A Brief Kind of Immortality

The silence roars in my ears when they turn the monitors off. The tightly controlled medics emerge from the billowing curtain encased in spiritual shells, refusing to share, refusing to feel. Phone rings and I offer the ritually correct greeting to another - a remote bystander following us like a favorite soap opera. Stalling, sidestepping, buying some time for the others to wrestle demons into specimen bottles, under microscopes, to await detailed examination in the cold hard hours of early morning.

No body bags are available - he's simply covered by a white sheet - wondering, hoping someone closed lifeless eyes in a final blink. The litter straps are being fetched to a soundtrack of wails, ongoing, stretching out through time beyond the limits of human lungs, wavering cry of grief symbolic for those who cannot allow themselves to feel. Not yet.

Strap him down tight, three straps - one two three - pull them tight so he won't slide away. Expect him to grunt, to complain they're too tight, mind pierced by the screaming alienness of a forever unmoving chest. Is he turning blue under the sheet? No, don't look.

He was moving when I first saw him, illuminated by alternating red and white lights. Struggling weakly and thrashing randomly, eyelids barely flickering. Blood had spilled like wine from his lips onto the pure white gurney sheet, flowing as we loaded him into the ambulance. They later tell me his heart was stopped when we arrived, but I didn't know it, shoving him through double doors yelling for help, surrounded by busy hurryscurry. Thinking back minutes to screaming sirens, roaring voice on the radio, weighing speed against flinging precious cargo from side to side in the back of the ambulance. Wishing we were closer, wishing we were there, adrenal time dilation making seconds eternity.

Changing the sheets on the gurney as behind the soft curtain ribs pop under compressions, plastic pushing air into unresponsive lungs. Try to be deaf as someone counts one two three four five breathe, sit at the desk unhearing as someone shouts "All clear!" and the muffled thump of voltage spasms. Direct the bewildered bystanders out of the area, bid them bide a while in uncomfortable seats just far enough away they cannot hear what I hear, cannot imagine what I imagine. Their own musings are bad enough.

Catch brief glimpses of swollen stomach and catheter and wonder at the lack of dignity at passing away this way, sweat dripping from determined workers on lifeless skin, shouted instructions and rushed movements about your unyielding form. Then the fear of blackness rises in my skull as it always does, and I make the phone call for the helicopter we all know will be far too late.

The litter sits on the clean gurney sheets, white wrapped about green pink and blue, with splashes of red. How tacky to clash when you're dead.

Another drives the ambulance on the slow ride to the mortuary, rectangular box disappearing in perspective, turning a corner and out of my world - the strong smell of bleach pulling back to here and now, sponges and mops cleaning up after the storm. Walk back to my office, as useless now as when it began.

Out of sight, out of mind. Yeah right.

I never ask if they closed his eyes.

I don't want to know.