“We never did get back to the conversation, Ben.” Elliot talked to the air and opened the laptop. “I wasn’t finished.” He pulled open his underwear drawer, grabbed a pair, then retrieved his jeans and a shirt from the closet. When he got back to the laptop, he saw Ben’s reply.
We can talk more tonight, unless you just can’t wait. It’s easier to talk in dreams.
“Yeah, and I like to see your face when I’m talking to you.” Draping the clothing over his arm and picking up the laptop, Elliot thought of something he’d been meaning to ask for a while. “By the way, why can’t you manifest? All those movies show ghosts popping up whenever, and the other characters can see them.”
Hollywood definitely does
not
have all the rules correct.
“Rules again. You’d think a body could get away from rules once they die, for crying out loud.” He carried his armful to the bathroom and set the laptop down on the sink.
LOL
Reaching for the toothbrush and toothpaste, Elliot laughed out loud with Ben. “But there are real people who say they see ghosts too. What about them?”
Maybe it’s different for different situations. I only know that it takes way too much energy for me to manifest. I tried it once or twice, decades ago. I tried to scare away a young couple who was threatening to tear down the house. It took all the energy I had to appear as a wisp.
Elliot brushed his teeth as Ben typed, then spat into the sink and took a sip of water. “So what happened? With the couple, I mean.”
They thought it was intriguing. But at least they didn’t tear down the house.
Elliot laughed again, putting away the toothbrush and toothpaste and grabbing the shaving cream. “Yeah, I could see that you would be such an adorable ghost that they wouldn’t be scared by you.”
Whatever.
Elliot lathered his face. “You know, I love that you still have all the attitude you ever did, but have picked up more modern ways to express it.”
There was a pause as Elliot looked into the mirror and shaved, and then he read
I’m shrugging my shoulders and glaring at you right now.
AS PROMISED,
Dr. Sowder had called Elliot’s cardiologist and they gave Elliot an appointment for that day.
Sheri drove him and filled him in on some of her upcoming catering jobs, but Elliot was rather silent. Having sat in the waiting room for what seemed like an eternity, he was called back. It wasn’t long before Dr. Abernathy strode in.
“I hear you had a bit of an adventure in Pennsylvania.”
Dr. Abernathy always had a way with understatements.
“You could say that.” Elliot finished taking off his shirt as he sat on the omnipresent paper-covered examining table. “If open-heart surgery and a now-embedded device that shocks me whenever it damned well feels like it is your idea of an adventure.”
Dr. Abernathy leaned against the counter, in his favorite position, file in hand. “Not exactly your reason for going to Pennsylvania, I take it.”
Elliot thought briefly of throwing his shirt onto the nearby chair but thought better of it and simply dropped it to his lap. “Not exactly.”
“Did you accomplish what you wanted to do there, at least? Before the heart attack?”
Elliot thought of getting the journal and the memories and realizing he was Patrick. Not what he’d actually set out to do, but it was definitely a wanted accomplishment. “Yeah, I think I did. There’s more to do to fix up the house I bought there, but I’ll contract that out.”
The doctor flipped papers in his file. “That’s good. I would like you to restrict travel for a while, or at least make sure you travel with a companion.”
Elliot fisted his hands in his shirt where it lay on his thighs. He’d expected this. He wasn’t sure why it upset him, but it did. “Yeah. I figured as much. I can do a lot of work remotely. Even with the other houses.”
Dr. Abernathy shook his head and laid the file on the counter. “You don’t have to stop living. But be careful. We don’t have a lot of options left here.”
Elliot forced his hands to let go of his shirt and threw it to the chair after all. “Yeah, I sort of realized that.” He hooked his hands over the side of the table. “What options
do
we have left?”
“Well”—the doctor leaned back a little, resting his buttocks against the counter. Still not actually sitting on it, but much closer—“the only other recourses are a ventricular assist device or a heart transplant.”
Elliot took in a breath and squeezed the table until his knuckles turned white. He had known those were possibilities from the research he’d done. But to hear that they were at the bottom of the list of options was hard to take. “Ventricular assist device. Basically life support?”
