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🔆
“You're a ghost, you're a ghost, you're a ghost, you're a ghost, you're a ghost
And I choke, and I choke, and I choke, and I choke on the—”
🔆
Dennis is so in love — he’s been in love for the last fifteen years and it feels like a lifetime. If he could take every minute of the last fifteen years and stretch them out, end to end, he feels like they could have stretched to the ends of the earth and out to the corners of the universe.
He leans against the kitchen’s French doors, his arms loosely crossed over his ribs. He tries to stand like he used to when he was young and trying to be sexy, but it’s not quite right. He’s forty-one now and Robby’s pushing seventy. But you wouldn’t know it: he still lifts heavy bags of soil from the garage when he decides the backyard needs remulching. He still climbs a rickety ladder he borrowed from Jack thirty years ago to clear the gutters. He’s currently fussing over a big bouquet of sunflowers from Trin, making sure their faces are turned to the light. Sunflowers, even though she knows Dennis hates them. She sent them with a card that said, live longer than them, fucker.
He wonders who will win, a bouquet of fresh sunflowers or a forty-one-year-old man with more tumors than he has remaining intestine.
Their life together isn’t big or showy, it isn’t the farm Dennis thought he would have — but they have an herb garden, a nice house and they fostered kittens before this whole mess started. Dennis didn't know how hot Robby was holding a newborn kitten and bottlefeeding at all hours of the night until then. They watched TV in bed every night and Dennis would have to turn it off after Robby had his CPAP on and was a million miles away.
They figured his bloating and cramps were food poisoning at first, then IBS — he was thirty-six. They’re doctors, they thought bad shrimp was the culprit. But then, there was so much mucus and it turned pink and then there was a lot of blood. Mucinous colorectal adenocarcinoma, stage III. It’s a really shitty kind of cancer and they caught it pretty late in the game too. They’ve tried everything: colectomy, immunotherapy, radiation, chemo: FOLFOX and CAPOX. He’s on his way out. Now it’s just a waiting game.
Robby nearly jumps out of his skin as his phone starts ringing in his back pocket. Dennis knows who it’ll be. “Jack?” He asks from the doorway, smiling.
Robby nods, already answering. “Yeah, hey you old bastard.” He puts the phone to his ear and leans one hip against the counter. Dennis can hear the faint buzz of Jack’s voice even from across the room. “Yeah, yeah, I know what day it is,” Robby groans, rolling his eyes. “You and that damn pickleball cult.” Jack’s been trying to drag Robby out to the courts twice a week for months now. Dennis shifts his weight against the wall, watching the sunlight stretch across the floorboards toward Robby’s bare bony feet, they’re covered in a layer of curly white hair that looks like snow. “Yeah?” Robby sighs into the phone. “Tonight?”
Dennis already knows what Jack is asking. It’s always the same begging. Come play a few rounds. Get out of the house. Stop being such a hermit. Robby rubs the back of his neck. “Well, I don’t know.”
Dennis pushes himself off the wall. “You should go, baby.”
Robby covers the phone with his hand, eyes damp. “You sure?”
Dennis nods, taking a step forward.
“Yeah. Go play with Jack. Kick his ass.”
Jack must be talking again because Robby glances back down at the phone. “Hang on, Jack.” He lowers it slightly. “You feeling okay?” Dennis knows that Robby hates that he isn't close enough to check Dennis’ pulse or his temperature. But the fact is that Dennis was dying yesterday, dying today, and very likely, he will be dying tomorrow. Robby needs to get out of the house.
“You worry too much.”
Robby’s mouth twists the way it always does when he knows he’s being called out. He’s such a vain peacock, always has been and always will be. Robby’s hand is still cupped over the phone, Jack’s voice buzzing faintly through the speaker like an impatient mosquito. Dennis walks the rest of the way into the kitchen. “How’s the pain?” Robby fusses, fretting into what’s left of Dennis’ sandy blond curls.
