She used to try to please but not anymore! She is too busy writing her obituary.
In Ward Three, Abigail lay motionless, a tiny figure shrunken within the bedclothes, so slender she hardly made a dent in the mattress. You might think she'd recently passed on, but if you leaned over her more closely, you could detect a flickering beneath her opaque eyelids. Her right hand, out of the covers, also quivered. You would probably never guess that she was entertaining herself by composing her obituary.
Abigail Lain O'Shaw McLaughlin, 95 years of age. She had a good life. Her first child, Marcus Royal, married Hattie, an old-fashioned name for a thoroughly modern woman. No progeny. Hattie was much too concerned about her waistline ever to hazard having children. Now, Hattie was well past the child-bearing age. Of course, none of that could be in the obituary. She was straying. As always. But what was the point? Was there a point to life itself? Leave it to the philosophers. I am too old to bother. Abigail sniffed and continued. As her thoughts came, her right index finger trembled. It recalled the feel of her favorite fountain pen. The other child, the late beloved daughter, Antoine Etta Henderson...no, no, take out beloved or put it in front of Marcus Royal's name as well. It would hurt him if she said beloved for Antoine and not for him.
Go on. Keep writing.
And the late granddaughter, the only granddaughter, Phoenicia, and Phoenicia's most beloved child, Abigail's great-granddaughter -- oh, yes, here she should say beloved, beloved, beloved. The late ten-year-old Cubbie. Abigail shivered. Most beloved Cubbie. All three of Abigail's girls killed when American Flight 56 plowed into the World Trade Center. On their way to see her for her birthday on September 11. What presents had they carried? She always said, "Just yourselves. That's all the present I could ever want, more than enough to see your sweet faces, but they came like the Magi, always bearing gifts.
The year before the accident, Cub brought her a dog she'd rescued from the pound's death row, an old Chihuahua, wobbly and woozy, obviously on its last legs. "I know you said you didn't want any more dogs, Mamaw," Cubbie apologized, bending down and kissing the old lady's dry cheek. Cubbie knew Mamaw professed there was nothing she loved more than dogs. It was unspoken family knowledge that the only reason Grandmother didn't get another one after Bingo's passing was the fear the new one would outlive her. This one surely wouldn't. Cubbie tenderly placed the diminutive female dog in her great-grandmother's lap, as if the Chihuahua were a fragile wine glass.
Against her better judgment, Abigail immediately reached out and fingered its ribs, thinking. Pablum. Baby food. Strained beef. Ask Dr. Hewlett what diet this poor little stick of a dog could tolerate. When Cubbie and Phoenicia and Antoine left that time -- the last time they would ever be together, although, of course, none of them could know that -- the separation hadn't torn at Abigail as badly as usual, because she was so wrapped up with her new project, her little Snookie. Snookie would be in the obituary. And the others? There had been twelve dogs, twenty-one, if she counted the foster dogs PAWS placed in her care over the years. But this last one was the most special because Cubbie had picked her out. Snookie Pie, a stupid name, the stupidest name Abigail had ever given an animal or human, and she'd come up the some doozies. Snookie had to be in the obituary. With a capital B. Beloved.
Snookie now resided with Marcus Royal and Hattie. Hattie, who said she'd never have a dog! Why, she'd fallen in love with the Snook in a flash, and even painted the dog's toenails with fingernail polish, a different shade each week. Abigail's right hand curled as it recalled writing.
Marcus Royal had brought Snookie to see her just last week, hidden from staff under his jacket. Snook wasn't upset that Abigail was no longer speaking, not upset the way Marcus had been and still was. "Just too weak," the nurse told Marcus when his mother decided to go silent five months ago. "There's nothing wrong with her voice box. She just can't make the effort. It happens, dear."
Abigail quit speaking after she had the dream for the first time. She figured if she didn't talk, people would become more and more uncomfortable around her and quit coming to see her. Indeed, the regular visits had dropped off dramatically. Even Marcus Royal came just once a week now, generally on Sunday afternoon, instead of four or five times during the week.
"Mother, please, please talk to me. I miss your voice," he begged her. Her heart broke for him, the way it always had in her former life. She wanted to please him, she did. Her tongue worked and she could not count the times she almost broke down and granted his request, but she managed somehow to keep her lips sealed. His plaintive pleas continued. "I miss you. Isn't that the craziest thing? You're right here in front of me, and I miss you. Please, Mama. Just say my name. Marcus. C'mon, Mom. Marcus."
