Exit

~ Where do I put my trust, you ask? Everywhere. Even into the arms of strangers.~

I do not want to know it, but I do: I know this is the last day I'm here. I feel it in the deep-seated and radiating pain in the chest, and in the tripping, trembling, unhinged muscle in it. I feel it in the way I'm holding the pen (one of the few remaining ones from the pharmacy while I still worked there), and writing, meticulously, conscientiously, small notes about my rising blood pressure in a spare wall calendar -- for someone to find; maybe collect or take a picture of. I feel it in the way the air of this June day seems to be reaching an exhaustion point, announcing a vacuum after.

This is not how I imagined it. How I imagined it ...  is not just yet, and with enough time to say a few words in person, words that are self-aware, words that mark the end of something, words that rise tall and protect whatever and whoever stays behind. Instead, I am spending this last day far from those who will stay behind, who still don't know that I am going. They are hundreds, thousands of kilometers far, and there is no time for any of them to come before this day is over. There are some minutes in this day when I numb myself into thinking that this turbulence will pass like all the other ones before, and tomorrow I'll pick up the phone and call all of them one by one, and tell them about it, and tell them with relief that it was a false alarm, or perhaps I won't even mention it, but I will use the opportunity and tell them, just in case, those words I have been rehearsing my whole life, it seems. In those minutes, I refuse to believe that this is what I fear it is. But then, there is the violent vomiting, the 911 calls, the ambulance and fuss of getting out of the apartment building in the stretcher, the wary looks of random passers-by, urgent gasping for breath as the panic kicks in again and the real me knows that this is really happening right now, to me. That I will not come back to my home. That whatever I left scattered in the chaos of the critical departure -- my slippers, my glasses, my pen -- will have to be picked up and tidied by someone else. That I'd better look carefully at the June-green chestnut tree in front of the entrance as they are carrying me past it, where my children played when they were little; I'd better take the mental snapshot of it with me -- I have no other pictures, no mementos, no souvenirs. How could this be? Is it fear that made me so unprepared? I always planned for everything, even the most trivial things, always thinking ahead, anticipating situations and securing solutions even before they were needed... But I failed to plan for this. For my exit from this last day. For my own exit.

The moment they lock the stretcher into position inside the ambulance, my life does not belong to me any more. I am out of my depth here, and through the fear and the rugged pain nestled insidiously inside that vulnerable spot in my chest, I am trying to hang on to the image of the sky-patch I caught a glimpse of just before they closed the door at the back and, immediately, a thought comes to me -- of a glittering star-filled sky one night towards the end of the war, as my mother held me in her arms somewhere outside. Mother. And when the news reaches her-- what then? Through the deafening wailing of the sirens, I am straining to hear the usual, normal noises of a regular day in this city where I have been living for many years, in these streets which I walked thousands of times, carrying bags, groceries, presents, happiness to those at home; as I am lying here, I am imagining known faces -- a neighbour, a colleague, a family friend -- walking down the street obliviously as the ambulance wails by, not suspecting that I am inside, never to return.

If they knew, what would they do?

The car winds down the green, tree-lined streets of the city, before it goes uphill to the distant central clinic. I do not see outside but the auto-pilot in me is vaguely sensing the route, now passing somewhere close by the first pharmacy I worked in. There is that photo of all the pharmacists in our white coats, on this street on a green day not unlike today, proudly posing with our young faces turned towards the camera. The howling of the siren, and the skipping, loud and vibrating rhythms of that contracting muscle blow this image up to shreds, which disperse along the street... Who will end up with that photo? And will they know the names of my colleagues in it...

Then the commotion of the arrival at the hospital -- too soon, not leaving me enough time to think of this city, to part from it (it was a good city, despite a few dark years during the civil war), before the rushing, and the long corridors, and the flickering lights, and the busy strangers with kind, uninterested faces who take me and my body even further away from the familiar, who stamp even more categorically my exit from the worldly regions, and an entrance into some uncharted territory. Some purgatory. Is this really how it is going to be? Hospital sheets, smell of disinfectant, distant faces? The muscle is spastic, my hands begin to tremble --

In and out. Drifting, sedated. The light has changed, dispersed, then concentrated in the bright bulbs overhead. The edges of my body have become fuzzy; the central pain has lost its blade but my chest feels indented, sunk under an undefined weight; it feels like the slightest move will trigger another onset... When my daughter was six, she was often sick with bronchitis. Once, they kept her in the hospital, in a small room with a few beds on the ground floor; they took the little plastic bag she was clutching with a comic book and a couple of other personal items from home, and put it away in a drawer -- I saw her face sink, and her chin begin to tremble, on the verge of tears. Then my husband and I walked outside to the back of the building, found her room and the window through which we saw her, leaned our faces in, and knocked on the glass, with big smiles on... In and out. The window in this room is black, it is night-time. The man in the other bed is quiet, living through some reckoning of his own.

