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Levi's bone-tired, like he's never been before. Not after a twelve-hour shift or working ten days straight. Not after a sleepless, drug-fuelled weekend. Not after a red-eye flight. Not even when he was humping it in the boonies, scared shitless, expecting every step forward to lead to a landmine or a booby trap or a VC squad patrolling through the wet green jungle, hopped up on dexies helpfully provided by the DoD. The pep pills made you sweat and sent your teeth grinding and your heart racing, but they propelled you forward, too, through heat and rain and hail of bullets. Even then, Levi was never this tired. Never so worn down, so completely obliterated. This is existential fatigue; his soul is tired.
The doctor is helpful and apologetic. Levi prefers them callous and detached. Hates that this guy, Dr Seth Alderman, knows Erwin professionally and that somehow this transforms him from a slab of meat to a real person in Alderman’s eyes. Or maybe not; maybe Dr Alderman is compassionate and communicative with all his patients. Maybe he's one of the good ones, like Erwin. Maybe he's a real humanitarian. He’s certainly overworked here in the AIDS ward, watching all his patients inevitably slip away. Levi shouldn't judge unduly; it's gruelling, thankless work, and Dr Alderman has always been calm and reassuring yet forthright.
He’s here now, wanting to discuss options. Erwin's not up for it. He's grey and pallid against the hospital bed. He can't talk with pneumonia and an oxygen mask. His face is marred by the unsettling red KS blotches, and he looks ancient instead of the vibrant, sexy forty-three he’d been ten weeks ago, before the sudden but inexorable decline in his health. The pulse oximeter is hovering around 90% even with supplemental oxygen. Erwin's insistent he doesn't want to be intubated, but his lungs are necrotic and failing. He's going septic, all his organs failing. The antibiotics aren't working, the antifungals aren't working, and Dr Alderman wants to try different ones, wants to try a blood transfusion and wants to do another sputum culture. Levi blinks at him through the haze of his exhaustion, brain fuzzy and limbs heavy. It takes a while before his mouth starts moving and the words start coming out.
“Let Erwin rest,” he says.
Erwin lifts his eyelids, and their gazes meet. Levi thinks, and he nods in barely perceptible assent. Then he closes his eyes and leans back into the pillow. Levi takes his hand gently, avoiding the plastic tubing and the cannula.
“Are you ready? It's not going to get better. You don't have to keep fighting for me.”
A wet exhale, that hideous double pneumonia gurgle. A squeeze, weak but distinct.
“You can rest. I’ll keep fighting. I’ll keep your memory —” His own sob surprises him. He shoves it back down his throat.
Levi doesn't want to feel this. He inhales; each breath is painful. Although there's nothing wrong with him, he’s negative despite it all; he never gets sick, and he’s indefatigable and indestructible. He won't cry here in front of Dr Alderman. He doesn't want Erwin to know how much it's going to hurt. Erwin shouldn't feel guilty about his own death, and he knows Erwin isn't ready, that he has so many plans that will never come to fruition and so many unmet goals, lofty or otherwise.
So Levi packs up all his grief and rage at the world and hides it away. He dredges up his love instead. He leans over and kisses Erwin's forehead.
“I'm here; I’m not going anywhere. You fought hard, but now you can let go. And I’ll keep going after you're gone. We’ll shock those fuckers out of their murderous complacency. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll scream and rage and burn the fucking White House down if I have to.”
Erwin attempts a chuckle at Levi's intensity, the sincerity of his ire, but it just comes out like a suffocating snort.
“We know nothing new’s going to work at this point,” Levi says.
Dr Alderman wants to argue. He’s about to begin some spiel Levi doesn't want to hear. This tenacity and defiance in the face of certain death makes him a good advocate for his patients, but Erwin's not going to rally no matter how much healthy blood they try to pump into him. Levi watches the rapid, shallow rise and fall of his chest. The beeping machines provide a stream of information he can't parse (but Erwin surely could, which makes him an obnoxious patient, although Alderman never complained no matter how many questions Erwin had back when he was still capable of asking questions).
“What's his T cell count?” Levi asks.
“CD4 was 45 on re-admission. But we’ve had some success with the blood transfusions.”
A healthy person has a CD4 cell count between 1,500 and 500. A count of less than 200 is classified as 'AIDS'. At 45 Erwin's immune system is non-existent. Levi wants to scream. The virus mutated. The fucking AZT didn't do shit.
“He doesn't want to be intubated. No sedation,” Levi says.
Alderman nods. “We’ll focus on palliative treatment.”