“Same as always, baby.” Which is to say: bad, but the morphine is doing its best and his intestines are doing their worst. The tumors have turned his gut into something that feels less like fat and organs, and more like a bag of wet river stones. He had never imagined the sensation of one tumor smacking into another until these last few months. But Robby doesn’t need to hear that right now. He reaches out and pushes Robby’s wrist gently down so the phone isn’t muffled anymore. “Come get him, Jack.”
Robby grunts. “Wait no, hang on, Jack,” He yelps again into the phone before lowering it. “I can just tell him next week.”
“You’ve been telling him next week for three months.” Dennis hooks his fingers into the belt loops of Robby’s jeans. “Go beat him at pickleball,” He smiles. “Humiliate him. Make him cry.”
Robby rolls his eyes. “Jack doesn’t cry.”
“Oh, he absolutely does.”
“Only when the Red Sox lose.”
🔆
Dennis lowers himself into the old porch chair with a soft grunt.
He scrolls through his contacts in his phone: friends, specialists, and pharmacists, a whole life in medicine rendered into a column of glowing text. He pauses when he reaches Jack’s name. His thumb hovers there longer than it should. He imagines Jack asleep across town — sprawled like a starfish across his mattress, a man who hasn’t shared a bed with anyone in the last thirty years, snoring like a chainsaw, his phone buzzing angrily on the nightstand beside him. Jack answers on the fourth ring. “Dennis,” He mutters, the syllables slurring together. Dennis can hear the faint rustle of sheets and the dull thump of a lamp being knocked crooked. “It’s two in the fucking morning. I don’t work the night shift anymore.”
Dennis smiles, the porch light is off, leaving him half-hidden in the dark, the herb beds a row of shapes beyond the railing. “Yeah,” He says quietly. “I know.” He tilts his head back against the siding of the house. “Force of habit. I need to talk to you.”
On the other end of the line, there’s the sound of Jack sitting up in bed — the groan of his mattress that he should have replaced five years ago, another rustle of sheets being shoved aside and his prosthetic likely being knocked over. “What’s wrong?” Jack asks. “Are you in the hospital again?”
“No.”
“Then why am I awake?” Jack whines, “This couldn’t have waited till morning?”
Dennis sighs, he couldn’t wait till morning — either he will have lost his nerve or Robby will be awake. “We need to talk about our boy.”
“Our boy,” Jack repeats.
“Yeah.”
Jack hisses through his buck teeth. “What about him?”
Dennis shifts in the chair, leaning forward slightly, elbows settling onto his knees as he stares out across the dark lawn. “Jack,” He starts gently, “He needs to wear his CPAP every night, not just when he remembers: every night. He’s got too many pauses without it — you’ve seen the sleep studies, those apneas stack up fast.” Jack starts to say something, but Dennis keeps going. He doesn’t have the time to wait. “And he always forgets his baby aspirin,” He continues, as he stares down at the porch floorboards. “You’ve gotta double-check him on that. He’ll swear he took it already even when the bottle’s still full. Also, he needs a new podiatrist. Someone kind, you know he’s vain. You need to make sure he actually goes. Those corns on his feet are awful and he’ll ignore them until he can barely walk. You know how stubborn he is about that stuff. Oh, and he’s bad with spicy food now too,” Dennis adds, voice softening with tired affection. “You can’t go horking down ramen like you did in the old days and expect him to keep up. He’ll pretend he’s fine and then he’ll spend the whole night miserable on the john.”
“Dennis.”
“You need to make sure he takes his Lexapro,” He stresses. “He skips it when he thinks he’s doing better, but that's the reason he’s doing better. He actually has to see his psychiatrist and therapist, not just say he will and then cancel the appointment. Please, Jack. Follow-up, okay? Please. He’s almost seventy,” Dennis whimpers. “He needs extra care now.”
