Chapter 8 Jack

Tony Patricelli died at 8:52 a.m. with his parents, his siblings, and a couple of ex-girlfriends at his side. His passing was peaceful, mainly because he'd been pumped full of morphine to ease the pain of his bone cancer. He drew one last rattled breath, and that, as they say, was that.

Jack Moriarity had known from the beginning that his line of work—hospice and palliative nursing—would be hard. But he hadn't anticipated it would be this hard.

His interest in the field had begun the summer he was fifteen, when his single mother had slowly wasted away from cancer. When chemo and radiation hadn't worked, she'd decided to let nature take its course. And Jack, her only child, had spent that summer lying on the bed with her, looking through old photos and videos, eating licorice, and talking about the future.

It hadn't been his idea to talk about the future—even to his fifteen-year-old brain, it had seemed unnecessarily cruel to imagine a life without her. But his mother had insisted. She said that death was part of life, and all anyone really needed to pass from one realm to the other was someone to hold their hand.

He held her hand all the way to the end. And to this day, he couldn't abide the smell of licorice.

His mother had arranged for Jack to go live with her maternal aunt in California, who, as far as Jack knew, was the only family his mother had. He'd never known his father—his mother had said he wasn't important. Jack thought he could have been really important, especially that summer. But whatever. He went to live with Aunt Patricia.

Aunt Patricia wasn't bad. Though he never felt any affection from her, she took her duty seriously. She made sure he was provided for and had a college fund. Who could blame her lack of enthusiasm? People didn't get to seventy years old and hope to take in a teenager. But he could look back now and see how much he'd needed a little love. A hug, a pat on the head. Something. He'd lost his mom, had never known his dad. He'd moved around a lot as a kid, his mother always exchanging one bad job for another. He never knew where he belonged.

After he graduated from high school, he decided he belonged back in Austin. He said goodbye to Aunt Patricia, and she packed him peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the drive.

He attended a small college and dated some. Nothing serious, not until he met Brandy when he was twenty-two. He was instantly smitten with her long blonde hair and tanned legs and fell head over heels in love. He'd never felt something so intensely. It lodged in his chest, swelled with every breath he took. He thought Brandy felt the same. She twined their names in calligraphy and fantasized about them living by the sea and saving turtles.

It had been only a few weeks when he felt her pulling away from him. She finally admitted it. She said he was too "clingy."

Clingy?

Jack was mortified by this pronouncement. She ended their short, flaming affair, and he suffered the loss deeply. He added the fear of being "clingy" to his insecurities.

After Brandy, after his mother, he was afraid of needing anyone again. He was even more afraid of losing anyone again. "You can't love someone without the constant fear of losing them, can you?" a girl at a party had asked him one night when they were both nursing beers, both on the losing ends of breakups.

Her question had resonated uncomfortably in him.

But life moved on. When he completed his education and specialized training and passed his boards, he was 100percent sure of his calling. He believed that helping people transition from this world to the next was a necessary and unique skill.

By the time patients reached Sanctum House, where he worked, they had usually accepted the inevitable, had cycled through their stages of grief. But not everyone had someone to hold their hand all the way to the end. And because of staffing shortages, Jack had been holding a lot of hands in the last year or so. It was getting to him.

On his first day of work, Sandra, the head of nursing, had taken him around. She was a large woman who wore pink Crocs and faded scrubs bedecked with cartoon animals. She'd been at Sanctum House for twenty years. She'd said, "Let me tell you something, Jackie—take this job for what it is, and it will be much easier on you."

"Um..."

"I mean, don't get emotionally involved. Look around—all these souls we're caring for? Here today and gone tomorrow. Accept that, and it will make this job a lot easier on you mentally." She'd tapped herself in the head as she spoke. "Trust me, I know what I'm talking about."

He had no doubt that she did. And he worked hard not to get emotionally involved. For the most part, he was successful.

And yet... and yet.

He understood that patients came to Sanctum House to die. He'd studied end stages of life, had probably read more about death and dying than your average priest. And still, he struggled to absorb the losses. Especially when it was someone like Tony Patricelli.

Tony was only forty-one. Eight years older than Jack.

Tony was funny. Boisterous. A real bro. He told wild stories about women he and Jack both knew didn't exist. He flirted shamelessly with female nurses and doctors and tried to hustle any man who walked into his room. Sometimes, after his shift, Jack would hang around to play Call of Duty with him.

