he heard the click, and he turned the knob to let himself in.
The faint scent of old bodies and the residents’ diapers was almost masked by the aroma of antiseptic cleaners and some kind of artificial spray—maybe lavender. Whatever it was, it was cloying.
An old man came shuffling up the hall and passed him without acknowledging he was even there. He heard a nurse from somewhere behind him talking to the old man.
“There you are, Jerry. It’s time for bingo. Do you want to play bingo?”
“Bingo?” the old man said, and let her lead him into another hallway.
Charlie walked past the common room, remembering the puzzles he used to work there with Annie. Working jigsaw puzzles had been her favorite pastime.
An orderly he knew came out of a resident’s room.
“Hey, Charlie. Still looking for lost people?” he asked.
Charlie nodded.
“Well, you came to the right place,” the orderly said, and laughed, like he’d made a great joke.
The comment pissed Charlie off and he didn’t respond. It wasn’t fucking funny.
The door to Annie’s room was open. He knocked once and walked in. A woman was standing beside Annie’s bed, adjusting an IV.
“Hello,” Charlie said.
The woman turned around and smiled. “Hello, I’m Doris, Annie’s hospice nurse.”
“I’m Charlie. Annie is my wife,” he said, and walked to the foot of her bed. Her eyes were partly closed, but they were moving beneath the lids, and her fingers were twitching.
“Is she asleep?” he asked.
“Not in the sense you mean,” Doris said.
Charlie swallowed past the lump in his throat. “Is she unconscious?”
“Again, not in the sense you mean,” she said. “The brain is a repository for a lifetime of memories. We don’t believe they’re really remembering incidents. It’s more like a reflexive action you get when someone hits that funny bone on your knee that makes it jerk. In the rare instances when an Alzheimer patient’s brain fires, they might see a random image, or a memory of a time long ago, which triggers a momentary physical action.”
“Jesus,” Charlie said, and pulled up a chair beside her bed, taking her hand. “Hello, sweetheart. It’s me, Charlie.”
Annie didn’t react to his voice or his touch.
“How do you feed her now?” he asked.
Doris paused, then pulled up the other chair and sat down with Charlie.
“She has a living will,” Doris said. “It came with the paperwork when she was admitted.”
Charlie frowned. “Yes, I remember her filling that out on the day we got her diagnosis.”
“Did you ever read it?” Doris asked.
Charlie shook his head. “No. She took it back to the next doctor’s visit and asked him to put it in her medical file.”
“She agreed to taking fluids intravenously, but not nutrition. In other words, that is a refusal to allow a feeding port to be inserted. She will no longer receive sustenance since she can’t chew or swallow.”
The words felt like a physical blow to the chest. He couldn’t take a breath without bursting into tears.
Annie had chosen this, and he’d never known.
He felt Doris’s hand on his arm, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Annie’s face. She’d done the brave thing. The thing he would never have been able to do to her. The thing he would never have been able to do for her.
“I’m going to step outside for a few minutes to give you some time alone.” She pointed to the buzzer near Annie’s bed. “Just ring the bell if you need me.”
Charlie heard her footsteps as she walked away, then the click of the door as she closed it behind her. Now was his chance to say whatever he wanted to say to Annie, and he couldn’t, because he’d said it all a thousand times before. There was nothing left to tell his sweet Annie but goodbye, and he wasn’t ready to let her go.
* * *
Baxter and Macie were camped out in the ICU waiting room, living from one visiting hour to the next. They had a blanket apiece and a pillow apiece, and had taken a room at a nearby motel to go bathe and change, and took turns leaving the hospital to do that. Tony wasn’t conscious, but according to the nurses, his vital signs were stronger. They wouldn’t ask for more.
It was midafternoon when Macie got a text from Trish. She read it, sighed, then handed her phone to Baxter.
I just found out Tony is alive. I asked God for that and nothing more, so it was the answer to my prayers. I should have told him I