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The beautiful fall leaves fly by me faster than I want them to but at the same time not fast enough. I watch them as they appear like a watercolor, sloping along the sides of the highway and I keep my head rested on my knee, staring out of the window. I listen to my fiancé, Seth, as he hums along to the radio and I silently wish that he would just shut up. My heart is pounding and my stomach feels uneasy and torn. I have never travelled this far up Route 89 before and I wish that I was making the trip for any other reason. Memories flood me and I am cannot contain the tears that pour down my cheeks. 

Closing my eyes on the car ride, I see Christine’s eyes and feel her laughter, so alive and melodious with the soft rasp from her cough trailing after. I think back to a month before, September, and remember what Christine had called our “Girl’s Night”. Her eyes had been so hopeful and alive as we laughed and snapped pictures of ourselves while we sipped on fruity cocktails. It was a night to try and forget about Cystic Fibrosis, lung failure, and the rule that forbid people on transplant lists from drinking. We had decided not to let the anticipation of her beeper finally buzzing prevent her from enjoying the little time she had left, at least not for that night. We had laughed as we shared stories that without each other would otherwise have remained forever untold. We were each other’s story keepers. We were each other’s best friends.

I am twenty-six years old. I am on my way to visit my best friend in the hospital and as I watch the landscape sliding past me, I try to imagine what Christine is feeling. My heart is breaking but I can’t accept that I am on my way to say goodbye. I am clinging tightly to the hope of the only phone call that can save her, the one she has spent over two years waiting for. The sky has darkened when we arrive in Lebanon. The hospital looks plain and white… like a hospital. I’m not sure what I was expecting. I guess in a way, I felt that from knowing Christine the way I did it ought to be something more wonderful, someplace much more elegant. How could there be a possibility that this might be the last place that she would ever be? I just cannot accept any of this.

Walking inside through the sliding glass doors is difficult. I am like a robot as I lift each leg separately to motion myself to the elevator. I know to take it to the fourth floor because her Mom has told me where to go already. As I get off the elevator, her Mother is waiting and she looks okay. Robin always has a way of hiding how bad it really is from her face. None of us ever thought that it would come down to this. I can’t hide my tears and I look into Robin’s eyes with such sorrow, I force new tears to hers as well.

It is a quiet walk to Christine’s room. The lily arrangement I am carrying is taken by the nurses. Flowers are not allowed in the ICU. The nurse turns back toward me and pulls open the curtain. I will never forget the look that she then gives me. Her look says, “I am so sorry that your best friend is going to die.” The nurse has tears in her eyes.

Christine lay on the bed so helpless looking. Her energy is gone and her body looks completely uncomfortable. I’m told that she is unconscious and that she is unaware of what’s going on. A large tube runs down her throat and there is an open end where to suck the junk out of her lungs on her throat. Oxygen runs through her nostrils and there is a square machine next to the bed printing out a chart continuously as a box inside a bag next to it, makes the sound, “wooooosh woooooosh.” This machine is actually opening and closing Christine’s lungs. It is what is keeping her alive.

Robin excuses herself immediately and Seth leaves soon after Robin. Tears are streaming down his face and he’s not sure what to do. I want him to be there for me and hold me, yet I want him to go.
Alone, I hold my best friend and cry. I whisper softly into her ear about how much I love her and I watch as her eyes open widely and she struggles to speak. There are no words, only pain as the congestion in her throat is disturbed and she begins a fit of coughing. Her eyes open and close over and over as I watch her eyeballs roll back into her skull, and she coughs more and more. Her coughs are so uncomfortable and painful sounding due to the amount of phlem that has built up in her lungs. She is struggling to breathe and yet she is still unconscious. I feel helpless as I hold her fragile, petite body and I begin to sob. The nurse runs back into the room immediately. She holds Christine upright into a sitting position and takes a long sucking device that she puts inside of the tube opening on Christine’s throat. She uses the device to suck all of the phlem out of her lungs while I hold her and cry.

Although she is in an induced coma, Christine knows I am with her, and as I hold her, I feel her body talk to me. With the help of the machine, she breathes. I cradle her in my arms and stroke her hair while memories of our childhood, teenage years and twenties pass through my mind. I cannot imagine turning 30, 40, 50 years old without my best friend. I leave her with a card that I fear she will never be able to read herself.

