The Book of the Dead

For Mason Everly life was pain.  Not just the inevitable soreness or discomfort when a person well past their prime years pushes their body a bit too hard playing a sport they have no business playing, but a deep and overriding agony.  Each morning he could barely get from his bed to the bathroom to relieve himself.  Actions that a relatively healthy person didn’t think twice about were a monumental struggle for him. 

He had started feeling awful not long after his thirtieth birthday.  He had gone to North Carolina to visit an old friend from high school when he began to feel run down, kind of like a car battery when the lights are left on too long.  He just assumed that it was the twenty hour round trip that was making him feel the way that he was but, after sleeping most of three days away, he had an inkling that it may be something more serious.  Like most of us though, Mason just passed it off as stress from work or his allergies acting up again.  Soon the fatigued feeling was overwhelming, and he spent more and more time in one semi comatose form or another.

Then the pain started in earnest.  At first it was just a general aching deep within his bones.  It was hard for him to describe because it wasn’t something that he had felt before. He then began to have difficulty walking when he got up in the morning, it taking him a good twenty minutes of activity to get the hitch out of his step.  One day when he was feeling a bit spryer, he decided to take the stairs instead of his customary trip up the elevator to his third story office.  About half way up the second flight, he could go no further; his legs complained so loudly that he had to stop and sit on the hard metal tipped stairs until he got up enough courage to crawl his way to the second story elevator.

That was the reason for his trip to the doctor’s office.  As he sat there alone, he stared off into open space, not wanting to invade the private worlds surrounding the other patients sitting all around him in the atrociously decorated waiting room. At the moment he was reading a six month old copy of Reader’s Digest, hoping wildly that no one would break the vow of silence that the other inmates had silently agreed to.  This was now his second visit to this overwhelmingly depressing place.  He had set up his initial appointment weeks ago and had been asked to stop by for a short how-do-you-do, and to give what seemed like a pint of blood for them to do tests on.  Now it was judgment day.

After forty five minutes, he was admitted to the inner sanctum by a rather surly, disinterested nurse.  He was tersely informed that the doctor would be in shortly. The tackiness of the outer waiting room was offset by the utter starkness of the one in which he sat.  The obligatory magazines and warnings of one dread disease or another were absent in here, in here it was all business.  Walls painted a light puke green had been accented by a single three inch wallpaper border that looked like some kind of druid symbols painted on a scarlet colored back ground.  He felt the Nazis would have used a similar color scheme in Dachau.  Of course the exam table was directly across from him, as well as a stark white cabinet set that housed a small sink. 

Soon he could hear the sound of muffled voices through the thin drywall that separated the next examination room. He wondered lightly whether it looked the same as this one.  He could faintly hear the conversation happening next door.  The gist was that someone had been a bad boy and now would have to shave his nether regions and use a little comb on the stubble every day.  Mason laughed out loud when the diagnosis was handed out.  He could only imagine the several shades of red that the embarrassed patient was turning at the moment.  He could only wish that he would be let off that easy.

Soon the unclean occupant of the next room was released, and he could faintly hear the doctor giving the staff his recommendations on the follow up visit.  Mason’s ears pricked up when he heard his name mentioned by one of the nurses at the station beyond.  The hair on the back of his neck saluted as the doctor knocked lightly on the closed door, opened it slowly, and presented himself to the dread filled patient.

“Hello, Mr. Everly, my name is Doctor Palmer.  I have your chart here and I have given it a thorough going over,” the balding physician said, his eyes scanning the contents of the folder in front of him thoroughly, as if he had missed some important information his first time through. He reminded Mason slightly of Doctor Bunson Honeydew, that crazy Muppet doctor on The Muppet Show.

“I see that we had you do the standard battery of tests. We did, however come up with a couple of things that may be of importance.  We saw some elevations in a couple of levels that are a bit alarming, as well as the presence of some abnormal cells in one of your blood tests,” the doctor continued, his tone never wavering. He had long years of practice in giving what could be very bad news and he didn’t want to alarm a patient unduly.  For Mason, the sentence that he had heard not seconds before was enough to alarm him, unduly or not.  Abnormal cells were not good, even a rank medical amateur like him knew that.

“Now before we can pin point the exact cause, I wanted to send you to a colleague of mine that knows a lot more about the results of your tests than I do.  His name is Doctor Collier; you may have seen his office on your way in.” he continued lightly.

