chapter 2
fiction
HUFFINGTON
09.23.12
J
OHN MONGAY DIED five days later, having
never regained consciousness. As each day
passed and he gave no sign of mental activity,
eventually it became clear that not all of him
had survived the code. The family decided,
once pneumonia set in, to withdraw support. Even though I
had anticipated the pneumonia, and was pretty sure I could
get him through it, I had to agree it was for the best.
He had become something unreal to me — something
beautiful, like a work of art, but unreal. Amid all the mess
and squalor of the hospital, with its blind random unravelling of lives, in their patient dignity and kindness he
and his family stood apart. In his case, for a little while
at least, everything had gone exactly as it should have.
The perfect code. And it hadn’t made any difference. After a bedside service, I pulled his tube early in the afternoon, and took my place at the wall while the usual drama
worked to its conclusion.
They sent me a card that Christmas, Mrs. Mongay and
her daughters. I kept it for a while, until it vanished in
the clutter on my desk. She had written a text inside,
something from the New Testament I had admired at the
bedside service, but soon forgot. I do remember vividly
the picture on the card. It was like the Mongay women:
sober, attractive. It showed a medieval nativity scene, all
saints and angels with their burnishe d golden ovals overhead. Their faces were sorrowful in profile, as if anticipating what will crown that rosy newborn, perfection laid in
straw, with pain in time to come.
Terrence E. Holt is a physician practicing in North Carolina.
Holt’s first book, a collection of short stories entitled
In the Valley of the Kings, was a finalist for the PEN/Robert
Bingham Fellowship for Writers.