Life wants to be; life doesn’t always want to be much; life from time to time

goes extinct…. Life goes on.

 

—Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything

 

I have to write everything down while I still remember.

Dispatch called at 3 a.m. A hospital in Monterey. Insurance had sent a car.

I sat on the porch in the dark, reading the patient’s file. Erik Hagestad. A marine biologist and diver, a scientist at the research institute. He’d brushed against deepwater coral. The abrasions were severe. Antibiotic noncompliance led to sepsis. Headlights swept over me. My ride.

The driver had a serene soul. As he drove, he was thinking of his wife and daughters. Not words, just images. Very specific. The little one grinning, having lost a tooth. His wife’s hands forming masa into tortillas. It made for a peaceful drive.

In Monterey the sky was lighter. The air smelled of cypress and the sea. I tipped the driver $2,500. It was all I had on me. Nurse Devon Jagler met me in the lobby. She walked me to palliative care. A man stood outside the patient’s room. He was weeping. The nurse introduced him. Somebody Smith. Milton?

“Are you the husband?” I asked. Continue reading