After the decision is made, Erwin doesn't linger. Levi's given him permission to die, and he gets on with it with his typical efficiency. The sepsis progresses, he goes into cardiac and respiratory failure, and he's declared dead at 2:09 am on February 10th, 1991. Levi's there for all of it, holding his hand, whispering “I love you” into his ear, and ignoring the dirty looks from some of the nurses when he gives Erwin a final kiss, chaste and solemn like a blessing. That he’s here at all is thanks to Erwin's prescience and knack for paperwork and formalities. He's arranged everything: power of attorney; an ironclad will so Levi's not out on the street; and even a playlist for his memorial service (he’s stipulated a secular celebration of life, cremation, and generous posthumous donations to Action AIDS and ACT-UP).
It's unseasonably sunny outside. The sky is the fragile, pale blue of a robin’s egg, speckled with white clouds. Levi stands in the weak morning light, shrouded in cigarette smoke and car exhaust. People enter the building, and the automatic doors whoosh open and shut with a soft pneumatic hiss, releasing bursts of warm air into the parking lot.
He hasn't been home for more than a few hours in weeks, and the place is sure to be a mess. The thought of dusting and scrubbing encrusted shit out of the disgusting crevice in the toilet bowl, of scouring calcium deposits off the taps, of wiping counters and of cleaning out the fridge gives him motivation to keep going. He’s not sure he still has a job. He used up all his combined sick leave and vacation days before January was over, and he's stopped calling in to explain. Maybe a new job will feel like a fresh start. It might be better than fielding his co-workers’ questions and the inevitable reactions of disgust or uncomfortable sympathy he’ll have to endure if he goes back.
Everything is consumed by the numb chasm of loss and his refusal to feel, to analyse the seething emotions that threaten to burst out of him into the placid morning. When his mother died, Kenny insisted on a Jewish burial and on sitting shiva; it was the only time Levi ever saw Kenny Ackerman utter a prayer, but Erwin's an atheist former Catholic, and Levi's not sure how to ritualise this grief. Ritual ties us to community, tethering the survivors together in the wake of tragedy and linking them to all the mourners and dead who came before, back through the millennia. But Levi's estranged from any sense of community. He doesn't want to rely on others, despite all his lip service to community action and all the times he's been the one cleaning apartments and cooking meals and running errands while somebody else was terribly busy dying or else rendered catatonic with grief. He doesn't know what to do, can't follow a prescribed set of actions and words to articulate his bereavement, which is unique but also the same as everyone else's.
Hange picks him up from the hospital in their shitty yellow car that's always mistaken for a cab. Hange likes to see all those people waving like long lost friends and sadistically relishes the moment of disappointment when they realise they can't get a ride. He lets them drive without a single rebuke. He hasn't slept in a bed in five days. He's spent the last ten weeks panicking and catastrophising, and now the worst has happened. The car slides through a yellow light and rattles down the street. Thankfully it's Sunday, and there isn’t any traffic. There are dried tears on Hange's face.
At home, in the newly empty house, they give him a hug, and he collapses into it. The body's already en route to the crematorium. He doesn't remember when or how he's supposed to collect the ashes. There's a business card in his pocket, and he realises he’ll have to call them once he goes to sleep and wakes up again.
Then there's the will, transferring the deed on the house, closing Erwin's bank accounts, changing the name on the utility bills, and selling his car. Mounds of paperwork and terse phone calls loom in Levi's future. Once, before he got really sick and gallows humour lost its appeal, Erwin had joked that dying was so inconvenient it was lucky you only had to do it once. Of course, it's mostly inconvenient for whoever is left behind.
Levi's staring into space, one shoe off and his coat in his hands, when Hange breaks his reverie.
“Do you want me to stay?” Hange asks.
Levi pauses. He's always thought of Hange and Mike and Moblit and the rest of them as Erwin's friends. They're not Levi's type of people, and he's awkward around them. Even after seven years together, he doesn't feel he really belongs in Erwin's social circle. He considers going upstairs and sleeping alone in the bed he should be sharing with Erwin, and it hurts so much he might as well rip out his own heart and stomp on it.
“Could you?” he asks.
Hange takes his hand and leads him upstairs, undresses him like a child, turns down the covers and settles him into bed in his undershirt and underpants. They slide in beside him and wrap their arms around him. It feels good and comforting. Levi sags into their embrace, starved for human touch, for connection. Hange’s unembarrassed and tactile, rubbing his shoulders and running their long fingers through his hair, shushing and crooning.
His whole body throbs with exquisite pain. It radiates out from his torso and down his limbs. Even his fingertips ache.
“You can cry, Levi,” Hange says.
He can't, though, not yet.