She’s probably gone already, she says, and we’re looking at Her body. Her sister is brave. Braver than me when I was her age. Braver than me now too. A doctor comes into the room and looks at Her chart. We both stand up to greet him, and Her sister introduces me to him as “Her friend.” I shake his hand because that’s what you do in situations like this. Eventually, Her parents come back into the room, and Her father wheels Her mother next to the bed. I give him my chair and stand by the window. No one says anything. The hours drag on. The curtains flutter slightly. Eventually, visiting hours are over, and I leave because I am just a visitor. I cannot offer these people any comfort. I cannot change the situation. I feel stupid and small. I can tell I’m not welcome.
I go back to my apartment and the Disaster is already there. The room is filled with awful silence. The kind of silence that only happens when someone dies. He leaves and comes back with a bottle of Jameson, sets it on the table, and we drink it in silence. Nothing can possibly be said. I wonder if this is what he did when his baby died. I don’t say it because I already know the answer.
The next morning I am back at the hospital, sitting in the cafeteria. The room is full, but no one looks up from their table. I drink coffee from a paper cup. I wander the hallways, wondering how many ghosts are walking alongside me. I am putting off going to see Her because I don’t want to see Her like this. For the first time, the thought occurs to me that perhaps this is all my fault. That she was coming to find me. I remember our last night together, how awful I was to Her. I cry in the chapel, say a prayer to God, who decided two nights ago that Her number was up. I go up to Her room, and Her family is still sitting there, only now they’ve multiplied to include grave-faced aunts and uncles and weeping grandmothers. I don’t know any of them, and they do not acknowledge my presence. Because I have no place here.
The day goes on. Her sister and I have hushed conversations in the hallway about a funeral because Her mother doesn’t want Her to hear us talking about death. We don’t bother telling her that she can’t hear us anymore. Her sister tells me that she always knew she loved me, and that she would be happy that I am here. Later, as Her family is down in the cafeteria, I sit with Her and tell Her how sorry I am for letting Her down, for hurting Her. She can’t hear me. I watch Her chest rise and fall softly. Sometimes there are long gaps between breaths, and my heart pauses and a lump grows in my throat, and I’m begging Her to breathe again, and then she does, and everything returns to the way it was.
That night, as visiting hours are coming to an end, she is surrounded by doctors. Her family is crying and holding hands, telling Her they love Her and it’s okay if she wants to go. She dies at 9:50 p.m. Wednesday, the seventeenth. No trumpets sound or angels descend. She just stopped breathing, and the machines went silent. She is already up in heaven or wherever, turning in Her time card. Maybe she is trying out Her new wings right now, afraid at first, but after a few tries mastering barrel rolls and graceful loops. That night, she doesn’t come to me in my dreams, probably because she is too busy getting used to Her new accommodations.
The next few days are a blur. I tell Her father to call me if they need any help with any of the arrangements, but he never does. My parents send flowers. She is buried on a Saturday, but I can’t bring myself to go to the funeral. In the morning, I had got dressed in my only black suit, but when I looked at myself in the mirror, I couldn’t help but think that I looked like a giant phony. I couldn’t imagine going through the motions, sitting in some church with my head bowed, listening to some priest talk about “the infinite wisdom of His ways” and “calling His flock home” and shit like