Harmonics | The Walrus

"Like a private nightclub, this bright ambulance. Modular interior, glitter-futuristic fitted jewel box kitted out with drugs (theirs, yours in a bag grabbed from home). Spa recliner, straps, young paramedics like DJs, bouncers, sit-down comedians bantering about traffic. I stroke your tripping head while we ride backwards to the cancer choir, soprano wail and techno beat. Inner zones of ER, curtains like field-tent flaps."

"We're in our own, last, air-conditioned nest. Your life flashing, I tell you micro stories all night against your death, while you macro-dose hydromorphone. My broken love, my storytelling failing . . . Do you want music? You say, no, more happiness. Music not happiness. You say, you're the writer. Leaving me with all these words. When you left music, we knew the end. Head on rough pillow, turned towards me, you sink out of yourself, one ear, exquisite, attuned to earth, the other attuned to air."

A caregiver rides in a nightclub-like ambulance stocked with drugs and a spa recliner while young paramedics banter like DJs. The caregiver comforts a tripping loved one en route to an emergency ward where curtained zones resemble field tents and patients recline like royals, pleading for small comforts such as ice chips. Mechanical, garish birds punctuate the dim space with screeches and pain scales. In an air-conditioned nest, the caregiver tells micro-stories against the loved one's death as the patient macro-doses hydromorphone and asks for more happiness instead of music. Final moments split attention between earth and air as the dying person sinks out of themselves.

Read at The Walrus