Christine is waiting for a double-lung transplant because she was born with Cystic Fibrosis, a disease that causes excess amount of mucus build-up in the lungs and eventual lung failure. A person in Christine’s position is allowed to remain on life support for only ten days before being taken off of the waiting list to receive a new set of lungs. To be fair, the transplant team has decided that new lungs must be placed into a body that is most likely to accept them without chance of rejection. By the end of the ten days, the body becomes used to and dependent on the machines to breathe. In other words, it is unlikely that Christine’s body will remember how to properly function the new lungs on its own if left on life support for more than ten days. Therefore, Christine will be taken off the list and any available lungs will go to a candidate’s body that would be more likely to accept them. Over the last two years, Christine has struggled to maintain her weight and she has had a feeding tube put in so that she could rise into the weight level needed to remain on the transplant list. To be taken off of the list would mean certain death. Transplantation has become our only hope and “the list” has become our lives.

Friday, October thirtieth. Everywhere I turn there are advertisements and mention of Halloween, my favorite holiday. The only holiday that I ever look excitedly forward to, ready to play my Spooky sounds C.D. and chase the neighborhood children with unchained chainsaws. I look at the pile of fabric and tea bags sitting on the counter in my kitchen. I will not be turning them into a mummy costume this year.
On my way to the hospital this day, I pick up my close friend Number Seven. His name derives from the location of Christine & I’s first apartment ten years earlier. We lived at apartment number 8 and he lived next door at number 7.

We stare at the leaves together as we make the silent drive. When we talk, it’s to laugh, as we recall memories we both have of Christine. Every now and then, between talking, we are just silent as we think about where we are going and why. We are going to say goodbye to our friend who has now been awakened from her induced coma and given the news that no lungs became available during the ten day period she has been put out. She is breathing now only because of the machine that she is attached to. Once the machine is taken away, she will have very little time, maybe an hour or so, before her death. She has been told that she must now decide when she would like to be taken off of the machine.

Christine sees somebody behind me as I walk in her hospital room and she’s not sure who it is. When she realizes it is Number Seven, a warm smile lights up her face. She’s hugging me while I cry but her tubes are still in place on her throat, so she is unable to speak to me. She speaks to me with her eyes. She tells me she loves me and I hug her crying because I love her too. It is hard to make conversation at first. We do not ever bring up the fact that the last day for a possible transplant was the day before or the fact that Christine has been taken off of “the list”.

Number Seven complains of his haircut and Christine widens her eyes in amusement. Her mother and brother are laughing too. Christine is a hairdresser and the light-hearted joke distracts from the pain we are all feeling. Memories, they wash over us all like a wave at the ocean as we travel through time and remember all the good times shared together. We laugh recalling our youth and the silly things we did, like the time that Christine fell into the Lazy Susan laughing.
It is not easy to say goodbye since we all know what the morrow brings, the removal of the life support. Christine doesn’t want me to go either and we are hugging each other tightly.

“It’s going to be okay,” I tell her. She shakes her head no.
“Yes, yes, it is” I say. I look into her eyes with all of my love. We both know that she will definitely be going to the most beautiful of heavens tomorrow.

Her eyes speak to me again with pain. She doesn’t want to die. She knows where she is going but she isn’t ready to go yet.

It is now Saturday, October 31, 2009. All of the little skeletons and goblins are wandering down the sidewalks, their minds consumed by images of candy corn and Sugar Daddys. I am on my way to the hospital to watch my best friend be removed from life support and to tell her goodbye for the very last time.

Christine’s brother, Brent, has flown in from California and she has let us know that with him standing beside her, she will be ready to have the life support turned off. Christine types into her laptop, her dying message to her brothers, “We never give up.”
I want to scream. I want to run through the halls and find a doctor who knows how to change this. I want to keep her alive.
Her breathing slows as we hold her. Her eyes close and she soon looks asleep. Time is standing still as I stare out the window and look up at the sunshine and the blue clouds behind Christine’s hospital bed. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to find a way within myself to bury the pain that is becoming too difficult to bear. I don’t feel like I can let her go but I know that I have no choice. My hand can still feel life under where it lay on her, yet I know that she is on her way to somewhere far more beautiful.

