The Viewing Room

PASSERBY

[passerby] Some people view life as a gift, and some people view life as an entitlement . But Ellie knew she was different. She viewed life as a shortterm bridge loan, and she was always behind on the payments. She was aware that at any moment the collateral could be repossessed. When anything bad happened to her, she asked not why me but why not me. She wondered if this was the beginning of the end that she had expected even earlier. She knew firsthand that sight is an anticipatory sense, its greatest value resting in the warning of danger coming straight toward her. She knew this because she had lost her vision for an extended period of time, enough time to live the rest of her life, once recovered, with one foot in the blind world and one foot in the sighted world, teetering between, never sure where both feet would end up, like a person who can’t swim must feel stepping down from a dock into a boat, unsteady, rocking back and forth, legs growing wider apart, until finally a choice must be made. Ellie had fallen many times before, but she knew that this was the last time. It was dark ahead, but she walked toward it anyway, feeling certain that a light would emerge to guide her steps, motiondetector lights like the ones she had installed around her house. She took the stairway that she thought was leading to a parking garage, pleased that she would get to her car before the other people leaving the theater, who were still waiting for elevators. She took that first air-step and knew immediately. There were no stairs, and there would be no soft landing. Here it was, the abrupt ending, and she relaxed into the fall, grateful to be reclaimed at last. [114] passerby She was not afraid of death. She knew many people said that they were not afraid of death, just of suffering beforehand, but in her former days as a hospice nurse she had seen how people clung to life, wracked with ferocious, unrelenting pain, confessing in a whisper , I am so afraid, so afraid. But her worst suffering had already happened , when Mandy, her only child, died, taking the poisonous sting out of her own death. The other mothers in her bereavement group had said the nights would be the hardest, but that was not true. She welcomed the setting of the sun, making her feel as if it were practically normal to crawl back into the waiting, unmade bed. No, it was the mornings that were excruciating, waking up into one more day without her daughter, needing every bit of emotional strength to move her eyelids open. “Eleanor, can you hear me. Can you tell me where you are? Eleanor ! Eleanor!” A strong male voice of increasing urgency and brisk impatience. This man’s voice was entirely different from the two voices she had heard a few minutes before. After she fell, a husky older voice, not asking questions, but talking to her, “Oh, my, you’ve done it now. Poor thing, you can’t get up from this,” and then later more questions , a young, breathless voice, “Where does it hurt, squeeze my hand if you can hear me and show me where it hurts. Blink if you understand me.” And she had tried to blink but her body, every piece of her body, was disconnected from her mind. And now this voice, a doctor’s voice, and she knew that this man was highly educated and was irritated with her, or with the nurses around her. Now she wanted to open her eyes and answer the orientation questions, the who, what, where, and when of the moment, oriented to person, situation, place, and time, but she had nothing left. She had asked these questions of people herself, trying to gauge the flimsiness of their grasp upon the solid world. She wanted to answer him because she was not in any kind of pain or discomfort and she passerby [115] wanted to reassure the voice that everything was all right. And she wanted to tell him to call her Ellie, not the formal name on her driver ’s license. “Unresponsive,” he said, in a quieter, resigned voice, to someone who was taking notes. “Severe head trauma, probable skull fracture, massive bleeding from lacerations, need a head and neck ct...