Marcus, Marcus, Marcus Royal, she said over and over in her mind. Go away, darling. Do. Go to Hattie. Be everything she wants you to be, and that'll keep you busy for the rest of your life. Go with my blessing. But he came back every Sunday for his mother fix, even if it was no longer satisfying. He still needed her to entertain him, placate him, praise him, pander to him.
Abigail had been in the business of pleasing people all of her life. She'd done a fairly good job of it. People naturally gravitated to her. First, her grandparents were so adoring. They marveled at her name, perfect for her, they said. It meant "bringer of joy." She was absolutely the epitome of joy, they assured her. They waited for her on their porches, stretching their necks out like turtles to be the first to catch a glimpse of her as she rounded the corner with her friends on the way home from grade school. Snapping turtles, she unkindly thought. She denied her own meanness as fast as it arose. She maintained a fierce loyalty to them she supposed was a form of love.
Later, she developed that same watching syndrome over her own children and it helped her understand her grandparents. She'd never known such love. It tore her into pieces. Was there no part of her inviolate to love like this? The grandchild and the great grandchild -- Phoenicia, oh, Cubbie -- had been more relaxing, the love more pure. She didn't know why. She had adored her husband, Francis, but she also resented him a good deal of the time. His flirtations. The affair she'd discovered. The embezzling charge that ate up most of her inheritance to get him in the clear. She made friends easily, but when they loved her back a bit too much and began to crowd, she withdrew. This confused them, and she did not understand it any better than they.
She embraced some causes with fervor. Save the Children. PAWS. Sometimes the causes made her want to scream. None of these self-revelations in the obituary! She'd always scorned women who analyzed themselves ad infinitum, ad nauseam, and now she was doing it. But at least, not over a bridge game in a loud, pushy voice that bounced importantly off the parlor walls. The inconsistencies in her character didn't make any sense to her, irritated her, made her writing fingers twitch.
Well, she certainly had expended much energy on many things that no longer interested her. Now, left to herself, she could reflect on what did matter and what did not -- or even, if anything at all mattered. She could play mind games, be sinfully self-indulgent.
Name a few favorite sights you have not considered for a while, she told herself. She heard the memory of her voice. "Objects backlit by the setting sun. If I were an artist, this is what I would paint: Weeds in a pasture, the sun a huge red ball slipping down behind the hill, the weeds in the foreground white, shimmering, ethereal. Or that sorrel colt I once saw, its wiry crewcut mane lit up as if on fire. You could count each separate blazing hair."
What are the best things to smell? "Alfalfa fields being harvested. Puppy breath. Freshly turned earth. The neck of a baby or of a horse."
Best things to feel? "Oh, of course. The Visitor." She would think of that later. Save the best to savor before sleep, and perchance to dream. Again.
Reverie was her sole project now, even as painting the baby's room or training a new dog or writing a letter to a faraway friend or taking photos of the children or lining up entertainment for a charity marathon or baking her husband's birthday cake, all had been consuming projects in the life before this. For this final project, she needed only to be very quiet and let whatever would come, come.
At first the nurses tried to cajole her out of her silence. They were losing their pet patient. "Still not speaking, hmmm? Oh, now we're getting the silent treatment, hmm? And what have we done to deserve that? C'mon, Mrs. McLaughlin. Just a word. We miss your voice. Your happy laugh. Your bright and positive attitude."
Indeed, she had been a favorite among staff when she first came to the home. She had made sure of that, had wooed them shamelessly, seen what they wanted and given it. Coming here had been her idea, she told them so. They liked that. She told them she would not be a burden to Marcus Royal, though he and Hattie had begged her to live with them. The staff admired her spirit, her independence. It was time to live in a dormitory again," she trilled. "Like going back to college, rah-rah," she chirped. Why hadn't she waved some pom-poms while she was at it? Time to abide by the rules of an institution again, she said, and then asked them, "What are your rules?"
"We have very few rules, Mrs. McLaughlin," they assured her. They lied, of course.
There was a game to play at any institution, and Haley's Rest Home was no exception. She knew how to rack up points in her favor, and for at least a month, she enjoyed pleasing them. Staff preferred good-looking old ladies, and she was one of that elect. Thanks to fortunate genes, she had not wrinkled much or gone to slabs of fat. She was thin. They liked thin. The whole world liked and admired thin, as if a high metabolism were something you had worked hard all your life to achieve, as if it were a mark of sterling character, instead of what it actually was, a happy occurrence of DNA. She was also well-dressed, though her wardrobe was now limited to a few skirts and blouses, a sweater, pajama sets, some nice pairs of slippers, underwear, a silk robe. Limited as it was, the labels were impressive. Don't think for a moment they didn't prioritize such insignificant details.
