A Common Sense

I never liked doctors. Don’t trust ‘em. No one wants to go to school for that many years and still has enough sense to cut me open. But some crack told me I needed a new heart. I didn’t care much when he said I’d need a hospital stay, but then Sylvia started cryin’, so I checked myself in. That’s how it usually went. She was always lookin’ out for me, and I never wanted to listen.

“A bitter old man,” Sylvia’d call me. That’s what the other gal said, too.

She started botherin’ me only a week into my stay at St. Mary’s. The docs stuck me in the smallest damn room I’d ever seen -- they painted it beige, too. I s’ppose they try their best to make it nice, but it just makes you happier to be dyin’, if ya ask me. There wasn’t anything else I wanted to do in that god awful room but read my book, very innocent like. But these damn docs took that girl on sprees past my window. She took it upon herself to heckle me, too.

“Hey ancient!” the gal would yell. “Watcha readin’ today?”

“Same damn thing as yesterday!” Jack London. Always Jack London. But I ain’t much of a talker, and she clearly wasn’t much of a listener, so I just let her go most days. Other times, I’d heckle her back. The occasional gestures were exchanged.

It went on for weeks, just like that. Then one day, she goes on and invades my personal space. Some kids had come through earlier—couldn’t have been older than nine—runnin’ with a little black book and rowdyin’ each other up. I was too damn tired to chase ‘em outta there, so I just let ‘em goof around for a minute or two until they finally found the sense to leave. Sylvia thought it was darlin’, those boys runnin’ in and out, but my wife and I didn’t share many opinions, those days.

She’d gone to get me some fresh pillows when that gal from the hallway pranced in like she owned the place. She had her old walker and everything, the whole pitiful shebang. I asked her what the hell she wanted.

“My brothers,” she replied, all matter-of-fact. “They took my book. The doctors said they hid it somewhere, and you’re the only desperate brat without his door locked.” Truth be told, I hadn’t known that was an option. But she found it under some flowers Sylvia’d brought in to brighten up the place. When she hobbled back around to face me, I guess I was scowling.

Wouldn’t be the first time.

“Jesus Christ, would it kill you to smile?”

“Yeah, I think it would.”

As if that wasn’t enough to make her go away, she kept pryin’. “What are you in for?”

“Enlarged heart.”

“How ironic.” She leaned on her walker. “I’ve got leukemia.”

“I didn’t ask.”

“I know you didn’t.” But she told me useless facts about herself anyway, like how she was seventeen years old and had a thing for even numbers. How she’d lived in and out of St. Mary’s for more than half a decade. She even showed me what she wrote in her notebook, some scribbles about philosophy.

All that damn girl did was read philosophy. Tons of it. Though, she did read Thomas Paine, too. “The idea of separating one from oneself,” she told me, without me asking. “What could be more philosophical than that?”

She asked for my name, and I told her to screw off. But the docs took me out for strolls in Grimaldi Park every morning, and apparently she could see me out her window, so she took to calling me Mr. Grimaldi.

Finally, she left, and for days upon days I dreamed the worst was over. Sylv said that made me bitter, but I’d never liked teenagers anyways. Delilah, our daughter, had been the only decent one. She was pretty, and sharp as all hell, until that damned seventeenth birthday. That’s when she decided to run off and do something stupid like go to medical school. Wasted potential, if you ask me. But Sylv was proud as ever. Always proud, my wife.

Around April, the doctors stuck that same gal and I together for our daily exercise.

“Walking buddies”, they called it. I guess they figured she was the only one slow enough to stay back with me. As they put it, she wasn’t doin’ too good. I didn’t care much. But they stuck us together anyways, and I didn’t fight it, so as to save Sylvia’s tears.

That was a decision I’d come to regret.

“You lonely, Mr. Grimaldi?”

“Of course not. Why the hell would ya ask?”

“Cause I knew it’d get you talking.” She hobbled a few steps forward. “So, tell me about your family.”

I almost didn’t. “I was married.”

“No, no,” she interrupted, shaking her head as if I hadn’t just barely started. “You’re already lying to me.”

“How the hell do you figure?”

“‘Married’? In the past tense? I’d bet a cancer cure on you still being married.”

“And what on God’s green earth would you know about that?”

She sighed. “Mr. Grimaldi, you don’t strike me as some Shakespearean protagonist with a gaping hole to fill. Your wife wasn’t murdered, your daughter didn’t leave, and your parents loved you just fine. You aren’t damaged. I’m not the unlikely friend that you’re gonna end up needing much more than I need you. Don’t get this confused.”

