Heart the Lover (53)

‘She hasn’t?’

‘Not yet.’

‘She’s twenty-seven.’

I nod.

‘When she does, will you tell her about me? Will you tell her I love her?’

‘I will. Of course I will.’

‘Tell her . . .’ he says. I can’t make out the rest. He’s crying hard. He tries again. ‘Tell her I’m always rooting for her.’

Neither of us can talk for a while. Our tears pool at his collarbone.

The only sound is Sam, snoring like a foghorn.

‘You did all that alone.’

‘I wasn’t alone.’

‘Without me.’

I look at the monitor. 87. Even with the mask. They will have to increase the liter flow.

‘Do you think—’ he stops for breath.



‘Don’t talk, Hink. Save your breath.’

‘For what?’

I don’t answer.

‘Do you think I should have married?’ He searches my face. ‘Would I have been happier?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t think I would have been good at it. Maybe a quarter of the time. The rest of the time I’d want to be alone.’

I can see how true that is. How unhappy it would have made me.

‘I have always loved you, though,’ he says. ‘Always always.’

The nurse Kelly comes in then. She smiles at Sam’s snoring as she goes around his cot. I lift up my head and let go of Yash’s left hand so she can pull a tube out of his IV and replace it with another.

When she leaves I put my head back on his shoulder.

‘Do you think I’ll be able to see her? Watch over her?’

‘I think so,’ I say. ‘In some way.’

‘Do you think it will be better?’

‘Better than life?’

He nods.

‘Yes,’ I say, as if it’s possible to imagine anything outside life.

‘We have a child,’ he says.



‘I’m sorry.’

‘For what?’

‘Not telling you.’

I feel him shake his head. ‘You told me. I’m so glad to know.’

We are quiet for a while.

I think he’s fallen asleep, then he says, ‘What do you make of death?’

‘Death?’ I stall.

‘Do you have a personal theory?’

‘You’re going to think it’s very Pollyanna.’

‘No doubt.’

‘You’ve spent your whole life reading everything. You should be telling me.’

‘Say it.’

‘Well, I believe we’re all one. Same consciousness or awareness or whatever you want to call it. The universe is expanding now but soon—in a few more billion years—we’ll start shrinking back again to what we were before the Big Bang. We’ll get smaller and smaller and then for a moment we’ll be a tiny speck. After that they say we’ll be nothing—we won’t exist at all inside a black hole. Then there’ll be another bang and we’ll return.’

‘Surprise!’ he says faintly.

‘I think we desire unity because we have felt it before and we want to feel it again. It’s our natural state.’

‘Eternity as a concept is a bit terrifying,’ he says.



‘Only if time exists as we experience it. Which we know it does not. Without time, eternity loses its bite.’

‘This is true.’

I wait for him to push against my theories. Instead he says, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to like billions of years of one consciousness.’

‘You might get used to it.’

‘I might. And I have a daughter.’ His voice breaks and he squeezes my hands hard. ‘It makes it easier somehow, Hink.’

We cry a little more and I feel his hands slowly go slack. He gives into sleep.

Sam rolls onto his side. Both feet are sticking out beyond the mattress now.

His open eyes make me jump.

He grins. ‘I slept in.’

‘You did.’

‘Was I snoring?’

‘Some.’

‘I’m sorry. I know it’s bad. Was he awake?’

‘For a little while.’

‘He sounds worse.’

‘He is.’

His clothes are on a chair in the corner and he can’t get to them.

‘I’ll go get the coffee,’ I tell him.



I go down to the basement and stand in line. It’s only hospital personnel at this hour. They wait in pairs or larger groups. Their chatter is comforting, these people who do such important work.

I was on a panel a few years ago with a philosopher who’d written a book on time. She said there were two prevailing theories, eternalism and presentism. Eternalism is the belief that everything that is, has been, and will be exists right now and forever, all at once. Presentism is the belief that only what exists in the present exists at all. Nothing before and nothing after. No exceptions. As we were walking off stage I asked her which she believed, and she told me she could make a strong case for either, but recently she was leaning toward presentism.

I didn’t understand why she would lean toward presentism, why she would choose only the present moment—no past, no future—when she could have everything all at once for eternity. But standing here in line, with all these good people working to help others get better, it feels okay to me to have this moment and nothing else. It feels vast, open, beautiful. Only this right here right now. I feel happy. I have told him.