THE IMMEDIATE WITHIN
You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I have a time bomb ticking in my head. I may seem like a normal person, but I’m a walking dead man. Most folks view death as an abstract idea, something that hovers on the horizon of a distant future. For me, death is more like a maniacal kitten batting at flies on my kitchen windowsill.
My name is Henry Watkins, and I am not going to live to be forty. That might not be so bad if I were eighteen, but I’m thirty-eight. My life was normal and boring until the day a co-worker found me staring at my computer screen, twitching and shaking in the wide-eyed meltdown of a brain seizure.
I lost a few days after that, days that are still a blur to me. There was an ambulance, hospital rooms, then tests and more tests. But the final verdict is a malignant tumor growing at the base of my skull, inside my basal ganglia. I didn’t even know I had basal ganglia. The things you learn, right?
My particular tumor is a stubborn little bastard. The doctors went after him with their magic gamma knife, but my tumor just grew back. He likes living inside my brain. My neurosurgeon is the kind of man who hates to lose, but he finally had to throw in the towel. That’s how we got to where we are, using words like aggressive, inoperable, and terminal.
The doc talked about what the team was going to do next. I guess the idea of a team sounds good to the doc, but the only one dying is me. The words thudded onto the desk between us like a dead fish. Then the talk was over. We shook hands and I left his office, a thirty-something who is never going to have the opportunity to mourn middle age.
Then I was out on the street, those final words echoing in my brain. It was the moment where I should have been raging against the coming night, but that’s not what happened. I just stood there on the sidewalk, watching the living people walk past me. The sunlight was brighter and clearer than anything I had ever experienced. The air was sweet on my tongue. I could hear the passage of time.
Of course, that singular moment didn’t last. There were counselors to see and the five stages of grief to learn about, all the methodology of modern dying to absorb. I tried, I did, but I made a mess of it. At first, I got the stages out of order. I bargained before I got angry, then I went into denial. Before I could get depressed, I had a second brain meltdown. I was scrambled when I came out of it, so I had to start all over again.
My parents have done their best to be distraught, but this sort of thing was never their strong suit. My mom chose denial and stayed there, a haven that is familiar and comfortable for her. My father, he just drank more. Even under the shadow of death, life clings to simple patterns.
Margret, my younger sister, went straight for righteous anger and embraced it. She ranted against the unfairness of it all, reciting lists of all the evil people who deserved to die while her only brother deserved life. She is still angry, and I find comfort with her when I need to be angry too.
When you are straddling the line between living and dying, people get uncomfortable. They feel the brush of death and get skittish, like herd animals sensing a predator. That proximity makes them do strange things. The worst are the ones I call the sadly cheerful. They are so obviously relieved to have dodged fate, and I so very much want to punch them in the face. I know that sounds uncharitable, but it’s the truth.
I don’t spend every waking moment thinking about dying. Most days I’m just trying to get by like everyone else. That’s why my first encounter with one of the sadly cheerful was so infuriating.
I’m at the counter of my favorite dive diner, paying for my lunch, when Amber bounces up to me. Amber is a girlfriend of Margret’s, silly and sexy, and her hugs are really good. She sees me, squeals out my name, and I’m getting the wiggly hug which is great. Then she remembers, and I feel her remember, and she pulls away to arm’s length, a hand on my shoulder. Her eyes have gone all sad puppy, but she’s also freaking out because she just hugged a dead man.
“Margret told me. Henry, I’m… I’m so sorry.”
She’s biting her lip and looking sideways and then back at me.
“Yeah, thanks Amber. It’s okay, really.”
Which it most certainly is not, but that’s what you say, right? Then Amber goes for the phone dodge, holding the screen up and peering at it.
“Henry, sorry, I gotta run. It was great to see you.”
Gone like a shot, trailing relief like the wildebeest who dodged the lion and without giving me another body rub hug. Bitch.
It’s been six months since I got the last bad news. I would love to tell you that I rushed around the world, ticking precious items off my bucket list, but that’s not what happened. Instead of surfing naked off the coast of Bali, or kicking penguins in Antarctica, I met Claire.
When the clock is ticking, there are things that become far less important. Recycling, for example, which was the first thing Claire asked me about when I told her I was dying. It was a strange meeting.
The coffeehouse was crowded that day. I looked up from my book to find a tall, lean woman standing at my table. She was dressed like a welder, steel-toed work boots and all. Her smiling face was crowned with a mess of crazy black hair that stuck out every which way. She grinned at me and pointed to the empty chair.
“You mind if I sit?”
Before I could answer, her cup hit the table and she flopped herself into the chair. She smiled at me, chin propped on one bony hand, happy to invade the space of a total stranger. I tried using my book as pest repellant, but she wasn’t having it.
