Hold Music for the Afterlife
The chair was more comfortable than it looked. I settled into it carefully, expecting the familiar pressure in my lower back, and waited a few seconds before realizing there was none. My left knee felt fine too. I stretched both legs across the carpet and wondered what they had given me.
A small screen beside the door displayed a blue circle turning around a telephone icon. Beneath it was a number with too many digits to be a phone number. I assumed it was mine, although I had no ticket and could not remember checking in. There was another chair beside the opposite wall, a low table between us, and a framed photograph of trees above it. The room looked like a nice dentist’s office.
Music played quietly from somewhere overhead. A clean electric guitar repeated a little tune over a warm, steady hum. It reminded me of the instrumental music my wife put on when she wanted to read, the sort I generally stopped hearing after a few minutes.
“Thank you for your patience,” a woman said. “Your presence is important to us. Someone will be with you shortly.”
I told her there was no hurry. My voice sounded normal, which reassured me, and I leaned back while I tried to remember what had happened.
There had been a kitchen. I was fairly certain it was ours, because I remembered the yellow towel hanging from the oven handle. Something had fallen near my foot, and my wife had been saying my name in a tone I had never heard from her before. The memory became confused after that, although I could picture the underside of the refrigerator and a dust ball I had meant to clean up.
I looked down at my clothes. I was wearing the blue shirt I usually slept in, but it was buttoned wrong. That small detail bothered me enough that I fixed it before getting up to find someone.
The door had no handle on my side. When I approached, the screen brightened and offered three options: assistance, comfort, and information. I touched assistance, and the blue circle paused before resuming its slow rotation.
“Your request has been received,” the woman said. “Please remain available.”
I stood there for a while, then touched information. The screen displayed my name, Martin Ellis, followed by my date of birth and a time: 8:42 a.m. I recognized the date beside it as the morning I remembered from the kitchen.
Below that, a line read, Physical session concluded.
I pressed my hand against my chest. I could feel the cloth and the shape of my ribs, but nothing moved beneath them. Once I noticed, I realized I had not taken a breath since standing up. I inhaled deliberately and found that I could, although the act provided no relief and seemed to accomplish nothing.
I returned to the chair. For some time I concentrated on the music because it was easier than considering the information on the screen. I had expected death to involve either a great deal more explanation or considerably less furniture.
The woman repeated her message. I asked whether my wife had someone with her, but the music continued without interruption. When I asked again, the screen displayed a small check mark beside Assistance requested. I decided that a person would answer eventually and that I should save my questions until then.
At first, waiting was almost pleasant. I had spent the previous year dealing with medical appointments and insurance calls, and I knew how to sit somewhere without being useful. There was no pain to distract me, no need to use the bathroom, and no worry about a parking meter. I imagined my wife calling our daughter, who would be upset but would know what to do. I hoped she would remember that the folder with the account information was in the bottom desk drawer.
After a while, I tried to count the repetitions of the guitar melody. It was longer than I expected, with a pause near the end that sounded as though another phrase ought to follow. Instead, the first note returned. I reached forty-three repetitions before losing track and starting again.
The photograph above the table showed a row of cottonwoods beside a lake. When I stood close, I could see that one leaf near the corner consisted of several small squares. I touched it, and the squares rearranged themselves into a more convincing leaf. The rest of the photograph sharpened, revealing a wooden dock I had not noticed from the chair.
I asked where the picture had been taken. The screen offered to adjust the room.
Under comfort, I found controls for lighting, sound, and surroundings. I lowered the music until the slider reached zero, but the guitar remained faintly audible. When I selected a different photograph, the trees became a beach. The chair beneath me softened before I could decide whether I had wanted that.
I left everything else alone.
Eventually I heard a voice outside the door. It was too faint to make out the words, but I recognized the cadence of my mother calling from another room. She had been dead for nineteen years. I stood so quickly that the table shifted, or appeared to, and went to the door.
“Mom?” I said. “Can you hear me?”
For a moment the wall beside the screen looked like the hallway of the house where I grew up. Sunlight fell across the carpet, and I could smell the hot dust from the floor furnace. I moved toward it, expecting the opening to become wider, but the hallway stretched away while the door remained in front of me. The floor seemed to slope beneath my feet.
“Your wait is nearing its end,” the recorded woman said. “For your comfort, please return to your seat.”
The hallway disappeared before I sat down. I stayed standing with my palm against the wall, angry now, and asked who had made that happen. The screen marked another request as received.
I stopped being polite after that. I shouted until the effort became embarrassing, then apologized in case someone had finally begun listening. Neither approach changed anything. I could not tell whether minutes or weeks had passed, and I began to wonder whether my daughter was still driving to the house or had already finished cleaning it out.
I tried to hold on to things I could verify. My wife’s name was Ellen. Our daughter lived in Columbus and had a dog named Walter. The kitchen cabinets needed replacing, but Ellen wanted to wait until after we repaired the back steps. I repeated these facts aloud and added others whenever they occurred to me.
Then I could not remember whether Walter was the dog or the name of the man next door.
I went to the screen and asked for paper. It opened a field labeled Additional information, and I typed everything I could remember. I described Ellen’s face, the way she tucked her hair behind one ear while driving, and the smell of the hand lotion she kept beside the sink. I wrote that she had been frightened when I fell and that I needed to know someone had reached her.
When I pressed submit, the words disappeared. A message thanked me for helping improve my experience.
I tried opening the field again, but it was empty. I typed Ellen’s name, submitted it, and watched another check mark appear. After that I sat with my hands beneath my legs so I would stop giving the room things it would not return.
The music grew fuller without getting louder. Somewhere beneath the guitar, another note lingered after it should have ended. I could hear a rough edge in it, almost a voice, and I began leaning forward each time the melody approached that part. Occasionally I thought it was saying my name. More often I thought I recognized it simply because I had listened so many times.
I found a mark beneath the table while looking for a speaker. Someone had scratched words into the finish, close to the edge where a seated person could reach.
My wife is Ellen. Ask about Ellen.
I crawled backward and sat on the floor. There were other marks farther underneath, but the table would not turn over, and I could not bring them into focus. I ran my thumbnail along the first sentence and found a small rough place on the nail that fit the groove.
I remembered writing it only after I returned to the chair. I had done it because the information field would not save my words. I also remembered finding it once before, although that memory was less certain.
The woman thanked me for my patience. I asked whether anyone was actually coming, and the screen briefly displayed something different. Several lines of small text appeared behind the blue circle, too quickly for me to read except for the words continuity and reassurance. Then my number returned.
I had questions about those words, but I could no longer organize them. I knew there had been a reason to stay alert, something more important than getting through the door. When I looked beneath the table, the writing seemed familiar without helping.
I sat back and listened. The guitar had become quieter, and I could not tell whether the other sound was fading or whether I had grown used to it. There was a little pause where the tune seemed ready to finish. I waited through it and heard the first note again, softer this time.
“Someone will be with you shortly,” the woman said.
I told her I understood. It seemed important not to make trouble before I knew what was going on, and the chair was comfortable enough that I could close my eyes for a minute. I stretched my legs and was pleased to find that my knee did not hurt.
When I opened my eyes, I noticed a small screen beside the door. A blue circle turned around a telephone icon, and beneath it was a number I assumed was mine. Music played somewhere overhead, a pleasant guitar melody that sounded familiar, although I could not remember where I had heard it.
I settled into the chair to wait. Near the end of the tune, I thought someone began to speak, so I leaned forward a little and listened.