“Yeah,” he said, his voice still hoarse. He coughed, then tried again. “Let’s go.”
*
As planned, we went into the room before the ICU team. We called the interpreter first, informing him of our plan. Wordlessly, Ricky grasped my hand as we walked toward his father’s hospital room, giving Bethany and Dr. Milner a nod as we passed. Together, Ricky seemed to be saying. We’re doing this together.
Abuela was waiting for us when we arrived. Her rosary, normally tucked in a pouch in her pocket, was wrapped around her wrist. She jostled her husband awake, then scooted to the edge of the couch. Her gaze flickered to our conjoined hands, then back to our haunted faces.
“You have something to tell us,” she said, giving us a nod. “And we are ready to hear it.”
Ricky and I exchanged a glance, and I took a deep breath.
“All right,” I said.
And then we began.
*
I slid the door to Gabriel’s room shut, waiting to hear the soft thump of the air pressure shifting before dropping my head backward against the glass. Under my closed eyelids, I could still see Abuela and Mr. Gutiérrez’s gray, resolute faces, still picture the pale-knuckled grip Abuela had on her husband’s shirt.
“How long do we have?” she’d asked, her voice firm even through her tears. Minutes? Hours? Days?
Months ago, when I’d watched Shruti lead the resuscitation effort for the young gunshot victim, I’d marveled at her objectiveness in the face of tragedy. But I hadn’t seen what happened next. I’d missed Shruti sitting the boy’s mother down after the code was inevitably called, holding her shattering body in her arms as she told her that it was over. All this time, I’d assumed that being a doctor meant performing miracles. Fixing bodies. Saving lives. I had hardly considered the flip side of that coin: that it also meant looking a patient’s family in the eye and telling them to say their last goodbyes. That it meant staring down the permanence of death over and over again, until it stopped feeling like something to be prevented at all costs and instead became something to be occasionally embraced.
I wandered back to the family meeting room. Part of me was tempted to glance at the monitor in the nursing station that displayed Gabriel’s vital signs remotely, but it seemed improper to count down a man’s death, and so I dropped my head against the back of the couch and tried to understand why I felt like I was losing someone too. A more innocent, naive version of myself, maybe? The one that hadn’t been forced to tell the man she loved and the woman she had come to admire that their father and son was circling the drain?
Several minutes later, the door to the family room creaked open. I jumped to my feet, ready to vacate in case Dr. Milner needed the room for a different family, but it was Ricky, one hand in his pocket, the other holding the door open for his grandparents. I gave him a questioning look, and, understanding, he answered with a grim nod. So it was over, then. What had I told Abuela, when she asked how much more time she had with her son? I don’t know, but I don’t think he’ll last the day. He had hardly lasted the hour.
Mr. Gutiérrez glanced at me, then back at his grandson, saying something quietly in Spanish.
“He’s saying, ‘Thank you for everything you’ve done for our family,’” Ricky translated. His eyes were no longer bloodshot, but I could see the exhaustion in the droop of his shoulders. “And, um, that if you would like, you should come to the funeral.”
I gave Mr. Gutiérrez a shy smile, touched.
“Of course,” I said.
We stood, looking at the tile, for a long, still moment. There was nothing left for me to say. I’d done what I’d sought to do, and now it was time for me to go home, accept that this was the end of the road, and try to move on with my life. It had been only a few days, but I would miss Abuela. And Ricky . . .
Well, I had almost gotten over him once, right?
Suddenly, Abuela kissed her teeth.
I turned to her, flummoxed by her annoyance, but she had eyes only for her grandson. Ricky staggered backward, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, as she lifted a finger to his face.
“You are still among the living, are you not?” she asked him. “Sé fuerte. Go. Show her.”
“Wait,” Ricky said, alarmed. “Right now, Abuela? Shouldn’t I be going home with you? I can help with making arrangements—”
“You think that we need you for that, little boy?” Abuela said, and suddenly I saw her for the broom-swinging, slipper-slinging matriarch that she was. “él que no arriesga, no gana. Now go.”