The Moments

Chapter Twenty

MADELYN SHEEN

Everything feels new and different these days. Each breath feels like something I have never experienced and may never experience again. I can't walk anymore, I've gotten used to the constant use of an oxygen tube, and I'm tired all the time. The few hours of the day I spend awake, I am surrounded by people saying goodbye. I think I hurt their feelings a little bit when I don't cry with them, but I'm out of tears. There's only a few people I really care to say goodbye to anyway. That said, I'm aware that saying goodbye isn't for me, it's for them. I won't be around to miss them, but they will all be around to miss me. Jordan is only just beginning to face that and I think he's having trouble figuring out how to say goodbye.

I'm down to days. As in any second could be the last. Any breath, any goodnight, any hug, any word. No matter what I do there is always this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me I haven't done enough. I don't think there is anything I can do to silence it. I wonder if people who have lived full lives feel this. I hope they don't because it really sucks.

Today I really want to be around people. I'm not sure why, but I don't want to spend any time alone. I tell my dad and he claimed he was happy to sit by my bed all day. Maybe he really is, but it just makes me sad to think that he has nothing better to do than spend time with me. What will he do when he has nothing to do at all? Where will he end up? I don't know how to talk to my dad about something like that, but I do know who I might be able to get advice from.

Nurse Kate has visited me a few times since I was sent home. We text from time to time, usually she initiates by asking how I feel today or how the at home nurse is treating me. I always give her honest answers because out of all the people in my life, I know she can handle it. I wonder how many patients she's gotten close to then lost. She must know death better than anybody I know, even Jordan. Maybe she can give me advice on what to say to him. You'd think I'd be out of life lessons to teach him, but I think there is a lot that he is yet to learn that most people won't bother to explain.

"Hey," Kate whispers from beside me. I hadn't realized that I was dozing off so when I hear her voice I sit up with a start. "How you feeling?" She asks upon entering. She speaks in a low, gentle voice. Her signature smile lights up the unbearably bleak room.

"I've been better," I answer with my own signature grin.

"You have such a lovely smile," she admires, gently touching my cheek. The compliment makes me smile more.

"How have you been?" I inquire, propping myself up on the mountain of pillows behind my back. She takes a seat in the chair beside my bed that my dad abandoned when she arrived.

"The hospital has been unusually calm lately," she says, her eyes trace my room slowly, likely observing the lack of character. Most of my stuff lived at the hospital, now it mostly lives in boxes. It was important to me that my stuff be packed and donated before I die so that my dad didn't have to look at it. More specifically, so that he didn't insist on keeping a ton of stuff that other people could make much better use of.

"That's good, right?"

"Absolutely."

The small talk is getting boring so I reach out and place my hand on hers. I've noticed I do that a lot. I just naturally assume that people find comfort in my touch. I hope I'm right. She wasn't looking at me before. It was like she forgot I was in the room and she looked sad. But when my hand met hers she plastered the smile on her face again and for the first time in all my years of knowing her I had to consider the possibility that her wonderful smile was not genuine and just a thing she applied for patients. 

"I need advice," I declare, looking into her eyes. She inches forward in the chair and leans towards me. "I asked you a while ago if I was doing the whole dying kid thing correctly and you said I wasn't content. Well I think I figured out what that means and I think I'm content now." I pause to inspect her reaction. I've been forgetful lately, like a dementia patient or something, but I remember that conversation clearly. With all it's cryptic simplicity and unspoken deeper meanings behind basic words. She is recalling it too. "I've done what I can do for myself, now how do I help everybody else?" I finish.