Jack lets out a long, tired breath. “I see,” He quips dryly, “We’ve forgotten I’m not exactly a spring chicken either.” Dennis smiles, scrubbing at his eyes. “Dennis,” Jack continues, sounding awfully gutted for a man who called him Robby’s boytoy for three years. “Please, I don’t want to have this conversation.”
Dennis presses his chapped lips together. “We have to.” He rubs his thumb slowly along the edge of his phone, eyes fixed on the dark line of the newly mended fence at the edge of the yard; it’s leaning again. “Because he’s going to be yours again, Jack,” He adds softly. “Just yours.”
“Dennis, sweetheart,” Jack growls, his voice dropping into the tone he used when they were all younger and someone had stayed awake too long. “Go to bed.”
Dennis closes his eyes. “Please, Jack,” He whispers. “I need to know he’ll be looked after right. Please.”
He can hear Jack breathing through the phone. “Okay. Okay, kiddo. I will.”
🔆
Robby doesn’t sleep much the night after Dennis dies.
He just turns onto his side and pulls the blanket higher over his shoulder. He doesn’t bother reaching for his CPAP. It sits on his nightstand beside the bed, the coiled tubing drooping over the edge. Dennis had cleaned it yesterday morning, wiping the silicone cushion with one of those little alcohol wipes he kept stashed in every drawer in the house. You’ll get thrush if you don’t clean it. Robby had always assumed Dennis would be there to do it. He squeezes his eyes shut and tries to pretend the machine isn’t there.
Jack shifts beside him, just as Robby is beginning to slip away. There’s a rustle of blankets and then the soft thump of Jack’s hand landing blindly on the nightstand, practically climbing over Robby to do it. He opens one eye with a groan. But Jack doesn’t say anything. He just keeps fumbling around in the dark like a bear looking for snacks until his hand closes around the CPAP mask. He lifts the mask and tubing and drops them squarely onto Robby’s chest.
“Put it on,” He growls, fuzzy with sleep. “You breathe like a walrus without it.”
“I do not.” Robby pulls the blanket tighter around himself, attempting to ignore the mask completely. “I’m not doing it tonight,” He says quietly, there’s no point. Dennis is gone. Who exactly is he trying to wake up for at this point? Jack promptly throws himself over, yanks the blanket down, and shoves the mask directly onto Robby’s face. The silicone squishes against his nose and mouth like a gag. Then Jack reaches past him and flicks the damn machine on. Air rushes into Robby’s lungs before he has time to argue. “Jack!” Jack presses a hand flat against the mask until Robby’s first startled breath settles into the forced rhythm of the machine.
Jack drops back onto his pillow and Robby glares at the ceiling. “You’re an asshole,” He sighs, muffled through the mask.
Jack shrugs under the blankets. “Dennis asked.”
Robby goes quiet at that, staring at the ceiling again, trying his hardest not to cry. “Did he?”
“Yep.” Jack scratches his scruffy beard against the pillow, like a cat. “Two in the morning phone call a couple of weeks ago. Gave me a whole damn checklist on how to take care of you, like I ain’t been taking care of you for decades before he was born.”
Robby smiles. “That little narc.” He turns his head slightly, the hose tugging as he moves. “What’d he say?”
Jack is quiet for a moment, before: “Baby aspirin,” He begins, counting lazily on his fingers in the dark. “CPAP every night. Podiatrist for your nasty old man feet. Lexapro,” He continues. “Apparently you get moody when you skip it.” Jack finally rolls onto his side, properly facing him now. “He also said no spicy ramen.”
Robby’s eyebrows knit together.
“What?”
“You get a sore tum-tum.”
Robby has to yank up his mask to laugh. It takes him a good long while to calm back down, especially because after the laughter comes the tears. “He talked to you about all that.”
“Yep.” Jack nods and Robby swallows, it feels like trying to choke down glass. “Kid really fucking loved you, brother.”
“I loved him more.”
🔆
“And I'll pray for you, be in pain for you
I'll leave the porch light on
Heartbroken, each morning when it's me that turns it off…”
🔆