She had not objected when they poked and prodded and talked about the wonderful old sport she was. She went off to therapy docilely and tried valiantly to do what they asked. But she surpassed their fondest dream when she insisted on taking care of her most private needs by herself. The main way to be popular in an institution of this ilk was to use the toilet on your own. To get up out of bed, no matter how weak, to situate yourself behind the walker, to shuffle yourself to the toilet and to stay there until something moved, even if it took the better part of the morning, and then, by God, to clean your own self up. This was how to please staff, and she had known it and done all of these things just the way she conscientiously worked the people in her former life. She supposed, when it got right down to it, she was a phony. A bowing, scraping people-pleaser.
But, after the dream, it was as if she had been given permission to be herself. The effort of trying to be good or wonderful became too irritating to sustain. It took up so much precious time, time she was no longer willing to donate.
This was, after all, the end of her life. She had no say about the beginning, little say about the middle. Surprising, how she'd let herself be carried along like a log in a swollen river all those years. But now she would do exactly as she wished, no more, no less. No more manipulating, no more trying to be clever or sweet or strong or valiant. Let there be accidents if she felt too weak to leave her bed. Let them come and diaper her. Let them spoon broth into her mouth and wipe her chin. Let them bruise her, if that is what it came to, if they grew impatient and angry. All she wanted, just for whatever time she had left, was to be silent and cater to nobody.
Marcus Royal nagged at her, nearly broke through her resolution time and again. She rationalized that she needed to release him for his own good and that she was actually doing him a favor. She reminded herself of the constrained, grim set to his lips during his visits, even when she still was speaking. She had seen him sneaking looks at his watch. Caught him rolling his eyes when she forgot and repeated herself. "I've heard that already, Mother." Watched him stifle sighs and yawns. Listened to the over-solicitous tones as he asked, "Are you in pain today, Mother? Did you sleep well?"
Last week when he'd smuggled in Snook to see her, she had known it to be a ploy, of course, to break through her silence. That she wouldn't speak, even in her joy, didn't bother the dog who seemed to read her mind. Oh, Snookie, I've missed you so much! The dog burrowed under the sheets, settled gently by the old lady's side and laid her tiny head down on one of Abigail's sunken breasts. "You seem happy now, Mother," Marcus Royal observed. Then pried, "Are you? Are you glad to see your little Snookie Pie? Can you open your eyes, Mother? Hattie got Snook a new collar. Thnookie-Pie looks so thweet in pearls, ha ha. Oh, Mother come on. Say something, so I can tell Hattie. For God sakes, Mother."
He sat rigidly in the bedside chair, simmering with anger. Abigail could feel his heat waves. Suddenly, he reached under the sheet to reclaim Snook. The Chihuahua edged away from his hand, growling, snapping at him as he lifted her squirming body from the bed. "Oh Mother, look," he said, the anger in his voice not abated. "Snook doesn't want to leave. Don't you care about anything, Mother?" Then before he turned on his heel, he spat out, "I suppose you've lost your mind. You don't speak because you can't. You're a useless shell, that's all, and I don't know why I bother. Goodbye."
Superfluous information, all of this. Not obituary material, not at all.
Old habits prompted her to bring herself back to point. Now, what was it that she said about her life in the beginning of the obituary? A good life. Well, it had a nice enough beginning, if you skip the initial tragedy. Easy for her, because she hadn't been old enough to remember. Her mother died in childbirth, her father quickly remarried, but he was killed a few months later in a horse and buggy accident. Her stepmother turned Abigail over to her two sets of grandparents. Grandmother and Grandfather Lain, Grandmother and Grandfather O'Shaw. Being their little girl had been the nice part. Growing up adored by four august people. Well, who wouldn't like that? Who wouldn’t call that nice? They gave her everything her heart desired. It was nice, wasn't it?