“More or less, yes.” Dr. Abernathy readjusted his weight on the counter, now sitting more than leaning. “It’s an external machine that will keep your heart going a little longer. Usually while you’re waiting for a new heart.”
“But I’d have to be in the hospital for that.” Elliot rocked back and forth on the edge of the table.
“Either a hospital or a long-term care facility. Yes.”
Elliot didn’t like either of those options. “Aren’t the lists for heart transplants really long?”
Dr. Abernathy nodded. “We can get your name on it right away. Your age is in your favor, but the fact that other organs are involved would move you down the list some.”
“I’d have to be in the hospital for that too, and there would still be no guarantees I’d make it off the table, let alone take to the new heart.” Elliot tried to will himself to stop rocking, but it wasn’t working.
“There are never any guarantees, no.” The doctor picked up the file again. “Those are really the only choices for additional treatment if the ICD doesn’t work. But really, that could work for quite a while. We may not have to have this discussion until much farther down the road.”
Elliot’s shoulders and arms were beginning to shake from being so tense. “Or we could need something more tomorrow.”
Dr. Abernathy sighed and moved his chin down an inch in a reluctant acknowledgment. “Let’s stay positive, though.”
Elliot bit the inside of his lip and didn’t say anything else.
ELLIOT STAYED
quiet on the way home, regardless of how much Sheri tried to get him to talk. He had agreed for the doctor to put his name on a waiting list for a heart transplant, just in case, but he really didn’t like any option that was going to take him away from the house for any length of time. He didn’t want to die somewhere else and not be able to get to Ben.
In the next weeks, he tried to put the whole thing out of his head. His heart seemed to be behaving itself for the most part. He felt a couple of little zaps from the ICD, but not that many, and it seemed to get everything back the way it should be. But he did try to stick around the house more, just in case.
Sheri, Malcolm, and Daniel came by often. They eventually stopped asking Elliot to go out to dinner or the club. They simply brought movies over and ordered food in. Elliot loved the way they all included Ben in their conversation. Elliot had told Ben that only Daniel knew about the reincarnation. Elliot still didn’t feel it was worth it to broach the subject, especially with Sheri. It would only cause a colossal debate and probably no little amount of chastisement. Malcolm would probably find it fascinating, but Elliot didn’t want to put Malcolm in a position to have to keep things from Sheri. And if Malcolm told Sheri, they’d be back to the argument scenario.
Things were going as well as could be expected until the day Elliot had another episode while Sheri was with him. Elliot ended up in the hospital again; he was getting sick of being in various hospital beds. There was absolutely nothing interesting to look at: no window in this room, institutional off-white walls, and machines lining the wall. Again no one was in the other bed in the semiprivate room. Finally Dr. Abernathy came in to talk to him about his condition. Elliot could tell he was trying to be his usual informal, jovial self, but it was not as genuine as Elliot was used to seeing. The doctor grabbed a visitor’s chair and turned it around, straddling it.
“The news isn’t good, Elliot,” he started, and Sheri shifted in her seat. “This was a major heart attack, even
with
the ICD. So I think we’re looking at those last two options.”
Elliot hadn’t told Sheri about his last major conversation with his doctor, so her shocked facial expression didn’t surprise him. She leaned forward in her universal back-busting visitor’s chair, looking from Elliot to the doctor. “What options?”
“Life support or heart transplant,” Elliot intoned monotonously, looking at his feet.
“What? Those can’t be the only options.” Her wide-eyed gaze finally settled on the doctor as she balled up her fist in his loud, floral shirt. “He hasn’t even had this condition that long. How can he be that bad off already?”
The doctor addressed Sheri. “He hasn’t been
diagnosed
with this condition that long. He’s had it for quite a while. If you’ll remember, there was already secondary organ damage when he had his first heart attack. This is a tricky illness, especially for people who tend to push themselves pretty hard. The early symptoms look like fatigue.”
Then Sheri did something she almost never did. She was silent. Elliot was more frightened by that than by anything the doctor said.
