The Descent (27 page)

“I think maybe you and I have been brought together in order to talk,” I said slowly, trying to make sense of our circumstances. “Was there something you wanted to say to me? Something you didn’t tell me when we were together? Maybe it will come to you if you relax,” I said, taking his hand. “How are you?”

He gave me a sideways look. “You mean how am I since I died? How do you
think
I’ve been? Dying wasn’t at all how I expected it to be. Not that I was looking for a scene from the Bible, pearly gates and Saint Peter, any of that nonsense. But it was a little underwhelming. I had to figure everything out
for myself when I got here—I don’t know, I guess I expected it to be better organized. . . . It’s not like the first day on a new job, there’s no woman with a clipboard from human resources welcoming you on board, no printed checklist to help you get settled in. No one tells you what to do or where to go. It just happens, whether you want it to or not.”

“What do you mean, ‘it just happens’?” I asked, not quite following him. “What just happens?”

“The next part. The hereafter. Eternity.” Oddly, he was still wearing eyeglasses, and he pushed them up the bridge of his nose as I’d seen him do a thousand times in life. He shook his shaggy head. “Whatever comes next, it’s already happening. I’m losing a bit of myself every day. My memories are fading. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s like I’m breaking up and parts of me are drifting away or falling off.”

He sounded so sad and desperate that, even though the prospect was terrifying, I tried to remain upbeat and cheer him up. “Well, that doesn’t seem so bad. Maybe it’s all part of becoming a new person, clearing out the old, making room for the new.”

Luke looked at me as though I’d gone crazy. “What do you mean, it doesn’t sound bad? It’s the worst thing that could happen. I’m
breaking apart
. I’m ceasing to be. I suppose it means the very last bits of my consciousness are finally coming apart and all that was left of me—residual energy—is returning to wherever we come from.”

He was a doctor, a man of science, so I tried to appeal to his analytical side. “If your energy is returning to the cosmos, maybe that means your consciousness is going there, too. Maybe you’re about to experience the wonders of space.”

The prospect seemed to depress him further. “I don’t think so. I think it’s all just coming undone, like a tape being demagnetized. As time goes on, I remember less and less. I
feel
less and less. Sure, it all
sounds
interesting in the abstract, but now that it’s here, I’m frightened, Lanny,” he said. I’d never heard him sound as scared, not even when he confronted Adair four years earlier. “This isn’t what I expected. All those times I’d wondered what it would
really
be like, to be dead . . . especially after having patients die on you, being right there with them when it happened. I wasn’t prepared for
this
. It’s
really
going to be over.
This
is what it means to die. I’ve come to the end. I can’t believe it. It’s really going to be
over
.”

He was right: this was frightening, much more frightening than the many deathbed vigils over which I’d presided. I was scared for him, and what’s more, I could do nothing about it. I couldn’t stop what was happening to him, I couldn’t save him. As I contemplated all this, holding back tears, he snapped his head up as though he was seeing me for the first time since we’d materialized in the hospital room.

“You never did tell me . . . if you’re not dead, what are you doing here?” he asked. I suppose he was suspicious, and why shouldn’t he be? I was alive in the land of the dead.

I squirmed, suddenly realizing that he might be thinking that I’d come for
him
, that my presence here was all about him. That maybe I’d had second thoughts about his delirious request—
you could ask Adair to make me immortal
. I answered him truthfully. “I asked Adair to send me. I came to look for Jonathan,” I confessed, trying to look as contrite as possible.

An exasperated sigh escaped from Luke and he folded his arms, awkwardly for all the wires and needles. “I should’ve
known. I should’ve
guessed
that. It’s always been that way with you, always Jonathan or Adair. Never Luke. Never any room for me.”

