Then his father and half-sisters arrive. And his mother and Peter, Peter, pale and shy this time. They say good-bye. Yes, that's what they're doing. They sit at his deathbed holding back their tears. Then Charlotte says, "That's enough. He's tired out." They back out of the room with dark eyes. She pulls the blanket up around him. "Don't die. You're not going to die. Just you wait and see." And he thinks she smiles. But she winces when she gets out into the hallway. Because she knows she's losing him, but she doesn't know if it's her fault. She runs a little, desperate to get out into the cool summer night.
* * *
When they detect meningitis, he's given a new kind of medicine that's hard on the kidneys. He turns yellow. They're afraid his muscle mass will be permanently damaged. They say that the medicine is working. But the blood tests still show an infection. Then it looks like it's beginning to have an effect. And he, he has no suspicion about the threat of death. He has no intention of dying. He puts on the headphones: "Give it away, give it away, give it away now. . " The bass pumps, he rocks his head from side to side on the pillow, and looks out at the evening turning blue, the moon half hidden behind the drifting clouds. Did I have sex with her or not? And then suddenly he remembers. He didn't. He couldn't get it up! He smiles to himself, it's so funny, imagine that, he couldn't do it, he was healthy and strong, but he couldn't get his dick to cooperate, and now he also remembers that they shared a joint afterwards, when he'd given up, and she had been so shit-faced that her eyes rolled around in their sockets, then she fell asleep with her head in his lap; that's how it was.
MARCH
He opens the main door and falls onto the street. It's raining. He can't get up. He tries to get up on all fours, but his body refuses. He simply lies flat on his stomach on the dirty wet sidewalk. There are a few people at the bus stop watching. Then, at last, an older couple comes over to him. They could be his grandparents. He takes their hands and with great difficulty, he hoists himself up. A couple of teenagers hide their laughter. A young woman turns her back. He thanks the old people, and leans against the wall of the building with one hand. Then he starts to move up the street with small steps. As usual, he feels pins and needles in his feet. They say there's chronic nerve damage. Charlotte is furious at him. In a way, that makes it easier. He'd rather not be bothered. His clothes hang on him. He lives on pork chops with gravy, but he only gets fat around the waist, it doesn't distribute evenly, so he still has toothpick arms and toothpick legs, but he doesn't have the energy to use the exercise bike, he can't be bothered; it takes him at least ten minutes to crawl up to his apartment on the third floor; he smokes a lot of dope, that helps, he sleeps better, it dulls the anxiety — his fears, simply. There's so much he understands now, which he can't bear to understand: he is terrified to die, he's afraid of being sick—cancer, heart attack, a boil on the ass—there's so much he's come to realize, the underlying frailty, how close he was to kicking the bucket, and then the fact that his life has broken into a thousand small discordant pieces, it can never again be as it was, he's not the same person anymore, no pride, no joy, no recognition: THIS IS ME, but whatever he is, he doesn't know, he has no idea how he'll move on with his life, as Charlotte put it, when she also told him it's sink or swim and slammed the door, he could hear her shouting something else on her way down the stairs.
He smokes, turns up the music. And suddenly starts laughing, loud and heartfelt: Shit, when he was at Peter's and his new girlfriend's wedding last week, he threw up and got such a pain in his stomach that his mother had to drive him home; shit, there wasn't anything fucking wrong with him, it was just stress, all those people, no, nothing was wrong, it was just that he was suffering from an imaginary sickness, that's so fucking funny and so to hell with everything, he's sold the summer house, he will sell his share in the company to Stig, he's staying here, ordering pork chops from the take-out place across the street — they're so kind to deliver it to him — dragging himself down the stairs to buy dope, and then: ah, sweet sleep, sweet refreshing rest, thank the Lord; he sits down and cracks opens his long-anticipated beer, suddenly feeling like a newborn with everything to look forward to.