The air around me becomes alive and electric as her precious, little lungs fill and release oxygen for the very last time. I stare at the beautiful shell that was her body and I ache to put her life back into it. Her electricity fills the room as her magical aura dances up into the beautiful clouds outside of the window. I can feel her everywhere, around me and a part of everything. Her body lay there empty and although I know that she is gone already, I can feel her still alive, dancing in the air beautifully and rhythmically as she intertwines with the heavens. Her mother is doing the same thing as I. We both just hug her and gaze at her beautiful shell while we cry. I know that her mother should say goodbye alone and I get up to leave, but it is so hard to go. I turn back and kiss my beautiful friend for the very last time on her precious, tiny lips. I trace her beauty marks on her collarbone and lift the blanket that covers her to admire her tattooed thigh for one last time, engraving the memory of the beautiful Hawaiin Hibiscus flowers into my mind. I choke on my sobs as I give her foot one last squeeze. I still am not ready, but I go.
My emotions peak into a flood of realization as I walk past my own mother where she sits waiting by some windows outside of the ICU. My best friend is gone and I am sobbing so heavily that I make myself throw up into the toilet. When I am done, I feel fuzzy and in complete shock. I just can’t believe it is really happening.
Christine’s brother, Ben, places his arm around my shoulder as we cry and try to absorb what has just happened while we wander around the hospital aimlessly. Everything is coming through in waves and I feel dizzy and numb. I want to run to the highest point I can find and scream at the sky, “Why? This isn’t fair! She is only twenty-six years old. She is beautiful and talented and smart and funny. She is my best friend!!! Why God? Why would you take her now? Give her back! It can’t be too late. Her body is still here. Give my best friend back to me right now please. I would do anything. She wasn’t ready. She didn’t want to leave. It isn’t over. It can’t be over!”
Instead I am quiet while I cry. I can’t breathe through my nose and I feel like I need to sit. I watch Christine’s mother, Robin, as she comes from the room wheeling Christine’s beloved Victoria’s Secret luggage. Through the course of Christine’s life, she had been hospitalized countless times for her disease. The luggage has never left the hospital without her before this.

There are many other families waiting in a small area by us. They also have loved ones inside the ICU and they stare at us with fear on their faces. There is nothing I can say to them. I just lower my head and stare at the floor as I walk pass them. Everything is in slow motion as I walk through the sliding glass doors and exit the hospital. My mother helps me into her car and we begin the long ride home. I stare at the clouds above and I wonder where Christine has gone.
I again watch the leaves along the highway as we travel down Route 89 on the way home. They are the same leaves that I have been staring at for days and it occurs to me that they too, will die soon, and there is nothing in life that is going to change that. It is the circle of life and the way things must be. I have a very long journey ahead of me that I must take toward acceptance of the loss of life and the past. It is so hard for me to accept that time changes and that the world moves on. I wish there was a way to freeze time and to hold the ones we love and laugh with and enjoy life with for infinity.
What an enormous epiphany it is to realize your own tiny significance in this world. Like the leaves on the trees, our time here is brief. The seasons change, the world keeps turning, and time moves on.


Christine would quite possibly be alive today if an organ donor had died in time fitting the criteria. Christine weighed 86 pounds and had a tiny chest diameter. She needed a set of lungs from the body of somebody who was blood-type O+. Christine and I had the same blood-type, the same size chest cavity and I am an organ donor.
Life is truly a gift I feel that I must embrace to the fullest because you never know which day might become your last. Many mornings I wake and actually think to myself “Today could be my last day”. I wonder if the outfit I am choosing might be the last I ever wear or if when I kiss my children good-bye, it might be the last time they see me again. It is too obvious to me that any moment could be the last in a person’s life. I think a lot about where human spirit goes and I wonder where our energy goes and what it becomes. Einstein’s theory: Energy never ceases to exist, it only changes form. 
Christine’s legacy lives on through me and she is with me always as well as a few other close friends that I have lost along the way. Above all, the experience of losing my treasured friend has helped me grow to truly appreciate each and every instant of this magical and beautiful gift called “life”. I will always maintain goals and work hard to fulfill my dreams because I watched the greatest of fighters live her life to the fullest until the absolute end, always looking ahead towards the future and pursuing her dreams.
“We never give up.”- Christine V. Come 10/31/2009