Chapter 4 - The Currency of Time
At eight that evening, the palliative nurse on the night shift, a quiet woman named Nurse Gable, knocked on my study door.
“Mr. Hale?”
I looked up from the empty screen of my laptop. I had been sitting in the dark for three hours, watching the Hudson turn from slate gray to ink black.
“Yes?”
“Your mother’s vitals have shifted,” she said, her voice carrying the practiced, neutral caution that medical professionals use when they are delivering a death sentence in installments. “Her blood pressure is eighty over fifty. Her respiration has become Cheyne-Stokes—irregular, shallow. Her temperature is rising. Dr. Kenneth has authorized an increase in the subcutaneous morphine, but... she is entering the active transition phase.”
My throat tightened until it felt like a closed fist. “How long?”
“It could be twenty-four hours,” Gable replied gently. “It could be forty-eight. I don't believe it will be longer than that.”
I stood up. My knees felt hollow, unstable. “Where is Clara?”
“She’s in the room, sir. She hasn't left since four.”
I walked down the long corridor of the east wing. The silence here was different now; it was heavy, thick with the scent of rubbing alcohol, floral water, and the faint, sweet decay of failing organs.
I pushed the door open.
The room was lit only by a single amber lamp on the far dresser. Eleanor lay propped up on three pillows. Her skin had taken on a faint, yellowish-gray cast. Her breathing was loud in the room—a rhythmic, rattling gasp followed by five, six, seven seconds of absolute, terrifying silence that made your heart stop before the next breath dragged its way into her chest.
Clara was sitting on a low wooden stool beside the bed.
She had a small basin of cool water in her lap. In her hands was a soft washcloth, which she wrung out with quiet, methodical precision before dabbing it gently across Eleanor’s bare, silver-stubbled scalp.
“I’m here, Eleanor,” Clara whispered into the dimness. “You’re home. It’s quiet. You don't have to fight.”
Mother’s eyes fluttered, partially opening. They were unfocused, milky with the heavy doses of narcotics and the approaching dark.
“Julian?” she rasped, the word barely a breath.
Clara didn't hesitate. She didn't flinch. She took Mother’s cold, dry hand and brought it to her cheek. “No, Eleanor. It’s Clara. Julian isn't here. You don't have to be afraid of him anymore.”
A long, shuddering sigh left my mother’s body. Her features, pinched with pain, softened marginally.
I stood in the doorway, my chest aching with an unbearable pressure. I looked at the tailored suit I was wearing—the three-thousand-dollar wool, the silk tie, the cufflinks of white gold. I had never felt more useless, more utterly superfluous to the human experience, than I did standing in that doorway.
I stepped inside.
Clara looked up. Her eyes were rimmed with red, exhausted, bruised with fatigue, but there was no hostility in them now. In the presence of death, anger seemed to have burned away, leaving only the raw, shared misery of two people trapped in a room with a departing soul.
“Nurse Gable said it’s time,” I whispered.
Clara nodded slowly. “Her feet are cold. Her circulation is pulling inward toward her heart.”
I walked to the edge of the bed. I looked down at the woman who had brought me into the world, who had watched me grow into a cold, efficient replica of the husband she had feared.
I reached out, my fingers hesitating, then rested my palm against her forehead. Her skin was burning hot, slick with sweat.
“Mother,” I murmured.
She didn't respond to my voice. Her head turned slightly toward Clara’s side of the bed, her fingers twitching against the linen sheet, seeking Clara’s hand.
A knot of pure, unadulterated shame tightened in my throat.
I pulled off my suit jacket and dropped it onto the floor. I loosened my tie, pulled it over my head, and unbuttoned my collar. I walked around the bed, pulled up a heavy armchair, and dragged it across the carpet until it was flush against the mattress on the opposite side of Clara.
I sat down.
“Show me,” I said.
Clara looked across the bed at me, her expression surprised, guarded. “Show you what?”
“Show me what to do,” I said, my voice cracking, the tears I had suppressed for eight months finally burning behind my eyes. “I don't know how to do this, Clara. I only know how to pay people. Teach me how to be her son.”
Clara looked at me for a long, silent moment. She looked at my trembling hands, at the jacket discarded on the floor, at the unraveled posture of a man whose armor had just been completely dismantled.
She dipped the cloth back into the basin, wrung it out, and held it out across the bed.
“Take this,” she said softly.
I reached out and took the damp, cool cotton from her fingers.
“Her forehead,” Clara instructed, her voice steady, gentle, guiding. “Don't rub. Just press it gently. She gets hot behind her ears. And talk to her. She can still hear you, Bennett. The hearing is the last thing that goes. Don't talk to her about the house, or the lawyers, or how much you spent on the doctors. Just tell her you’re here.”
I brought the cloth to my mother’s skin. My hand was shaking so violently that the water dripped down her cheek, mingling with her sweat.
“I’m here, Mother,” I whispered, leaning down until my mouth was inches from her ear. “It’s Bennett. I’m right here. I’m not leaving.”
Eleanor’s chest rose in a long, shallow hitch. Her hand, previously searching the sheets, moved an inch.
I dropped the cloth, reached down, and took her fingers in mine. They were icy, light as bird bones.
May you like
I squeezed them. And for the first time in thirty-four years, Eleanor Hale squeezed back.
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