out, more than it’s already stressed.” The almost inevitable result, in short, would be congestive heart failure—the same thing Nora had died of. How had she seemed so serene through all of it?
* * *
—
In the morning, everything was much worse. Debbie was gone and Bernard had taken her place. Bernard changed the catheter bag, and Yale tried to ask about Fiona, but all he got out was her name.
“She’s calling the nurse’s station every ten minutes, I swear to God,” Bernard said. “She wanted to know when you woke up. No baby yet.”
Dr. Cheng came by. He said, “You’re gaining weight, which is, for once, not a great thing. We’ve got some fluid collecting in your abdomen now. Which means the kidneys and liver aren’t doing too well.”
Yale’s fingers tingled from low blood-oxygen, and he wasn’t sure he could feel his toes. His heart was climbing a mountain with every beat.
In second grade, Mrs. Henry had been hospitalized with pneumonia and the substitute, a man who mostly told them stories about his time in the Peace Corps, had attempted to explain what was wrong with Mrs. Henry. “Take the deepest breath you can,” he said, “and don’t let it out.” They did, and then he said, “Now take another breath on top of that. Don’t let that one out either.” They tried. Some of the kids gave up and let it all go with a wet raspberry noise, fell off their chairs laughing, but Yale, who always did as he was told, managed to keep going. “Now take another breath on top of that one. That third breath is what pneumonia feels like.”
There was something comforting in the midst of all this about knowing he’d been warned so early. That sitting there with his healthy, strong little body, he’d felt, for one second of his seven-year-old life, how things would end.
Dr. Cheng said, “I want you to just nod or shake your head. If I can’t understand you, we’ll go to Fiona, alright? I want to know if I have your okay to take you off the pentam and the amphoterrible. That means we’d be officially starting hospice. And I want you on morphine.”
It was one of the things Yale appreciated about Dr. Cheng, that he just went ahead and called it amphoterrible.
Yale used all the strength he could to make it as clear as possible when he nodded yes.
* * *
—
He woke up after God knew how long to see a very tall young man hovering over the bed. He couldn’t quite focus; the face was cloudy. The morphine was a rug, a warm, numbing rug that was on him and in him.
“Hey, it’s Kurt,” the man said. “Cecily’s son.”
Yale tried to breathe in to say something, but he coughed out far more air than he’d taken in, and each cough was a morphine-dulled boot against his ribs.
Debbie was here. It must be night again. Now that he thought about it, he’d known Debbie was here. He’d felt her beside him for a while now. She knew about the spot between his eyes.
“Hey, I’m sorry. I don’t need you to talk. My mom wanted me to check how you were, and I—” Yale could see, foggily, Kurt glancing to Debbie for permission. He unzipped the duffel bag he carried. “I brought Roscoe.”
A blur of gray. Yale had held Roscoe on his lap every time he went to Cecily’s for dinner, and each time, Roscoe settled in as if he knew exactly who Yale was.
“Mom’s back from California on Friday.” Yale had no idea how far away Friday was.
Kurt hovered near the bed, but he didn’t put Roscoe on it. He surely hadn’t been prepared for the number of tubes, the number of machines. He might have imagined Yale propped up with pillows, reading a book.
“I know he appreciates it, honey,” Debbie said. “Here, let me bring him close for a second.”
She took Roscoe, who didn’t object, and she raised Yale’s hand and put it down in the thick fur. Yale was aware, as he moved his fingers as much as he could, that this was the last time he’d ever touch animal fur, the last time, in fact, he’d touch much of anything besides his own bed and people’s hands.
Kurt said, “But I’d better get going.”
The poor kid. Yale wanted to tell him it was okay, that he wouldn’t blame him if he ran for his life.
When he was gone, Yale managed to make an F sound with