Final Companion (1370 hits)
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Rating: 1.88 on 46 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2006-04-09 15:02:37 EDT
(This thing popped into my head while I was down on my hands and knees scrubbing my kitchen floor this morning. Yeah, just call me Mr. Excitement. Anyhow, I thought I'd write it down before it slipped away.)
Final Companion
I pulled into the lot and parked, getting out of the car and pausing to look up at the sky. Above me was that rich California blue that makes you giddy and mellows you out at the same time. It was a beautiful spring day. As good a day to die as any, I suppose.
The car horn toot-tooted behind me. I turned and saw Stan sitting on the passenger seat, his gray and bushy tail wagging away, hitting the chrome ring and sounding the old Chevrolet's horn.
I'd taught him to stay in the car until I said it was okay to come out.
"Let's go," I said.
Stan let out a little 'hrumph' and carefully stepped down out of the car. There was a time when Stan would have barked vigorously and launched himself into the air, but that was years ago.
I went into the building and stopped at the reception desk, smelling antiseptic and pine air freshener. Sounds were muted here. The paint on the walls was off-white, clean, soothing.
I'd been in places far worse than this. State-funded institutions were the worst. Hospices like this one, surviving on public funding alone, somehow always got it right.
The woman at the desk glanced up from her paperwork. There were lines worn into her face, creasing her forehead and bracketing her mouth, lines that were the insignia of women around the world and throughout the ages who worked to help others simply because it was the right thing to do.
"I'm here to see Mrs. Heller," I said.
Stan's toenails ticked on the linoleum floor.
The receptionist stood and peered over the desk.
"I'm sorry," she said, "but animals are not allowed in this facility. Unless you are a family member, and she has none as far as I can recall, you'll have to—"
"I'm from Final Companion," I said.
The woman's face changed, softened a little, as much as those hard-earned lines would allow.
"Oh," she said.
I smiled. I knew what was coming next.
"Mrs. Heller could pass at any time," she said, lowering her voice. "But she seemed okay when I saw her yesterday, as okay as anyone can be losing the fight against osteosarcoma."
She moved a few papers on her desk and then asked, "Why are you here now? Today?"
I looked down at Stan, looked up, and shrugged. "It's his call," I said.
"Well," the woman said, coming around the desk, "I'm Anne Gordon. Follow me."
I introduced myself and followed her down the hall. We passed a number of doors and then Ms. Gordon opened one.
"Laura," she whispered. "There's... there's a man here from, well, from Final Companion."
I heard a murmur.
"All right," Ms. Gordon said. She turned to me and opened the door wide.
When I had said I was from Final Companion I hadn't told the whole truth, but I hadn't lied either.
I was Final Companion. Just me, and the animals who did all the hard work.
I've been doing this for twenty-five years now. Stan was the sixth final companion I had worked with.
I stepped into the room, thanked Ms. Gordon, and closed the door.
"Hi," I said. "Mrs. Heller? This is Stan."
The old lady in the bed raised her head off her pillow and winced, reached for the button that controlled her morphine drip, and then smiled through her pain when she saw Stan's goofy face.
She was small, wasted from the cancer. I could tell she had lost her breasts to the disease years ago, and yet her chest pushed up against the sheet and blanket covering her. The tumors growing inside the bones expanded and distorted the strongest of our internal structures.
I couldn't imagine the pain.
I sat in a chair by the window. There was a tree outside and the leaves stirred in a light breeze, a lovely, calming sound.
I sat and watched the leaves move and let Stan do what he came here to do.
Stan was a weird mix. He had the musculature and coloring of a pit bull, but he was the size of a German Shepard, and had a bushy tail and big floppy ears.
He also had a goofy, lopsided grin that made everyone who saw him smile.
I'd been driving down Stanyan Street in San Francisco when I first saw him eight years ago. He'd been sitting on the median, his coat a mess, his tail full of burrs.
He was a stray, and he'd been waiting for me.
I'd stopped the car in the right hand lane and opened the door, ignoring the yell of a cab driver behind me.
