Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 6 (Patreon)

It was the day. Eric hadn’t slept the night before. Nothing was packed, nothing was cleaned. His apartment, the spare space he called his looked like his on any other day, and that’s how he wanted to leave it, ready for him to return as though he were going away for a long weekend.

Eric showered and hung his towel to dry and dressed as he would on any other summer day when he wasn’t going to work, and then he paced until he willed himself to sit and paced again when he couldn’t sit anymore. And finally the knock came. Cheryl was there to take him.

That hollow feeling in his stomach rose into his throat, and his hand shook as he opened the door.

“Big day. You ready,” Cheryl asked with a forced smile. Eric glanced over his shoulder and instinctively felt for his phone and keys and wallet.

“Yeah. I guess,” Eric sighed. He tried to smile, not very hard; just enough to show her he wasn’t unhappy. Nervous, dislocated, thoughts colliding so quickly it seemed almost the clear his mind, but not unhappy. Not second guessing. Afraid a little, but not sad. Not yet.

“You’re not taking anything?”

“No. At first I thought … But I don’t have anything I want to take with me. It’ll be here if I decide to come back.”

“Yep, everything will be here. And if you change your mind, you can write to me, and I’ll see you get it.”

They stood in the doorway on oppsite sides of the threshold, and neither moved nor spoke for a long moment.

“We’re not on a schedule,” Cheryl reminded him. “We can wait a bit if you want to.”

“I was just thinking … I don’t know what I was just thinking.” He shook his head, holding his breath before pushing it out with the words, “I’m ready.” A clarity of impulse: If I’m doing this, let’s do it. I’m ready. His voice didn’t shake, and his hands didn’t tremble.

Cheryl stepped aside so Eric could step out. He forgot to take a last look around, glimpsing just the doormat and tile underneath as he closed and locked his door and turned to find Cheryl with her hand out. Glancing at his keys but without hesitation, he placed them in her palm and followed her to her car without a word.

“It’s a nice day out,” he remarked as he waited for the door to unlock.

Once on the road, Cheryl asked him again, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“I’m going to ask you two more times today, remember?”

“I do.”

“You know you can change your mind right up until the last moment?”

“I know.”

Eric looked out the window at the passing life in front of him heading in every direction like today was not their last day on Earth, like they had a tomorrow not so different from today and lived their lives according to that logic. He stole glances at Cheryl as she silently drove and remembered their night together.

When they arrived at the agency, they didn’t go to Cheryl’s office but to another building he hadn’t been in before. It looked like a surgical center, and Cheryl led Eric to a room that looked like a visitor’s suite consciously designed to feel less institutional, but it never could feel that way; too put together, too clean, it smelled like a hospital. Eric had spent time in these kinds of rooms, usually comforting someone having one of the worst days of their life.

Cheryl took a seat on the couch and motioned for Eric to do the same. “Do you want anything to eat or drink,” Cheryl asked.

Eric was about to say no when he noticed how dry and gummy his mouth felt. “Some water … would be good,” he choked out. Cheryl reached around to a minifridge under the arm of the sofa and handed him a bottle. “Thanks,” Eric said and studied the bottle’s label for no reason before twisting the top off.

“I’m going to go over what’s going to happen one last time, okay,” Cheryl said, pausing to make sure Eric was hearing her. Often times clients couldn’t keep their attention focused, but Eric was listening even though he wasn’t looking at her.

“I’m going to be with you the entire time until you’re asleep. In a little bit, when you’re ready, we’re going to go to the prep area, and you’re going to change into a gown. A nurse anesthetist will come put in an IV and give you something to help you relax. When you’re ready, we’ll wheel you into the staging area where we’ll give you something to help you sleep through the entire trip. When you’re asleep, that’s when I’ll leave you,” Cheryl said. Her voice cracked on the last clause. A first for her, not ever having been anything except happy for her clients on their departure day. She hoped Eric wouldn’t notice. She didn’t want him to be afraid. She didn’t want him to worry about her; she didn’t mean to give him reason to.

“Do you understand all that,” she asked.

“Yes.”

“On your preferences form, you indicated you wanted to look and feel younger, and you wanted to have any medical problems the doctors find fixed. All that will happen when you get there. Do you want to make any changes to your preferences right now?”

“Uh, yeah. I changed my mind about my vision. If they can correct that, I’d like that.”

“Okay, I’ll make that change,” Cheryl replied as she took out a folder of forms and made the change. “I need you to initial the change.” Eric did.