My mind is a riot of torn thoughts. They said not to think of anything, not to talk, not even to move, the night was critical. But how can I do that, on a night like tonight... Everything is screaming for attention, to be once more considered, remembered, imagined, to be there. To be. If only there were a known voice. I think of my cell phone, but they have taken it somewhere to another room; this is Intensive Care, here you can only lie (in silence) and wait (in silence) and hope (in silence), and even my husband was asked to leave. And that was it for us. 40 years and no real goodbye. Like a small animal cornered into a hopeless position, my mind is defeated but can't believe it is defeated and is testing the walls of the enclosure over and over again. If only I could hear a voice, share the burden of an unwanted end, the shame of helplessness, the grief of being silenced by a cruel solitude... My son's voice, talkative, garrulous. I told him many times we'd be millionaires if he spat out money with every word he uttered. A golden sense of humour, and a kindness, a protectiveness behind it, always on the alert. I have surprised myself by learning that I can rely on him - a young man now, who used to be that little thing that would toddle over into the pantry and stick both his hands into the sack of flour because it made him so happy, whom everyone used to call "the little guy"... But he'd be worried and scared now, because my voice does not sound like my voice any more; because it would betray the need to say goodbye. Is there a time when you should forget about not worrying others, especially if they are your children? Is this one of those times? But there is no choice anyway. I am stuck here, with an emptiness outside, and a fidgeting inside.

There is a hint -- is it just a hint? -- of a surge, still distant, still uncertain, rising from somewhere deep; I'm listening for signs. In this blurred and fraught state, it is hard to distinguish the dreaded from the real. I hope for some more time. A little more. A little more time to think, against that distant rumble, about the last words I said... What did I say? What will they remember? Was the last known person I saw the son of the family friends who works as an anesthesiologist in this hospital? My husband must have asked him to drop in to see me, to assess the situation. I remember him from my daughter's third birthday -- my son was not born yet. He was a gap-toothed kid, about 9, had a striped buttoned-down cardigan, and agreed shyly to sing a song while I played the accordion...

... the accordion I had hugged close to me on many stages, framed into dozens of black-and-white photographs: an obedient bright-eyed kid with hair clips and thin arms, a young woman with a coy smile, uneasy in front of the microphone... A young woman with her hair covered by a shawl tied under her chin, her half-closed eyes looking wistfully into the distance, into the heart of the matter, perhaps, the winter sun everywhere on her face and her hair. I am beyond fear now. The thuds of the drums in these depths are still in the background, but are unmistakable. Getting louder.More erratic. I do not want to know it but it is inevitable. Inevitable, like the best things in life. I told her: Tijana, did you hear how rich that music is. There is no richer music than the swell of the classical orchestra. Everything is there, everything. Will she remember

Will they remember that song about the bunny we used to sing, a long long time ago

From the vast horizon of nothingness, we carve out our golden moments to have and to hold, until they too go extinct.

A tide is rising, carrying with it anything in its way, rising towards the surface, lifting my upper body abruptly, bending me in the middle. The man from the next bed is suddenly right there, propping me up, holding a tray up to my mouth for all the liquid. A visceral tremor cuts into the core, shakes up the roots -- there will be more -- and while somewhere beyond the drums of the darker register, the commotion of the hospital panic-sounds begins to barrel down the corridor towards us, and before they burst inside, press me down, clear the bed, and switch on their machines, I manage to look up at this man, this stranger, holding me and the tray, I look him in the eyes, and in the oasis of silence which blooms like a delicate flower, he is now you, all of you; my mother, my father, my brother, my husband, my son, and my daughter, and the moon-faced girl with the sun on her covered hair, looking dreamily into the distance.

And you are all with me, now.