It was unlike Luke to be so candid. Staring oblivion in the face probably had something to do with it; no reason to pretend anymore. Still, I was hurt and not above rebuking him. “How can you say that? I was good to you, Luke. Especially at the end. I promised I would take care of you and I did.” We’d had a bargain. Four years ago, Luke had helped me escape from the police after I’d released Jonathan from his immortal bond, and in exchange I promised that he would never be alone. I would be his companion for life. I didn’t realize until later that I must’ve made this offer to Luke because being alone was what
I
feared most. He’d taken me up on my offer, nonetheless. Maybe we’re all afraid to be alone.

Here I was making good on my end of the bargain, but in a way I could never have imagined.

He seemed somewhat mollified. He looked up at me, over the rims of his eyeglasses. “I’ll give you that. But—we can be honest with each other now, can’t we, Lanny? Now that the end is near? Because I do have something I want to tell you.” He paused and looked at me tentatively before proceeding cautiously: “If you want to know how I really feel about us . . . I feel like we never should have gotten involved. I always felt as though you never really loved me.”

A sharp pain cut into my heart like a knife. “Luke, you must know I love you. I wouldn’t be here now if I didn’t. I know I have no right to say this to you, but it hurts me to hear you say these things. To say ‘it was always Jonathan or Adair, and never any room for me.’ I loved you, Luke, of
course I did. If I didn’t love you, I could’ve just walked away. It would’ve been a damn sight easier.”

He was quiet, thinking. The monitors beeped in the background. “I suppose,” he said.

“We were happy together,” I insisted.

“But you never loved me the way you loved those two. You can admit it to me now. I won’t hold it against you, but I’d rather die knowing the truth. Jonathan and Adair—they were always on your mind. I could tell.”

My cheeks flamed. I couldn’t deny it.

“I don’t hold it against you, really,” he continued. “I mean, I saw Jonathan with my own eyes. He was a god. One in a billion. Even in death I could see why no woman was able to resist him.”

My stomach twisted, remembering the purpose of my visit to the underworld. “Luke, Jonathan’s in trouble. That’s why I’ve come here,” I blurted out. “He is being held by a queen, the queen of the underworld. Have you heard of her?”

He shook his head. “It sounds like something from an old myth, doesn’t it? Hades and Persephone and all that. Sorry, I can’t help you, Lanny. Like I said, nothing’s been explained to me. The queen of England could be here for all I know. I’m not like Jonathan or you or Adair. I’m just an ordinary guy, a speck of dust in the cosmos, and I’m going to die an ordinary death.” He had the same expression I’d seen many times, a quizzical look he’d worn during the odd quiet moment. “I have a question for you, Lanny, and I want you to tell me the truth. Did you ever love me, or was I just a convenience that night when you were brought into the hospital? What was I to you? Just a gullible man who could help you escape from the police . . .”

I threw up my hands in exasperation. “Luke, I just told you five minutes ago that I love you. Wasn’t I with you for the past four years?”

“You stayed out of obligation, because of your promise, not love.”

“Isn’t obligation a part of love?” I felt my blood rising. “I made a commitment to you, and I honored it because I love you.” I squeezed his hand.

He made a sour face. “Do you know what it was like knowing that you didn’t love me the way you loved the other two? That you loved them more,” he said, unable to say their names at that moment.

“Does love have to be a contest? I’ve had a long life and it’s always been that way for me: you lose one love and, if you are lucky, you find another.” I tugged him closer to me, though he tried to resist. “Listen to me: I was alone for a long time, Luke. For many years, before we met, I had no one in my life. I didn’t want to go through it again, you know: growing close to someone, tangling my life up in someone else’s, only to lose them. I just couldn’t do it—but then I met you. I couldn’t remember when I’d known such a good man. I knew I was lucky. Don’t tell me that I squandered the last years of your life. It would make me very sad to think that you had been unhappy.”

He bumped against me. “You know that’s not true. I wasn’t unhappy. But I
know
what you wanted, Lanny. You wanted Jonathan to love you the way you loved him, to love you above all others, to be his one great love. I suppose that was all I wanted: to be
your
great love. That was foolish of me, since there would always be Jonathan, but . . . none of us is immune to our heart’s desire.”