“Anything else you want to change,” Cheryl asked.

Eric looked it over. He didn’t want to change his body or memory or mind. Looking and feeling younger were one thing, but deliberately taking steps backwards developmentally, that was too much.

“I can change my mind on some of this later, right,” Eric asked.

“Yes, you can change your mind, and your guardian can decide if they want to follow through on your wishes or not. You’re sure you don’t want to change anything now,” Cheryl asked with a serious look on her face, the kind people use on children when they’re telling them something is important so they need to choose carefully.

“I’m sure.” He nodded his head, shallow.

“Okay,” Cheryl said as she took the form back. “When you arrive, you’ll spend a week in quarantine, and then they’ll examine your body. Their medicine is much more advanced than ours. They can’t find or fix everything, but they can find and fix most things, especially for someone your age. Anything they find, they’ll fix if they can. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Once they feel it’s safe for you to leave the hospital, you’ll be sent home with your guardian. From the time you go to sleep here until you get to your new home, you’re going to be asleep – for that entire time – and you’ll be in the custody of the agency from now until your guardian takes you home from the hospital. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. Depending on the procedures the doctors do, you will need to heal for some time, and it could be a while before you’re fully recovered. It won’t take as long as it would if you had the same procedures here, but it could be several weeks.

“You may be groggy for several days after you wake up. You may be in some pain, but they’ll send you home with things to treat that. You may be frightened, and they’ll also send you home with some things for that. Understand?”

“Yes.”

“Any questions at all?”

“No.”

Cheryl asked him again, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“I’m going to ask you one more time today, remember?”

“I do.”

“You know you can change your mind right up until the last moment?”

“I know.”

“Can you initial here and here, acknowledging I asked if you wanted to move forward twice today and reminded you that you could change your mind up until the last moment,” Cheryl asked him, handing him another form.

Eric initialed where she pointed and noted there was one more space for his initials and three for signatures at the bottom of the page.

“Okay,” Cheryl said.

“Okay?”

“Yeah, that’s all of it. We can go when you’re ready.”

Eric sat still for a moment and then swiftly stood up but didn’t move. “Ya know, it would be easier if this were on a schedule,” he said. “Is there anything else we need to do?”

“No, nothing. You can watch TV or take a walk, or we can just talk. We have a chaplain, if you want to see him,” Cheryl said. Eric said nothing for a moment.

“I went to Mass this week,” Eric said. “I hadn’t been in a long time.”

“What made you go,” Cheryl asked casually like they were back in their booth at their restaurant.

“Are you religious,” Eric asked. Cheryl shook her head.

“I’m not either, not really. Sometimes I go through the motions. But … I guess it’s more me wanting to believe saying a quick prayer makes a difference. Like it’s something I can do to take some control of a situation I don’t really have any control over.

“The foster parent I was with the longest, Mrs. Vilalba, she took us to Mass every Sunday. I’d just sit there bored. When you’re a little kid, you can’t even see what’s going happening on the altar, but …” He paused. “Every once in a while, I’d look around and think there was something about the place that was special. The stained glass. Everybody dressed up. The … solemnity of it. I was part of something. I didn’t know what, but I was there with the same people doing the same thing every Sunday. I was part of something.

“After I aged out, I was with all these people who had normal lives growing up, and I had no idea how to talk to them or make friends with them. I was afraid of them, I think. Just … uncomfortable sometimes being around them. Sometimes I’d go to the chapel on campus and just sit there; no one was ever in there; look at the stained glass. It was familiar; that was comforting; just me in there.” He took a sharp breath and brushed at his nose as though waving away a memory.

“So yea, I went to Mass this week and took communion. It made me tear up a little, just … just taking part in that ritual.” Eric smiled wanly and blinked.

“It’s a beautiful ritual. The vestments. The incense. The hymns. The light through the stained glass. Breaking bread together … I’m sorry I didn’t keep up with it. I think I missed out on being part of a community.”

Eric was standing by the window now, looking out through the glass at the sun coming through the leaves casting shades of shadows light and dark over the green of the grass.

“Cheryl,” Eric said, “I’m ready.” No tears this time.

Cheryl hid her own tears and said weakly, “Okay.” She organized her papers, wiped her eyes, and straightened herself up. With her best smile, she reached out her hand and said with in a dry rasp, “Let’s go.”

Eric took her hand, and they walked out into back through the door and down the corridor together. Once through the next set of doors, they were in what looked like the prep are of a surgical floor. Cheryl led him to a room.

