Authors: Denise Mathew
I took the public bus to the hospital and hurried to the front door. Since it was still early, I used my security card to open the door. The lady at the front desk who looked unfamiliar, seemed too busy working on her computer to have noticed me. As I did every time I passed through the foyer, I paused to look at the decorations and thought about Marilee coming to the apartment for Christmas dinner. I was stoked that we were going to spend the holiday together, but also a bit worried. I’d been to her place, seen the opulence that was an everyday occurrence for her. I couldn’t help but feel embarrassed about the paltry digs Gran and I had.
I never liked to think too far ahead into the future because you never knew how things could change, but imagining Marilee sitting at our tiny kitchen table in our closet sized apartment, didn’t leave me feeling warm and fuzzy inside. If I was being honest, there were so many miles between our lifestyles that I didn’t know how we’d make it work after she was out of the hospital. The limo alone had completely tapped me out, and had meant that I couldn’t buy Gran the bed she so desperately needed. It would be a cold day in hell before I could pony up enough cash to make a repeat performance.
The third floor was quiet. Quite a few patients had finished their chemo runs and were home between cycles since it was just a week before Christmas. Marilee’s next cycle had been postponed until after the holidays. Not that it made much of a difference since according to her parents, she’d be bunking in the hospital anyway. It still made no sense to me that they were still being jerks about taking her home. But if I was being truthful, I selfishly wanted her to stay because I didn’t know how I would have made it through not seeing her for the holidays.
I made my way to Marilee’s room. The door was still closed meaning doctors rounds hadn’t started yet so she was probably still asleep. I pushed the door open and spotted her curled up under her duvet. It always amazed me how tiny and child-like she appeared in the bed. I tiptoed to the side. Even her head was buried beneath the covers. Unlike me, who needed a constant supply of fresh air, Marilee loved to sleep with her head under the blankets. I started to pull the duvet away from her head, careful not to wake her up, when she sprang up and yelled boo.
“Shit,” I hollered, staggering back. Marilee broke into boisterous laughter. Her cheeks went pink almost immediately.
“The expression on your face was so worth setting my alarm for,” Marilee said between heaving breaths. Tears streamed down her face and she gripped her stomach with every giggle. I was on her in seconds. She collapsed into a ball, knowing what was coming next. Even so, I managed to find an unprotected area around her ribs. I worked my fingers into the spaces between her bones, a place I was well acquainted with and where I knew that she was super ticklish.
“Jax, no, I can’t breathe,” Marilee said between laughs.
Worried that I was going overboard, I stopped. That’s when she counterattacked. She slipped her hand into my jacket, dipped down into the area just below my armpit, a place where only she knew I was ticklish. Then I was gasping for breath between loud guffaws. I didn’t know when it went from a tickle fest to us kissing, but that’s exactly how the doctors found us. With Marilee straddling me, our lips locked in a kiss, one of her hands tucked into the waistband of my jeans. And with me, both my hands under the back of her t-shirt, caressing the bare skin of her lower back.
We’d only realized that they were there when someone cleared their throat so loudly that it was impossible not to hear. Marilee when five shades of red. I think even I did the male form of blushing, whatever that was called.
“I’ve got to get out of here,” I said, standing up. I smoothed out my leather jacket and ran a hand through my hair. I gave Marilee a chaste peck on the cheek, as if we hadn’t just been in the throes of too much fun, just minutes before. Marilee, still flushed, managed to look a little tousled even though she didn’t have a hair on her head. She nodded, cocking an eyebrow my way suggestively. I backed away from her. I didn’t trust myself not to start kissing her again, despite the fact that the room was filled with doctors and their students.
“Bye Dr. McClaren,” I said, giving the team a wide birth. He shook his head. He didn’t bother hiding the amusement in his eyes.
I was out of the hospital and on a bus back to the Strip twenty minutes later. In my opinion I hadn’t had near enough time with Marilee. There was no question that working on the list on one of the few days off I had was a sacrifice, but I hoped it was worth it. I tried to convince myself that she wanted me to spend time on the Peace Project, as much as I did.
