Little Elephant Week
Part Four
By Scott J. Welles
scottjwelles@yahoo.com

DISCLAIMER, for those who enjoy reading disclaimers: All "ER" characters and institutions are the property of Warner Bros., ConstantC Productions and Amblin Television, and ain't nobody making a profit on this piece. (I trust that covers the bases.)



(On Thursday, Frances LeValle died in the emergency room...)

Time of death, 12:14 pm.

I hear Dr. Weaver make this announcement in a flat, toneless voice. She wears goggles and latex gloves and a plastic gown, all garments designed to ensure a complete lack of human contact between doctor and patient. The harsh lights above my body illuminate it coldly, allowing no sign of warmth or life. The machines beep and hum dispassionately and without mercy.

There are others, similarly attired, but I know only the tall surgeon, Dr. Benton. He spoke briefly to me - not with me - describing the surgical procedure he planned to inflict upon me as though it were an abstract exercise in mathematics or engineering. His dry explanation was interrupted when my heart ceased to beat, and I was rushed to this place.

The room holds Dr. Benton and Dr. Weaver and a handful of lesser functionaries, and it holds me. And the earthly remains that used to contain me, until 12:14 pm. When I passed away.

I stand at the head of the surgical table, contemplating my own vacated physical form. It scarcely resembles me any longer. It has my face, my limbs, my hair, but it is no longer a living thing. The innermost recesses of my body are laid bare on the table, exposed to the outside world for the first, and last, time.

This is not at all what I had expected to experience upon my death. Perhaps my views on the afterlife are antiquated or clichéd, but I honestly expected to be...somewhere else. I thought perhaps that there would be a divine light, perhaps music, perhaps a gateway opening to...who knows where. At the very least, I had hoped that I would be greeted by my angel. My most treasured beliefs have always been that they walk among us, guiding our steps, granting us strength in times of weakness, and ultimately receiving us in our final moments.

Instead, I find myself in a cold, sterile room, painted a horrid mustard yellow, with black and white checked tiles beneath my feet. I am aware that the tiles are cool, although I cannot feel them, per se. It is more like a remembrance of what cold tile felt like. But that is all. There is no revelation, no ascendance, no reward. My spirit has left its flesh, yet I remain here. Why? Is this, truthfully, all that there is?

Dr. Benton makes impartial notations, and departs, stripping off his protective garments. He does not look back at my body. The others hover about, collecting used instruments, storing devices in their proper places. No one looks at my lifeless face. Their actions do nothing to acknowledge that a life has left the world as they know it.

I look at Dr. Weaver. She is as cold as any of them. I find myself feeling anger toward her, and, curiously, a sense of betrayal. I might have anticipated that Dr. Benton would react in this manner, but she, at least, seemed to exhibit signs of compassion when we talked earlier. Her thin voice was soft as velvet, and her eyes were gentle. She seemed to lend comfort with her presence. I had no fear of death - the Lord takes us each when He chooses, but the reassurance of another human soul was a precious mercy.

Had her solicitous manner been mere deceit? A hollow mockery of true caring? Had the purpose of medicine, the nurturing of human life, become so sanitized that only the structures of the body were considered to have value? Is life no more to these people than a collection of properly configured tissues? Is that all any of us are to her?

Dr. Weaver gives terse, routine instruction to the others, and barely nods as they respond by rote. She leaves through the same door as Dr. Benton, limping on her crutch. Lifeless rubber and metal made more reliable than muscle and bone. How appropriate, I think, bitterly.

I feel an inexplicable impulse to follow her. I look one last time at the body I once wore, now lying abandoned on the table. Though I have no further need of it, it is still difficult to walk away from. It served me well for sixty-eight years. Without it, what am I now? A ghost, a spirit, a departed soul?

Meaningless words. I am myself. Nothing less, nor more.

Responding to impulse, I follow in Dr. Weaver's steps. I am in the corridor, now. Did the doors open for me, or did I pass through them, ghostlike? I don't recall.

Dr. Weaver walks through the halls, passing people of all descriptions. She exchanges words with some, by necessity, and ignores others. They react to her, and to each other, in similar fashion. Each pair of eyes focuses on things: charts, supplies, papers, or else turns inwards, focusing on nothing. None of them look at each other, unless absolutely necessary, and none look at me. I look at each of them, but it is as though they are shadows. As meaningless to me as to each other. Except Dr. Weaver. I feel something towards her, if only bitterness.

A tall, balding man falls into step beside her. How's your patient, he asks her.