Stan had leaped across me into the passenger seat, he was a lot more spry then, and I had driven home with him.
I had lost my last final companion only two days before. Edgar was a little terrier. He'd died in his sleep. No pain.
Stan sat beside the bed, his tongue hanging out on side of his mouth, his tail slowly swishing across the clean floor.
"Mrs. Pennybaker down the hall told me about you," Mrs. Heller said. She raised one terribly wasted hand and let it settle on Stan's head. "She said that there was a special creature who could help me, and here you are."
When I started doing this it was by word of mouth, and I continue to operate that way today. I have no website, no business cards, no office. I have no snappy slogan or catchphrase - 'Final Companion, Your Friend at the End!'
I have no special training, no license, and in the eyes of any and all bodies of authority I had no right to be here.
"What a pretty boy you are." Mrs. Heller grinned, and for a moment I could see the strong and lovely face of the woman she had once been. She looked into Stan's big brown eyes and her fingers twitched, the best she could manage as far as petting him went.
Stan gave another 'hrumph,' and simply sat there, looking at Mrs. Heller.
She eased her head back into her pillow and closed her eyes, her face relaxing. Her smile changed, not reflecting amusement, but simple peace of mind.
Euthanasia is against the law. People get so sick and suffer such incurable, inescapable pain that they need a way out.
This is an age-old conflict.
And this is where I come in, and Stan, and those final companions before him.
The animals do all the work. I just find them.
That, and having a knack for picking winning lottery numbers were the only talents I had. I never won big in the lottery, but I took home a couple of grand every other month. It was enough to pay the rent and keep a stock of pet food in the pantry.
I started with Rascal, a quarter-century ago. Rascal had been a little dachshund, with bright eyes and a wiry coat. I'd stepped outside my front door early one Sunday to grab the newspaper and Rascal had been there, waiting for me.
I had looked at him, and Rascal had looked back with those bright little eyes, and I known. I had just known.
Mrs. Heller took a deep breath, and let it out slow and smooth, the respiration of a person about to nap on the couch on a Saturday afternoon, chores done, mind at peace.
Stan raised his gray muzzle a little, his big black nose touching the inside of the old lady's wrist.
Counting Rascal and Stan I've worked with three dogs, two cats, and a rat I called Billy-bob. The cats tended to snuggle up alongside the dying and purr loudly, almost as if humming a lullaby. Billy-bob would curl up on a chest or perch on a forearm, his long pink tail wrapped around his gray and white body, his whiskers twitching as he studied a human face with eyes like tiny black beads.
At some point, probably no more than ten minutes after we entered the room, Stan let out a whimper.
I went down the hall and found Mrs. Gordon, who summoned a nurse practitioner.
Mrs. Heller was finally at peace.
I went out to the car with Stan, wondering as always if the final companions sent the dying on their way and cut short their suffering, or if they simply appeared at the right time to be a friend at the very end.
Stan curled up in the passenger seat and we hit the road. I scratched his head.
"Good boy, Stan. Good old guy"
Stan looked at me a while, and then closed his eyes. The old boy was tired.
The dying I visited were always alone at the end, no family or friends to hold their hands or comfort them.
I was halfway home when I felt something move by me, a warm current that made my heart speed up.
I looked down at Stan, and I knew. He was gone.
When I got home I took him into the house. I knew that when I finished crying I would call Pet's Rest out in Colma. They would pick up Stan's tired old body, and in a few days they would send his ashes to me. I would put them in a little wooden box, with a photo of Stan on the front. The box would go on the mantle over the fireplace, alongside five other boxes.
One day, when my time came, I would be cremated as well, and my final wish was that all of our ashes be mixed together and sprinkled upon the dark blue waters of the Pacific Ocean that I could see every day from my window.
A few days passed, and during that time I missed Stan terribly.
On a Friday night I went down to the corner store to grab some sodas, maybe some root beer. Hunkered down beside a trashcan and licking the inside of a discarded Andes ice cream sandwich wrapper was a little cat. The little half-Siamese, half-whatever had blue eyes and a mottled coat.