Tony never talked about dying. He talked like he was about to go on vacation, like he'd be back in a few weeks or months. Tony wasn't the first patient Jack had nursed who preferred not to acknowledge the inevitable—so Jack thought about it for him. Tony's death was one he'd tried to prepare for, and he truly believed he was ready for the end when it came. But he wasn't.

Everything felt so temporary. Here today, gone tomorrow. What was the point of it all?

After the funeral home picked up Tony's body, Sandra found Jack in the medicine closet, his back against the wall, his eyes closed, swallowing hard against tears. That was another thing you learned early on—don't cry, don't mourn, because there is always someone else who needs you to hold their hand.

"Okay, Jackie." She took the clipboard from his hands. "Take the afternoon." When Jack didn't move, she nodded at the door. "Go on. Get out of here."

"That's not necessary," Jack had lied.

"Like hell it isn't. Look, we've all been there. Just take off, clear your head, and come back when you're ready. We can live without you for a day or two." She'd patted his cheek. "But we can't live without you for long. Get outside and hear the birds and see the trees or, I don't know, kiss a girl."

He'd gotten into his car and started driving with no destination in mind. He wondered where Tony was now. If he was alone, if he was afraid. If loved ones were there to greet him when he passed. He wondered if Tony knew how much Jack would miss him.

All that wondering unwittingly took Jack to the place he often ended up when he lost a patient: the Goodfellow Community Garden.

As improbable as it was, Jack had a garden here. "Man, how old are you, anyway?" his best friend, Byron, had asked him. "Never had a bro who liked to putter around a garden like a retiree," he'd joked.

The plot had been bequeathed to Jack by Mr.Ronald Hauser, a former patient. At the time of Mr.Hauser's death, Jack had not been happy with the gift of a garden. It was too much responsibility—what was he supposed to do with it in the middle of his busy life? He'd told Mr.Hauser's children that they should keep it, but he could tell by the way his son kept looking at his watch and his daughter kept glancing at her phone that they didn't want it either. Their father's death had been a long and slow one, and they were ready to move on. They'd insisted their father wanted him to have it. They'd taken care of the paperwork.

It was a bit unsettling to think that Mr.Hauser's children could so easily dispose of something that had meant so much to him. But Mr.Hauser's desires and joys had gone home with him and had not become the desires and joys of his children. The plot was Jack's.

Toward the end, before Mr. Hauser was heavily sedated, he'd begged his kids to take him to see the garden one last time. But he'd been too frail to leave the facility, so at last his daughter had gone for him. She'd walked around with her iPhone, giving her dad a remote tour. Mr. Hauser didn't say anything as Jack held up the iPad so he could see. The old man had a vague smile on his face, squinting at times, his brows rising with surprise at others. When his daughter was done, Mr. Hauser had nodded and closed his eyes.

Jack had been the new owner of the garden plot a month or so before curiosity got the better of him and he went to have a look. He'd come after a long day at work, tired and grumpy. But the moment he stepped through the gates, he felt an immediate change in the air. In the middle of a crowded city, it was cleaner and brighter here. He could practically feel the budding life in the forty garden plots vibrating inside him. Maybe it was all the green, or maybe it was the electromagnetic field of the earth—who knew?—but something was suddenly moving in him and through him.

Mr.Hauser had written out detailed instructions when he'd still been able. Tomato plants went in the ground after the last frost. Cabbage should be planted in the heat of summer to harvest in fall. Bee balms must have full sun, so plant them on the west side of the plot.

The first few times Jack had come to this little patch of paradise, he'd been alarmed by his peculiar need to cry—he could hardly stop himself. He was ashamed of it—his shoulder was the one onto which others cried. But this was the one place he could let go of his emotions. Only a few birds and God to see him. Well. And the old lady who sat in a rusted wheelchair and watched her companion work a plot.

Jack soon discovered that work in the garden was therapeutic. It was good to thrust his hands in the dirt, breathe sweet garden air, have the cycle of life confirmed again and again.

Thankfully, there was no one around the day Tony died. Jack sagged onto his knees in the middle of the plot. A lone tear tipped from the corner of his eye and slid down his face. He hoped Tony was in a better place and free of pain.

Godspeed, Tony.

He unlocked his supply locker and took out a spade. He started turning the earth, preparing it for new life.