“That’s pretty sad stuff for a sunny afternoon.”
I gave it up and lowered the book with a theatrical sigh, which my intruder ignored. She just sat there sipping her coffee and smiling at me.
“Do you know this book?”
“Sure, a good former student makes the pilgrimage to see his dying professor. We all cry at the end. I’m Claire, by the way.”
A fine-boned hand stretched across the line of demarcation between us. It was flee or fight, and I wasn’t giving up my table to this upstart. I reached for her hand and got a quick, firm shake in return.
“Henry, Henry Watkins.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Henry Watkins. Do you have a dying professor in your life?”
I will never forget that moment, a glaring opening to play my trump card. With a few simple words I would crush this woman. I paused before I spoke, the better to savor the vision of her scuttling away in horror.
“I am the professor.”
“No shit? You’re dying? That really sucks.”
My trump card lay on the table between us, ignored and useless. Claire did not scuttle away. She did not apologize, nor tell me how sorry she was to hear about my horrible fate. Her clear, grey eyes did not waver from mine, as if I had mentioned no more than a stubbed toe. When she spoke again, her voice was jovial and teasing.
“I guess that means no more recycling, right?”
* * *
Meeting my tumor and meeting Claire: each was an extraordinary zigzag in the course of my ordinary life. Past experience did not prepare me for the insidious sweep of death, or the grinning onslaught of Claire. I could claim a modest string of ex-girlfriends and the office record for not taking sick days, neither of which were much help. The new waters I was swimming in were very strange indeed.
Claire and I were inseparable from the first day we met because I could not get rid of her. I tried to do the right thing, but it was no good. She just would not go away.
Within a few weeks, Claire met my sister Margret, and I had fallen head over tumor in love with this strange woman. I cannot tell you what Claire saw in me. If I pressed, she’d just grin and say she liked the certainty of knowing I would never leave her. Then she would wrap herself around me and make me forget that I was dying.
It wasn’t long before Claire experienced one of my brain episodes, the weird time when the tumor decides to run the show. My cognitive ability blurs out, like a Rorschach test made with too much ink. Claire and Margret tell me about it afterwards, but I don’t remember anything.
My brain is like the songbirds that fly headlong into the big glass door back home. There is a muffled thump and then an awkward pile of immobile feathers. The birds that don’t die lie there blinking and helpless. The trick is to wrap the bird in a hand towel and wait. Eventually, some internal reset button triggers in their bird brains. When it clicks, they spread their wings and fly away. Me, I wake up in a hospital bed, blinking like an owl.
When I swam back to consciousness after that latest seizure, I was carrying a level of anger unlike anything I had ever known. It seemed to mark the time like a metronome. There were four of us in that hospital room; Claire, Margret, me, and my newfound rage.
Imagine a huge clock tower hovering on your horizon, bells tolling bells marking the passage of every single hour. No matter where you go, the clock tower follows. The racing hours were hard before I met Claire. Coming to and finding her next to my hospital bed only made time run faster.
I had met the perfect woman, even if she was crazy. I wanted every remaining moment to be filled with Claire and I doing monumental things. Of course, that is not how life works, even when you’re dying. Someone still has to clean the toilet and wash the dishes. Claire could see the magic hiding in small details, the simple, ordinary things. I just got angrier.
Claire moved into my small bungalow. If Claire was afraid of my periodic volcanic eruptions, she never showed it. Crazy and fearless, that’s what she was.
When my rage overflowed, she would wait it out. Exhausted after reciting my list of injustices, she would push me down on the sofa, or the bed. With the angles and fine bones of her body pressed against mine, she could make the ticking clock go quiet.
In the months that followed, Margret and Claire became fast friends. Claire’s presence seemed to soften Margret’s anger, blending it with some form of acceptance.
They went shopping together and acquired a collection of silly hats and costume glasses. Every so often, my tumor would decide to knock me into limbo. When my lights went out, the two of them sat by my hospital bed, taking photos of me wearing a sombrero or a fez. It was always good for a laugh when my reset button finally kicked in.
I would love to tell you that I learned to accept what was happening to me, but I didn’t. Instead, I figured out a way to make everything much worse. I decided that I was being totally selfish, a soon to be dead man ruining a young woman’s life. Claire would be better off without me, so I had to chase her away.
It took an entire week of me being a total bastard before Claire started to take me seriously. I badgered her about why she was wasting her time with a dead man. I called her a ghoul, accusing her of being a morbid tourist. That was the tipping point. She gave me a long look and began packing a bag.
