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For a moment, just like always when unexpected things happen, time stops.
Though the nature of this so-called thing - for it is too fresh, too new, to be labeled as what it really is - can hardly be called unexpected. It’s been something that’s been weighing everybody down for weeks now, which is a particularly long time to just be waiting for something to happen, but it isn’t long for something as fragile as health to decline so quickly.
It’s an unfortunate fact that’s been hanging over Marvin’s shoulders for twenty-two days now; he’s been counting, yet when he started, he hadn’t really taken into account that he would have to stop crossing off the days on the calendar in their shared apartment. He’ll have to throw the red marker out. Looking back, it’s ridiculous. Why he chose red out of all the colours to choose from is beyond him, because red is bright and sickly and painful, like blood that’s coughed up and dribbled onto your white sweater at two o’clock in the morning in a cramped hospital room, with your friend who also happens to be a doctor rushing over with gloves on to clean up.
On the day that he’d started this morbid countdown he’d come home and screamed in anguish and agony so loudly that he was surprised the neighbours in the next apartment over didn’t come in to ensure that he hadn’t been murdered.
On the second day he’d searched for the definition of what was happening in the dictionary to ensure that it was, in fact, happening, and that it hadn’t been some horrific hallucination or distorted memory.
On the fifth day all it had taken for him to break down was Trina putting her arms around him.
On the sixth day the medication had stopped.
On the eighth day his son had a little league game. They had all turned up except for the person that he had wanted to be there the most.
On the twelfth day he had blood spattered on his hands and he couldn’t understand why his friend was so freaked out.
On the fifteenth day he’d understood.
On the twentieth day he’d been laying in bed, silently wishing that he could take the place of the person who really needed to be in there, as he’d whispered, voice fragile like a person who’s losing touch with reality’s always is, “Don’t want…this. Scared.”
On the twenty second day, it was his son’s Bar Mitzvah.
Today is Jason’s Bar Mitzvah.
Today, the curtains are pulled and the incessant noise from the multitude of the machines surrounding him stops. At first, the relentless beeping had been annoying, but now Marvin would do anything to hear it again.
He does nothing but sit. And stare. Can’t do anything but.
What exactly he’s staring at, he’s not quite sure. Maybe it’s at the eyes that are still open, still looking directly at him, still staring back. Maybe it’s at the chapped and flaky lips that are slightly parted, like he’d wanted to say something, like he’d wanted to whisper and rasp some futile words of comfort to Marvin - like Marvin is the one who needs them. Who needed them. Maybe it’s at his left hand in his hair which is simultaneously dry and greasy; they’d stopped washing it ages ago. Maybe it’s at his right hand, which is clasped around his hand, which has a sickening blueish tint to it.
He’s been cold for a few days now. He’s been a shivering wreck for even longer.
Shivers cease. Movement fails to materialise.
Beeps cut themselves off.
That itself is enough, enough for Marvin to recognise, to signify what has happened.
Like he needed an audible sign.
Like he didn’t know that this was how things were going to end up.
He stills like the man in the bed.
His eyes, those beautiful, lively brown eyes, brown to match his name, gaze at him with a mix of love and fear and sadness. Before, Marvin hadn’t realised that the three could co-exist.
Before, it had just been anger and lust.
Before, in those ten months (he refuses to believe it’s nine months), all they had done was shout. And have sex. And then shout some more. They had been each other’s worst enemies but also the one that the other desired more than anything, more than the wife and child, more than the psychiatrist, more than the dozens of other, younger, more attractive men in New York City that his lover could have chosen.
But, for whatever reason, he’d chosen Marvin.
If he hadn’t, maybe he’d be here alone.
Maybe.
Or maybe not.
He still has Charlotte. Charlotte who comes next to where Marvin’s standing, who places her thumbs on his lover’s eyelids, who gently pulls them down until Marvin can no longer see his glistening eyes. Charlotte, who shakes as she places her thumb and index finger on either side of his chin, before pushing it up softly, closing his mouth so that he can never speak again.
Marvin doesn’t let go of his hand.
Charlotte turns around, leaning down. Marvin vaguely hears her knees thud against the hospital floor, almost as if she was intending to hover, to squat, but she couldn’t quite support herself. As if her legs gave up on her.
“Marvin,” she whispers, her voice shaking just as much as her hands, which are now on his shoulders. “I- I’m so sorry.”
Sorry doesn’t suffice, but Marvin knows it’s what you say when something like this happens.
He isn’t looking at her. He’s aware that she’s there, aware that she’s looking at him, but he can’t find it in him to tear his eyes away from the pair of closed ones.