I got off the bus at my stop. I pulled out my list, crumpled from being repeatedly folded and unfolded, and was more than satisfied that I was already down to the last five people. I planned to make a new list as soon as the holidays were over.
I knew money couldn’t buy dignity but I hoped it would come close.
Joanna Kelso had been on the streets since she was ten. Unlike Max and Zeke who’d found each other, Joanna hadn’t had the luxury of friends, and from what I knew had been used by practically every person she’d bothered to trust. Now somewhere between twenty-five or twenty-six, she was close to finishing the last chapter of her life. No matter what I said or did, there would be no happy ending for Joanna. But I figured that if I could make the ending a little more comfortable for her, then that’s what I’d do.
I walked to the area where I was pretty sure I’d find her. Tucked behind the dumpsters that sat in the back lot of a Italian restaurant, Joanna merely existed. Drawing in air and exhaling it, eating when she could, and going hungry when she couldn’t. I skirted the restaurant and was a little worried that she wasn’t there when I didn’t immediately see her. But when I saw the tip of a filthy shoe that was so battered I was surprised that it still held together, I knew I’d found her.
Wedged in the space between the huge metal garbage cans that stank of rotting food, old oil and even human waste, Joanna sat. Her eyes were closed, her mouth agape and for a moment I thought that I was too late, that she’d already left the land of the living.
As if she sensed me, she flicked an eye open. Bloodshot and watery, one dazed eye peered at me. I was a little stunned that she was still alive.
“Joanna?” I said, hoping I wouldn’t startle her. I was quite sure that she knew me, but she was so far gone that I didn’t know if she’d even remember.
“Hey Jax, want a date?” she said, her words slurring. Her dark hair was matted in a clump on her head, her face was dirt smudged and skeletal. Even though I knew her age she looked double that. She wore a thin cotton shirt that had once been yellow, but now was a sickly shade of grey-brown. The black hoodie she wore over her t-shirt looked as if something had chewed out parts of it. Her black sweat pants looked much the same as the hoodie.
I smiled and shook my head. “Not today Joanna,” I said. I reached my hand out to her.
“I want to take you to a place that’s warmer than here, where someone will take care of you.”
Joanna locked on me with her open eye and grinned. “Nobody takes care of me,” she said with a mirthless laugh. I hated to admit that up until this very moment, it had probably been true.
“Today is different,” I said.
I got hold of her hand, bony and covered in scabbed over sores. I tugged her forward. She was so light that it was as if I’d plucked a dandelion from a crack in the sidewalk. Joanna fell forward. I caught her in my arms. Her smell was pungent of unclean and dying. I did my best to ignore it, bundling her in the heavy sleeping bag that I’d bought for her. Too weak to protest or even ask questions, she went limp in my arms, like an empty paper sack. I was once again surprised that she hadn’t succumbed already to the unforgiving cold.
With Joanna still in my arms, I walked to the front of the restaurant. People shot me disgusted glances; I ignored them. I was doing something that they weren’t, helping the helpless. It took longer than I wanted to flag down a taxi, and even when I did I had to promise the driver that I would pay him extra if he took the fare. He drove us to the address I gave him and I went good on my promise to pay him extra.
As far as I could see the place had once been a small apartment building that had been converted into an End of Life facility. There were other facilities, but after I’d done my research I’d found the this place was the most reasonably priced one, that also seemed to take good care of the patients. The building was old but was kept spotlessly clean, not that Joanna would have complained after where she’d been spending her days and nights. I moved to the front desk and gave them my name. The receptionist nodded, picked up the phone and dialed. A minute or two later a twenty-something Hispanic man with a shaved head, a sturdy build and a ready smile, greeted us.
He led us down the hall. The place was much bigger inside than the exterior suggested. We took an elevator to the third floor and he showed us to the room where she would be staying. The space was small, containing only a hospital bed with crisp sheets, a small television, a worn wooden desk with a matching chair and a tall oak dresser. What struck me about the room was that the bed made it appear a little like a hospital room, but the furniture gave it a homey appeal.
