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The thing about death, Greg reflected as he poured himself yet another cup of horrible coffee, was that it was so boring. They didn’t tell you that in those happy, glossy brochures advertising care homes or NHS facilities, how absolutely, horrendously boring it was waiting for someone to die.
The same conversations with a rotating parade of seemingly every person who’s ever met the soon-to-be decedent, all with the same solemn looks on their faces, the same unshed tears in their eyes as they left. The same interminable hushed conversations in the hospital corridor as the nurses finished changing the sheets or, worse, the nappy of the person who once changed yours.
Comfort care, they called it.
Prolonging the inevitable, as far as Greg was concerned.
It was perhaps worse, he thought, dumping three packets of sugar into the coffee and stirring it absently, since he was a comedian. They expected him to entertain, to make them laugh instead of falling apart, as if he wasn’t thirty seconds from falling apart himself. So on top of pretending like he was even halfway holding himself together, he had to force a smile and something resembling merriment, enough to get everyone else to also smile.
He took a sip of coffee and winced. He thought about adding more sugar but he honestly wasn’t sure it’d make any difference whatsoever.
Might kill him faster, so when it was his time, he didn’t drag it out like this.
That may have been horrible of him, but it didn’t change the fact that he was about thirty seconds away from just smothering her with a pillow, put them both out of their misery.
God, he needed a nap.
Just his luck, though, the old woman would die while he was asleep, and his sister would never let him live it down.
He scrubbed a hand across his face, which woke him up about as much as the shit coffee was likely to, though he forced what he hoped was something closer to a smile than a grimace as the nurse stepped out of the room, closing the door softly behind her. “Any change?” he asked.
She smiled at him, which only meant bad news. “No change,” she reported, which were two words Greg had come to loathe. “She didn’t want anything for dinner, but we’ll be back to check on her once more before visiting hours are over.”
Before you leave for the night, she didn’t say, though it was implied. Before you get to go back to your flat in London to not sleep in your bed instead of not sleeping in the uncomfortable chair next to her bed.
Before you spend the whole night hoping that she just doesn’t wake up, because as impossibly hard as that would be, it’d be easier than going through this again for another day, or two, or however many more days it took.
Greg had been through this once before with his father, but he didn’t remember it being like this. Maybe because his mum had taken the brunt of it at the time, he thought as he let himself back into her room, closing the door softly behind him, or maybe just because he’d blocked out all of the bullshit over the past decade and then some.
Or maybe everything just felt so much worse because it was fucking Christmas.
Not that you’d even know it was Christmas, he thought gloomily as he took his position back at her bedside. Certainly not from the decorations, or distinct lack thereof on the ward. A single strand of fairy lights around the reception desk where he picked up his visitor’s badge each day was seemingly the only decoration in the entire hospital, or at least this wing of it.
But decor aside, Christmas also meant that people had places to be, people to see, and merriment to concentrate on rather than sparing a thought for his own abject misery. His friends might’ve remembered to message between presents and turkey and festive drinks, but there was no one he could really reach out to lest he ruin their Christmas, too. Even his sister was at home with his nieces because while Greg was a selfish prick, he wasn’t a selfish enough prick to make their Christmas as miserable as his own, so he’d volunteered for the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day shifts.
And so in addition to being so fucking boring Greg could almost pluck his own eyeballs out, it turned out death was also horridly, dreadfully lonely.
Not to mention really fucking depressing, though that at least was probably to be expected.
After staring at his mum for long enough that he was beginning to drive himself mad counting her short, shallow breaths and the ever increasing pauses between, he slumped over to the sofa, settling down onto it with a weary sigh. He dug his mobile out of his pocket, though he wasn’t sure why he was bothering. It wasn’t as if there was a bevy of messages awaiting his response – just one from Rhod he’d been putting off answering, since he didn’t have a response to Rhod’s ever-eloquent ‘?’ message sent four hours past besides, No, not dead yet, and the thought of sending that message yet again for the fourth day in a row was even more depressing than the rest of it.
Still, he took ten seconds to reply accordingly, saw the three typing dots appear and disappear before Rhod finally just sent a thumbs up, and tossed his phone away with another sigh.
Rhod meant well, and Greg had been through this with him for both of his parents as well as Greg’s dad, but Rhod, like seemingly everyone in Greg’s life, also had his wife to help. He hadn’t been alone in dealing with it.
Not like Greg was. Since Greg had no one.
Yet another depressing thought.
