Two days before, he stood up to speak for the immigrants at city hall.
The day before… he worked and laughed. And said “It wasn’t a lotl, so I bought it for you.” It was a small gingerbread axolotl from Buildabear.
That morning, I could hear the whistle he used when he had tachy events even as I sat drip drying in the living room and playing Minecraft. For months, I had been telling him to go to get it fixed. Nope. He didn’t want to. It was too much trouble. Too much bother. I heard it, and checked my phone. He had sent me images of his ecg/ekg from his Kardia device. I raised an eyebrow. My suspicions were high. I should have listened to my gut.
He came out of the bedroom and into the living room. “Do you want me to drive you to the hospital?” I asked. He was still blowing the whistle. He shook his head no and sent another ekg to my phone. It showed his heart slowing down. “No. It’s resolving.”
Except it wasn’t. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the last words he spoke to me.
I returned to Minecraft. He sat in his recliner and put his feet up. He sent a message to me and to his bond…. At 11: 11 am on November 6th, he said to both of us on Discord: “down to 65, 15 minute event, now recovering.” I had logged into SL and was talking to Torri and preparing for that day’s class at the Gorean University.
He wasn’t recovering. My nightmare was about to start.
I heard him choking and gasping. I called his name as I got out of my chair. I pushed his monitor and keyboard out of my way. My first aid training went into automatic. “Black? Black? Black? Are you okay?” I did a pain test and he didn’t respond and he was making more gurgling sounds. I pressed into his chest and kissed his lips. He wasn’t breathing. I had to start CPR.
But if I started CPR, I needed to be on the phone to 911. I grabbed my phone and turned back to look at him and take the two steps back. His hands were fisting up by his chest. His right foot was turned in towards the center. His body was stiffening like he was on a board. I grabbed him and tried to get him out of his recliner. I couldn’t. So, I climbed on him and dialed 911. I put my cel phone down beside me. I had 911 on speaker.
“Fire, police, or ambulance?” It was 11:14.
“70 year old man. I’m starting CPR.” and I shoved him into the recliner as far as I could. And I kept on shoving. And shoving and shoving, screaming at the dispatcher. Repeating the address. Repeating what was going on. Repeating what I saw. I could feel my chest burn from an asthma attack, and he had no pulse. I couldn’t get him off the recliner. “123 Smith Street! HURRY! I can’t keep this up! CODE FOR THE DOOR IS 2001!!” I screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed. It was the only way I kept breathing.
“Don’t do this to me Black! You promised me 10 years!”
I tried to breathe for him. No air moved. I kept doing CPR. I kept trying to breathe for him. The damn recliner. Damn his 220lbs of mass. I couldn’t get him off.
My shoulders ached. My wrists ached. My back screamed. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t. I couldn’t. I was exhausted. “Keep going, ma’am. Don’t stop.”
I jumped off him long enough to open the door. Right back on him and pushing harder.
I heard the paramedics come in through the door and got off him one last time, and shrank down to my chair. I was now stuck.
They worked on him. And kept working on him as I sat there, naked, on the couch. One asked if I wanted to put clothes on. I couldn’t function. I was barely breathing. I could feel the fire in my lungs. I typed at the bond. I typed at Torri. And classes were canceled. People joined the discord voice channel and I went quiet as I watched these men work on my husband.
Finally, I got up and tried to get past him. Where he was lying on the floor with the paramedics I couldn’t get past. “What are you doing?” I was asked. “I’m going to go that way,” I pointed, “and take the long way to go get dressed.” Hands came out to help me balance and not fall on my husband, my Black. I got into the master bathroom as I listened to them work on him. I got dressed. and cried in the other room. I came back into to the living room and watched them put him on a Lucas and take him out.
“Don’t worry about the mess,” I said even as I saw my husband’s blood on the carpet. They were picking up all the bits and pieces of the stuff they had used on him.
“We have sharps to dispose of.”
