control on your own. Then, maybe the afterlife won’t be so bad.

I don’t live here, but the periods of admittance are becoming more frequent, and longer each time. Sometimes, I’m not sure I won’t screw something up at home and end back up in the same room, with the same tubes, in the pre-void just outside of life. Lots of people check in on me when I get home, and I feel loved, but it’s hard to feel important or useful for the first few days. Whenever I’d gone home in the past, I never knew what to do with myself; it always felt like after spending days in the hospital, existing in an entirely different dimension of time, I had to just adjust to “business as usual.” I’d often feel like my wingspan had been clipped, being confined to a bed that constantly re-configures itself, conforming around me every time I moved. It was the uncharacteristically warm hands of death, reminding me how out of control I really was.

Once it’s finally over, they discharge you, and send you back out into the world to rejoin the drones. On the rides home, I’d do anything I could to avoid thinking about the whole experience I’d just survived. I’d talk to the Uber driver, or call a friend, or sing loud to whatever had been stuck in my head those last two days. But every single time I crossed the threshold of my apartment, I dropped the act and did my best to process what happened that put me there in the first place. Of course it was my fault, and sure, I could have done something preventative hours before, but given the circumstances I faced, I chose the lesser of two evils. I did my best. I mean, I’m still doing my best. I’m not dead yet.

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