She looked up at me, licking her whiskers clean, giving her head a shake as if something was in her ears. Her coat was filthy. This little one needed a good bath and a visit to the vet.
She looked up at me and I knew. I just knew.
"Andy," I said. She was a girl, but what the hell. "Want to come home with me, Andy?"
The little half-Siamese let out a meow like a squeaking hinge.
"Okay," I said.
I picked her up and carried her home.
User Reviews
Submitted by TigerLilly (user info) at 2007-01-11 04:23:16 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Ok, I'm really confused....???
http://www.ubersite.com/m/97549
Who is pulling my leg???????/
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2007-01-10 12:20:46 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
I guess you are right. I bow humbly before Uber's literary master...
--
The heavy oak door swung open easily, too easy for it to be anything other than a well hinged, maintained door. A light push on the cross bar was all it took to open. Inside, the narrow hallway seemed to have no ceiling, the walls were of exposed stone, it was as if the passageway had been hewn from the living rock, only the highly polished marble tiled floor bore the intricacies of the work of man. At the end of the corridor was a dim light which flickered and waved like the light of flame rather than bulb. A muted roar came from the direction of the light, a sound like the crashing of waves upon rock. Karsten followed the light and the noise, pulling his hood down further over his eyes, until after almost ten minutes of walking noiselessly forward the passageway abruptly opened into a cavernous hall, the view took his breath away.
The hall was circular. The sides were approximately twenty feet higher than the bottom to give the impression of a huge bowl or stadium cut into the rock. There were steps in front of him which led down to the very base of the bowl. The bottom was around the size of a football field with a huge pit in the middle from whence seemed to come the noise. Around the sides of the bowl at floor level to where Karsten was now standing were thousands of lit torches. The heat from the torches was stinging Karsten's eyes which by now were truly open wide in astonishment. Despite the amount of torches the size of the room was such that they gave off only a glow sufficient to see vague outlines at the bottom of the bowl.. As he inched forward to get a better look he stopped abruptly. He held his breath. A noise. From behind him him.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2007-01-10 11:51:20 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
terribly contrived
lottery tickets.
haHAHAHAHHAHAHA
Submitted by Razor (user info) at 2007-01-10 11:41:34 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
HAHAHA
http://www.ubersite.com/m/97548
Submitted by Method (user info) at 2007-01-10 11:40:28 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
<flutters eyelashes innocently>
Submitted by icarus1987 (user info) at 2007-01-10 11:35:41 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
*WEEPS*
Submitted by hour_man (user info) at 2007-01-10 11:33:38 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Because Method stole it. This was fucking sound man. If you stopped nobbing around and stuck to what your good at you'd be in my top5.... and I know how much that means to people....
Submitted by Nellypaal (user info) at 2006-04-12 11:14:37 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Really enjoyed this. Very good indeed.
Submitted by Oxymoron (user info) at 2006-04-10 22:51:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-04-09 18:22:51 (#)
Ranking: 2
I printed this out for my old lady to read when she gets back
from the store. When she reads it she will probably cry, given the ages of
our dogs. Bad man, Jack. Go to your corner!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-04-10 22:41:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-04-10 22:03:27 (#)
Ranking: 2
Far out!! The U.S. mail was good to me today. Thanks!!!
--
Whenever you finish, read these again.
This features Al Johnson, http://www.ubersite.com/m/77500
This has a link to the Compound, http://www.ubersite.com/m/77102
Enjoy!
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-04-10 22:03:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Far out!! The U.S. mail was good to me today. Thanks!!!
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2006-04-10 21:44:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Jack, this was heartwarming. I got teary eyed at the end.
Good job.
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-04-10 19:28:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
(continued from previous review)
WHAT A RIPOFF, I WANT MY 'E' TICKET BACK
Submitted by JonnyX (user info) at 2006-04-10 19:26:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
so, wait a minute...you mean, they just up and died? Like regular people do?
No life-force stealing vapors come out of the dog? No con-artistry by the narrator? Not even ONE explosion???