Then she quoted some stupid story from one of those books of hers. She talked an awful lot about the holes in a person. Well, she talked an awful lot in general. But she’d quote all these fancy philosophers and revolutionaries that I frankly couldn’t care less about. “A prodigy,” the nurses called her, as if liking to read is all it takes to be a prodigy these days. What a sad ol’ world we live in.

But the more I tried to shake her, the more she fought to stay. She’d just keep talkin’ and talkin’ about things I didn’t pretend to be interested in, and I guess she liked that. “Honest,” she called it. After a while, I learned to let her stay––not because I liked her, mind you. It was like playing guitar with fresh fingers. You just build up a tolerance, I guess.

So she started stopping by my room from time to time. Disturbing my peace and quiet, if you ask me. But like a parasite, she just wouldn’t go away, and it was easier to let ‘er be.

Some days she was better, and some days she was worse. Some days I was better, some days I was worse. But every day she would ramble on and on about the origins of the world, always offering annoying explanations for questions I barely asked.

“Can you pass the salt?”

“That depends: it’s a question of determinism and indeterminism. Yes, I do have the human ability to pass you the salt; but is my ability to pass the salt a result of a culmination of all past events leading to this moment, or of my own free will?”

“Could ya just pass the damn salt?”

“No. Nurse Rachelle is watching your sodium this week.”

Some days she was too sick to stand, so she made me come to her––which was rude, the way I saw it. But it was almost nicer that way. She talked less when she was sick. There was less rambling. I’d just finish my crossword in near silence, and occasionally she’d look up to call me old, and that’s the way it was.

We’d still walk together, almost every day, by the demand of those poor docs. I’d grab onto my cane, and she’d clutch tight to that walker, and then she’d annoy me to the thought of blowing my brains out.

“Why do you just read the same thing, over and over again?”

“‘Cause that’s how I like it.”

“That’s a sad thing to be fond of.”

“What is?”

“Invariety. Don’t you ever want to learn anything?”

“I want to learn how to walk faster than you.”

“Damn, you got me there.”

“Don’t say ‘damn’.”

“Why not? You say it.”

“I’ve lived more than you have.”

“You’ve lived longer than I have.” And we just left it at that.

Then in September, they found me a heart. Sylvia practically went full circle and burst into flame, there were so many tears from that woman. I guess she’d been afraid I’d die.

I had no such worry.

The operation took a while, and they’d gotten me so hyped up on drugs that I didn’t remember much, afterwards. But I knew the gal was there, walker and all, holding my wife’s hand ‘til the fear subsided. Sylv told me later how much it meant to her. And I think, for the first time in a while, I told Sylv how much she meant to me, too.

Recovery took an awful long while. It hurt like hell, but I think mostly it was inconvenient. Delilah came to visit me once, but I could barely even remember it, I was so drowsy on the medications.

The gal came. I knew that. Even if I couldn’t remember it happening, I knew she hobbled in with that walker of hers and sat for a while, holding my wife’s hand in that horrible beige room. That’s just the way she was.

It took me a while to get back to my old self. I still couldn’t walk. I could barely even sit up straight, but talking was definitely easier. We got back to our old annoying conversations.

“How are you feeling?” She asked me.

“My chest hurts like hell. What’s this medication for if it ain’t gonna make me feel better?”

“You know, John Stuart Mill suggests that the key to happiness is limiting desires. Maybe you just need to lower your standards.”

“Well, you can tell John Stuart Mill to shove it. My chest hurts.” But she smiled, I suppose because I remembered the man’s name. Then she went on about Thomas Paine, and once again, I didn’t pretend to care. She’d give me so much grief for Jack London, and yet it was always Thomas Paine, with her.

Still, life was almost back to normal when she came about. I wasn’t a fan of the kid, but at the time, she was just about the only constant in my day-to-day, other than doctors and drugs. I may not have liked her senseless talking, but I never quite minded routine.

I think we bonded in some weird way, after the surgery. I was usually in pain, or not quite myself on the medications, but she would come about anyways. I suppose I was nicer on the drugs. That’s what Sylvia’d tell me, anyways. Those two girls got along like peas in a pod while I recovered, which really chapped my buns. But it was nice for Sylvia to not feel so alone.