The grandparents had taken her to the Episcopal Church every Sunday where she sat primly between the Lains on her left and the O'Shaws on her right. She rarely missed a service from age one through twenty, and she had fervently believed in the faith all the way through childhood. But later, the doubts came. Perhaps she had read too much. Thought too much. Questioned too much. Became convinced human beings made up the gods in their own image. She wished now she were not agnostic. It would be so lovely, so very simple to believe as she had back then. Comforting, especially now. However, she was not afraid of death. Suddenly came the image of the plane disappearing into a ball of flame against the building. Cubbie. Phoenicia. Antoine. Not afraid. No, I am not afraid, she told God, if there was a God. She stuck her chin out defiantly. Christianity was built on one's vulnerability, one's fears, and she wouldn't cave into it ever again.
She stroked the sheet with her see-through hands, the blue veins prominent. They stretched up toward her fingers like branches of a barren bush. She did not need to open her eyes to view her hands. She told herself to keep breathing despite the recurring image of the plane. Do not let the plane wreck stop your breath. Not breathing just made the head swim, and even if you felt faint, you didn't faint. You didn't die, not even if you wanted to. You just gasped and took a breath anyway. She couldn't seem to stop breathing any more than she could stop some very negative thoughts. Well, let the thoughts and images come, then. Go on. Look at them. Go into the center, the terrible center, and find peace. That was a Buddhist idea she recalled having read somewhere. Some funny name for its author. Lu Dohge? Dogue Lobsand? Lobsang Lu? Go into it, he said. Staying on the periphery is more damaging, takes more energy. Stopped-up energy is very bad. Every old person knows this.
So she lay there and watched the doomed airliner that carried Phoenicia and Cub and Antoine hit the South Tower over and over again. This was the terrible downside of the reveries. Was it a swift death? Did they see it coming? Did they have time to hold hands? To say a prayer? To scream? Was it a more lenient death than the death of those who jumped from the building to escape the fire? Again, she caught herself holding her breath as she plummeted down to death with the jumpers. She had read -- damn the reading anyway -- that the height was not sufficient to make the jumpers pass out before hitting the pavement. Before she'd read this, she imagined them blacking out. Clumsy with the remote, she had accidentally caught a bit of a TV show that included the terrible sound of the jumpers' deaths in the background. Like watermelons exploding. She hated these memories, but was powerless to stop them. Well. There wasn't much more life left in her. The memories would stop soon enough.
She was older than she imagined she would ever be, and weak, so weak she could not keep her eyes open long enough to watch the whole redundant ad for the in-the-egg-shell-egg-beater on the TV. No loss. Superfluous. Her mind, though it wandered, was still capable, unlike Bess, her delusional roommate, who thought she was in the Riviera instead of a rest home and kept ordering daiquiris. When the nurses or aides brought a glass of water, Bess sipped gingerly and told them, "A little strong, but, Ohhhhh. I like a drink to be a little on the strong side." When she'd first overheard this, Abigail had chuckled to herself. But it grew old. It grew sad.
Just now, the thought of finishing the obituary was pointless and sad, as well. She should have attended to it when she still had enough strength to put pen to paper. Well, she hadn't. It would be up to Marcus Royal to do it after she passed, and he would make such a mess of it. She dismissed the thought and let herself slip toward sleep. She wished for her dream. Often she could bring it on merely by reviewing it. She would pass from the review into sleep without sensing the line. If there was a line.
Many years ago she and Francis, her husband, had acquired a hound, not a purebred, but a mixed breed. They rescued him from the highway where the dog was loping along, turning his head anxiously toward every pickup truck that went by. So they always assumed someone driving a pickup dumped him. Even though she and Francis drove a Mercedes, the hound acted as if he'd always known them and jumped into the car when they whistled. They named him Bayer, after his signature wailing bark. Most people thought they called him Bear or Bare.
In the repetitive dream, Bayer came to find her. He padded silently to the entrance of Haley's Rest Home, waited patiently at the automatic doors till he saw his opening, almost ran over a doctor getting in, trotted down the polished pseudo-marble halls, sniffed disdainfully toward the cafeteria, evaded nurses and orderlies who tried to capture him. Sometimes this part of the dream was like watching a children's cartoon. Oh, the chaos, the overturned chairs, the screaming old ladies, the ancient men with canes trying to be heroic, taking jabs at Bayer and getting nothing but air for their efforts, some of them falling over on their backs, their spindly legs in arthritic hosiery making exclamation marks. Bayer eluded everyone. He hid himself in broom closets, behind medicine carts, under beds, even in an abandoned bed.
