Dick Jokes and Death

Dick Jokes and Death

by E. W. Shannon

Fredo, my partner, grew sicker as the minutes ticked passed. At only twenty-seven and in the twenty-first century, evidence of AIDS had permeated every part of his body because old straight white male doctors had spent a year trying to diagnose everything else. In September he saw a gay doctor who diagnosed him in minutes. The person who had been jogging in August rested in Intensive Care in November.

At this point in the disease's progression Fredo could no longer take food orally. As he ebbed in and out of lucidity the nurse came to me, his medical power of attorney, and said it would be necessary to insert a nasogastric (NG) tube to feed him and administer oral medications.

I had reservations about this. Only a few days prior, we had a discussion about tubes. The unanimous decision being, 'no tubes.' It's easy to say 'no tubes' when the patient is in the middle of a rally, but when the patient is unconscious, losing body mass, and is your greatest source of love, it's a different story. Naturally I gave consent, remembering the old saying about it being easier to ask forgiveness than permission.

A nurse ushered me out of his ICU room to a waiting area just on the other side of the wall from his room. Two more nurses went into the room as I tried to psychically reach Fredo on the other side of the wall and apologize for the personal violation about to happen. Suddenly I heard Fredo yelling and gurgling at the same time as the nurse tried to pass the tube up his nose and then snake it down his throat. Not only did Fredo's body try to reject the foreign object, but Fredo's conscious (well, what remained of it) also undoubtedly tried to reject the prolonging of suffering. Surely by this point his body, his mind, and the universe had had some sort of discussion about his impending return to the ethereal.

I'm not sure how many attempts had to be made to administer the tube, but every gurgled scream felt like razors aimed at my insides.

Finally, his nurse came out and said I could return to the room. When I entered, another nurse smiled and said something to the effect of, "Well, that woke him up."

The third nurse in the room paused as she exited. "Yeah, he's not real thrilled with us. But then nobody ever is after that procedure." The way Fredo glared at her, she must have been the one doing the inserting. If he hadn't been so frail, he probably would have jumped out of the bed and choked her to death with the ample supply of plastic tubing hanging off of him.

His eyes then reverted to me. The anger coming out of him made me step back and bump my head against the aluminum door frame. He paid no attention to the nurses on either side of him as they repositioned him and adjusted all his tangled bedding and tubing. He just seethed and stared at me.

After fluffing all his pillows, they left Fredo and I alone. His blue eyes tried their best to kill me with whatever metaphysical energy they could muster. I stayed pinned against the cold aluminum door frame at the end of his bed. He furiously wrote on the dry-erase board he used to communicate. He turned it around with such force I felt a slight breeze pass. He pounded on it with the end of the marker to make sure he had my attention. On it he wrote: "WE SAID NO TUBES!!!"

I knew I had betrayed our decision, but I also knew why I had done it. Despite having reconciled everything in my mind, I still felt horrible. First, I had woken him up in probably the most unpleasant way possible. Second, I had agreed to the procedure without first stating my reasons to him. I decided the best way to get through this would be to calmly state my case for having a plastic tube rammed down his throat.

I sat on the edge of his bed, took his hand in mine, and stared into the bluest eyes I had ever seen. They were the blue you see in the Caribbean if you dive into the water, swim down as far as you can hold your breath, and then look back at the sun.

"I agreed to the feeding tube because you need to be able eat and the nurses have medications they need to give you orally. You now have food, water, and air. You have everything you need to live. And of course, my love."

He rolled his eyes and looked down at all the tubes connected to his body. An IV in his right arm for fluids, oxygen tubing in his nose, more IV tubing in his left arm, a tube snaking out from under his gown to a bag of urine, and now the NG tube taped to his nose. He wrote some more on his white board, "What kind of tube does the love come in?"

As deadpanned as I could, I replied, "Average sized. Some say slightly above."

He shook his head and gave me the biggest smile I had seen on him in weeks. I had forgotten how big he could smile and how good it made me feel to make it appear. I kissed him on his slightly feverish and clammy forehead. It would be the last smile I would ever see on his face. The fact the last thing that made him smile was a bad dick joke never ceases to give me pleasure.

The next morning, he would take his last breath and make me smile for the last time in his existence. I know it sounds odd. It wasn't a smile without tears. As his heart stopped and, then, his breathing, I looked up at the clock, made a note of the time, and smiled. He had given me, the one who loves number and word puzzles, a numeric palindrome to remember him by. 5:11 on 11/5.

In the last twenty-four hours of his life I had managed to make him smile and he had managed to make me smile. We had both found little holes in the clouds to let a little light through. While there is still a lot that haunts me about his death, it's those minute rays of light that tamp down the darkness.