I sensed his time was short. I was conflicted—unsure what to say, for it was clear that he wanted to be refuted. He wanted me to tell him that he was the great love of my life, and what difference would it make if I lied to him as he teetered on the brink of annihilation? Yet I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that it was Adair, not Jonathan, I loved more than anyone. After years of chasing after Jonathan, I’d come to love him like a brother; he was the
one
connection I had to my past, to my family, to my home. He was the only one to whom I felt any sort of obligation, not Luke. I was the one who’d brought Jonathan into this mess; I had to do everything in my power to get him out. I took a deep breath, decided which course to take—and spoke.

“Isn’t it enough to be
one
of my great loves? I’ll never forget you, Luke. You were the best man I ever had in my life. A much better man than Jonathan.”

He snorted. “A better man than Jonathan? That’s not much of an accomplishment, is it? From everything you told me, he was—a jerk, to be blunt. I don’t know why you’ve come here after him, Lanny.”

“I have my reasons. He needs me—let’s leave it at that. I don’t want to talk about it right now.” Meaning I didn’t want to use up the last minutes of his life talking about Jonathan.

He blinked at me, as though fighting to see through a film. “You know, I’m about to be sent into the great unknown and I still don’t know what I was supposed to do with my life, what it was supposed to
mean
. I want resolution. There must be a reason you’ve been sent to me, Lanny. You’re the immortal one. You must know something that isn’t revealed to us ordinary people. I want answers.”

“I don’t have an answer for you, Luke, other than to say you were a wonderful father and partner. Your daughters love you. You made me happy every day we were together. Maybe that’s what your life was about. Isn’t that enough?” I kissed his forehead. His last moments were upon us. He was dissolving, blurred in some spots, thinned in others. He looked like a ghost.

He’d closed his eyes, leaned against my cheek. “Now that we’re at the point of sharing secrets, I have something to tell you. I always thought it a shame you couldn’t have children. You’d have made a wonderful mother.”

“Me?” I blurted out a laugh.

“You were great with the girls,” he said softly, as though he were falling asleep. “Always so patient. They loved you right from the start. It made Tricia a little jealous, you know.”

“Shhh,” I said. His hand was getting colder in mine. The air in the room seemed thin all of a sudden, as though we were on a high mountaintop. I’d woven our fingers together tightly now, feeling the stretch as I accommodated his larger hand in mine. However, his grip was weakening by degrees and the bulk of his hand felt lighter with every second. He was fading before my eyes, drifting away piece by piece—his end
was
truly here.

I ran my fingers through his hair, but it was as though I were raking frigid air. He was almost gone; the hospital room was almost gone, too. It was freezing, as though a window had been thrown open on the coldest Maine night—no, surely colder than that—and the blinks and hisses and chirrups of the hospital room ceded to the rasp of empty, endless space. Infinity was calling. Eternity comes for us all in one form or
another, and it had found Luke. We teetered at the edge of a huge abyss and I sensed that if I wasn’t careful, I’d be pulled into it. This was the abyss Adair had told me about, and now that I faced it, I understood his horror. It was impossible to believe that our consciousnesses could live on in that absolute emptiness. If they did, how lonely they must be; how bereft an existence they must have in the flat black void. This was what Adair had saved me from for a great long while by making me immortal. I could not save Luke from it. This was the inescapable end.

“Good-bye,” I said to Luke in a last gesture of tenderness, but he was already gone.

Within seconds, furniture and hospital equipment started disappearing all around me. Afraid of what might happen to me when the last piece vanished, I hurried to the door, cracked it open, and peered out. The passage was empty, so I crept out. It seemed positively quiet and serene here, now. I proceeded to retrace my steps, thinking that I might come across the door from my nightmares and, behind that door, Jonathan. But as I turned a corner, I came face-to-face with a demon.