“He is a specialist in Oncology and he’s a good man, I’m sure you’ll like him,” the doctor said, trying to soften the word “oncology” with a reference to his associate’s character.

There is really no need to delve into the particulars of Mason’s visit to the specialist. Some people take bad news well, ever looking for the bright side or some hidden blessing in the midst of tragedy, but when you are diagnosed with inoperable leukemia, even the most upbeat are severely damaged.  To him, the proclamation of this terrible type of cancer was a death sentence. He had two clear choices: spend the next year in excruciating pain undergoing a series of treatments that probably wouldn’t work anyway, or live the remainder of his short life doing as he pleased.  To be sure, it was a heart wrenching decision.

On his way out of the office that day he had seen a non descript sign hanging in the outer office that advertised a leukemia support group in bold black letters.  He hesitatingly noted down the phone number on a borrowed piece of paper, not knowing for certain if he would ever use it. 

As you would expect, there was not really a point to Mason’s life anymore.  He just felt lost, knowing all too well the feeling of the convicted felon waiting out his sentence on death row.  He had his freedom, but it meant very little to him. His employer had been kind enough to offer him a nice severance package, but he continued working for a while.  The countenance of his coworkers soon became too much for him to handle, though. He knew that they had the best intentions at heart, but he could no longer stand the pitiful glances and awkward silence when he entered the room.  That and the pain he endured every morning soon made him resign and consign himself to his own four walls.

He soon became unshaved and unkempt.  Hiding in his misery, complete in the fact that even those that he loved would now be insulated from him, he lived with his pain of mind and spirit each dragging day. He wasn’t exactly sure how long his diseased body could hold out, but he was hoping that it wouldn’t be too long.  The only thing that kept him going was the inviting sheen of his favorite electric guitar.  He had played guitar for a long time, but now, with this body aching wildly from any activity what so ever, it became his one solace in life.

Sometimes it just takes a little flicker of life to bring someone back from the brink.  When his fingers rested in the right places on those steel strings and that perfect note was struck, something in Mason’s soul longed for life. It was now time for him to try to make contact with the outside world again.  Fortunately he had kept the slip of paper from the doctor’s office and decided that being with others in his predicament may help him feel better.

So that was how he found himself, seated in a long, cinder block room of the YMCA annex on the following Tuesday night.  He was more nervous than the occasion called for.  Most of the people present were either afflicted with his same disease or were dealing with someone that was.  The meeting was soon struck to order by a large, burly man with a brown beard.  He informed all that didn’t know that he was Stan, and he was a survivor.  The rest of the group, each seated in an uncomfortable chair that was situated in a large circle somewhere close to the center of the large room, replied to his exhalations in some unintelligible language or other.  Mason said nothing.  He was thinking that perhaps, if Stan could beat this nasty thing eating away his insides, that perhaps there may be hope for him yet.  By the looks of him, Stan had not just beaten it; he had eaten it into submission.

Mason then began to pan to his left, looking upon each of the participants in this theater of pain.  Next to him sat a thin, washed out being that looked as though this very moment would be his last on earth.  To the left of this wan creation was obviously someone who was his caretaker. A rather voluptuous, wide faced girl had his skeletal hand in a death grip between her squishy fingers. Her skin tone was nearly identical to his, but was sloppily highlighted by gaudy red lipstick and matching eye shadow.  Her perfectly manicured fingers were sharpened like a raptor’s talons and they sported the same shade of red as her features.  She could feel his stare and turned slowly toward him just in time to see him look away.

As he perused the rest of the circle there, the same pattern presented itself: sickly person followed by the person that intended to either help them get well or keep them from dying alone.  There on the opposite side of him though, was someone who broke the pattern.  She was sitting, legs crossed, both hands clasping a book tightly to her bosom.  Stan was receiving her undivided attention as he told some heroic story of his courageous fight against their common disease.  At the moment Mason had no interest whatsoever in it; he just sat transfixed by this incredibly striking girl that was seated all by her lonesome just across the room.

He began now to guess as to her reason for being there.  Was she there for Stan?  Maybe so, but she was not seated by him at the moment, and he saw no indications jewelry- wise that she was taken.  Perhaps she had a loved one die recently and was here to support others in the group, even though she was beyond help now.  If that were true, he liked her even more now, and although it seems awful to say, she would not be involved with anyone if that had actually happened.  In the midst of his daydream a thought came that put an end to his musings rather quickly:  He was here because he was dying. Did he believe that it would be right to try to cultivate a relationship under these circumstances?  He at once felt ashamed and decided that this was not the place for him at all.  There was no support here, these were strangers in a strange land, and he did not belong.