“Your gown is on the bed. You can step behind the curtain and put it on. You can leave your clothes on the chair.”

Eric picked up the gown and set it down again. “I’m going to use the restroom first.” Cheryl pointed to a door.

Cheryl had been doing this eight years, and in that time, she had helped maybe a hundred clients through this process. It was an emotional moment. She was helping people take what might be and in most cases were their last steps off the Earth that had been under them their entire lives, about as close as one could get to literally helping someone be born again into a new and, for them, better place. It was like a hospice and its precise opposite at the same time.

She usually got emotional on send-off days, but not like this. She got emotional all those other times because she was happy for the person, because they were almost always happy, and even when they weren’t, Cheryl was because she knew it was for the best. If she didn’t believe that, she wouldn’t have accepted their application.

This time, she was sad because she was going to miss Eric. For all the troubles he had, he had turned into a good person, and for every flaw he had, he redeemed himself twice over. How different his life might have been, she thought. She reminded herself he was getting to start over, and for him, for someone who grew up without a family, this would be his chance to have what he had never had before.

Eric stepped back out of the restroom with a slight blush on his cheeks and ducked behind the curtain.

“Do you need any help,” Cheryl asked. She wanted him to say yes.

“No, I think I got it,” Eric answered. With steady hands he fastened the gown behind his back, and then with one hand held the back closed and with the other drew the curtain back.

Cheryl was forcing a smile as best she could, but she could hardly get the corners of her mouth to turn upward. Eric recognized that attempt of a smile. He’d seen it on the faces of children trying very hard to be brave when what they really wanted to do was cry. He thought he’d be the one to struggle with this, but his heart felt calm.

“Cheryl,” he said gently, “I have something for you. It’s just a letter, for you to open when I’m gone.” She accepted the envelope from his hand and placed it in her back pocket, not meeting his eyes.

“Thank you. I have a something for you too. It’s a present. You can open up it when you wake up there,” she said, pointing to a giftwrapped box on the chassis under the hospital bed.

“Thank you.”

They stood looking at each other until Cheryl turned toward the door and hit a button above the light switch. “That tells them we’re ready for the nurse anesthetist,” she explained. “Why don’t you sit down on the bed?”

Eric gently climbed onto the bed doing his best to keep his gown closed behind him and his modesty intact. When he was situated, he took a deep breath and asked what he feared asking. “Cheryl … do you forgive me for leaving you?”

“Oh, Eric, there’s nothing to forgive.” She looked him over from his feet up, running her hand the length of his arm to his shoulder; he seemed small in the hospital bed. With bright eyes she looked into his. “Do you believe me?”

“I do. Of course I do.” Cheryl had always been honest with him, and besides, Eric needed to believe it. He couldn’t stand leaving if he didn’t.

Eric cast his eyes on the chair next to the bed, and Cheryl sat down. He laid his arm flat, palm up, and Cheryl took his hand in her own. His fingers closed intertwined hers, and his thumb made small circles over the soft flat of her hand. He smiled, and she stared ahead to keep her emotions under control.

Another few minutes’ silence, calm for Eric as he held her hand and sensed the hint of her fragrance and was happy to be in her company a little longer, her forgiveness given and her mere company soothing; anxious for Cheryl as she searched for something to say not sure if she should or needed to say anything but sensing there were some important words, something left to say even if there wasn’t, as though words alone could answer for an inchoate feeling of … she wasn’t even sure. A knock, and it was too soon.

The anesthetist was used to seeing caseworkers and clients holding hands, but usually they were both smiling or else it was the client with the watery eyes.

“Eric Jacobs,” she asked.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“I’m Tish. Has Cheryl explained everything that’s going to happen?”

“Yes.”

“Do you have any questions for me before we get started?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Okay, can you please read this chart and verify all the information is accurate,” she asked, handing him a clipboard. He scanned it over: name, birthdate, his social security number, what was now his last address, his phone number, an image of his driver’s license. PII, he thought, Personally Identifiable Information. His information; information that alone or in combination identified him as Eric Jacobs; the official marks of his identity.

“That’s all correct,” he responded.

“Okay, just give me a second.” Tish logged into the computer and printed off two wrist bands and labels for blood vials. “These bands have all your information on them. This one goes around your wrist,” she said as she fastened it, “and this one around your ankle. I’m going to draw some blood too. You do okay with needles, honey?”

“The bigger the better,” Eric answered back, an impulse to make a joke, less to lighten the mood than to sense some control through a performance of bravery even though he wasn’t afraid. Cheryl looked everywhere but at Eric.