“This progression is awfully fast,” Dr. Abernathy finally admitted. “Not unheard of, but not really typical either.”
Elliot had decided it had something to do with the soul mate thing. He’d found Ben again now. His soul didn’t need to stick around much longer.
Dr. Abernathy stood up, put the chair back, and patted Elliot’s foot. “Elliot’s already on the transplant list. The ICD did keep his heart going long enough to get him to the hospital. We’ll just take it one day at a time.”
Elliot nodded. What else could he do?
I SIT
on the side of the bed at home. I insisted on leaving the hospital since my heartbeat was as regular and strong as it was going to get.
“Should you have come home so soon?” Ben asks me.
“First you don’t want me to leave, then you don’t want me to come home?” I try to joke. It falls flat.
“I want you to be safe.”
A long silence stretches between us. “Well, at least I’ll be crossing over with you a lot sooner than we expected.”
“Don’t say that.” Ben wraps me in his arms. “Don’t give up.”
“Wouldn’t you see that as a good thing? I mean, we’ll be together forever then, right?”
He strokes my hair and peppers it with kisses. “We’ll be together forever no matter what. I can wait with you here for another hundred and fifty years. Now that I’ve found you… well, you found me… and you remember everything… there’s nothing that’s going to get me to leave you. We’re together now. I want you to be happy.”
“I’ll be happy wherever I am as long as I’m with you,” I answer. “I’m just a little apprehensive. I’ve never died before.”
“Actually, you have. At least once. But I’m glad you don’t remember that part of being Patrick.” He suddenly holds me even tighter, as though if he lets go, I will remember that part.
Ben turns my face to meet his and kisses me. I forget all about talking… about anything. I meet that fierce kiss with all the desire I always have for Ben, just waiting for my dreams to be able to express it.
We tumble back onto the bed and Ben lies over me, touching me seemingly everywhere at once. Our clothes are gone and we’re both erect in a split second. There’s no finesse tonight. We rut and grab and kiss and nip like there’s no tomorrow. We both realize that at some point, sooner rather than later maybe, there
will
be no tomorrow. At least not as we exist now. I don’t know how I feel about that. But it’s a debate for another time, which I think is Ben’s idea with this all-out sex attack. I can give him that. For right now I just turn myself over to my baser yearnings and meet him passion for passion.
LIFE FOR
Elliot got pretty maudlin after that. He wasn’t giving up, but he really didn’t want to leave the house. He talked about getting a medical Do Not Resuscitate order, and Sheri lectured him for an hour.
Malcolm researched the hell out of any offbeat treatment that might buy him more time. Elliot was on the waiting list for the heart transplant, but he felt selfish and somewhat nasty, waiting for someone else to die so he could have a chance to continue to live. And he wasn’t even sure he wanted to. He had researched too, and even if he didn’t have problems with his body rejecting the transplanted heart, he’d be taking a shitload of meds for the rest of his life. Not that he wasn’t already, but he’d have all sorts of limitations and a higher risk of developing cancer due to immunosuppressant use.
“It would totally be my luck to survive a heart transplant and then die of cancer,” Elliot lamented to Daniel one afternoon.
Daniel had no answer to that. No joke. No rebuke. Nothing.
Elliot thought,
How bad do things have to be that Daniel, of all people, doesn’t have anything sarcastic to say?
If it had “felt like a wake,” as Daniel said before the last incident, the mood of all concerned was downright funereal now. Elliot, unbeknown to everyone else, started making sure his affairs were in order.
“So, do you have any suggestions about what to do with the house, Ben?”
Which house? U own 3,000 of them.
Ben was the only one with even a hope of getting Elliot to chuckle these days. “This one, of course. You know—your home for the last two hundred years?”
Hasn’t been 200.
“I don’t care, Ben.” Elliot was tired. No longer just in body, though there was that too, but in spirit.
I know.
Ben was addressing more than Elliot’s answer to his quip about the elapsed years.
I hate seeing u like this. I want u to live, Patrick. I want u 2 b happy.