Died on the table, she answers, as though he had asked her the time.

Any next of kin?

No.

You okay?

I'm fine, Mark.

All right. I'll see you at two for chart reviews?

Of course.

He leaves. Their entire exchange could have been repeated by parrots with as much meaning.

It is true, I have no family. I have spent my adult life, alone. I had few friends. Those I had sometimes took pity on me, wondering why I never married, bore children. I have no answer. The Lord provides such things, or He does not, as He sees fit.

Once, just once, my heart beat for the sake of another. More than half a century ago, I loved My William. That is how I have always thought of him, My William, for I once believed that he was mine and I was his. It was, I believed, meant to be. I never spoke to him, and I do not know, to this day, whether he ever remembered me after that. It was, perhaps, the one time in my life when the courage of my convictions failed me, and I allowed him to slip away, when a few words might have made him mine indeed. But I will always carry the memory of My William with me. Flesh departs, memory remains.

I watch Dr. Weaver as she passes by a counter, staffed by a large young man on the telephone. He says, Dr. Weaver, it's a Dr. Cristadopholous from D.C. for you on line three.

Take a message, Jerry, I'll call him back.

He says it's about the--

I said not now.

Whatever you say.

Dr. Weaver's voice has not changed since declaring my death, and she has not so much as glanced at the man with the telephone. My body is empty and lifeless, while hers is animate. Why, then, is she so cold? If she is without warmth or compassion, why did she present a semblance of humanity to me earlier? This issue compels me to follow her, still.

She enters a room furnished as a lounge. Worn sofas and chairs provide minimal comfort. She pours a cup of coffee from a glass pot, and sits at the edge of a sofa, her spine straight. She seems to gaze at nothing. Her face remains empty.

"What has done this to you?" I want to ask her. "Did your profession strip your humanity from you? Or did you exchange it, voluntarily?"

Then something unexpected happens.

She seems to slowly collapse in upon herself. Her shoulders shake, her knees fold, and her face, which she had kept carefully empty, crumples. The tears begin to flow, and ragged sobs fight their way free from her throat. She slides off the sofa, onto the floor. Her coffee, forgotten, remains on the arm of the sofa as she huddles, childlike, in a ball and fights for control.

I am entirely taken aback at this change. Did my thoughts cause it? As a loud noise causes an avalanche in snowbound mountains?

She shudders violently, at war with her own emotions. She cannot restrain her sobs, yet she will not allow them to escape.

With sudden clarity, I understand.

I could not have been more wrong about her. She cares about me, about all of us, so deeply that it terrifies her sometimes. As though she fears that her own feelings will consume and devour her if left unchecked. So she banishes them, locking them away behind oaken walls. But the walls are stretched thin, and there are cracks forming. The only true deception Dr. Weaver practices is on herself.

Perhaps Dr. Benton and the others are the same. Perhaps not. Perhaps I am only meant to see it in her. But why?

No answers present themselves to me. There is only me and the disconsolate young woman.

Not knowing what else to do, I kneel beside her and take her in my arms. She feels insubstantial to my touch, there and yet not. Like the cotton candy I remember tasting as a young girl at the circus. Melting away almost before I could taste it.

I rock her, gently, hushing her like the daughter My William and I might have had.

"Many aspire to strength and achieve only indifference," I whisper to her. "To feel love for those who cannot be saved is the sign of a generous heart."

She quiets, her breath coming more slowly, steadily. Can she feel me, hear my words? I choose to believe that she can, if only as a gentle breeze, or a distant memory.

After a time, she inhales, calm once again, and stands. She sniffs the coffee, then pours it out and takes a bottle of juice from the refrigerator. She sips it and looks at herself in the mirror over the sink. Her calm demeanor reconstructs itself until she can look herself in the eye with equanimity.

I stand behind her, watching her, and there is a moment when her eyes, in the mirror, seem to meet mine.

The door opens. Kerry, we've got MVAs incoming, announces a dark-haired woman.

Thank you, Carol, I'll be right there, Dr. Weaver replies. The other woman leaves and we are alone.

Kerry Weaver takes a deep breath, lets it out, and returns to work. I feel no impulse to follow, this time, but I watch her go with a strange pride.

I turn away, and walk in a different direction, unimpeded by walls or doors. I choose no bearing, trusting that my feet shall carry me where I am meant to travel.

But I think, briefly, of Kerry Weaver, who was with me at the end of my life, and who cried for me when no one else could. Was she my angel, after all?

Or, perhaps, was I hers?