In that entertaining part of the dream, Bayer disguised himself as one of the residents, jumping into an empty bed on Ward A and pulling the covers up to his neck. He passed as a senior because his mournful hound eyes dripped water and pathos in equal measure, his jowls flopped like tired human cheeks, his tongue lolled in that tongue-lolling way common to many of the residents. "Are you comfortable, sir?" asked a nurse, speaking respectfully to Bayer, and Abigail, watching along the sidelines of the dream, shrieked with laughter. Her laughter sounded so young to her ears, it almost startled her into wakefulness.
The dog in the ward was eventually forgotten. They all assumed he'd found his way out, for he stayed in bed quite a long time, even lapped up his dinner daintily when it was placed on a tray over his lap. When the coast was clear, Bayer hopped out of the bed and with nose to the pseudo-marble floor began drawing in long snorts of air, his jowls whuffling, as he tracked his Abigail. He moved straight toward Abigail's ward where he hid behind a door that was ajar till the lights were dimmed and the night shift came to work. When no one moved in the area, Bayer trotted confidently toward his owner and sat at the side of her bed.
He nudged under her arm with his wet nose to let her know he had come. The nudge was quite unlike the nudge of any other dog she had ever owned. She had not realized before that there were differences in dogs' nose-nudges, but the difference was singular. It was as individual a thing as a person's fingerprint.
"Bayer, Bayer," she said, breaking her silence of five months with a wavery, ghostly voice. He licked her eyes which were glued shut. The moisture on the lids helped her open them a crack. Her Bayer, dead twenty years or so, appeared as he had in the prime of his life, young, vital, muscular, a shining brindle coat and a gleaming amber eye. He spoke to her in a language she did not know existed, a language that combined guttural sounds and intricate nose nudges, but to her delight she perfectly understood everything he said, even the nuances. "I am here to introduce the one who will take you across," he said. The nuance so clear to her was that someone would take her across a wide and treacherous river. The other side would be calm and she would never have to talk to anyone ever again if she didn't choose to. Perhaps, after she was rested, she would want to, but there would be no pressure. "The One who comes has awesome power," Bayer said. The nuance here was that the word One should be capitalized. "It is a great honor, Abigail," added her hound. The nuance here clearly let her know that she had been specially chosen, that not everyone was so fortunate.
She wanted to answer. Working up her courage, for it is difficult to speak a foreign language the first time, she felt shy, enormously humble, was afraid of tenses even if she had a degree of verb mastery. She asked him a question. She was weak. She was surprised she could croak the guttural part of the language well enough to be understood. "Is it my time?"
"No, this is merely an induction," Bayer responded, and the nuance led her to realize that the induction wasn't a thing to be taken lightly. It would not do, after she awakened, to doubt what had happened here, the way she had come to doubt the watered-down Christian religion of her past.
Bayer told her to be quiet now. The hound sat at attention beside her bed, his long ears cocked as far up as they could go, loopy at the top, the floppy velvety lengths quivering. His tongue hung out, and he was panting so heavily his sides heaved.
A man materialized beside him, not with a poof of talcum or any such tomfoolery. A man was suddenly there beside the dog. Abigail looked at the man from the feet up. He wore no shoes. Bare legs. A white loin cloth, clean and free of wrinkles. A naked, well-developed chest. No hair. Strong arms crossed over his chest. On his head he wore the pointed mask of a black dog. The first time she dreamed it, she assumed that he wore a mask, but then he leaned down, and touched her face with his snout. He gently explored the tears that leaked from her eyes. He wet her dry lips with a quick lick of his tongue. His whiskers brushed her cheeks, her ears, her hairline. He sniffed her hair. His nose was wet and warm. His whiskers were most certainly real. They tickled. She never remembered any touch holding as much bright promise, not Francis' touch, not Phoenicia's, not Marcus Royal's, not Antoine's, not even Cubbie's.
"Almost time," the man-dog said in perfect English without an accent. He did not use the guttural-nudge language to add nuances.
Each time she experienced the dream, she awoke enormously comforted and highly amused. After the first time she'd dreamed it, she had wracked her brain to place where she had seen that man-dog before. A memory materialized. It was the jackal-man, to be more exact, and he had a name. An-something. Ana-something. Anubis. Yes! In ancient Egyptian mythology, Anubis was the... Oh, what she would give at this moment to sit at Marcus's computer and type Anubis into the Google search engine. The memory of a 95-year-old was so shaky. She had not studied mythology since seventh grade. Mrs. Smith had been quite strict. They had to spell all the strange names correctly, as well as know what each god ruled. If she remembered correctly, Anubis was responsible for leading the dead person into the next world. Wasn't that it? Was there a river in the Anubis myth?
