shirt, you wouldn’t have known. When she got to nine months, she’d promised him, she wouldn’t risk the drive from Madison. But it had become increasingly clear in the last week that she might not go back up there at all before he died.
The cannula was tickling his nose and he managed to adjust it without sneezing; sneezing would hurt. It was pizza night—Pat’s donated every week—and Fiona was eating a slice of pepperoni. Yale hadn’t had solid food in weeks, but this was the first time he felt a bit jealous watching someone else eat—a good sign. Or it would have been a good sign if he didn’t know full well that he was only feeling better because they’d changed his meds and were pumping him full of pentamidine and amphotericin again—backing off those was what had let his lungs get so bad—but these treatments would end up doing his kidneys and liver in. Dr. Cheng hadn’t pulled any punches on that. One of the volunteers had told him a long time ago that whenever someone had a good breakfast, that was it—the patient only had a few hours left. He wasn’t about to have a good breakfast, but these full breaths felt as nourishing, as ominous. The haircut guys had come through today, and he’d even sat up for that, with their help, and they’d shaved the back of his neck, massaged his temples with something that smelled like mint.
Fiona said, “Your eyes look so much better.”
“What did they look like?” He didn’t want to know, though, because soon they’d look like that again, or worse.
“Your pupils were just so dilated. It was like watching someone trapped in a tank of water. That’s probably what it felt like too.” She sighed, leaned down awkwardly to massage her swollen ankles. “You want the relaxation channel?”
Rafael came in then, getting his walker stuck on the doorway so Fiona had to get up and unwedge his wheel.
“I’m making a delivery,” Rafael said. “I lacquered it for you, so it’s shiny.” He was talking about the small birdseed mandala he held against the walker handle with his thumb, the one Yale had made a month ago in the art room. There was no space for Rafael’s walker between the bed and wall, so he handed it to Fiona to hand to Yale. “The art room isn’t the same since you aren’t there to play your terrible, sad British bands. That guy Calvin commandeered the stereo and it’s all fucking techno now.”
Yale held the mandala, although holding anything made his arms ache. He didn’t know what he’d do with it. Send it to Teresa, maybe, in California. She still wrote him cards once a week.
Rafael said, “Tonight’s the night. I’m cleared, and Blake’s picking me up in an hour.”
Fiona clapped enthusiastically, and Yale didn’t know how she had it in her. “Are you ready?” she said. “Are you set up?”
“Open Hand is already over there stocking the fridge, and I’m doing great off the IV.”
Yale appreciated that Rafael didn’t say it apologetically. He’d been a perfect roommate. Before Rafael, Yale had shared a room with a tall man named Edward, who kept saying in a sad voice that this was the happiest he’d been in his life, that unit 371 was the first place he’d ever fit in. Prior to Edward there’d been an uncomfortable straight guy, Mark; before Mark was a man named Roger, whose enormous Irish Catholic family surrounded him as PML took his motor control and his speech but left his brain function intact, at least for a while. On an early stay, Yale had roomed with a guy who had ten Dixie cups lined up on the windowsill, each with an acorn planted inside. He was trying to sprout them before he died so he could give oak trees to ten of his friends.
And after all this, Yale had been lying in bed one day recovering from a lumbar puncture when they wheeled someone in on the other side of the curtain, and he heard the normal sounds—nurses explaining things about IVs, call buttons, something about the smoking deck—and then he heard someone say, “You know what I want on my Quilt panel? Just a giant pack of Camels!”
Even before he called Rafael’s name and the nurse pulled back the curtain, Yale knew it was him. It had to be the most cheerfully anyone had ever checked into unit 371, but Rafael had his routine down, his favorite nurses.