He hears her sniffle. Watches but doesn’t really watch as her shoulders flinch and jolt for a moment.
“Time- time of-” she begins, but her words merge into nothingness as racking sobs overtake her.
She leans forward and her head buries itself into the crook of Marvin’s neck, the tears and saliva dripping onto his skin and shirt. His stomach twinges and for a moment he feels the urge to get up, to put some gloves on, to wipe the wetness off him, because bodily fluids shouldn’t be touching his bare skin, they shouldn’t be in contact with him, they could infect him, they could ruin him-
He has to remind himself that Charlotte is a doctor. That she is sterile. That she is safe.
And that he is already ruined anyways.
Doctors do not cry. Emotions are not something that Marvin has ever associated with one.
But he supposes it’s different when it’s your family in the bed.
He doesn’t hold her. He doesn’t let go of the person who he knows can’t feel the contact (which is sickening for a man who used to value touch so much) and he doesn’t stop looking at him.
She’s blurry in his peripheral vision when she pulls away, sniffling and wiping her face.
“Time of death, eight a.m.”
Her voice quakes right before she starts sobbing again, but this time she gets up from the floor and twists her body through the curtains, her heels smacking the tiles at an alarmingly quick pace before the sound of a door slamming shut sounds. It echoes, reverberating into the room.
Marvin’s ears ring.
He doesn’t let go of his hand.
What is a man to do when his lover dies?
Marvin does not cry.
He does not want to cry.
Because crying means acknowledging that something is wrong. That what he’s been fearing for weeks has finally happened.
He actually almost laughs.
Eight a.m. on the dot.
Whizzer had always been a perfectionist.
Marvin can say his name now.
What he can’t do, however, is look through his possessions.
Or enter their apartment.
The mere thought of even entering that building, let alone the apartment itself, is too much for Marvin to bear.
So, instead, he resides himself on a bench a few feet away from the entrance of the hospital. He toys with his yarmulke in his hands, toying with the cloth in between the shaking pads of his fingers. He sits, hunched over, still in his suit - though it really is too hot outside for this kind of attire; the sweat is pooling underneath his armpits - and he watches the world go by.
He watches as the world carries on. For one, the weather is sickening - not only is it actually making him feel sick, but the concept of it enrages him to the point of inducing nausea. It really is like this universe is playing some sort of cruel fucking trick on him. How dare the weather be good, how dare the streets be clean, how dare the people be happy, when his entire world has just been ripped out from his chest and torn apart?
He watches as a man wheels a woman in a wheelchair out of the entrance into the parking lot where the bench faces. She has a blanket draped over her legs and her hair is messy and her cheekbones are gaunt and she has a hospital band hanging loosely on her wrist, but she’s smiling. She’s smiling and looking back at her man - it must be her lover, Marvin presumes - and she seems happy.
She doesn’t seem to understand how lucky she is.
That should be me, Marvin thinks bitterly as he looks at the man pushing her. That should be us.
He tears his eyes away. He can’t stand to look any longer.
He puts his head in his hands, his yarmulke hanging pathetically on the edge of his thumb, the tips of his index fingers digging themselves into his eyes. He wonders what it would be like to push his fingers further inwards. To insert them more and more into his sockets, the pressure building up until he gouges them out completely.
He wonders what it feels like to lose weight so quickly that you don’t even realise until you can see your ribcage poking through your skin. He knows that you can pin it down to your increased amounts of exercise, your increased games of racquetball, until you can’t anymore.
He wonders what it feels like to be tired all the time, to fall asleep constantly, on the couch, in bed, at the dining table, in the bathtub. He knows that you can explain it by saying you’re just working too hard, that you have too many clients, that it’s only going to get busier because more people want photos taken of them in the summer, so you’re just going to have to find a way to deal with it.
He wonders what it feels like to have a headache so debilitating that you can’t even keep your eyes open, that you can’t even stand. He knows that you can say you’re not eating enough, that you’ll eat a large dinner tonight to cure it.
He wonders what it feels like to toy with your food, stabbing grains of rice on the tines of your fork, taking miniscule mouthfuls, leaving half of the meal on the plate. He knows that you can gloss over this by saying you’re tired, that you don’t have the energy for it, that you’ll eat more in the morning, even if you never do.
He wonders what it feels like to be up late at night, shaking and sweating and saying things that don’t make sense, being unable to cool down even when the air conditioning is blasting in late March and you’re only wearing your underwear. He knows that it’s because you’ve just got a bad touch of the flu again, just like you did last month, or a while back.
