Still Here (20 page)

Shit! Vica thought, pushing back tears. She couldn't afford to get emotional over a patient. Everybody at work told her so. Some of her colleagues offered tips on fighting back emotions. Christine said that whenever she was about to feel weepy she would try to visualize her bank statement. Liliana thought of sex. Santiago of the recent soccer game's score. But it was Sergey, who had never worked with dying people, who actually gave her the best advice. This was years ago, when she'd just started working at Bing Ruskin and would often come home sobbing. “Think of it as a movie or a TV show,” he said. “When I was little I used to get really upset over sad scenes in movies. And my dad once told me, ‘Serezha, listen, these are not real people. They will go home and change their clothes after this and go on with their lives. Lassie the dog is not really dead, she's an actress. She will go home and gnaw on her favorite bone.' It helped a lot, although it did ruin the magic of storytelling a little bit.”

For the most part Sergey's protective strategy worked really well. This is not real, Vica would tell herself. This is just a TV series.
ER, Grey's Anatomy, House M.D.
The doctors are not real. The patients are not real. That sweet kid who died last month didn't really die; he was simply killed off by the writers, because some new show offered him a better role. It didn't work with Ethan though. Possibly because he really was an actor, it was harder for her to imagine him as a pretend actor. Ethan was real and he was going to die for real. Fairly soon too. She had heard that the doctors were giving him only about a year.

The last time Vica had a chat with Ethan was about two weeks ago.

“I know what you want to ask me,” Ethan said.

He was staring at her intently, even aggressively. She had to look away. He couldn't have guessed that I had been thinking about his money, could he? Vica thought, her spine tensing.

“Go on, ask me. Ask me if I'm scared of dying.”

“Are you scared?”

“Hell, yeah, I'm terrified. I'm not ready. It's funny, isn't it, how my docs devote so much effort to prolonging my life and none of it to preparing me for death. Which is coming no matter what! Couldn't they think of something to make dying just a little bit easier, a little bit less scary?”