They’d talk about all the things Sylv had done and all the things the girl hadn’t. I reckon that wife of mine went on for a week about her not having a first kiss at seventeen. “Then kiss her yourself,” I think I told her. Sylv grew awful quiet. I was scared she’d cry, what with all her emotions. But she didn’t. To my goddamn surprise, she laughed. She clutched my arm and laughed harder than she had in a long while. It was a happy time for the two of us, and a part of me thinks the girl had something to do with it.

There was a week or two, though, where the kid wasn’t up to her usual self. She was quieter. Paler. A little sadder. Her eyes were always red and, when she did speak, it was about darker things. The sadder philosophies. More realistic, if you ask me. But they put her in a bad place. I don’t think she called me old once that whole time, which just felt wrong. Even the docs came through with sad eyes, lookin’ at the ground the entire visit. It was like the whole hospital was mourning, and I didn’t know what for.

Of course, she gradually cheered up, so I thought nothing of it. She annoyingly started spouting about revolutions again, so everything was back to normal. We’d eat lunch together, and banter about the nurses. Her family came every other weekday and all through the weekend. She liked ‘em, too. It’s hard to like family, but she did. Even introduced them to me, once. That was annoying. Those two little rascals that came running into my room months before were somehow even rowdier the second time I met ‘em. But her parents were nice enough. Young.

Soon I was up and walking again, with my damn stubborn exercise buddy, though both of us were even slower, now. I’d hobble and she’d call me ancient, so I’d insult her walker and it’d be even. It was a peaceful time, even though both our bodies were barely working.

I got the sense mine was healing. Hers, on the other hand, was going the other way. The leukemia was givin’ her a good fight, but she’d never admit it. Too much pride. But we were one another’s routine, and we liked that, even if we didn’t much like each other.

Or maybe we did. I don’t know.

Those were the good weeks. The happy-go-lucky ones. Sylvia said I smiled more, and the girl quit calling me bitter. I still wanted to go home, but not nearly in the same way. As much as I hated having a parasite, it was growing on me, in all the wrong places. In all the happy places.

And then, she got too sick to go on walks in Grimaldi Park. I felt bad for the kid. I mean, no one wants to be so sick they can’t even get out of bed, especially a kid so young. But a part of me was selfish about it. I just wished someone had told me that one walk would be our last. I’d have made fun of Bertrand Russell, just to push a few of her buttons. I suppose it’s no good to try and change the past.

After that, I was the one coming to her. I’d bring Jack London and the daily paper, and we’d talk formally about whatever came up. Sylvia came some nights, too.

Sometimes, when we talked, the conversation would lull and you would hear all the machines. They were damn annoying, I thought, but they kept her out of pain, so I let ‘em be. Walkin’ sure was boring without her, though. I didn’t tell her that. Too much pride.

Then one evening, she got the nurse to shuffle me into her room. That felt unnecessarily formal, but you can’t blame a kid who can’t move. I brought my crossword puzzle, and she brought her insults, though they weren’t as strong as they used to be. Nothing about her was strong. The kid could barely breathe. I wanted to ask her what philosophy of the world allowed that tough young girl from the hallway to deteriorate into a shell of herself. Instead, I just shut my mouth and worked on seven down.

We sat in silence for a minute or two, and I noticed the light coming into the room. I wasn’t ever the type to take account of a sunset, but somethin’ felt off about it. Eerie. The sky was purple, and so was the room. She was so pale, the sky colored her purple, too. After a while, she finally spoke. I wish she hadn’t.

“I’m going to die tomorrow.”

There was another moment of silence, but it got me to look up from my crossword.

She elaborated. “Not tonight. I can make it through today, but I feel it coming. It’ll be tomorrow. I’m sure.” I was stunned. My chest still hurt bad, but something about those words stung more. Damn docs can’t make medication to cure a hurt like that.

I was angry. And so I asked her why the hell she was so happy to be dying.

She said she wasn’t.

So I asked her why she wasn’t fighting harder. “You’re not bringing the cavalry,” I think I said, so she laughed and called me old.

Then she said she was a Christian. She’d never told me that before. She’d never bothered to let me know that she’d loved God since she was three or that she’d grown up in a church just down the road from where we raised Delilah. And I just about cried. She’d read all these pages of useless philosophy, about the horrors of the earth and the worthlessness of the people in it, and she could speak it to me like it was her own secret language. And yet all this time, she’d believed in predestination, and the human purpose, and a heaven after earth. I think I asked her why. Why she could ever believe in a God with a plan or a purpose that would leave her out to dry at only seventeen years old.

