David’s temperature and oxygen levels dropped and rose.  He had seizures.  The nurses consulted with the doctor and refined the medication schedule, adding more frequent PRN morphine and Ativan.  David worked hard to breathe, but the oxygen didn’t help – and he hated the cannula.  Sometimes his breathing would ease and his face would soften.  The nurses and CNAs spoke to him gently, respectfully, before they administered meds or turned him to prevent pressure sores.  One picked out hospital gowns with patterns that she knew he would like – a deep blue leaf print like a Japanese stencil-patterned textile, a lightly striped print with Florentine emblems. 

Fiona arrived; so did David’s sister, Doran, and her friend, Truette – an honorary sister.  Each of us had time alone with David.  The staff brought in a fold-out couch so that someone could stay with David every night.  Doran had brought a little Lamb Chop toy because she and David had watched Shari Lewis together as children.  She set Lamb Chop on his shoulder, and there Lamb Chop stayed.  The nurses moved Lamb Chop carefully to the top of the bed each time they turned David and then settled Lamb Chop back on his shoulder. 

A gravelly-voiced night nurse relished telling me about the arguments she’d had with David.  He would start to get up from his chair, and she’d call across the room that he had to stay there, that she couldn’t help him just then and he had to stay in the chair until she could get to him.  “’I beg to differ!’” she said. “That’s what he told me – ‘I beg to differ!” Delighted, wheezy laugh. “’It’s not fair!’ he says to me. ‘If I want to get up, I can get up.  That’s my right.  If I fall, that’s my choice!’  And I says, ‘Mr. David, you’re right; it’s not fair that you can’t choose to get up.  But I can’t let you fall – the paperwork!” And then she wept.

A day-shift CNA told me about the times that David joined the conversation at the nurses’ station from his desk nearby: “One of us would ask another CNA, ‘can you help me with —-?’ And David would look up from his chair and say, ‘Unfortunately, as a matter of fact, I cannot.’ So we’d say, ‘Oh, thank you David, we’ll find somebody else.’”  Such courtesy, such gentleness, such recognition of and care for David. 

David’s strong heart beat on. 

Kate S arrived.  We left David with the others to go to my house and take showers.  I checked with the nurse: no significant changes.  Minutes later, I got a call: the changes were accelerating.  We’re on our way, I said.  And just minutes later, another call: he’s gone.