Unit 7  Section 2Facing Death
Vignette
The next morning Dr. Henry and I went off to see a bunch of his patients. A couple of them were dying. The first was a lady wrinkled as an old apple who practically couldn’t breathe. Her room was so full of flowers, it looked like a funeral home. She didn’t even hear us coming up to her bed, but the second she opened her eyes, she reached up to Dr. Henry and clawed his white coat, like she wanted to climb it. “What’s going to happen to me? Am I dying?” Her hair was all proper but even her lipstick and powder couldn’t hide her crazy-afraid eyes. Dr. Henry peeled her hand gently off of him and patted her shoulder. “No, you’re not dying,” he said. “You’re going to be fine.” She relaxed back onto her pillow and her eyes widened and softened. “Thank you, doc.” You could hear the inside of her lungs gurgling like a science project. Dr. Henry’s palm hovered over her perfect hair, as if in blessing. Out in the hallway he leaned close to me and whispered: “I give her a couple more days to live. Two to three tops.”
“Really? But you said—“
“If you only had a couple of days left and were scared out of your wits, would you want me to spoil them for you?”
I thought I’d want to know, but then, I wouldn’t try to keep up appearances by having my hair dressed either. Not everyone is like me, I guess.
The purpose of this section is to explore biological and physiological mechanisms of dying as well as fears and coping mechanisms
relating to one’s mortality. |