“I have sharps containers. You can use it.” And so they did, leaving a mess behind. When they moved the ambulance, I moved his car, and talked to a neighbour. “Do you want us to follow you?”
“Yes.”
I took my car and followed the ambulance about 5 minutes behind.
I got to the hospital.
“My name is io Cloud. My husband is Black Ort. He was brought in by ambulance.”
“The family is here.”
“Can we let them through?”
“Yes.”
I walked into the ER and was brought to rooms 19 and 20 – the trauma rooms. I found a bench outside and sat and watched them work on him.
And work on him.
And work on him.
Someone came to talk to me. “We got his heart beat back.”
Then I heard someone in the room say his heart wasn’t back.
“You can be in the room.” I was told. I shook my head no. My chest was hurting. My lungs still hurt. My kidneys were complaining. If I was in that room while they worked on him, they would have had to deal with me as well. I fainted before when a family member needed trauma care because I was in the room, and it was nowhere near as bad as what I was watching.
“Really, you can be in the room.” No. I could see what was going on and I was typing at people in our discord. My training said to stay out of the way of the higher level professionals and let them do their jobs and not interfere. I could see everything that they were doing. I could hear the monitors. I knew they were doing their best. They didn’t need me screaming at them to do more.
I dug into my phone for his sister’s email. There… I could email her at least. 8pm her time? She’d be asleep soon.
The doctors and staff may have asked me what I wanted. I shook my head. I got the courage to go into the room and they had cloth on his face because of all the blood coming out. His intubation tube was full of blood.
Time was a blur. It was 12:27pm when he was pronounced.
I emailed his sister. She demanded I put in Whatsapp. I did. I told her by voice. She was in shock.
“Wait,” I said to the staff, “he’s an organ donor.”
They’ll check, they said. The look on their faces said that they new his organs were a lost cause.
So was I. My neighbours asked that I get checked out. In between telling people, and getting a blood test or two, and being patted on my head by the doctor at the ER and told I could go home with antibiotics. They took the tube out of his mouth. I stayed until they had to take the body away…. I got some of his beard hair… And his watch… and that was all that I took home from the hospital from him. My husband was dead.
I don’t know how I got home. Organ donation called me during the drive and my neighbour told them to call me back in a couple of hours.
There was blood on the ground. Blood on the steps up to the house. I went inside and found his last shirt in shreds on the floor. I looked at the floor and started to clean. I think I logged into SL. And left.
I contacted our friend Strangequirk. “David… there’s pewpews here. I’m an immigrant. You have to get them out of here. Black’s gone. I can’t have them in my house. I can’t risk my immigration status.”
Strangequirk arrived a few hours later and found two of them. A third was found later at his place when he unpacked other items that could or were pewpew parts. All three guns gone and sold after a few days.
Strangquirk and Highwayman took me out to eat. Then the organ donation people called in the middle of the meal. The men gave me stink eye, making sure I ate even as I answered what seemed like a thousand questions. Did he do this? Did he have that? A thousand questions. The only things that might be viable would be his corneas and his skin. Did I consent? Yes, but my consent wasn’t needed. He was an organ donor, they told me. My consent was never needed.
I got home. I was alone. I logged into Second Life.
My heart started to beat fast.
It wouldn’t stop.
Xander told me to get to the hospital. He threatened to call 911. I went stubborn. I drove to the hospital. Over 200bpm and I got into the car and drove.
Yah, I’m an idiot.
“My husband, Black Ort, died today. My heart is in a tachy rhythm over 200. I told them not to send me home.” I spoke, and I nearly passed out in the lobby, falling into the glass panel. It was the only thing that kept me up. They put me in a wheel chair, did a quick assessment and then put me in the exact same room my husband, Black Ort, was pronounced in earlier that day. “Noooo! Not room 19! Not there! Nooo!”
I could see him. Not Black Ort Actual, my husband, but Black Ort, the rock of the GU. My world was greying. I reached for him. Everything was fuzzing out and I could see him. “Black… you’re here…”
He didn’t take my hand.