She went over the Red Riding Hood segment of the dream where Bayer pretended to be a little old man and fooled the nurse. Abigail's small breasts shook with laughter. Silly as the dream was, it was also a religious experience. She felt truly touched by a god. It was thrilling, his touch, and reminded her of what a young woman who dreamed of a lover might feel, a thrill which began in the lower part of the body and warmed its way up, even tingling the icy tips of her fingers.
She felt his presence very strongly just now. Bayer accompanied him again. The hound's thumping tail announced them both. She could not open her eyes, though she tried.
She felt her hand move with her familiar pen between her fingers. She wondered if she still had time. It did not matter. It was he. "Come," he said, and it was that simple.
###
Marcus Royal paced back and forth on his mother's side of the room. He was red-faced and waved the notepaper he'd taken off his mother's bed stand. Her old-fashioned fountain pen filled with purple ink remained uncapped on the stand. Before they'd drawn the sheets up over his mother, he'd noted purple ink stains on her right fingers. Her body now awaited the coroner. A doctor, a few nurses, and an orderly lingered about and watched the son warily. "Who was with her when she wrote this thing?" he asked.
They shook their heads.
"Someone has to know something. Look. It's her handwriting. Well, it's how she used to write when she was younger, yet it's dated today. But how could she have written anything? All of you know she was too weak to feed herself or even open her eyes. Hell, she hasn't even spoken for at least five months." His eyes narrowed. "Or did she speak and you didn't tell me?"
Her personal physician, Dr. Milhouse, stepped forward and asked Marcus Royal what he was talking about. What was this paper that had him so agitated? Marcus handed it over. The doctor raised his eyebrows at the precise, old-fashioned script that filled the page and read slowly.
ABIGAIL LAIN O'SHAW McLAUGHLIN'S OBITUARY
Abigail Lain O'Shaw McLaughlin, 95, resident of Shipping, California, passed away Wednesday, July 9 at Haley Rest Home where she had resided for the past six months.
Mrs. McLaughlin was born on September 11, 1907, to Harry and Netty O'Shaw. Her parents died while Abigail was an infant, and she was lovingly raised by both sets of grandparents: Marcus Lain and his wife Mabel, who owned Lain's Millinery on the south side of the square which is now the Sub Shoppe, and Daniel O'Shaw, well-known in those days as an incorruptible judge, and his wife, Idabell. Abigail attended Williams Finishing School for Young Ladies which later served as Shipping Grade School and is now a preserved historical site. While in school, Abigail studied languages.
She was preceded in death by parents, grandparents, and her husband of forty-five years, Francis McLaughlin, who was in banking and real estate, by her beloved daughter Antoine Etta Henderson, by her beloved granddaughter, Phoenicia True Albagori, and by her beloved beloved beloved great-granddaughter, Carolina "Cubby" Albagori, all three of whom perished in the 9-11 disaster when their flight was piloted by terrorists into the World Trade Center. They were on their way to see their mother and grandmother to celebrate her birthday, a custom they enjoyed every year. Also preceding her in death was her most beloved hound, Bayer, whom Abigail often referred to as "The Hound of Heaven."
She is also survived by Marcus Royal McLaughlin, her son, and his wife Hattie Lou, and by her beloved Chihuahua, Snookie Pie, who was generously adopted by Marcus and Hattie when their mother could no longer maintain her home.
Mrs. McLaughlin will long be remembered for her work with PAWS and her advocacy of all animals, especially canines. She also worked with Save the Children Foundation and was a volunteer at the public library. Services to be announced later.
The doctor handed the obituary back to Marcus Royal. "Sometimes they amaze you," he said, inadequately. He turned quite red and stammered, "A...a last minute rush of adrenaline perhaps? They do rally, occasionally."
"She never once called her dog Bayer, the Hound of Heaven," Marcus Royal said. The doctor nodded, excused himself, and stumbled a bit in his haste to leave the room. Marcus Royal sat down heavily in the chair by his mother's bed and stared out the window. But for that error, use of beloveds. He winced that he hadn't earned a beloved, but no wonder, after what he'd said during the last visit. Everything else seemed correct. He'd see to it that it was printed the way she wrote it. That was the least he could do for her. Atone for his boorish behavior. He leaned over and put his beefy hand on the edge of the mattress, patting it softly, but making sure his fingers were not touching the corpse.