With Dignity

Mary Zheng

(originally featured
in issue xxii.i)

Last night I had a dream that a dog was dying in the middle of a field.

He is my dog. Mine, and the dozen or so other people all clustered around him. We want to be with him as the sparks dwindle from his eyes, as his soul floats out with his final breath, rising towards the burning sun. 

But he doesn’t want us there. As soon as we settle on the ground around him like some strange dog-worshipping cult, he uses his last few specks of strength to hoist himself up onto his paws and haul himself away from us, his tail dragging along the yellowed wheat.

Seeing as it is a dream, I instinctively know why: he wants to die with dignity. He doesn’t want us to see him like this; he wants us to remember him as he was—not like this. 

I know animal psychologists say that dogs go to die alone because of instinct, not dignity. Feeble and defenseless, their aim is to hide from predators. 

Not in my dream. In my world, dying with dignity is as necessary as living with it. 

//

He can’t find his pants. 

This wouldn’t be an issue if the taxi I’ve called wasn’t already waiting for him outside the emergency room, or if the closet of donated clothes wasn’t a ten-minute walk away in another corridor of the hospital, but the taxi is here, and the clothes are far. So the nurse gives him paper pants. 

I stand outside the curtain of his room, waiting for him to change out of his hospital gown. The sooner I can escort him to his taxi, the sooner I can go to the other patients who need a social worker. After waiting a while, I realize I don’t hear the shuffling of sneakers or the unzipping of a backpack—just grunting that is as rhythmic as the ticking of a clock, as constrained as laughter at a funeral. Every grunt is a brush stroke that paints clearer to me the image of a man, struggling. I superimpose that image upon the one I’ve seen earlier: him slumped over in his bed like a broken stalk, a disappearing collection of sagging flesh and brittle bones under a sad white blanket. 

“Can I help?” I ask, eyebrows corrugating with concern. 

//

In college, I am part of a group that brings unserved dining room meals to the homeless. Donning plastic gloves, I plop heaps of overcooked green beans and lukewarm cheeseburgers onto frail paper plates. I smile into the faces of people hungry for a free meal. 

At the conclusion of one of the lunches, as I peel off my spaghetti stained gloves to spritz a table with Clorox, one of the men who has finished eating makes his way to me. 

“Can I help?” he asks, meekly, but full of longing. 

I almost say No, I got it, but something in me wonders more about the genesis of his question than the future of my response. Something in me flickers awake, and I wonder if giving, even just a little, makes the taking easier—wonder if there are things in this life far greater than food, housing, money.  

“I would love some help,” I say. 

Soon after he begins wiping down the tables, someone else grabs a broom and starts sweeping the tiled floor. Another sets off collecting marinara soaked plates to dump into the trash can. One by one, everyone in the room rises to help. 

Oh, we are all hungry for so much more. 

//

“I can’t find my pants,” he exhales.  

“I’m sorry, I hope the paper ones are okay.” 

No response. Just grunting. 

I take a breath and pray to God he’s not naked as I peel back the curtain just enough so that I can wiggle into his room. He is yanking on the thick, Pappardelle-like, drawstrings of his blue paper pants to try and pull them as tight as possible before he marries them into a knot. Tighter, tighter, tighter. As tight as you can, or else they’ll slip. 

They look like the sort of pants where, if a wintry gust were to barrel by, you’d feel every ice blue molecule ramming jagged into your bone of bones, leaving you to wonder if you were wearing anything at all. This would make sense, given that these are disposable medical scrubs meant to be worn over existing clothes—they are meant to be as breathable as possible, not to be worn as somebody’s only cover. 

After he wrangles the drawstrings into a knot, he struggles to grab his belongings, so I help. I place everything that is his into his already stuffed pillowcase. A pillowcase will have to do when you don’t have a backpack. 

//

I walk by a woman placed in the hallway of the emergency room. 

She is a ball of frustration imploding onto itself, bursting wild at the seams with hot tears and rage. I am on my way to another patient, but I stop when I see her.

“What’s wrong?” I ask. I worry that if my two brows furrow anymore they will bleed into one.

“It hurts so much,” she moans, motioning to the abscess in her right shoulder. 

She didn’t know you weren’t supposed to skin pop—that is, inject straight under the skin instead of into a vein—with meth. I don’t think skin popping is technically safe with anything, but I’ll take her word for it that it’s worse with meth than fentanyl. 

“I’ve been tryin’ to not take fentanyl but the pain is killin’ me and I’m scared I’m gonna have to. I need something for this,” she says, her face contorting into a scowling grimace. It is a cruel twist of fate how a smile can scream agony. 

“Let me go find your doctor,” I say. 

I return with the doctor and the doctor is frigid, mechanical—tired of the patient before she’s even met her.

“I’m sorry, we can’t give you any—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m a fucking junkie,” the patient says, spitting out the last word like a hunk of rotten milk.

I stare at her, my eyes swimming with sorrow. I know I should say something, but I’m horribly unprepared for the brutality of her words. They are daggers thrown by herself, flying a thousand miles an hour straight at herself. 

I will rewind and play and rewind and play that shame in my mind for days until I know what I wish I could have said: “Don’t talk about yourself like that. You’re just human, and you’re doing the best you can.”

I am prepared to use those words as a shield, for the next time someone tries to harm themself.

//

With his cane in his hand and his pillowcase in mine, we make our way to the taxi. He reminds me of a captured turtle let loose—surprisingly fast—but he’s inconsistent. He hobbles like a howling hurricane for a few feet until he slows, looking as if he’ll bow down broken. 

When we shuffle our way to the taxi, the driver rushes to open the door and I crawl inside, dropping the pillowcase into the opposite corner. I retreat, and I see the man hunched over, sizing up the expanse between his white Air Force Ones and the lip of the rear door, paying careful attention to the steep ravine where the sidewalk plummets into the street. 

“How can I help?” I ask. 

“Pull my pants up if they fall,” he commands in a soft whisper. 

Then, while grunting, as if every movement introduces to his body another shard of glass, he orchestrates a calculated fall into the cab. 

I return to my desk. I ask aloud to anyone who will listen, “How can you have dignity wearing paper pants?” 

“You can’t,” another social worker says, without even swiveling her chair around to look at me. Without missing a goddamn beat.