Last Requests

I can explain why I quit. I was on the train back to my apartment when he stepped into the car. The past few months had been so bleak and unmemorable—carry out from the same Chinese and Afghani restaurants, weekly calls from my mom and sister in Detroit pleading with me to come home where it is “safe”, and the impossibility of feeling ANYTHING among the swarms of bundled bodies and (now) masked faces trudging down 42nd Street. I worked as an assistant to the assistant of a men’s outerwear designer in the garment district. The hours were brutal, and despite the fairytale depictions of ice skating at Rockefeller Center and carriage rides through Central Park, it had been a tough winter in the city. The unrelenting cold, on top of a virus whose name shall not be spoken, left everyone exhausted and hollow. I, along with most of my fellow New Yorkers, needed a win.

He had been on the train for a mere 8 minutes. He sat across from me wearing scrubs with his shoulders back and legs wide apart, his heavy-lidded eyes on me in a way that felt more intense than my last couple of dates. That’s why I didn’t hesitate to leap off four stops too early when I saw a little black book fall out of his coat pocket as he departed the subway car. The book was worn and felt surprisingly heavy for its size when I rescued it from the filthy subway platform. Almost every page was filled with names followed by brief notes written in a small and messy script that I wanted to investigate further, but the owner was moving quickly toward the turnstiles. Unfortunately, my most recent hobby of sitting on the couch and eating through the entire Haagen Daz flavor collection left me just short of catching up to him before he disappeared up the stairs.

I drug myself back onto the train, disappointed not to have a reason to hear my five-second subway crush speak. I binge-read the book in every spare moment I had for the next 2 days, foregoing sleep and skipping basic bodily maintenance rituals. Luckily, it was the weekend. The content of the little back book was beautiful and horrible, filled with declarations of love and bitter regret that reflect the core of a life. The first ten pages of the book were written by a man named Sam, who wrote about his wife and children. The rest of the entries were in a different handwriting, and the only thing that the people listed in the book had in common was that they were dead. The entries looked something like this:

Edgar Garcia, 46, passed away 4/5

Tell Julie DeRosa that I am so grateful to her for taking care of my mother. I have always loved her, but never got the courage to let her know. She lives off of E 188th St in the Bronx.

Igwe Okorie, 38, passed away 5/17

I haven’t spoken to my father, Debare, for 2 years. Please tell him I am sorry, and that I want him to meet my son, who was born last year. He lives in Brooklyn.

I decided to call the first entry in the book with a phone number, which belonged to Carmen:

“Hi, my name is Lily. I’m sorry to bother you, but I found a book on the train with a message for you. Do you know Reggie Hayworth?”

“Reggie? He died a few months ago.”

“Yes. He wanted you to know that he should’ve never left you, and that you were the love of his life. He says he’s so sorry he wasted the last year that you could’ve been together.”

She was sniffling and laughing at the same time. “He always had the worst timing. It almost seems impossible that he is gone, he was so loud and crazy and full of life.”

“I’m so sorry for your loss. This may be a strange question, but if you happen to hear about any doctors or nurses who cared for Reggie, could you let me know?”

“Of course. It means a lot to me that you called.”

I was pretty sure that the fine man in scrubs probably worked at Lenox Hill as a nurse, doctor, or some other sort of medical personnel based on where he boarded the train. I had tried to call and ask some questions based on information from the book, but the hospital could not give out the names of who may have taken care of any of these patients. When I originally started making these calls it was to track down the owner of the book, but soon I could think of nothing else when I was fetching coffees and sending memos at work but getting home to let those who were on the living end of this scary disease know that someone who wasn’t so fortunate was thinking of them in their last moments. As soon as it grew too late to call, I would track down people with vague information and write letters. Some calls were short and light, others were devastating. I rode the highs and lows like I was experiencing each of them myself, and I felt both ecstatic and gutted. And then one day I got a letter from Delores, who told me about the nice doctor her husband had spoken about when he began his doomed road to recovery. After waiting for weeks, I was finally able to meet Dr. Roth.

“Hi, I’m Adam.”

“Hi.” I replied, handing over the book. He was as attractive as I remembered, so it took me a second to form words when we met at a cafe outside of the hospital.