“Because he loves me,” she said. “And what could be more beautiful to believe than that?”

The room fell silent, and the purple turned to blue. No one spoke for a long while. I felt there was nothing left to say.

“You know earlier when I said you didn’t have any holes to fill? That wasn’t true.”

“Sure it was.”

“No, it wasn’t. That wasn’t fair to you. You may not have daddy issues or dead wife or a daughter who abandoned you, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have holes. You do. You have plenty. Your holes are just your own fears. They’re lessons about life that you’re aching to learn but can’t quite figure out how. Your holes are just confusion and denial about this messed up world you were given. And you know what, Mr. Grimaldi? You may not be a Shakespearean protagonist, but you’re a character of life, and that’s just about as sad and bewildering and hole-y as it gets.”

I paused for a moment. “Is that what you’ve been writing in that little notebook of yours?”

She struggled to laugh, weakly nodding her head against the pillows. Then she uttered the last words either of us would say on the subject that night.

“Just know that it’s okay to be broken.”

A little while later she recalled her only regret was not dying at sixteen. That was a much more even number, she said.

That girl had a whole clan there when she finally let go. I remember it was cloudy outside, just barely morning. The two of us had already said our goodbyes, so I was careful not to say a word. She had family to depart from.

But she did look at me one last time. It just about broke my heart. I swear, I heard her whisper “Grimaldi,” one last time into her oxygen mask. Her breathing sounded like a whistle, right before the end.

It had always annoyed me how her family came and went, bustling and laughing and crowding up the hallways. It was too loud. But today, it was quiet. Horribly quiet. There was no bustling. There was no laughing. Just goodbyes. And it hurt like hell.

I watched the machines struggle to read her. She had oxygen covering her face, and her eyes were purple like bruises. Her dad held her hand, and her mother grabbed tight to her shin. Neither of them were ready to let her go. They just tried to keep her talking until she no longer had the voice.

Then she passed.

It took a moment for the flatline to sink in. No one could so much as move. Then the mother dropped to the floor. She grabbed the arches of her daughter's feet. Then she let out the worst wail you’d ever hear. It was the sound of death. Of losing a child. No one can ever erase a sound like that from memory.

The parents were beside themselves. Her father actually fell to the floor. The little boys didn’t quite seem to understand, or they understood too well. Chaos and sadness filled that room––but the boys cried the loudest. Tears rolled down their fat little faces, and they grasped and ran and fought for their sister. They called out to her, but she was already gone.

I felt for the parents, paralyzed in grief. Their daughter hadn’t even gotten a first kiss. They weren’t in any condition to restrain two screaming little boys. So I just knelt down, slowly, and squeezed ‘em hard. Just hugged the little things. And yet with all the screaming, and all the crying, and all that goddamned sorrow, the only thing I could hear was the flatline. It was piercing, and painful, and it brought tears out of me. Tears I hated to admit were there. And though I didn’t believe in her God, I prayed to him in that moment. I prayed he would make the sound stop. I prayed he would send someone to unplug that damn machine. I prayed harder than I ever had, and harder than I likely ever will.

Eventually, he answered. The flatline stopped. Some nurses turned off the monitor. I held those tiny rascals for a little while longer, feeling those fat, wet tears on the shoulder of my sweater. Sylvia’d just washed it, too. But I didn’t pretend to mind. They didn’t want the grief there. They were less than ten years old. Just boys. Children.

I squeezed ‘em tight.

A year passed since she’d died, and they sent me home with Sylvia. I thought of that girl quite a bit, more than I cared to. The anniversary came and I couldn’t bring myself to visit her grave in Grimaldi Park. I figured her whole family would be there, and they’d want to mourn in peace. Or even worse, they’d want to hug me all over and cry with me like we were the same, which we weren’t. So I stayed home.

They'd kept in contact with me. Apparently, she’d told them about me on their visits. The family insisted part of her life insurance go toward my medical bills. I declined, a million times, but they insisted. Damn things went and paid the doctors behind my back. $20,000 worth of the friend I lost. It was horrific and saddening, but somewhere within the terribleness of it all, it was damn kind.

The anniversary was tough. I may have cried, but not as much as Sylvia, which wasn’t easy to watch. But there I was, only three blocks away from her family, knowing they were crying and setting flowers on her grave, making her favorite food to keep just a sliver of her alive, celebrating like it was the day of her birth and not the anniversary of her death.

And I was just the old sap at home reading Thomas Paine.