My heart was dead and broken in my chest, but I believed I was doing the right thing. Claire stuffed socks and panties into an overnight bag. A smarter man would have noticed how small the bag was. She slipped the thing over her shoulder and turned to face me. Her words left no doubt as to who understood what was really going on.
“Henry, I’m going to Margret’s for a few days. When you get tired of being noble, you let me know, okay?”
Then she kissed me, her hand hard on the back of my neck. Without another word, she walked out of the bedroom and out of our house.
For the first few hours after Claire left, I congratulated myself on taking the high road. She was much better off not being saddled with a dying man, and I was free to be tragic and alone. By nightfall, I was miserable, cursing myself for a fool.
The next morning, scared and lonely, I was ready to drive to my sister’s house. To hell with the doctor’s orders about not operating a vehicle. I would have done it if Claire hadn’t hidden the car keys. While I was tearing the house apart looking for them, my tumor decided it was time to shut out the lights.
Margret found me when she stormed into the house, a furious sister intent on reading me the riot act. I was keeled over my desk, with all the drawers open and ransacked. At first, she thought someone had broken in and knocked me in the head. The paramedics didn’t have any trouble finding my house. They knew the address by heart.
I was two days climbing out of that fog, the worst episode yet. All I remember is coming to and finding Margret on one side of my hospital bed and Claire on the other, each of them clutching one of my hands. My nose felt funny, and there were black rings around the edges of my vision. I slipped my hand out of Margret’s and reached for my face. My fingers traced the plastic outlines of dime-store Groucho Marx glasses, complete with fake nose and mustache. Blinking out through those empty black circles, I saw Claire and Margret laughing, tears streaming down their cheeks.
When the doctors released me, Margret and Claire took me home. The two of them got me settled and put the bungalow back in order. Claire unpacked her overnight bag, and after hugs and more tears, Margret drove off.
I struggled for the words to undo what I had done, but Claire did not give me the chance. Before I could stutter out an apology, I felt the thin bones of her hands on my face. She shook her head, then leaned in to kiss me. Her fingertips found the back of my neck, pressing against the back of my skull.
“Henry, you need to understand that I am not going anywhere. I don’t love you because you’re dying. I love you because you’re alive. I love you because you’re courageous and you don’t even know it. And hey, for the first time in my life, I know exactly how the story is going to end.”
* * *
That was the last time we talked about Claire leaving. She is still here, and I am still dying. The episodes are getting worse, so I guess there is no hope for a last-minute miracle. Hope is a very dangerous word.
There are moments when the fear and anger slip away, when the sunlight is bright and clear, when Claire is pressed up against me, the smell and taste of her more wonderful than anything else in the universe. I fall into those moments like I am falling into a clear pool of water that drowns out the inexorable passage of time.
I still rage against the coming darkness, against the finality that never leaves. Claire rages with me, and Margret as well. The episodes are coming more often now, and each one lasts a little longer. Waiting at the end of the chain is a sleep I will not awaken from. It is that black night we rage at, howling like wild animals.
How Claire copes with it all is still a mystery to me. Once a week, Claire and Margret go off together. They will not tell me where they disappear to. I imagine them at a shooting range, blasting away with big guns, or taking turns bashing an old car with a sledgehammer. I suppose the reality is something much simpler, like the two of them crying over cups of tea.
Claire and I do our best not to waste time, but our life together isn’t always perfect. She can be a bitch on wheels when she needs to be. Despair is one thing she will not tolerate. She says that it’s just a waste of time and serves no purpose. As far as Claire is concerned, I can rage all I want, but I cannot give up.
There is one other thing that will set Claire off like an avenging angel with a fiery sword. She has zero tolerance for strangers who want to pester me about my immortal soul.
One of the problems with being a walking dead man, besides the obvious, is that it tends to loosen tongues best left tethered. Some folks think I’m an easy mark for conversion to whatever afterlife they’re selling. But just let Claire hear their pompous talk, and they will find themselves a lot closer to their own afterlives than they wish to be.
Claire shouldn’t worry about it as much as she does. I love her for being my avenging angel, as I do for countless other reasons. Those folks selling paradise don’t bother me that much. It’s an easy thing to talk about death when you’re not the one dying. I’d like to give them my ticking clock, just to see them change their tune. What those poor sods don’t know is that my paradise is right here, right now. They can keep their version. I hope it does them some good.
My old friends anger and despair still make their appearances, but they pass as quickly as my days. As they and the world slip away, I spend my fleeting time memorizing every detail of Claire. There is not a single angle or hollow of her body, no smell or sight of her, that is not precious to me. She catches me looking at her, laughs, or pulls me close, and I discover yet another gleaming facet of her. I store all of these treasures in my heart, wrapping them in colored tissue and ribbons for the long journey ahead.