“I don’t even know how to thank you for this. I felt so guilty when it went missing. I’d been carrying it around with me since April, and I haven’t contacted any of these people.”

“I’ve actually had a bit luck with that. I wrote a few letters, and made some calls, but I’m not even a quarter of the way through the book. What made you start writing all of this down?”

“The book belonged to one of my patients, an older guy named Sam who had spent a week recovering before he took a bad turn. His phone hadn’t worked for a few days, so he started writing letters to his wife in the book, memories that just kept coming to him, he said. Things he hadn’t thought about for years. The way he wrote, it was so vivid, like it had all just happened yesterday. I read the stories over and over after he died. I carried the book around for awhile with the intention of returning it to her, but one patient after another had someone they wanted me to contact for them at the end, to apologize to or let them know how they felt. A lot of times, I was the only one there at the very end.”

He was so candid and easy going, and I felt more relaxed as long as I looked away from him every couple of minutes to collect myself. “That’s who wrote me back, his wife, Delores. She was overwhelmed, she said it felt like he had just disappeared. They’d been together 40 years. She was sick when she learned he had passed, so she had to stay in her apartment alone for two weeks. I think I cried harder than she did! Especially after I read Sam’s entry about their trip to Coney Island when their kids were little, it was like this snapshot of a perfect life. It felt like reading fiction, like there will be no more chances for any of us at love, or normalcy…”

“Right?” He smiled. “It killed me, but it also made me feel better, you know? That he was able to have a full life. Some of my patients were so young, I’m sure they thought they’d have plenty of time left. It was heartbreaking. It’s got to be difficult talking to all these people, some of it is heavy stuff.”

“I’m not gonna lie, it’s been rough. I always feel so bad at first, because it’s like picking off a scab. There is a lot of emotion. I’ve talked to a few people who hadn’t heard from the person for years! This one lady was still really pissed at her ex for cheating on her years ago, even after I told her he died back in October. She actually accused me of sleeping with Hector. There is always a story, which I usually love hearing, but sometimes they go on for hours into the night. I am about to lose my job because I have been late almost every day for the past 3 weeks.”

“I’m really sorry. Please don’t lose your job. I will take this off of your hands.” Adam sounded so sincere. My guard dropped, and I was suddenly unable to hold back my feelings.

Tears started streaming down my cheeks. As hard as it had been, I didn’t want to give up the book. In the last few weeks, I had begun to feel like I was not just sleepwalking through the same day over and over. The horror of this past year had happened right outside my door, and I was unable to do anything but watch the rising death tolls on the news. Contacting a friend or loved one for someone who had endured so was such a small contribution to make, but it was all I had. “I was actually thinking about quitting my job and trying to find something different once I finished going through the book. Even though it can be painful, I can’t imagine stopping at this point.”

“It’s crazy, that’s the way I’ve felt about my job this past year. It’s been awful. But I haven’t even tried to take time off, or do anything else. I feel like I have to keep going, at least until I see a light at the end of the tunnel. It's almost like an addiction, and I know at some point I’m going to break.” After staring at each other for a couple of minutes, Adam said he had an idea. “How long do you think it would take you to get through the book, to get in touch with everyone?”

“Probably several months if I keep my job.”

“I’ve got a proposal for you. I just got a bonus at work that I’m not going to have time to spend. If I give you $20,000, you could take a few months off to concentrate on finishing the book, and maybe find a new job? And I may throw a few new contacts your way from time to time, if that’s ok.”

“I can’t take your money!”

“But I insist. I have felt guilty about sitting on this for the last few months. I think I avoided it on purpose, like all of the unfinished business kept them alive in my mind. You would be providing a service to me, Lily, and I’d be very grateful.”

I ended up accepting Adam’s offer, and quit my job the next week. I jotted down the highlights of my conversations with the family and friends of his patients who had passed, and we met once a month to talk about it. Many times he remembered the patient, but a few he didn’t. Forgetting anything always seemed to torture him a bit, so I always saved the most uplifting stories for last. I was able to finally feel comfortable around him, despite the fact that his personality turned out to be just as appealing as his looks. At least until our fourth meeting, when he asked me out on a real date. I was almost speechless all over again.