He wonders what it feels like to keep hitting yourself on the corners of furniture or on doorframes. He knows that you can explain that you just bruise easily, that you’re just fragile, that you just walked into the couch too hard, even if that never used to happen to you.
He wonders what it feels like to cough so much that you can’t breathe, that your face turns a horrendous purple colour, that you’re gripping onto something, anything, to provide you with some sense of stability, that your mouth is open and you’re gasping in futile gulps of air. He knows that you can pin it down to the fact that you just had some dust in the back of your throat, or that you’ve nearly choked on the water you’ve just gulped down.
He wonders what it feels like to lose control of your body, to have your hands and feet be so numb that you can barely walk, can barely curl your fingers around someone else’s hand, to completely lose your reflexes, to keep dropping the cups of water that the nice doctor with the sorrowful eyes offers you. He knows that you can gloss over this by saying that you’re just tired, that you weren’t concentrating.
He wonders what it feels like to cough up blood late at night, when your limbs are paralysed from fatigue and you can barely muster up the energy to breathe. He knows that you can say you were coughing too hard earlier.
He wonders what it feels like to be so out of touch with reality that the only name you remember is your lover’s. He knows that it’s because you’re dying, and it turns out there’s no excuses for that.
He knows that, one day, he won’t have to wonder anymore.
Maybe he really should tear his eyes from their sockets. Maybe he should walk in front of one of the cars that are skidding into the parking lot at illegal speeds. Maybe he should walk right back in that building and take a handful of pain medication. Maybe he should lacerate his skin with a shard of glass that’s resting by his shoe.
Maybe just walking back into that apartment would be enough to do the trick.
Maybe taking matters into his own hands would mean that he would go out happier. It would mean that he wouldn’t have to suffer and watch himself fall apart and forget who he is or where he is and lose any sense of identity that he previously had.
But part of Marvin feels like he deserves to suffer.
He deserves to endure the pain that Whizzer did.
He wishes it was him in that hospital. He doesn’t know where Whizzer is, what they’ve done with him; he’s unsure on the protocol of what happens when someone- when this happens to someone.
He still can’t quite say that word. He can recognise that it’s happened, can use it to explain every single thing that has happened and that is going to happen, but something about using Whizzer and that word in the same sentence is unimaginable.
There had been a horrific sense of irony in Jason’s Bar Mitzvah, Marvin thinks. They were all gathered to celebrate him, to celebrate him becoming a man, to celebrate his life starting, when the real reason that they were there was because a life was ending.
Everybody had already been dressed in pristine suits and solemn dresses like it was his fucking funeral already.
Marvin had recognised what Jason had said, right before it had happened. How he’d looked at Whizzer and referred to him as father in Hebrew. Clearly, Whizzer had recognised it, too, because despite everything, despite the fact he was slipping away right under Marvin’s grip, he’d leaned forward and held Jason and thanked him.
Whizzer is more of a man, more of a father, than Marvin could have ever dreamed of being.
He suddenly becomes aware that the sound of gravel crunching beneath feet is getting closer and closer.
He looks up, taking his hands away from his eyes. The sunlight assaults him, cacophonies of colour exploding in his vision.
Jason and Trina are standing there.
And, well, Marvin loves his son, and he likes his ex-wife, but he doesn’t particularly feel like talking to either of them right now.
Before he can open his mouth to communicate this, however, Jason gets in there first.
“I want to go back,” is all he says.
That’s ambiguity if Marvin’s ever heard it, but he agrees. He wonders if Jason means that, like him, he wants to go back in time, to a reality where none of this was happening, where he still had Whizzer in his reach. But that would also mean going back to a time where he’d taken the man for granted, where he’d treated him like shit and taken out all of his frustrations on him every second of every day.
Or maybe Jason means that he wants to go back in that building. To see Whizzer one last time, to hug him, to fist bump him, to laugh with him, to have him hold a baseball bat or a chess piece again. To hold him in his arms, to run his hands through his hair, to whisper meaningless words of comfort in his ringing ears.
So Marvin just nods.
Not for the first time today, Marvin looks at his son. Really looks at him.
His eyes are watering and his pupils are shaking but he doesn’t let the tears spill over. Maybe that’s what being a man is.
He’s supposed to be a man but he looks more like a child right now than ever before.
So does Jason.
“You did good, kid.” He croaks. It doesn’t sound like it belongs to him.
Jason’s still wearing his suit. Well. Part of it. Trina is holding his jacket. His top button is undone and his tie is dangling loose around his neck. The right side of his shirt is hanging out over his pants, the creases that he knows Trina tried so desperately to iron out returned.
