The old man leapt up from his desk and confronted me. “You weren’t trying to resuscitate me, were you?” He demanded. “Everyone’s trying to resuscitate me,” he went on, shouting and drawing attention to himself. Eyes turned to me since I was the one getting reamed out. “Can’t a man keel over at his desk and fall lifeless to the floor without a bunch of damn do-gooders and screwball Samaritans bothering him?” He got right up in my face and continued screaming, “Go back to your work, whoever you are, and let me pass on in peace! Interfere with my death once more and I’ll have the law on you!”
As calmly as I could, I protested that I didn’t realize he was trying to die. I had just moved in at the desk beside his, and was only trying to warn him that the boss was making rounds while he was clearly sound asleep. I thought he would want to know that if he valued his job.
“Oh, who gives a crumb about that little pustule? He’s the one who dialed 911 when I died last week, and we all know how that worked out,” he said, growing ever more incensed.
I sheepishly took my seat beside him while he continued to glower at me. “Sorry,” I muttered, and shyly introduced myself as his new coworker. I didn’t add that next time he lost consciousness in my presence, he could consider himself interred.
Later, after he had calmed down and fallen asleep once more, evidently his function here, Marge, the young lady on the other side of me, told me that he had been sorely disappointed by his first death, and more and more was acting out his frustration with it. Whenever anyone spoke to him, or called his name, or handed him a memo, or asked him what his lunch plans were, or inquired as to when he might retire, or made any sound or sudden movement whatsoever, he immediately leaped to the conclusion that he was at death’s door and the troublesome party was pulling him back from his richly deserved demise. It was after he was hauled away on a stretcher the first time that he began to show up in the office not only with his nose out of joint by a mile, but wearing a silver Do Not Resuscitate necklace and a gold Do Not Resuscitate breastpin, neither one sufficient alone. He also placed a wooden placard on his desk, on top of a copy of his living will, that in all capitals shouted DNR.
“Was being revived the first time so excruciating that he can’t bear the thought of going through it again?” I asked Marge.
“Yes,” she replied. “It would seem so.”
I avoided contact with him as much as possible, a difficult task since he began most mornings by fixing me with a baleful look and saying with heavy sarcasm, “Not calling any first responders today, now are we? I don’t have to watch the elevator for men with oxygen tanks and defibrillators, now do I? You do agree that a speedy death is every citizen’s right, now don’t you?” I usually bowed my head in silence and got to work. In fairness to him he directed those questions not only to me, but looked around as he spoke to include all those around us who might be listening in. Some of these, I noticed from the corner of my eye, shot him dead with a pretend handgun or moved an imaginary knife across his throat. If anyone looked at me, to see how I, as closest to him, was bearing up, I sometimes mowed him down with a fictive assault rifle.
Our boss would mention him at the meetings he failed to attend, and explain that he, the boss, was doing all he could to encourage retirement, but couldn’t force the issue due to the man’s seniority and uncanny ability to do useful work while either at death’s door or sound sleep. But he did mention that he felt we were legally in the clear if we let him expire the next time he collapsed, and expressed sincere regret that he had been the one to call the life squad the first time. Marge said she thought of buying him a ticket to one of those European suicide spas where they gently assist you to stop your heartbeat, in case he would agree to that, but she had checked and the price was prohibitive. She told us the price, and it was.
After I’d been there three weeks, he had what appeared to be another life-threatening incident in the file room. Marge, who was not just young but attractive, witnessed it, and said he keeled over right after asking her to accompany him to the Bahamas for his annual weeklong vacation. “Looks like you might have to cancel those plans,” I ribbed her, but she ignored this. Now he lay on the floor, slowly looking around and muttering, “Nothing to see here, move on, continue as you were, notify no one.” Soon twenty or thirty people were staring at him as he lay motionless in a corner, several spilled files open on him. Everyone was afraid to move, even to breathe, lest any commotion somehow revive him. Finally the boss, after standing there shaking his head for ten minutes, said, “I’m sorry, folks, but I can’t just let him die. I’m going to dial 911.” At that the dying man, who had closed his eyes, opened them wide and screamed, “Not again, you’re not!” He jumped five feet in the air and landed squarely on the boss’s shoulders. After riding him like a bull for a minute, the oldster fell on his neck, dying instantly.
His funeral drew an amazing crowd of celebrants, of whom I was one of the gladdest.
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Michael Fowler writes humor and horror in Ohio.