On the fourth day it seemed all the study subjects arrived at our greatest fear at the same time. Life was going on just fine at home without us. Our jobs, our families, our pets and children and plants, were all chugging along okay. This made us all collectively feel unnecessary, which at first was upsetting and then was freeing. How can things be okay without me overseeing every detail? Which brings up the next thought: Maybe I don’t need to be so concerned about every detail? And that was the wake-up call. The moment when our type A selves sort of melted into the pool chairs and lecture seats. I inhaled and exhaled deeply. Was this what they meant by relaxing?
We got another piece of paper. This time it had five blank lines after “I am a _____.” We were instructed to quickly fill in every line with a different thought, the first five original thoughts that popped into our heads. But we were not to use the same word we used on day one. “And don’t overthink it!” the organizer said. I filled in:
I am a wife.
I am a sister.
I am a daughter.
I am a Miamian.
I am a Yalie.
On the morning of the seventh day, the scientists conducting the study again gave us a physical and took our blood. I was officially test subject number forty-seven. I would forever be in a telomere study database. The researchers were looking for markers, to see if with just one week of relaxing, the body could produce more telomerase, an important goo that clung to the end of the telomeres, protecting them from further shortening. Those results would not be made known to us for a very long time. But I had a hunch about them already. And right before we left our hotel spa haven of relaxation and comfort, we were given one last piece of paper. Again it had one line on it, to fill in with our very first thought: “I am a _____.”
I pulled my car out of the hotel garage, my free parking voucher in hand. It wasn’t until I was on the highway heading north toward Miami Beach that the weight of what I had written hit me. “I am a human.”
CHAPTER 31
BEEP
Detective Jackson kept his eyes on the photo of Jason. He tapped his finger on it, over Jason’s chest, almost like he was trying to bring his heartbeat back. Thump, thump. Tap, tap. If only it were that easy. I would give almost anything to rest my head on his beating chest one more time. Detective Jackson said again, “Handsome guy.” I nodded. Even on this pathetic excuse for paper stock, Jason’s cute nose and high cheekbones and symmetrical jaw shone through. The detective added, “You two made a nice-looking couple.” I nodded again, but he wasn’t even looking at me. Not then. A beat later he looked up and asked, “Want to tell me what happened the night he died? What really happened? Fill in a few details?” I kept my voice even and said, “It’s all in the autopsy report.”
Coming home from the telomere study a human had changed me. I arrived at the house so calm and serene that it freaked Jason out. He worried they had drugged me. Once I explained my epiphany, he was thrilled. I didn’t know how long it would last, but being a human was pretty amazing. I could allow myself a spectrum of feelings, I could have triumphs and failures, I could make others proud and disappointed, I could have love and grief and fear, and no matter what, right or wrong, I was still a human. That was the constant, and it was incredibly comforting. Such a painfully obvious concept, but for me it took being pulled out of my patterns and into a scientific study to find it.
I relaxed for seven days and experienced three consecutive nights of sleeping so soundly that I didn’t remember my dreams at all for the first time in my life. The night I got home, I fell into a deep sleep. Mr. Cat snuggled on my right shoulder. Jason snuggled to my left. And in the early hours of the morning, my mind drifted to when I was really little and my mother would plop me in the bathtub and leave me to my own devices. This wasn’t totally irresponsible because I had always been a good swimmer and she asked that I yell out “Beep” every few moments so she could hear me in the other room and know I was safe and sound. Every once in a while, just to make sure she was paying attention and that she cared about me, I would purposefully withhold my beep and count how many seconds it would take her to realize. And just when I decided she had forgotten all about me, she would yell, “Where’s the beep!?” And I would happily “beep” back. I dreamily thought about this as I started to hear an actual beep noise. But this beep wasn’t the laughing beep of a child in a bathtub. It was shrill and demanding. It was relentless and urgent. I popped open my eyes.
Jason wore a continuous glucose monitor, to alert him if his blood sugar went dangerously high or dangerously low. If he dipped under a fifty, it would beep loudly. This was designed to prevent “dead in bed.” If he went low in the night, the beep should wake him up so he could quickly eat the sugar goo he kept on his bedside table. But Jason was an incredibly sound sleeper. He always fell asleep within moments of his head hitting his pillow and slept deeply all night. I usually lay there, my mind racing and sorting things, reviewing and planning. I would fall asleep eventually, but it took me a while to unwind and drift off. And when I finally fell asleep, I slept lightly.
For years I had been woken up nightly by Mr. Cat’s antics. And once I started dating Jason, I was woken up countless times by his glucose monitor’s beep. Once it woke me up, I would wake him up. He would be startled and groggy. I would say, “Jason. You’re beeping.” He would say, “Okay.” And then sometimes fall back asleep without reacting, without reaching to his bedside table and eating sugar because he was low. So I would wake him up again. “You’re still beeping!” And sometimes I would be a little grumpy about the whole thing. And he would get upset that I thought it was so cute when Mr. Cat woke me up ten times a night, but one little beep and I was all bossy. And I would say, “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be bossy. But you have to take care of yourself and make it stop beeping!” And he would adjust his insulin intake on his pump and open a sugary goo packet and suck down the contents and his blood sugar would reach a safe number and the beeping would stop. And then in the morning he wouldn’t remember any of it, and I would have to show him on his monitor that it had in fact gone off and had been beeping. This went on the entire time we were together.
But this time was different. When my eyes popped open, I noticed that Mr. Cat was in the middle of our bed, and he was screaming meows at me. His meows were in between each beep. Since I was so deeply relaxed from my telomere week, it took a few moments for my brain to click in. I thought, Mr. Cat always sleeps to my right. He is never in the middle. Why is he in the middle? Why is he meowing? And the glucose monitor kept beeping. It was as loud as it could get. As usual, Jason was sleeping right through it.
I said, “Jason. You’re beeping.”
I waited a second, but Jason didn’t stir. So I nudged his shoulder.
“Jason, wake up. You’re beeping!”
Still nothing. I started to understand. I shot up and frantically turned to him, my heart thumping in my throat. I screamed.
“Jason! Jason! Get up!”
He was cold and lifeless. Mr. Cat had stopped meowing now that I was awake and aware of the situation. I grabbed my cell and called 9-1-1 while I raced to Jason’s side of the bed and ripped open a sugar packet. I slathered it into Jason’s mouth, hoping some of the lime-green goo would reach his bloodstream in time and revive his still heart. A wave of déjà vu passed through me. Like I’d done this before. Been here before. But I knew I hadn’t. Time slowed as I waited for the emergency operator to answer, and a tiny memory came through like radio static. As I desperately rubbed sugar onto Jason’s gums, to bring him back to life, I saw a flash of Duncan’s mother doing the same thing to herself with wisps of cocaine in the club bathroom.
I poured another packet of goo into Jason’s mouth, this one a cherry red. And then another. Tangerine. I could tell by the sickening slack of his head when I grabbed his shoulders and shook him that he was already dead. But I still had to keep trying. I knew it wasn’t rational. I grabbed a fourth packet. Grape. And was told by the emergency operator that an ambulance was on the way.
CHAPTER 32
WIDOW