Abdi caught up with me when I reached a big overpass. We stood underneath it and stared at the water. Occasionally a car shot past overhead, but otherwise there was a feeling of stillness. Finally.
I sat down on the grass. Damp soaked through my trousers straightaway, but I was too tired to care.
Abdi stood beside me, his arms wrapped around his body.
“Noah,” he said. “What’s going on?”
“Shall we have our drink here?” I started to shrug the backpack off.
“It’s freezing. Are you crazy?”
I’m going to have to tell him about my prognosis, I thought. The urge to share was strong. It’s not what I wanted, because the night wouldn’t end up how I wanted it, but I figured it might salvage things a bit, and it would be better than arguing. I didn’t have the guts to just say it outright, though. Instead I said, “Do you ever think about death?”
He exhaled crossly. “Why?”
“Just, do you?”
He sat down beside me, finally. “You’re mad.”
He rubbed his eyes. He looked pretty rough himself.
“Are you tired?” I asked him.
“Yes, but probably not as tired as you. You don’t look or sound good.”
I was shivering. We both were.
“We should walk back to the station and get help,” he said.
I ignored that and asked my question again. “Do you ever think about death?”
“Sometimes.”
“What do you think?”
“I think about a thing we talked about in philosophy class. Why?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was looking at the stars and the moon. Big things that are going to carry on anyway, even if we’re not here.”
Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 11: Experience something that puts your life into perspective.
Abdi was quiet for a few moments after I said that. He often reflects on things before he speaks. I looked at the pinprick stars so high above us, and noticed that a shred of cloud was covering up part of the moon.
When he finally replied, Abdi said something I wasn’t expecting at all: “Did you ever find out something that made you think you’d be better off if you were dead?”
“What do you mean?” For a second I panicked and thought he’d guessed about my prognosis before I’d had a chance to tell him.
He bit his lip. His eyes were locked onto the water in front of us.
“It’s the thing I was thinking about.”
“Do you think about what it would be like to actually die?” I hardly dared to ask.
“In philosophy lessons, while you were in the hospital last week,” he said, “we learned about a Greek philosopher called Epicurus. He said that fear of dying is the biggest fear we have in life, and that’s why we can’t be happy.”
“Huh.” I didn’t really know what to say about that.
“Yeah. His solution to that is to say that death is the end of physical feelings, so it’s impossible for it to be physically painful, and death is also the end of consciousness, so it also can’t be emotionally painful.”
“So we shouldn’t be frightened of it.”
“Exactly.”
He tore up little bits of grass and threw them down the bank. They landed invisibly.
I had a question: “But how does he know that death is the end of those things?”
“Because he believed that our souls are made of atoms that are spread through our body, and they dissolve when we die.”
“Dissolve?”
“Yeah. It’s a cool idea.”
Noah’s Bucket List Item No. 12: Be cremated. I can’t stand the thought of being buried. I want to be turned into smoke and air so I can be everywhere all at once.
I was feeling quite a lot of discomfort in my abdomen, in the area where my spleen is. Dr. Sasha warned me about that. I stood up, to try to ease it, and Abdi helped me. I had to lean on him quite heavily.
“Let’s go home,” he said. “Please.”
I was very tempted, but as I straightened up, I saw, a little way up the canal, on the other side of the water, a very cool sight: heaps of twisted metal stacked up in piles that looked like pyramids, and the bodies of loads of trashed cars. They all glittered with frost. I pointed it out to Abdi.
“Can we do one last thing? Go over there and sit together and drink our drinks.”
It looked like the perfect place to end the night.
I didn’t wait for an answer. I knew this was the right thing to do. I adjusted the backpack, feeling the straps bite hard into my shoulders, and set off along the towpath.
Abdi called after me. “Noah!” he said. “Enough! We can drink the bloody drinks on the way home.”
I ignored him. I kept going along the path and around the side of a large warehouse.
“Don’t you walk away!” Abdi shouted. His voice sounded distant and echoey. “Don’t keep doing this!”
Ahead of me, there was a bridge. It had high metal edges that were peeling and rusty.
“Noah! Come on!”
My lungs were tight and the pain in my abdomen was getting more intense. As I started to cross the bridge, I kicked a can by mistake and its loud rattle startled a bird somewhere above me on a warehouse ledge. It flew so low past me that I put up my arms to protect myself.
I paused to catch my breath. I thought I heard Abdi’s footsteps behind me, but I wasn’t certain. He would follow me, though, I knew he would in the end. He never let me down. You can’t do that when you’re healthy and your friend isn’t. It’s not fair.
The water running underneath the bridge looked like black treacle.
Voices bring me back to my hospital room. Dad’s talking to somebody.
“He hasn’t always been unwell.”
“When did he get ill?”
“He was seven when we first noticed symptoms, eight at diagnosis.”
“I’m so sorry. That’s tragic. And he’s been in treatment since then?”
“More or less. I never remember the precise sequence of events. I have to travel for work a lot, so I’m not always here. My wife has been by his side constantly.”
“Will she be here later?”
“Yes, but I’m not sure she’ll be comfortable with this conversation.”
“If it’s easier, I could meet you somewhere later?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m sorry. I wouldn’t normally dream of invading your privacy like this, but it’s a fact that sometimes you need press attention to get the police to take a case seriously.”
“I’m not unaware of that.”
“I believe Noah has been the victim of a crime.”
“That’s your opinion.”
“I’m sorry. This is very painful for you. I’ll go. Here’s my card. That’s me, Emma Zhang. Please call me if you want to talk. Anytime.”
A chair squeaks. She’s standing. But then a sob. It’s Dad.
Silence. I can sense her indecision. Comfort the big man or tiptoe away?
“Mr. Sadler?”
“Please, go.”
She does.
Later, though I don’t know whether it’s a minute or an hour or a day later, I hear the click-crunch of a phone camera shutter. Twice.
I don’t know who’s in the room with me.
I appreciate the orderly moments in my life; it’s why I like my work. I can follow the processes of investigation in order to succeed. It’s the emotional extremes that bother me. If I can, I avoid those like a cat skirting a sprinkler. The problem is that that’s not always possible.
I head into Fraser’s office to update her.
“How’s it going, Jim?”
She seems more tense than usual, but it’s hard to read why.
“We’re making progress.”