Submitted by awesome_face (user info) at 2006-04-10 17:23:09 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Everyone else gave it a 2 but i have no soul or opinions of my own.
Submitted by EntityErased (user info) at 2006-04-10 15:17:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Amazing.
Submitted by jack11058 (user info) at 2006-04-10 14:49:38 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
why you aren't yet doing this for insane amounts of money i'll never know...
Submitted by ruthless (user info) at 2006-04-10 14:02:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Awesome.
Submitted by hyprspacd (user info) at 2006-04-10 13:16:28 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Nice.
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2006-04-10 11:38:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by fuzzy_buzz (user info) at 2006-04-10 11:09:53 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Big watery eyes
Submitted by ghola (user info) at 2006-04-10 10:44:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by PrevertEnabler (user info) at 2006-04-10 09:42:32 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm tempted to let my mom read it, but she would be in tears by the end. Great story.
Submitted by nrduncan (user info) at 2006-04-10 09:24:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by simple_catalyst (user info) at 2006-04-10 09:17:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by c1ndy (user info) at 2006-04-10 03:42:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by Crystle (user info) at 2006-04-10 03:39:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
See... beneath the crusty old surface and the bubbling ire, there is indeed beauty.
thank you
Submitted by Serious_Melvin (user info) at 2006-04-10 03:35:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You're pretty good, you should consider joining UberMadness.
What?
Submitted by LittleMonster (user info) at 2006-04-10 03:31:40 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by cascade (user info) at 2006-04-10 03:21:24 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked the transition of the final companions, the context- seeing one doing his job at the end of his own life (vs. if Stan had just been a dog with this gift). makes me think it ain't such a bad way to go...
Submitted by kaos-king (user info) at 2006-04-10 01:36:05 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
...and this is why I made you a giant living computer powered by a mutant brain.
Submitted by Bigmike (user info) at 2006-04-09 23:20:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
(This thing popped into my head while I was down on my hands and knees scrubbing my kitchen floor this morning. Yeah, just call me Mr. Excitement. Anyhow, I thought I'd write it down before it slipped away.)
You're a wierdo like me.
You think of stories while doing the most mundane of tasks.
Submitted by Benny (user info) at 2006-04-09 22:47:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
That was a very touching tale. Amazing.
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2006-04-09 22:12:07 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
So good I wish I'd thought of it.
Submitted by MonkeyingAround (user info) at 2006-04-09 21:46:03 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
once you go into "my account" I forgot to tell you to click the link for "my profile" then write your display name in the appropriate box... really good story it's worth the 4 pts in my opinion.
Submitted by MonkeyingAround (user info) at 2006-04-09 21:43:27 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
you change your display name by going into "my account" and typing you new display name in the appropriate box. great story by the way.
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2006-04-09 21:28:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
*sniffles*
Submitted by tlozoot (user info) at 2006-04-09 21:03:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'm not sure i "get" it, but this was excellent.
Submitted by Cyrus (user info) at 2006-04-09 18:24:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Interesting
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-04-09 18:22:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I printed this out for my old lady to read when she gets back
from the store. When she reads it she will probably cry, given the ages of
our dogs. Bad man, Jack. Go to your corner!
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-04-09 17:10:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I, too, am an Uberdunce, but I think he means change it to
Final Companion. How? Beats the fuck outta me.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2006-04-09 17:01:25 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-04-09 15:11:12 (#)
Ranking: 2
Change your MVA name
--
1. Change it? Why?
2. Change it to what?
3. I'm an Uberdunce. I don't know to change it.
4. It took me forever to figure out the label thingy.
5. There is no 5.
Submitted by pragmatic (user info) at 2006-04-09 16:13:30 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I liked this a lot
Submitted by sparkle_pink (user info) at 2006-04-09 15:26:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This was beautiful.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2006-04-09 15:23:00 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Words are sometimes so inadequate. We have one urn of ashes on the bookshelf,
and, having 16 and 15 year-old dogs, there will soon be two more. Our two cats
are only about 5, so that won't be for a while. Good stuff as always...
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2006-04-09 15:11:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Change your MVA name