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I sped up Ditch Road past flashing yellow lights, going too fast partly to reach him and partly in the hopes a cop would pull me over and
give me an excuse to tell someone that my dying boyfriend was stuck outside of a gas station with a malfunctioning G-tube. But no cop
showed up to make my decision for me.
There were only two cars in the lot. I pulled up next to his. I opened the door. The interior lights came on. A ugustus sat in the driver’s seat, covered in his own vomit, his hands pressed to his belly where the G-tube went in. “Hi,” he mumbled.
“Oh, God, A ugustus, we have to get you to a hospital.”
“Please just look at it.” I gagged from the smell but bent forward to inspect the place above his belly button where they’d surgically
installed the tube. The skin of his abdomen was warm and bright red.
“Gus, I think something’s infected. I can’t fix this. Why are you here? Why aren’t you at home?” He puked, without even the energy to
turn his mouth away from his lap. “Oh, sweetie,” I said.
“I wanted to buy a pack of cigarettes,” he mumbled. “I lost my pack. Or they took it away from me. I don’t know. They said they’d get
me another one, but I wanted . . . to do it myself. Do one little thing myself.”
He was staring straight ahead. Quietly, I pulled out my phone and glanced down to dial 911.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. Nine-one-one, what is your emergency? “Hi, I’m at the Speedway at Eighty-sixth and Ditch, and I need an
ambulance. The great love of my life has a malfunctioning G-tube.”
He looked up at me. It was horrible. I could hardly look at him. The A ugustus Waters of the crooked smiles and unsmoked cigarettes was
gone, replaced by this desperate humiliated creature sitting there beneath me.
“This is it. I can’t even not smoke anymore.”
“Gus, I love you.”
“Where is my chance to be somebody’s Peter Van Houten?” He hit the steering wheel weakly, the car honking as he cried. He leaned his
head back, looking up. “I hate myself I hate myself I hate this I hate this I disgust myself I hate it I hate it I hate it just let me fucking die.”
A ccording to the conventions of the genre, A ugustus Waters kept his sense of humor till the end, did not for a moment waiver in his
courage, and his spirit soared like an indomitable eagle until the world itself could not contain his joyous soul.
But this was the truth, a pitiful boy who desperately wanted not to be pitiful, screaming and crying, poisoned by an infected G-tube that
kept him alive, but not alive enough.
I wiped his chin and grabbed his face in my hands and knelt down close to him so that I could see his eyes, which still lived. “I’m sorry. I wish it was like that movie, with the Persians and the Spartans.”
“Me too,” he said.
“But it isn’t,” I said.
“I know,” he said.
“There are no bad guys.”
“Yeah.”
“Even cancer isn’t a bad guy really: Cancer just wants to be alive.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re okay,” I told him. I could hear the sirens.
“Okay,” he said. He was losing consciousness.
“Gus, you have to promise not to try this again. I’ll get you cigarettes, okay?” He looked at me. His eyes swam in their sockets. “You have to promise.”
He nodded a little and then his eyes closed, his head swiveling on his neck.
“Gus,” I said. “Stay with me.”
“Read me something,” he said as the goddamned ambulance roared right past us. So while I waited for them to turn around and find us,
I recited the only poem I could bring to mind, “The Red Wheelbarrow” by William Carlos Williams.
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
Williams was a doctor. It seemed to me like a doctor’s poem. The poem was over, but the ambulance was still driving away from us, so I
kept writing it.
* * *
A nd so much depends, I told A ugustus, upon a blue sky cut open by the branches of the trees above. So much depends upon the transparent
G-tube erupting from the gut of the blue-lipped boy. So much depends upon this observer of the universe.
Half conscious, he glanced over at me and mumbled, “A nd you say you don’t write poetry.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
He came home from the hospital a few days later, finally and irrevocably robbed of his ambitions. It took more medication to remove him from the pain. He moved upstairs permanently, into a hospital bed near the living room window.
These were days of pajamas and beard scruff, of mumblings and requests and him endlessly thanking everyone for all they were doing
on his behalf. One afternoon, he pointed vaguely toward a laundry basket in a corner of the room and asked me, “What’s that?”
“That laundry basket?”
“No, next to it.”
“I don’t see anything next to it.”
“It’s my last shred of dignity. It’s very small.”
* * *
The next day, I let myself in. They didn’t like me to ring the doorbell anymore because it might wake him up. His sisters were there with their banker husbands and three kids, all boys, who ran up to me and chanted who are you who are you who are you, ru
entryway like lung capacity was a renewable resource. I’d met the sisters before, but never the kids or their dads.
“I’m Hazel,” I said.
“Gus has a girlfriend,” one of the kids said.
“I am aware that Gus has a girlfriend,” I said.
“She’s got boobies,” another said.
“Is that so?”
“Why do you have that?” the first one asked, pointing at my oxygen cart.
“It helps me breathe,” I said. “Is Gus awake?”
“No, he’s sleeping.”
“He’s dying,” said another.
“He’s dying,” the third one confirmed, suddenly serious. It was quiet for a moment, and I wondered what I was supposed to say, but
then one of them kicked another and they were off to the races again, falling all over each other in a scrum that migrated toward the kitchen.
I made my way to Gus’s parents in the living room and met his brothers-in-law, Chris and Dave.
I hadn’t gotten to know his half sisters, really, but they both hugged me anyway. Julie was sitting on the edge of the bed, talking to a
sleeping Gus in precisely the same voice that one would use to tell an infant he was adorable, saying, “Oh, Gussy Gussy, our little Gussy
Gussy.” Our Gussy? Had they acquired him?
“What’s up, A ugustus?” I said, trying to model appropriate behavior.
“Our beautiful Gussy,” Martha said, leaning in toward him. I began to wonder if he was actually asleep or if he’d just laid a heavy finger
on the pain pump to avoid the A ttack of the Well-Meaning Sisters.
He woke up after a while and the first thing he said was, “Hazel,” which I have to admit made me kind of happy, like maybe I was part of his family, too. “Outside,” he said quietly. “Can we go?”
We went, his mom pushing the wheelchair, sisters and brothers-in-law and dad and nephews and me trailing. It was a cloudy day, still
and hot as summer settled in. He wore a long-sleeve navy T-shirt and fleece sweatpants. He was cold all the time for some reason. He wanted some water, so his dad went and got some for him.
Martha tried to engage Gus in conversation, kneeling down next to him and saying, “You’ve always had such beautiful eyes.” He nodded a
little.
One of the husbands put an arm on Gus’s shoulder and said, “How’s that fresh air feel?” Gus shrugged.
“Do you want meds?” his mom asked, joining the circle kneeling around him. I took a step back, watching as the nephews tore through a