-1You’re going to die soon. I listen to the day shift nurse giving me report as I watch you slowly fading away. Your breathing is so shallow, your mouth wide open, your hands are blue and purple. The nurse says she just gave you your routine morphine, and that your next dose is due at eight o’clock. You’re not going to last that long.

The nurse goes home and I go about my usual routine as I start my shift. I lean over and speak in your ear in a low voice.

“Hey, it’s me again. Thanks for waiting for me.”

I’ve been working with you for six days, which is the longest I‘ve ever been with a patient. I was off yesterday because my niece was being baptized, and I said goodbye to you when I left the night before because I didn’t think I was going to see you again. You’ve never talked to me or anything, you were already comatose when I first met you, but I’ve grown very attached to you for some reason.

I finish taking your vital signs as best I can (I couldn’t get a blood pressure reading on you; it’s too low) and sit down to read your chart. You’re due to be re-positioned now, but I’m not going to. I don’t know if your lungs could handle it at this point, and that would be a rotten way to go. Anyway, it’s not like you’re going to be here long enough to develop a bed sore.

It’s just going to be you and me tonight. You never married or had kids for some reason, and your brother already came by the other day and said his goodbyes to you. He lives far away, and he told the nurse who was here that it was the last time he’d be coming back here. I’m a little nervous. People don’t usually die on my shift without there being at least one other family member there to hold their hand and tell them they love them and stuff. Since no one else is here I can’t help feeling kind of… responsible for you. I don‘t know. I guess on some level it bothers me to think of anyone ever dying alone, so that makes my role as the only other person here really important to me.

I put down your chart and sit back and look at you. I try to imagine what you would look like if you were asleep there on that hospital bed if you were young and healthy. There are some black and white pictures of you around your apartment here, but that young girl in the photographs doesn’t look very much like you now. She has teeth, you know, and dark, wavy hair. You were very pretty. Why didn’t any lucky young fellow ever marry you?

Time drags on. I don’t like to read or listen to music when I work because I like to give you my full attention, but it gets a little boring sometimes. Your oxygen concentrator sounds like a cross between a car engine and crashing waves, which for me is like a lullaby. I watch you suck in tiny puffs of air every ten seconds or so and try to stay awake. First I try thinking about infinity, but that’s not interesting enough to keep me awake so I start thinking about Brazilian jiu-jitsu instead.

After awhile I remember something and take out my wallet. I’ve been carrying an old finger rosary in there ever since I got the idea for what I’m about to do. I don’t even know if you’re Catholic or not, it doesn’t say your religion in the chart they gave me, so I hope this doesn’t offend you on some level. My mom always told me to “pray for ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out.” I pull it out and put it on my finger. The metal’s all worn down like an old coin, and the cross broke off the top of it a long time ago because the metal wasn’t very strong there. I ask God that if He wants to could He please make it so that you are praying this rosary and not me. I make the four-pointed sign and begin. I pray silently in case any of the staff from your care home come in and get weirded out. It’s the Glorious Mysteries today.

Your breathing changes before I’ve finished the fifth decade, and I know you’re about to leave. I stop praying and speak into your ear like I did before.

“Don’t be afraid.”

I hold your hand tightly and silently finish the rosary as I watch you disappear. I wait until it’s been a couple of minutes since you last took a breath and get up to go tell the facility staff that you’re gone. They send up a nurse to listen to your heart and officially pronounce you dead and I go call my agency with the time of death. The nurse says she’ll call your brother and the mortuary.

There are a lot of staff members here now. They keep coming in and walking up to your bedside with tears in their eyes and saying things to you, even though they know you’re not really there anymore. I guess you lived here a long time and they all really liked you, which makes me wish more than ever I’d known you before all this. I ask two of them who seem like they were especially close to you if they’d like to pick out something for you to wear to the mortuary, and they say yes. They go through your clothes remembering things and talking about stuff you liked, and it makes them happy.

When they’re all finally gone I close the door and fill up a wash basin. The first time I did this it really freaked me out; my hands were all shaking and my stomach was queasy, but now it’s easy. When I wash your body I’m just as gentle and respectful as when I did it those few times back when you were alive. I try to be extra nice to people in your situation, not because I’m a good person or anything, because I’m not. I just don’t know if I’ll meet any of you later on after my turn comes, and then you’ll have the home turf advantage, you know?

I finish up and make you look as nice and peaceful as possible so the staff can come and see you and so you can get sent off to the mortuary with some dignity when they get here. I say goodbye to all the facility staff, hugging them too, mostly, because most of them are Filipinas and they hug all the time for some reason. I take your chart with me and drive home in silence.

I open the door and walk past my wife to my room. She knows I like to be left alone for a little while whenever I come home early from work. I turn on my computer and play a song that I listen to every time someone dies under my care. I won’t bore you with my taste in music, but it’s a song that helps give more meaning to what just happened, and I want you to know that tonight I listened to it five times when I normally just listen to it once.

I eat an unreasonably late dinner without tasting it and get ready for bed. My wife is there waiting for me as I crawl under the covers and snuggle up to her as tight as I can.

“You okay?”

“I will be.”

“Wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

I take a deep breath.

“I’ve seen so many people die.”

She holds me and says nice things into my ear that make me feel better, and I begin to relax. I fall asleep in her arms and I dream about flying.

Your name was Lucy.