A good sized window with heavy mint green curtains, faced the brick wall of the adjacent building. It wasn’t an ideal view but it was better than being stuck between dumpsters. I knew Marilee had given me free reign with the money in the bank account, but I didn’t want to abuse her good will. Even so the place was by no means cheap.
I’d already given them a deposit for two weeks.
“I’ll get her care worker,” the man whose name tag said Carlos, said. He smiled and left. Throughout the whole taxi drive and even now, Joanna had slept. I didn’t know when she’d eaten or drank anything last, but they’d told me that if she needed it the facility was set up for intravenous infusions and feeds. I laid Joanna on the bed and washed my hands at the sink, even so her smell clung to me. I knew I’d have to go back home and shower before I did anything else. I glanced down at Joanna, watching the quiet rise and fall of her chest.
“Hello,” a voice said from behind me. I would have been lying if I’d said I wasn’t relieved to have someone there to help Joanna. Even I hadn’t known how terrible her state of being had become.
The woman who looked to be in her forties, had a plump frame a kind face, and glasses perched on the tip of her nose. Her brown eyes studied me over the top of the lenses.
“Mr…”
“Jax,” I said quickly. I wasn’t a mister anyone, not by a long shot. “This is Joanna, I already told them everything I knew about her. I’m sure there’s a lot that I don’t know.” My eyes drifted back to Joanna, oblivious to our presence.
“I’m Leticia. I’ll be Joanna’s care worker for the duration of her stay.” I couldn’t help but think that
duration of her stay
was a nice way to say until she died. She gazed down at the clipboard in her hands then looked back up at me.
“It says here that you’re not a relative or even a friend.” She cocked her head as if she couldn’t quite believe that I was paying for a stranger’s care.
I nodded. When I didn’t say anything she pulled a pen from the bun on top of her head.
“It also says that she is a former prostitute who is in the last stages of AIDS.” Once again I nodded. In my mind, admitting Joanna to the End of life facility had seemed a lot more black and white than the stark truth of it all. I knew she was going to die soon, it wasn’t like you needed to be a doctor to see how bad off she was. In fact I was actually surprised that she’d managed to outlive Fred.
But saying things like dying, last stages of life, and knowing that she was terminally ill, had been just words until right then. Joanna wasn’t a name on a list or a patient in this place, she was a person who’d had a shitty life. Nothing could fix that. I kind of felt like I was putting a Band Aid on a gaping wound.
“You’re doing a good thing for her,” Leticia said as if she’d heard my doubts.
“I did nothing,” I said, shaking my head.
Up until that very moment I hadn’t actually thought that I was going to drop her off there and wait for time to take its course. I’d wanted to believe in magic that I knew didn’t exist, the kind that could make Joanna well again and give her the life that everyone on the planet deserved. One where parents took care of you and where you didn’t have to sell your body to eat. I wanted Joanna to have been loved and cared for, and everything that we needed as human beings. But that had been all dreams. I knew what I was doing was the only thing I could do, but it felt like nothing at all. I hated the limitations that we had as humans, and that not every story had a happy ending.
“Do you have everything you need from me?” I asked, itching to get out of there. Away from the place where people went to die.
Leticia nodded. “I have your number. I’ll call you if I need any other information.”
She paused and met my eyes with hers. “I’ll let you know when she passes.”
I swallowed a few times, once again shocked at how truly broken I felt. I knew that the Peace Project was a good thing, but I hadn’t realized the toll it would take on my emotions. More than most people who didn’t see poverty on a daily basis, I’d thought I’d had a handle on what it was like to have nothing, but I didn’t. In fact I had no idea how it felt to be so broken, I hoped I never did.
Unable to do anything until I had a shower, I grabbed a bus back home. Grey clouds had gathered overhead and promised more snow. To make matters worse the wind had picked up, raking frigid fingers over my body. I wasn’t sure if I was cold because of the weather or because of my regrets about Joanna. Either way I needed to not only get clean and change my clothes, but also warm up.