Death and Steinbeck

My head snapped to the right, to where he was sitting in the passenger seat. His words hit me like a punch in the gut. “Ahh! That’s not good...” His voice trailed off.

I watched as he slumped forward. The air left my lungs.

“Joe! Joe! Wake up!” I yelled. I grabbed his arm just as his whole body stiffened. Before I could look back to the road in front of me, his whole body was wracked with seizures. His hands were contorted in front of his chest. It looked impossible that a hand could look like that. Inhuman.

My hands shook violently as I tried to grab my phone only to drop it as I slammed on the brakes and pulled haphazardly to the side of the road.

“Fuck! Fuck!”

I flung the driver-side door open, jumped out, and located my phone. As soon as I grabbed it, I started running toward the cars that were backed up behind me, unable to pass due to the sharp turn in the road that I had pulled over on.

The voice that came from me didn’t sound like mine. It sounded panicked, desperate.

“911, where is your emergency?”

I couldn’t answer the operator because I hadn’t the slightest idea where I was. I was on route 563 but that’s all I knew. I didn’t know what direction. I wasn’t aware of the mailboxes with numbers on them that lined the road; they might as well have not existed at all. I wasn’t aware of anything at that moment.

I ran to the nearest car behind me and started screaming at the woman in the driver’s seat. “Where the fuck are we?! What is the address?! Help me! He’s dying!” I ran away from her back to my Jeep before she could even attempt to answer me. Her mouth was agape in what I can only imagine was shock and confusion.

He was still seizing, his body jerking in all directions. His face was ghost white and covered in sweat. The only breathing I could hear from his lungs came in short gasps, forceful and labored, like an air compressor. Besides that, all I could hear was the sound of someone screaming and all I could feel was something hot running down my face. It took me a moment to realize the screaming was coming from me, and the heat on my face was from the rivers of tears coming from my eyes.

* * *

The room I am in is cold and stark. The walls are white, the chairs are white, and the décor is sparse. It smells sterile, save for the waft of cigarette smoke I can smell on myself. I look up to my left and my eyes rest on a picture of Jesus hanging on the wall. His hands and feet are nailed to a cross. A halo of thorny twigs adorns his head and light from the top center of the picture is shining down on him. Below him, there are men dressed in robes on their knees, their hands clasped in prayer. I have never been able to relate to the Bible or any of the stories in it up until now, but I think in this moment I can understand the desperation the artist has painted on their faces as they gaze up at their savior.

I look forward and down to the table in front of me. I shiver in my maxi-length sundress that I had adorned that morning after I was finished work, looking forward to the hot August sun. There is a round, white table in front of me. It is oddly low to the ground. On it there is a small vase of fake flowers with dust gathered on their petals next to a Bible and a box of tissues.

The minutes pass like hours as I wait. The ambulance I followed here with its lights and sirens blaring had arrived an hour ago. A nurse came to talk to me. She led me to this room and turned to me, her eyes locked onto mine. There was regret in her eyes as she told me that they were unable to release information about his condition. I wasn’t family, after all. I was his girlfriend. That doesn’t qualify me to know if he is alive or dead regardless of the fact that I brought him most of the way here. But he had to be dead, right? They wouldn’t have put me in this cold, depressing room if he were alive.

I leave the room and head toward the exit so I can smoke some more cigarettes. I have smoked my way through more than half of a pack in the hour I have been here. As I take my first drag, my mind wanders to just over an hour ago...

My lips are on his mouth, desperately blowing air into his lungs. His mouth is dry and tastes sour. My hands are clasped together, punishing his chest with deep compressions in my desperation to save him. The sound of his ribs and sternum breaking rings in my ears, like the snap of twigs under my feet on a walk through the woods just before winter sets in. The pavement is hot, digging into my knees. Somehow I am still screaming, desperate, begging him not to die, my lungs burning, head spinning. I look at his eyes. They are open but they are no longer full of life like before. They look empty, lifeless, and cold. Where there was once a spark, now there is emptiness. His gums and his tongue are suddenly almost pure white as my eyes scan the rest of his face. His skin is grey, just like they describe in books and movies. I always thought that was a made-up concept. I wish I didn't know how real it really is.

As I fall back onto the pavement the sound of sirens fills the air around me, co-mingling with the stench of grief that hangs thick in the hot, summer air.

Too late, I think to myself. Much too late. And I pray, to a God I don’t believe in, Please, let me lay here and die right along with him.

* * *

It’s very late at night, or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say that it is actually very early in the morning, just after 3 AM to be exact. I am still awake. It is quiet, save for the relaxed, slow breathing of my three-year-old daughter snuggled up next to me. She is small for her age, but healthy and strong and so, so smart. Her body is so warm and comforting; I find myself clinging to her, feeling her vibrant life-force and wishing I could feel the same within myself. Her hair smells like baby shampoo. I kiss her soft forehead and start to cry. It is all I do now, it seems.

It has been two weeks since Joe died. I haven’t slept much since, maybe a few hours a night at most, and I have lost a lot of weight because the mere thought of food makes me sick. I was already thin before; now I imagine I just look ill and hollow, like a terminal cancer patient that wishes for death as disease wracks their body.

During the day, I barely function. It is nearly impossible for me to smile, even at my daughter as she plays and giggles, marveling at the newness and novelty of even the simplest things. The trees, the grass, the bubbles in her bath water. My body is wracked with panic multiple times a day. I pop benzodiazepines like candy in a desperate attempt to quell the panic that comes and goes like ocean waves as a storm rolls in off the coast. Sometimes it works, but usually it doesn’t. By the end of the day I am so exhausted I can’t even think straight. Despite that, falling asleep before the early morning hours come is impossible.

I lay awake every night reading until I literally cannot keep my eyes open any longer; that is the only way that I can find sleep right now. East of Eden by John Steinbeck lays on my nightstand, a small bookmark peeking from between the pages. He is one of my favorites and I find comfort in his words; they give me a different world to become enmeshed in so I don’t have to deal with my own. I have finally put down the book after reading for just over four hours straight. I can relate to the dry, barren land that Samuel Hamilton built his home on when he immigrated from Ireland. That’s how my heart feels now, as though it will never be able to sustain life just like Samuel’s farm. It is painful and harsh, and it feels hot and dry in my chest. It pounds all the time now. I wake up sweating and cold every hour or so and I have trouble catching my breath all the time, even at rest. I just want this all to go away. I wish I could be more like Samuel; hopeful, strong, and positives. He takes things in stride and refuses to give up. All I feel is loneliness, sadness, and devastation and I want nothing more than to give up.

But even in the book with its various instances of hardship, the rain eventually comes to bring life to what is dead. Grass grows, trees thrive, life prevails, sometimes for a while, other times only for a short time. There is always hope throughout the intertwining stories of the characters, and a resilience to the evil that lies within them. They, whoever “they” is, say that life ebbs and flows this way for everyone. There will be hard times but also good times, always. I used to believe the same, but I am too busy feeling bitter and angry and devastated to put much stock in that theory anymore. How could this ever get better? How will I ever feel whole and happy again? After watching a man that I loved die, watching life leave his once bright, sparkling blue eyes, I can truly understand what hopelessness feels like.

Steinbeck writes in East of Eden, “And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”

My heart is dry right now. Harsh, arid, dusty, and uninhabitable. My soul is not conducive to life. It is hardened and cracked and I have little hope that I will feel alive again. I can't remember a time when I was happy or joyful. Those feelings seem so far out of reach, like I will never be able to reach out and claim them again.

I have lost all recollection of my rich years.