The next I knew, a nurse was pushing a drug into my veins. My world started to come back into focus. “See?” she said to another nurse, “the stress of her husband dying is messing with her heart and head. We need to get her out of this room.” So they did, when they got my heart rate down to under 150bpm. I was moved to a step down room. I should have stayed in the middle of the ER. It didn’t want to slow down at all. And I kept on seeing him. Black Ort Actual. Black Ort. Him laughing.
I could have easily slipped away.
Somehow, I stayed. I know it was the nurse.
Fifteen hrs later, I negotiated with the doctor to let me out of the hospital. I promised that if any new symptoms came up, or others became worse, I’d come right back in. I was let out. That was Friday.
I did the wake on Sunday.
“Do you need us.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll be there!”
I don’t remember Monday.
Tuesday… the stress of finding him a funeral home. Of dealing with everything. Of being told the only way I could get his remains handled and paid for by others was if I allowed his body donation to go to medical science and let them do what they do with those bodies. I couldn’t do that to him. The decisions. The frustration. Giving the funeral home $200 of my money as a deposit so that he would be taken away from the organ donation team. That was all my money. I felt my chest seize. My vision greyed again. My head was exploding in pain. The right side of my mouth drooped. I got back to the hospital. “I promised the hospitalist if symptoms started up, I would come back.” Security parked my car for me.
I was parked in the waiting room on a wheelchair. It was all I could do to focus on my phone. Then they brought me into the back. My vision was blurring and the nurses who checked me were suspicious. I got parked in a room. The doctor came in and examined me. I was slurring my speech. My right hand was weaker. Touches on my right side were off. He left the room.
Suddenly, I became very popular. A bed was brought in. Three people had to help me get out of the wheelchair. I stood up and my entire body shook. My next memory was of being in the bed and getting an iv, but I don’t remember the poke. The next one after that, I was in the CT scan. They pumped fluids into me.
The doctors believed me. I was having a stroke. I got there in time to stop it.
I got there in time to stop a stroke.
I was released late the next day. A bit of slurred speech. It’s harder to think now when I’m under stress. The only reason why I was being released was that Suilean was showing up that night. Torri showed up the next day. The two of them took care of me. Suilean took the lead in the mental stuff. Torri in the monetary as need be. Torri made sure Black could have a small viewing and be cremated. Torri paid for everything. We made sure the Jewish prayer for the dead was said over him as a request by his sister.
A week later, I brought his ashes home. I took a small amount out and put some in a small urn and I use that when I am angry at him. Other ashes are saved for being creative with them and making little tokens for people who want a piece. There have been a few requests. A little bit went into a tiny urn on a necklace for me to wear. “That’s disrespectful” I’m told. It’s ashes. There is nothing left of his body, except maybe some beard hair in a baggie and a tooth he lost two years ago.
Now I live in a nightmare of “what do I do next?” What forms to fill out. What bill needs paying? What credit card needs cancelling? The landlord says I have no right to live in the manufactured home because I’m not on the house title nor on the lease. Residential tenancy at legal aid say otherwise. I asked for help from his sister.
Supposedly there are benefits I can get. Supposedly. I need someone that can navigate the system for me to help me get them, but the only one I knew who could has retired. I need a pro. Someone who will help me get them.
I miss him so much. And the mess he left behind for me to figure out is an impossible puzzle. I haven’t done any of the physiotherapy I need to do to regain what I lost. I’m disabled but because I wasn’t working, I don’t qualify for benefits. It’s the catch 22.
I don’t know what is going to happen to me. Or to the Gorean University. I’m lost. I have people trying to help me, but I am so over my head, treading water is going to be a miracle. The estate is thousands in the hole. I have no access to money, and what money I do have access to is supposed to be money for me to live off of for a year. I don’t know what to do.
Why did you leave me, Black? I wasn’t ready for this.
His corneas went internationally to give the gift of sight. His skin and other flesh are going to help others regain mobility, recover from burns, and more. His organs were useless. Even in death, he gave everything he could.
My life is a work of He.art 