Stan had now relinquished the floor and one of the others was telling another in a series of terrible tales of loss.  He couldn’t bear the thought of taking the floor and trying to explain to total strangers his inner most feelings.  Feeling that now was the time to leave, he got up to exit the room as discreetly as possible.  All eyes turned to him as he rose clumsily to his feet.  He felt like one of the survivors of the Titanic as they loaded into one of the life boats as thousands that would soon perish watched them go.  Who was he kidding?  He wasn’t getting in any life boat, he was just jumping in the water before they were, at least they could feel the company of others as they sunk; he would go it alone.

It seemed a quarter mile journey as Mason made his way out of the door and into the hall beyond.  He had just about reached the big double doors that led outside when a firm hand grabbed hold of his elbow.  He wheeled to see who had grabbed him, and was staring directly into the most beautiful green eyes he had ever seen. 

“I’m sorry to be so forward,” she began in almost a whisper. “I had never seen you here before and I wanted to introduce myself to you before you got away,” she explained as Mason’s face burned a bright red.

“My name is Sarah, Sarah Parlee, and I have been coming to this group for a while now.  This is your first time coming to group?” she asked, not letting go of the grip that she had on Mason’s elbow. At the moment he didn’t feel exactly like wrenching free.  He had been taken aback by her intervention, but he was now warming to the prospect of talking with someone, especially someone as inviting as the girl still clutching his arm.

“No, no, I have never been to any of these groups before.  I found the number for this one on a flyer in my doctor’s office a while back and I thought I would see what it was about,” he stammered.

“Was that in Doctor Syphert or Doctor Collier’s office?” she asked without hesitation.

“Uh, Doctor Collier, uh the one in the medical plaza just across from the movie theater,” he explained.

“Well I’m glad to see that my efforts were not wasted then.  I was the one who put up the flyer there,” she grinned, now loosening her grip and letting Mason’s arm swing under his own power.

Her smile made her comely features sparkle, almost crackle, with life and energy and Mason was at once filled with it.  He was transfixed by her deep eyes and he stared dumbly back at her for what seemed an eternity.  His head was now swimming wildly and he had lost his focus.  Her voice soon brought him back to earth.

“Where were you going in such a hurry?” she asked innocently.

“Well, uh, I forgot that I had another engagement just around the block here… uh dinner, with friends of mine,” he mumbled, feebly trying to make any excuse that come to his addled brain.

“Well I won’t keep you from that.  Your friends are late eaters,” she added, now smiling and glancing down at her elegant gold watch.  It said half past ten.

“If you ever want to come by again, you know, just to get out of the house or, well, anything like that, I’m here every Tuesday.  By the way, I have this book that you may want to read, “she said, handing over her copy of a hard bound novel with the words “Living your Last Days in Comfort” by Dr. Emily Mortimer, Ph.D. stenciled on the front in bold, block lettering.  A hand drawn picture of a stately looking oak tree stood in the foreground of a breathtaking sunset.  A photo of the author that any glamour shot photographer would have been thrilled to have taken graced the rear cover.  It was the very book that Sarah had a death grip on when Mason first saw her across the room.

“I don’t normally like to lend out this copy, because it’s my favorite book, but maybe you could read a little bit of it and tell me what you thought of it sometime.  If you get a notion, my number is written right there on the inside sleeve,” she said, taking the book back and opening up the cover where her name and phone number had been carefully written in flowing cursive.

“I know I’m being a bit too forward, you know since we hardly know each other, but I watched you leave group, and you looked a little lost, so I just wanted to…I’m just so awful at explaining things,” she said, it now her turn to blush.  She looked as though she might start crying as well.  Mason rushed to reassure her.

“No, Sarah, thanks a lot for the book.  I was a little bit over whelmed by the group I guess, and I, well I’ve been a bit lonely to tell the truth. Tell you what, I will read the book and give you a call later on about it, OK?” he said, now trying his best to reassure her that she had done him no harm.