Greg ordinarily didn’t mind his status as perpetual bachelor, or at least, no longer minded it, not like he had in his thirties or forties, but times like this really threw it all into sharp relief. Who would be there for him, when his time came? Who would throw their back out stooping for hours feeding him ice chips because he couldn’t swallow water anymore without choking on it but was still so thirsty? Who would tuck the blanket more securely around his shoulders because he was too frail to do it himself?
Who would hold his hand and tell him that he was loved, and that he could go if he was ready to?
Death was depressing but living with that thought hanging over him for the next, charitably, ten to twenty years might have been the most depressing bit of it.
His phone vibrated against the sofa and he groaned, draining his coffee and tossing the cup in the bin before reaching for his phone, assuming it would be a message from his sister, asking for an update, or maybe a follow up from Rhod.
Instead, he was greeted by a message from Alex, unusually cryptic, even for how absolutely mad the man usually was: What side are you on?
Greg stared down at the message, half-wondering if he was delirious and hallucinating it. It was either that or Alex was resorting to increasingly esoteric riddles in an ill-fated attempt to get him to smile. Ordinarily, Greg would appreciate the effort, far more than he would ever let on, but now he mostly just felt a bone-weary exhaustion that threatened to throttle any attempt to lift his mood, even from Alex.
Sorry? he sent back, assuming he’d probably get either an equally oblique response or an apology for Alex likely drunkenly messaging the wrong person.
Sure enough, a moment later, he received another message: Nvm figured it out. Greg shook his head and was just about to hurl his phone either back onto the sofa or perhaps at the closest wall when it buzzed in his hand. Come to the window.
Greg blinked down at it, his brow furrowed. What? he sent back, still operating under the assumption that Alex had perhaps lost his marbles or had a bit too much rum punch. Quite possibly both.
Come to the window, Alex repeated via message, and even though the words weren’t any different than before, Greg could’ve sworn that he could read Alex’s stubbornness in those four words, especially when they were followed by a particularly petulant, Please.
Greg glanced almost guiltily at his mum before he stood and crossed to the door of her hospital room, stepping outside before making his way across the corridor to the pane of windows that stretched the length of the corridor, as if the natural light could somehow make up for the death and disease the doors opposite were hiding.
He felt foolish as he peered outside at the darkened car park below, and his thumb twitched for his mobile, ready to send Alex a message asking him what he was meant to do now. Then he saw the headlights of a car switch on before five figures tumbled out of the car, assembling in front where the lights illuminated them.
Greg half-smiled as he watched Alex and Rachel wrangle their children – hardly children anymore, and Greg didn’t blame whichever one didn’t even bother looking up from his phone. They must have been well used to their father’s strange antics by now, though he imagined driving to a hospital car park outside London on Christmas probably ranked fairly high on that seemingly endless list.
He saw Rachel point towards him, watched as all three boys obediently waved up at him, felt something deep in his chest unclench as he caught what he would swear was a glimpse of Alex’s gap-toothed grin. He raised his own hand, resting it against the cold glass window, and was glad that he was too high up for Alex to see the tears that sprang up in his eyes.
It was stupid – this whole thing was stupid. Alex dragging his family all this way was stupid, Greg getting choked up over it was stupid, spending his Christmas this way was stupid.
And yet Greg’s heart also felt lighter than it had in days.
If this was one of those wretchedly sappy made for telly Christmas films that Greg liked to mock even while watching them, Alex and his family would be joined by a bunch of Greg’s other friends, who’d all turned up at Alex’s request to lift his spirits.
This wasn’t one of those movies, but it didn’t make it any less meaningful.
More than Greg would ever be able to express to Alex.
The Horne family waved up at him for a moment longer before Rachel began shepherding the boys back into the car, and Greg felt his phone buzz once more. He glanced down at the message from Alex, the text blurring through Greg’s unshed tears. Happy Christmas, Greg xx
He swallowed, hard, and sent a message back of his own. You drove quite a long way for nothing.
Not for nothing. Made you smile, at least.
That it had, to say the very least. And Greg knew he would treasure that more than any other Christmas gift Alex had ever given him.
Thank you.
Alex didn’t reply, as was his way – he hated taking credit for anything, and Greg suspected he’d be even more reticent for something like this, when he probably wished there was more that he could do.
It didn’t make it better, after all. It didn’t make the situation any less awful, didn’t make Greg’s Christmas any less utterly shit, certainly didn’t change what would inevitably happen that night, or the next morning, or whenever it did.
It didn’t make it better.
But at least for a few moments, it made it a little easier.
And Greg couldn’t ask for more than that.
So he shoved his phone back in his pocket and he took a deep breath before heading back into the hospital room, feeling like he might just be able to bear it for at least a little bit longer.