“I don’t feel like a grown-up,” Jason murmurs.
He’s looking at Marvin more intensely in these last seconds than he has in the whole two years he’s been bouncing back and forth and only seeing him two days out of seven every week. His gaze is so strong, it’s almost like he’s trying to memorise the sight of Marvin’s face, every crease, every strand of hair, every line in his lips, every mark, every mole.
Marvin sighs. “Me neither.”
Jason sniffs. He blinks, and when he opens his eyes again, the gloss over his eyes has disappeared.
Then, without warning, Jason lunges forward and wraps his arms around Marvin’s shoulders. He buries his head in his neck, so close that Marvin can feel his eyelashes fluttering against his skin. He holds on tight, close, as if he’s going to disintegrate under his grip.
He feels Jason’s breath against his skin as he opens his mouth again.
“Is that gonna happen to you, too?” he whispers.
Marvin stills. Stops breathing for a second.
He doesn’t have it in him to lie but he doesn’t have it in him to tell the truth, either.
Jason’s voice is so quiet, so juvenile, so shaky and unsure of itself and downright scared that Marvin can’t quite take it. Jason is never scared; he’s witty and smart and sarcastic, rarely vulnerable, rarely honest and open, rarely willing to share his true and raw feelings on matters such as these.
In the silence, he can’t help but wonder if Jason is holding him closer than he’s done in over a hundred weekends (and ten years before that) because he actually wants to, or because he doesn’t want his mother to hear his question.
He wonders if he’s imagining that he’s Whizzer instead.
Marvin doesn’t say anything, not just yet.
Because he knows the answer to his question. He’s known for a week but it still feels like he’s only known for an hour.
He’s not ready to face it himself, so a child definitely isn’t, either.
Marvin knows that he’s not going to be able to handle Whizzer - a man he’d known for two years - so how is he going to be able to handle his own father?
But did he value Whizzer more? Did Jason see Whizzer more of a father, too? Is that why he’s upset now?
God, is he even going to be upset at all in however long’s time when he has to deal with this again?
The two sides of the argument are at war in his brain. Will your son miss you as much as he misses your lover? is a horrendously sickening question but it’s a perfectly valid one.
So, all Marvin answers with is, in a hushed voice, “You’ll talk to Mendel, won’t you?”
Because Mendel is the psychiatrist. Mendel is safe.
Nothing bad is going to happen to Mendel.
“But I want to talk to you.” Jason’s voice is desperate and angry. “Please.”
“I can’t.”
It’s a pathetic excuse.
“Can’t? Can’t what?” Jason isn’t whispering anymore. His voice is raw and rapid with rage. He pulls back and looks Marvin dead in the eyes. “Answer my question. Please.”
He sniffs again. His hands are digging into Marvin’s shoulders and he looks just about ready to shake him until he gives an answer.
But Marvin can’t.
Even if he wanted to, he knows he wouldn’t be able to.
He can’t even vocalise what’s just happened to Whizzer. How’s he supposed to do it for himself?
“I need to know,” Jason urges, as Trina comes up behind him and starts pulling him away. “Dad?”
The word stabs Marvin in the gut. He looks away from his son and up at his ex-wife. Her mascara is smudged and there’s pale tracks running down from her eyes to her jawline. She’s been crying and she looks just about ready to start again.
Jason still doesn’t cry.
He’s inside - since when was he inside? - and Cordelia is fussing.
He is not hungry, he’s told her, but she’s giving him food anyways.
What’s the point of eating when Whizzer can’t?
What’s the point of savouring food when Whizzer can’t?
What’s the point of breathing when Whizzer can’t?
He doesn’t understand how people can eat at all in times like these.
He vaguely recognises where he is. It’s an apartment but it’s absolutely not his own. It’s colourful, splashes of peach and teal everywhere, and there’s cooking books galore, and he’s sitting on a couch with multiple cushions pressing against his aching back.
Marvin’s still wearing his suit. Well. Part of it. The arm of the couch is holding his jacket. His top button is undone and his tie is dangling loose around his neck. The right side of his shirt is hanging out over his pants, the creases that he remembers he tried so desperately to iron out returned.
“You need to eat something,” Cordelia says softly, like if she speaks too loudly, too harshly, Marvin will just shatter right in front of her.
He just shakes his head.
“Come on,” she whispers.
“I’m not hungry,” Marvin insists for what feels like the hundredth time.
He hears Cordelia sigh but he doesn’t have it in him to feel guilty.