It had been that easy to get to know Sarah. From the moment that she first touched his elbow, he knew that now he was not alone.  Somehow his heart had told him when he had first saw her, legs crossed, clutching the book that he now possessed, here was someone that could help him.  He had indeed read the first chapter entitled “Getting over the Shock”, just to have something to say to her when he plucked up the nerve to call her that Sunday evening.  He really didn’t care for the book at all.  It was obviously written by someone who had a wholly clinical view of death and dying.  Of course, only the dead could truly know how it feels to take that last plunge into nothing, but unless you had looked death in the face yourself, as he had, you could never truly explain how it felt or what it meant to still be among the living.  The book to him was speculative psychobabble, but you would never hear him admit that to anyone.

“Is Sarah Parlee there, please?” Mason said, although he knew very well the voice that had just answered the phone.

“This is she.  Oh this is Mason, I was wondering if you were going to call,” she said in a voice that echoed nothing but enthusiasm.

“I was just thinking about you today and how you were getting along.  I was out shopping earlier and saw someone that looked a lot like you in the market.  I almost made a fool of myself, but I realized it wasn’t you at the last moment,” she said, now giggling lightly into the receiver.

“Yeah, well I just got finished with a couple chapters in the book that you lent me,” Mason lied; he had barely been able to choke down one.

“Well, what did you think? Is Doctor Mortimer great or what? She just seems to understand how a person is feeling when, well when they have troubles of that nature,” she said, now trailing off, unsure if the person that she was talking to actually had “trouble of that nature” or any nature at all.  They had never really discussed why Mason had attended the group where they had met. She was now hoping against hope that she had not misread the signs that Mason was terminal.

“She seems to understand how it feels, I guess.  She had some good advice for sure,” he said, trying hard not to sound too negative.

“So are you feeling okay today?” Sarah asked, now fishing for the answer that she wanted to hear.  She hoped he would open up to her and explain his illness and to which stage he had advanced as the cancer ate his insides.

“Well, I’m always in a lot of pain, but today wasn’t too bad, I guess,” he fibbed.  Today had been a bad day and he had hoped that talking to Sarah would take his mind off of his considerable pain. He just hoped that he could get through his conversation without throwing up again, as a new surge of nausea gripped him tightly.

“That’s good to hear.  I know that it can be pretty bad sometimes when you get farther along. I just wish that no one had to go through such a terrible thing,” she lied in return.

They talked for two hours in the same back and forth manner, she quizzing him lightly about his condition, he answering cryptically, not wanting her to know the true extent of things. As the hour became late, and Mason became unbearably tired, he agreed to read more of the dreadful book and set up a time to call Sarah again.  To his surprise Sarah disagreed about a phone conversation, instead she wanted to meet face to face and read some of the book together, if Mason didn’t mind.  There was nothing he would rather do, and he quickly acquiesced to a picnic lunch in the park the following Tuesday afternoon.

Mason’s heart raced wildly when he spotted Sarah coming toward the park bench that he was seated on, picnic basket clutched in one hand and her copy of “Living your Last Days in Comfort” in a death grip in her other. As she saw him, she gave him a sweet smile and a wave. She glided up next to him and seated herself alarmingly close to Mason.  She was panting a little bit from her brisk walk with the full basket of goodies, and her cheeks were a bit flushed from the effort.  She wore a pale pink sweater of some exquisitely soft fabric that Mason could not name, and she brushed lightly against him as she sat down.  She pulled her plaid red skirt daintily across her knees as she sat, her burdens now deposited on the ground in front of them.  She could not have been more stunning if she had been made up for a royal ball.  Mason inched away from her a bit, not knowing for sure how close that she was comfortable with.  She at once chased him the imperceptible space that he had moved away from her.

“What a marvelous day.  I got us some sandwiches, hope you like turkey and cheese, and some cookies that I baked last night,” she informed him.  There could have been rattle snakes in that basket and Mason would have dived right in, a squirming pit viper in each hand.  He was absolutely transfixed by her entrance.

They commenced to eating, talking lightly between swallows.  They were now getting to know each other better, now asking deeper, more meaningful questions and getting more meaningful answers since they were together in the flesh and could read each other’s body language.  Sarah’s body was telling Mason’s that he was welcome to her space; that she was not afraid of him being close to her and sharing himself with her.  Mason’s body was like a race horse that the jockey was trying to hold back with all of his might; he didn’t feel right about leading Sarah on, but he could not quell his need to be near to her.  If he didn’t control himself, he knew that his emotions would run wild, and if left unchecked, the little world that he had been building around her could come crashing in.  He didn’t think that he could stand that. Besides, just being with her was enough for him.

