Simon Fill

TAPE DIARY PRELUDE, Cate and I First Meet: Monday, November 23, 1992


Dr. Andre Gilligan told me my cancer is back and I have about five months to live. Aside from this news, it’s been a good morning.
I’m in the lobby of Piedmont Hospital, looking to join a terminal illness support group.
The desk clerk’s nametag reads Bette. “Our support group is at capacity.”
“Oh.”
“We formed another group for people who couldn’t get into that one.”
“Terrific.”
“Unfortunately, that group is now at capacity.”
“It’s an excellent time of year to die.”
I can tell she disapproves of my levity. Death shouldn’t be funny. Especially if you’re the person it’s happening to.
“Is there a wait list?”
“A wait list?”
“People must leave these groups on a, um, regular basis.”
“I wish I could help.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Sir,” she says firmly. I love it when people call me sir. It makes me feel like a maitre d’. As a poet and professor, I usually don’t get that kind of respect. I’m pudgy, too. You’d think my errant black hair and bad boy looks would compensate. You’d think that, and you’d be wrong.
Bette is still talking. “Find a hospital whose group has openings.”
“That’s the peculiar thing. My oncologist called around. He does everything possible to help people. You know anyone like that?”
I’m waiting for Bette to understand what I’m really saying. Her face flushes.
“Did it get hotter in here?” I ask innocently. “Every support group Dr. Gilligan checked in the East Bay was full. Someone at Piedmont Hospital said the computer was down, but they were sure there was an opening. Dr. Gilligan told me to head on over.”
“Whomever he spoke with was wrong.”
“She told him her name was Bette.”
Bette doesn’t appear the least bit sorry, then says, “I’m sorry.”
When she says this, I realize she is in her sixties, at least twenty years older than I am, and that I will never reach her age. I will never even approach it. I flinch a little, tell myself things could be worse. How, I don’t know. I guess I could already be dead.
The hospital lobby holds a faint odor of disinfectant. Somewhere someone is killing germs. This doesn’t reassure me. Kill all the germs you want, you’re still all going to die, I want to warn everyone.
Instead, I focus on Bette, in her silk dress with black-and-white squares. If she were less threatening, she could be a chessboard. She claps her hands. I leap a little. These are moments I’ll never get back, and I’m spending them with Bette.
“Gotcha,” she says, tapping away at her computer. “There’s a group in Redwood City.”
“That’s more than an hour-and-a-quarter drive.”
“On the way to it you can practice what you’re going to talk about.”
“I’m not joining a support group to make a sales pitch. I’m looking for someone who empathizes with an impossible situation.”
“What situation?”
“Becoming a dead guy.”
Poor Bette looks like she’s trying to swallow a basketball. To her credit, she musters her forces and delivers a withering stare. I want to respond appropriately, so I ring the bell in front of her.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Calling someone to help.”
“That someone is supposed to be me.”
“You said it, I didn’t. Why don’t you give me the contact info for the people leading the two support groups here?”
“It’s the same person,” she says, as though this ends the discussion.
“Then it should take you less time to give me that info.”
“Sir, why don’t you want to go to Redwood City? Do you feel driving is bad for the environment?”
“Driving IS bad for the environment. But right now, I’m concerned about having a limited time in this world and spending more than two-and-a-half hours of it each week going to Redwood City.”
“What do you have against Redwood City?”
I take a breath. I pace in front of her counter and lift my arms. If I was outside, I’d be invoking the heavens. Instead, I’m invoking a low 1960s corkboard ceiling. “I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST REDWOOD CITY.”
I’m surprised I haven’t attracted a security guard. Maybe no one loses their shit in Piedmont.
Bette doesn’t look the least bit worried. In fact, she seems pleased with my reaction. She nods.
I question her sanity. Then mine. Then the sanity of the person who hired her.
I decide to cut my losses. I need to get away from her. Regroup.
I sit in a chair along the wall of the lobby, catching my breath. The disinfectant is stronger, a pine scent. I’m ten feet from Bette, you would think far enough away.
Until she says, “Those chairs are for patients and their families.”
I gaze at her in disbelief.
“You don’t appear ill.”
On my list of favorite events today, I can now add, Accused of fake dying. “Please leave me alone.”
“But surely that must be good.”
“It isn’t, and stop calling me Shirley.”
“You can fill out a complaint form, Sir. Even about me.” She points to a small wooden box on the counter with paper and red pencil stubs next to it.
I’m tempted, I really am. I start to get up, but a thought stops me. “Who handles the complaint forms?”
She looks weary. “I do. If you fill it out, I will read it.”
“Then you’ll get rid of it.”
She grimaces. “In your case, certainly, Sir.”
The front door opens with a puff of cold air. A woman in a trench coat walks in. Click, click on the linoleum floor. She disappears.
Bette eyes me. I eye her back. We seem to have reached an agreement. We agree I’m having a breakdown.
“You can’t sit there, Sir.”
I don’t respond.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?”
“I called and rearranged my schedule for the support group, I teach English Literature.”
“My father was a professor of English.”
“I’m a poet.”
Now Bette becomes unnaturally silent and nods understandingly. This makes me feel the worst I’ve felt all morning. I tell myself to cheer up, I won’t be a poet much longer.
It’s strange how someone you don’t know, whom you dislike, suddenly sees you more clearly than people you’ve been around for years.
The trench coat woman returns. “I’m lost. Can either of you help?”
I point both index fingers at Bette. The trench coat woman stares, but goes to the counter to whisper to her.
And like that, I’ve rid myself of the information desk clerk from hell. But I’m more alone than ever, with no support group. Desolation fills my gut and I sink deeper in my chair. It is burgundy plush, with a folding bottom like in a movie theatre. If my life flashes before me when I die, I want to be in a chair like this with a box of popcorn.
I tell myself to act with the gravitas appropriate to a dying person.
It doesn’t work. It doesn’t seem like I’m going to die. It really doesn’t. I’m just more tired than usual.
I close my eyes for I don’t know how long. I understand how depression means a hole.

#

I’m jolted from this by what sounds like a thirteen-year-old girl yelling.
“I MAY WORK HERE, BUT THAT DOESN’T MEAN I HAVE TO HELP!”
To my horror, it is Bette, who appears to be reciting her life philosophy. She’s jabbing her finger at the computer for the woman in the trench coat. “See! Both have twenty people. That’s five over the maximum number. In each one. I don’t make the rules. I do my job and earn my paycheck, lady.”
The woman in the trench coat puts her hands on her hips. “You might be getting paid. But you aren’t doing your job.”
I suppress the urge to clap.
“I found you another group with four openings in Redwood City.”
“Do you know how exhausting it is to drive to Redwood City?”
I’m beginning to question the customer satisfaction levels at Piedmont Hospital.
Bette points at me. “He’s sick, too, and as rude as you are. Why don’t you form a support group with him?”
The woman in the trench coat looks over. “Sorry about this. I’m Cate.”
“Eli. No big deal.”