As If Death Summoned. Alan E. Rose

this night.

      “How was the conference?” she asks, wiping her eyes.

      “Fine. It was fine. Thanks for getting word to me. I was able to catch an early flight out of Dulles. How long have you been here?”

      She looks exhausted as she checks her watch. “Since four. I came in with him.”

      “What do the doctors say?”

      “Not much. They’ve managed to stabilize him . . . they think. They say now it’s wait and see. Probably won’t know until morning. And even if he does . . .” Her voice trails off.

      “Right. So, what happened?”

      She fills me in; talking seems to relieve her, so I listen, thinking of the one in the ICU with drips and tubes sprawling from him like some high-tech marionette. It all came as a surprise, but then, not really.

      When she finishes, I say, “You look beat. Why don’t you go home. I’ll stay.”

      “I don’t know. I should be here in case . . .”

      “I’ll call if there’s any change. I promise. There’s nothing you can do now. And I’m sure Fernando must be worried about you. You know how caring and considerate cats are.”

      She looks up and I’m grateful to see her cracked smile. “Like you care about Fernando.”

      “But I do. I do.” Fernando and I had taken an immediate and mutual dislike to each other upon our first meeting, and our relationship only deteriorated from there. “Go home,” I urge. “You need to get out of here.” I’m glad she doesn’t resist.

      “Call me if— ”

      “I’ll call. I promise.”

      And soon I have the room to myself. Just me and a few dozen ghosts. Sliding into a chair, I swear under my breath, “Damn, damn, damn . . .” I had promised myself when I returned from Australia I wouldn’t go through this ever again: Never again keep a midnight vigil in some hospital, awaiting the inevitable. There had been too many. I had promised myself. Never again.

      And here I was.

      By my own diagnosis, I’m borderline burnt out. And I should know. I’m a mental health professional. Fortunately, one’s own mental health is not a prerequisite for the job. It’s been a year since I returned to the States, exhausted and drained of life. Aside from brief visits, I had been away for twelve years, first living in Japan, then Australia. Mom was happy to have me home, the Prodigal Son returned. That first night back I would have preferred just going to bed and sleeping for the next month, but she had killed the fatted calf and made a huge dinner of it, invited Sis and her homophobic husband, and chattered happily, managing to forget the circumstances that had brought me back.

      We sat around the dining room table, I with no appetite, force-feeding myself to be polite, catching up on all the news. Family news. News of people I went to school with. News of people at church. Mom was a fount of unwanted information. Silently I listened as she went on and on.

      “Oh, and did I write that Carol’s been diagnosed with breast cancer?”

      Carol was my age. We had dated during high school, back in those early, preconscious days.

      “No,” I said. “I don’t think so.” More information I didn’t need right then.

      “Yes,” she sighed, adjusting her bubbly mood to the weight of the news. “It’s serious I’m afraid. But that’s a part of life. Eventually, you reach that age where your friends start getting sick and dying.”

      My sister and her husband were stunned at Mom’s comment. Even Dad caught it.

      I said, “Mom, my friends have been getting sick and dying for the last ten years.”

      Thirty-one by last count, as my plane lifted off from Melbourne. It was the thirty-first death that was bringing me home. She started to speak, then, realizing what she’d said, nodded and resumed eating.

      And yet, in spite of my exhaustion, in spite of my burnout, in spite of my resolutions on that long flight back to the US, within a month I was sitting in a ventricle of the heart of the epidemic, volunteering for more action.

      Dad expressed concern about this. We’d been outside in the yard on a late winter’s day, pruning his trees and preparing his garden for spring’s return. Some people are easy to be with when grieving, people you can be comfortably silent with. Dad is one of them. Clipping dead branches, he asked, “Are you sure about this?” He meant volunteering. Hadn’t I had enough of this AIDS? Maybe it was time for me to get on with my life. To realize there was more to life than death.

      I turned the soil for his garden bed. “No. I’m not sure. But I’m not sure I have a choice.” To his bemused look, I said, “I remember you telling me how the day after Pearl Harbor, you and your brothers went down to the Army office and signed up.”

      After serving his three years, he had the chance to return to being a civilian again, to marry and get on with his life. And he signed up for yet another tour of duty. Why? I once asked. He’d hated the military, hated the regimentation, the fighting, the food. But there was a war on, you see, and the war dominated those years, shaping his generation, infusing every aspect of their lives, and overriding any personal plans. He could not not be part of it.

      “That’s kind of the way it is with me now,” I told him. “This epidemic is my war.” He nodded, saying nothing further, and we returned to our work.

      War was the right analogy, and I knew I was suffering battle fatigue even when I showed up to volunteer at Columbia AIDS Project, or “CAP” for short. Originally, for a brief time, it had been called Columbia River AIDS Project, until someone noted the regrettable acronym. Fortunately, those were the early days, before they could afford letterhead.

      There are people you instinctively know do not appreciate humor. I knew this instinctively about Charles Philpott, CAP’s volunteer coordinator. We were about serious matters here. About life and death, where there is no room for humor. Levity is to be discouraged lest people misunderstand how terribly serious we are here.

      Charles was prim, proper, somewhat prissy, and very, very neat. His cubicle screamed Obsessive-Compulsive. Papers stacked neatly. Books and binders arranged neatly by size. Everything neatly in order, not one renegade paper clip out of place. I sat in his cubicle, hesitant to move for fear of disturbing the artificial order of things. He was polite, with that air of social politeness usually reserved for church, as if his tone had been selected like his tie that morning. One could almost see his mental checklist:

      Establish rapport with prospective volunteer (Check).

      Express appreciation for candidate’s willingness to volunteer (Check).

      Evince— I’m sure the word for Charles would be “evince”— a personal interest in said candidate (Check).

      That done, he opened a desk drawer labeled New Applications, removed a file, and handed me a number of forms. “You’ll need to complete and return these to me as the first step in becoming a volunteer.”

      He walked me through the forms I should take away, “study,” sign and return. There was the basic four-page volunteer application, a two-page medical history, a twelve-page personality profile, confidentiality statement, list of all the volunteer positions available at the agency, release form requesting a police background check— it hadn’t been this difficult to gain Australian citizenship.

      I shuffled through the papers as he kept talking.

      “Then there will be several trainings our volunteers take prior to working with our clients.” Our volunteers. Our clients. It all sounded terribly possessive. There would be a three-hour orientation to the agency, its mission, its services, policies and procedures; a required two-hour diversity training workshop; and then program-specific trainings on blood-borne pathogens, HIV 101, home care, self-care, homophobia