David G. Hallman's Blog

About six weeks after Bill's death, I found myself becoming anxious about forgetting details of those incredibly intense two weeks between the day he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and the day he died. It felt to me that if I forgot, it would be like losing Bill all over again. So I decided to create a record of those sixteen days. As I started writing, I was reminded of events from our thirty-three years together as a gay couple. Quite spontaneously, as they occurred to me, I began integrating vignettes from our past into the chronology of his dying days. The result was August Farewell.

After the X-ray is finished and the technician thanks Bill for the new joke, she pages an orderly to deliver us to the next testing site. Bill's bed is wheeled to a distant wing in the hospital and we are placed in the corridor queue for a CAT scan. There are several patients ahead of us, but the line moves pretty expeditiously and within fifteen minutes or so a technician comes into the hall and asks Bill if he is William Conklin. This time I am not allowed to go into the room with him but am directed to a nearby waiting room.

I wonder if he is telling her the dead duck joke.

For the first time today, Bill and I are separated. I have nothing to do but sit and wait. And think.

I replay the day's activities in my mind. It has been frenetic since Bill's early morning wake-up call. Because of the pace, I have not digested the implications of the activities. We are here at the hospital because Bill's doctor was concerned about the most recent tests results. We are now in the medical imaging department because the emergency room doctor was concerned about what we told her about Bill's recent history and about what she saw when she examined him.

Maybe we are finally going to get some solid answers as to what is going on with Bill.

But now as I sit here wondering what the CAT scan may show, I find myself having qualms about whether I really want to know after all.