They spent many days together, sometimes indoors, sometimes out.  They would always end their time together reading another chapter in “Living your Last Days in Comfort”, and to Mason’s amazement, it was helping.  He was feeling better after each time that they met. He was on cloud nine when they held hands and strolled along the wide sidewalks downtown together, casually window shopping.  He ascended one cloud higher when she pulled him close and kissed him for the first time on her front step.  There was no doubt that Mason Everly was madly, deeply, and inexorably in love.

The day was Wednesday and Mason was due at the office of Doctor Collier at a quarter past noon.  He felt so good today that he abandoned his car for a brisk walk.  He covered the seven blocks between his home and the office quite easily, not stopping once for a break.  The pain in his bones was a dull ache instead of its normal torrent of agony. He arrived in very good spirits, not even minding when he had to wait a full hour in the outer sanctum. He was soon let into the inner office and was shown to his stall by his favorite surly nurse.

As he entered the office, Doctor Collier was not his normal morose self.  His bearing today was rather perplexing to Mason.  In a minute or two, Mason would join him in his perplexity.

“Mr. Everly, what I’m going to tell you happens to very few patients that I see, but it does happen.  No one knows for sure why, perhaps some unknown chemical is triggered in your bone marrow or something. You were called in a couple of times to redo your lab work because I wanted to be absolutely sure that it was not a mistake in the labs; that is my standard procedure. The last take came back the same as the first; your cancer is gone, and we can not see signs of it in your body,” the doctor said firmly, staring heavily at Mason.

The further discussion between doctor and patients was overly clinical and thankfully short. Mason was assured that he could have a recurrence of his disease and that he should continue to be checked regularly.  Leaving the office, Mason knew how the inmate felt that had received that midnight call from the governor.  His whole world was bursting with life again.  He even danced a little jig around the light pole as he sauntered deliriously down the street.  Life was good.

Seated in his car, garage door closed tight, each opening sealed tight with plastic wrap and duct tape, Mason had no memory of his jaunt.  His memories began as he rang Sarah’s doorbell. He remembered hoping wildly that she was home because he could not wait to tell her the news.  His heart was racing out of his chest as she pulled open the door.  He remembered pulling her to him on the step, embracing her, and kissing her passionately on her soft, pink lips.  He couldn’t remember, though, how he had told her that he was no longer sick, that he was going to live. His jubilation became terror as her eyes widened in disbelief and she tore herself from his grip.

“Live? Live?  You were supposed to be dead by now,” she crowed wildly, her voice becoming a piercing scream as her lips rolled back over her teeth, the furrow in her forehead matching an attacking animals.

“How dare you tell me you are going to live?  No one lives, the book is done, the last chapter is next.  It’s your time to die!” she bellowed shrilly, as Mason backed quickly down the stairs.

“He didn’t get to live, and neither should you!” she rattled on, now becoming increasingly irate.  She then started banging her head madly against the metal screen door.  Soon a trickle of blood marched down her face.

“But, but, I came to tell you that I love you and we could be together now,” Mason sputtered, mostly to himself.

“Love? How dare you even say the word love, you worthless piece of trash!  I loved him, a way better man than you! You nasty, worm eaten dung pile, I could never love you,” she spat at him as she turned and marched back inside, slamming the door hard in Mason’s panic stricken face.

That was how he remembered it; every scene, every word.  The sound of the hinges of the door squealing, the slap of the screen as it slammed to, and the muffled, uncontrollable sobs of the woman that he had loved, now separated by that heavy, oak door.

It had been an easy choice for him.  He closed that garage up tight. He had thought of writing a note, but it would do no good. He had been a dead man that she had brought back to life; now he was a live man that would soon die alone. As the garage filled with the poison gasses that would soon overcome him, Mason Everly sat in his car, tears streaming from his eyes, reading the final words of chapter 19 of “Living Your Last Days in Comfort” by Dr. Emily Mortimer Ph.D., or what Sarah Parlee affectionately, and secretly, called “The Book of the Dead”.  They read, “As long as you can leave behind someone who truly loves you, you will live on forever.”







Josh Hider

http://jhider.wordpress.com