“Ha! That’s a first.” Tish quickly found a vein and filled three vials on the first try. “Two of those are for vitals. You’ll be hooked up to some monitors the entire trip, and they’ll take a little blood when they need to. The other one is for storing your DNA. When you get there, they’ll draw blood to match your DNA and make sure you are who they think you are, and then they’ll get your prints and dental impressions.”

Tish set the vials down and stooped down to remove an IV kit from a cabinet. She started to move toward Eric’s right hand, saw it clasped tightly in Cheryl’s, and moved to his left.

“Make a fist for me,” Tish said. She found the vein, inserted the needle and taped it down. “I’m going to inject a little something in there that’s going to feel warm as it starts to circulate. You’ll taste something metallic and may feel like you’re wetting your pants, but you’re not. That’s all normal.” Eric felt the warmth quickly spread through his body, and the metal welled up in his throat. Tish finished connecting the IV, hung the bag, taped a loop of the tubing to his hand, and placed a pulse oximeter on Eric’s left middle finger.

“Okay. Are you ready for the sedative?”

Eric nodded his head shallowly.

She took a syringe from the cabinet, twisted it into the IV port, and pushed it in. Cheryl, looking into Eric’s eyes, saw them relax like they had on their night together. His grip on her hand loosened ever so much; she tightened hers.

Tish checked the monitor to verify Eric’s vitals were fine. “Chet is out today, so I can wheel you down if you’re ready,” Tish offered.

Eric and Cheryl looked at each other, and Tish turned away embarrassed. She had never seen that look pass between a caseworker and client, but she had seen it in other rooms like this one in other places she’d worked. She didn’t see Eric and Cheryl embrace, nor see the long kiss between them. She heard it. And she heard the soft, short intake of breath from a woman swallowing a sob and imagined in the silence that followed she bent over him forehead to forehead, that odd gesture imparting that everything will be okay even if it is goodbye.

She heard the clink of a ring on the rail of the bed and the rail locking in place. She turned to see Cheryl and Eric, she on her feet, his hand still within hers, and the two smiling, his not as easy as moments before, hers that sad kind of smile that comes of knowing though it is goodbye, everything really will be alright.

“We’re ready,” Eric said without taking his eyes off Cheryl’s.

Moved by the scene, Tish didn’t banter with her patient the way she usually did. She simply raised the other rail, unlocked the wheels, and waited while Cheryl tucked a blanket around Eric’s body, being sure it was snug around his feet. Cheryl stepped through the door and held it, and Eric followed pushed by Tish. Once through the door, Eric held his hand aloft to find Cheryl’s.

The three of them moved through the ward past the desk nurse, where Tish deposited the three vials in a small fridge, past other rooms with other soon-to-be littles and their caseworkers, most happy, and Eric was happy, and Cheryl was happy for him. She was only sad for herself.

It was a short walk through the ward, down another corridor, and into an area with six spaces divided by a curtain. One had a sleeping woman in it. Another a sleeping girl who couldn’t have been more than nineteen. Tish guided the bed into a space between two curtainsand waited.

Cheryl didn’t say anything or move until she felt Tish’s eyes on her.

“Oh, sorry,” she fumbled, and then to a passing orderly said, “Excuse me, Jay, just wanted to point out he has a box under his bed that’s going with him. It has his info and barcode on it already.”

“Got it, Cheryl. I’ll make sure it goes with him,” he assured her.

“Thanks, Jay,” she said, and turned back to Eric.

“You have my letter,” Eric asked, feeling light and sleepy as the sedative continued to work its effect on him.

“Right here,” Cheryl said, patting the envelope in her pocket. “You comfortable?

“Yeah.”

“This your first time on a plane?”

“Actually, yes.”

“First flight, and you’re going to be out for it.”

“Maybe another one, some day.”

“Maybe.”

Cheryl removed a form from its folder and withdrew her pen. She stared at the paper.

“I’ll miss you,” Eric said.

“I’ll miss you too. I …” Cheryl didn’t know what she had started to say. She shook her head to clear the thought and breathed a short sigh to gather herself. “Are you ready,” Cheryl asked.

“I am. Are you,” Eric asked. It provoked a humorless chuckle from Cheryl, looking at the paper and nodding her head. She took a short breath and released it in a short sigh.

Cheryl asked him again, “You know this is your last opportunity to change your mind?”

“I know”

“Are you sure you want to do this?”