My hospital room is stark, filled with beeping machines. White blinds shutter away all natural light, and I cannot voice the request to see my last sunset. Oblivious, people huddle close, their pained expressions rendering them like strangers beneath the fluorescents. My bed is an altar, bathed in sickly radiance.

Went before his time, they will say about me.

The morphine leaves me woozy, detached. Even so, I loll my head toward the piled black notebooks on my bedside table. They’ll no doubt prove an emotional peak for my loved ones, who’ll pore over them in weeks to come, the contents forever in media res: sketches, musings, countless stories; and several hundred pages of a sequel to my first—my only—novel, which will stand now as a testament to my existence. An epitaph.

My movement incites a tizzy. Kin and compatriots press in, gathering like a wave, lives and happiness held in abeyance, awaiting my final breath. At my weakest, I am also at my most powerful. At these last stages it is not the dying who most need comfort, but the living.

My mother is a small raven-haired woman. Today she lacks her usual ferocity. She has waged war against many foes: bullies, school principals, video games, procrastination, pizza, anxiety, pot. Today there are no battles left. And while she has watched over the dying before—her parents, aunt, and uncle, whom she cared for in their final years—I am her first child.

My father, spectacled and gray-haired, stands beside my mother. A self-taught painter, in practice he’s toiled unceremoniously as a local dentist. His paintings hang in our house: one of my mother sitting on the porch of a clapboard Dutch colonial that became our home; and countless portraits of JFK and RFK, Sinatra, Bogart, James Cagney. He and I used to joke that when I found fame, he’d tell off his patients and close up shop. “Go back to school, be an art major,” he said. “Your dime.”

But his sacrifice is for naught. He stares at the floor, unable to bear witness. I cannot blame him. My chest drags with every breath. Even painkillers cannot disguise the overwhelming heaviness, as if I am Atlas and the pressure of a world keeps me pinned. My body has felt this way a long while now, as if swaddled in layers of straightjackets.

My sister takes my hand—originally she was Stephen, now Sadie. A composer, actress, we often talked of writing for the stage together. But when I fell ill, and she came out, things grew strained between us. Looking back, I think I wanted the monopoly on suffering.

I used to believe unequivocally that I was a good person. It’s only now my self-tally of sins feels enormous. I’ve hurt people despite good intentions; I have cheated, stolen money from my parents; been negligent of relationships; helped feed friends’ addictions along with my own. No amount of altruism in my heart can change the picture painted by my actions: not of someone terrible, but of someone flawed and pitifully human. I’m not special. I’m not especially much at all.

My sister begins to weep. Then, my best friend Claudia steps in, hugging, comforting her, but looking at me all the while. I have been avoiding Claudia’s eyes—green valleys ringed with long lashes. If I could communicate telepathically, I would say: I am responsible for our regret.

But I cannot form words, produce sound. Not an “I’m sorry,” or “thank you.” Not an “I love you.” Yet my fight to convey something, anything, must show, because Claudia takes my hand, her skin warm against mine. She kisses my forehead. Her tears fall, dew-like. We share each other’s eyes for the last time. She kisses me again: lips entwined, hearts beating.

But no, the heartbeat is only my own, weakly echoing in my ears. As she pulls away, I feel truly alone, despite those who surround me.

Only I will sail across this gulf, a voyager, an exile.

At that thought, there is a final unmooring. A ragged sigh escapes me. I sink back, further back, though there’s nowhere further back to go. It’s as if the bed rises up around me, enclosing, smothering. Claudia seems so far. She’s saying something. She is afraid.

Wait! I can’t remember anymore, why everything looks so dark, but I desperately claw my way back to her, to my family—an effort of mind, of will. I know that if I reach her, I can see her smile again. That would be worth it. But it is like swimming upward through a quagmire. I can no longer see or breathe. Still, somehow I . . .

I’ll make it back to her. I have to . . .

Please, if I could just . . .

. . . This isn’t . . .

. . . No . . .

. . . I . . .

. . .

Next Chapter: ii.