“Okay.” She stands up from where she had been crouching in front of him, knees clicking. She rubs his shoulder gently. “Okay.”
She turns around and Marvin watches her in his peripheral vision as she goes back to her kitchen, his gaze still fixed on a picture frame hanging up on the wall of her and Charlotte locked in an embrace, smiling, happy.
The sight of it makes him irrationally angry but he doesn’t have it in him to feel guilty.
He’s still ruminating on his conversation - he uses the term loosely - with Jason. It’s been two hours since then and he can’t get the sound of his voice out of his head. He doesn’t know when he’s going to see him again.
He doesn’t know if he will.
It feels wrong for their routine to carry on. It’s a Wednesday today, and the idea of waking up in three days’ time to have his son in his apartment, to have to take care of him alongside himself…well, Marvin isn’t quite sure he can do that.
Jason probably doesn’t even want to come over.
As if on cue, Marvin feels the couch sink to his left as someone sits down.
He knows who it is without even having to look.
Bar Mitzvahs are not Jewish holidays, but the psychiatrist is here anyway.
“Jason isn’t talking,” Mendel says quietly, like he’s trying to ease Marvin into a conversation that he so clearly does not want to be a part of.
He’s more focused on trying to eradicate the deep anguish that has birthed itself in his heart and is spreading through his entire body, in his limbs, in his chest, in his blood.
“Oh,” is all he says.
He’s trying to work out how he got here, to keep his brain busy, to try and make him forget what a dead man’s eyes look like. He distantly remembers Jason and Trina driving away, leaving him alone on that bench. He remembers Cordelia coming up to him and…no, the memory is gone. She must have taken him back here.
“Trina says you spoke to him,” Mendel presses.
Marvin wants to tell him to shut up, to leave him alone.
“Yeah.”
“What did you say to him?”
“Nothing.”
It’s not a lie.
Nothing comforting was said.
For the second time in the space of approximately two minutes, someone sighs.
Marvin takes that as his cue to get up and leave.
Where he’s going, he doesn’t know.
“Hey, wait,” Mendel starts.
He grabs Marvin by the shoulder, forcing him to turn around.
“Listen. If you- if you ever want to…talk,” he says, the word hesitant on his tongue, almost like he didn’t want to say it, almost like he’s offering to be polite. “I’m here. We all are, of course. But, I know how to help people with- with grief.”
Grief.
The word terrifies Marvin.
He doesn’t want to grieve.
He wants to go back, but not to the parts where he had to suffer through therapy sessions with his ex-wife’s new husband.
He wants love without pain.
But he’s never really had that, has he?
“I don’t have money to give you,” he murmurs, turning back around to leave.
“I don’t want your money,” Mendel protests, sounding offended, almost, as Marvin wrenches the doorhandle in his shaking grip. “I want you to be okay.”
Marvin nearly laughs.
He doesn’t think that’s a tangible possibility.
He opens the door with more force than necessary, the framed picture of Charlotte and Cordelia nearly falling off the wall when he slams it shut.
Somehow, he finds himself on the floor in the hall outside of his apartment.
The sun beats down on him through the windows, scorching his skin.
Part of him is glad that he doesn’t know where his keys are. It gives him an excuse, no, a reason, to stay out here, to not have to face the ghosts of Whizzer Brown and his possessions strewn all over the place. He imagines the apartment is almost frozen in time, a memorial before today, from a different era.
Because nothing, really, will ever be the same after today.
Marvin doesn’t think he could stomach going in there and having to lay eyes on the chess board or the racquetball rackets or the calendar marked all over with red crosses. He doesn’t think he would be able to touch Whizzer’s clothes, or the balled up comforter on their bed, or rags to scrub the blood in the crevices of the bathroom tiles away. He doesn’t think he could bear to inhale Whizzer’s scent, his sweet and addicting signature scent, before it was replaced with antiseptic and the general air of the hospital, like every other aspect of what made him him.
Marvin still doesn’t cry.
He reaches into his back pocket. He pulls out a crumpled, screwed, balled up piece of paper that Charlotte had given to him exactly three weeks ago. The one that he’d read but couldn’t bear to look at until he actually had to face it. The one that he’d kept in every pocket of every pair of pants he’d worn, just in case it had happened and he knew he’d have to read it again and again and again to solidify it in reality.
The lines on the paper look like the protruding veins on a pale person’s skin, and they inject through some of the words, but Marvin can decipher them just fine.
His eyes begin to scan the words.
An individual who has sustained either
- Irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or
- Irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem, is dead.