58
Dennis James Sweeney
DNR
He wakes up in the hospital, all bright lights and
whir. Big face standing over him as in the movies.
Can see every detail of it: acne just inferior and
lateral to the corner of the mouth, covered up
(“ ”) with product; teeth brushed sometime
within the past two hours; swollen eyes as
expected for medical personnel though still, after
all these years, it makes him nervous. She might
not have slept since—what day is it? He holds his
hand up. Nurse. What day is it? The nurse has
left. He is in the bed. Not before it.
Stop.
He thinks: I am alive.
He must wait nearly an hour before she
returns. There is no clock in the room. Only
the sun outside the broad white blinds which are
always calibrated in such a way as to misrepresent
the time of day. All the indoor lights turned off.
His electrocardiogram plods slowly along. Beeps.
He cannot lift either of his legs. A great pain in
the side of the head.
Nurse, he says. Nurse.
She has not heard him, but in the end she
returns. Bends to check the IV that protrudes
from a bump in the vein of his forearm. Is startled
when a snarl comes from his lips. He begins to
struggle. She steps backward, as if he were a dead
Jonathan David Tanger III.
Trip.
Orthopedic surgeon. Sports surgery, in particular.
Eight years. Since I finished my residency.
Sure. I was out for a run in the mountains—are
you familiar with the trails around the Flatirons?
I was out for a quick night run and had just turned
from Ski Jump trail onto Bluebell-Baird—these are
not far-out trails, these are trails in your typical,
day-hike areas—
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man speaking.
Wallet, he is saying. Wallet!
What? the nurse whimpers.
Wallet!
You want your wallet?
He growls.
With graceless steps—he hates new nurses,
never assign him a new nurse—she trundles to
the closet beside the window and removes his
pants, beige, waterproof, covered in mud. Christ,
her hand is starting to shake when she hands it to
him, his skinny, pale arm emerging from beneath
the blue waterproof sheets, his fingers clasping,
drawing it in, his other arm rising from the side
of the bed, manipulating the wallet with steady
fingers, steady fingers, he thinks, drawing out the
card in the window pocket, the card with white
text on red, the card that he believed would leave
him dead, should life decide to takes its leave of
him, the card that says:
DO NOT RESUSCITATE.
The man who saved Manse has left, hero bastard.
Receded gently into the night. No right in saving
a life that was alone and leaving it to remain
alone. The man had no right. Not even the God
damned EMTs looked at his wallet? In long
hours tucked in the narrow bed, he mourns the
future state of the medical profession. He rolls
over and dreams of the countless injustices that
are surely being perpetrated right at the present
I suppose I was somewhat aware of that, yes. Is that
what’s at stake here? Whether or not the park was
closed?
Thank you. I had just made the turn when I saw a
dot of light pointing up from the trail. I thought at
first that someone had dropped their headlamp, but
I had a headlamp on too and when I came closer, I
saw that it was a body.
What did it look like?
The body looked like a body. Grizzled. I remember
very briefly considering that it might have been there
for a long time, the way the beard had grown in and
the limbs splayed on the rocks. Something sloppy
about it. As if it had been left there on purpose.
Of course I did.
I always carry my phone. I have a little pouch that
straps around my waist where I keep a gel packet,
Crazyhorse
60
second. His own among them.
Let them die.
Let me die.
His convalescence takes three days. The
nurses tell him he went into circulatory arrest,
that the pain in the side of his head is the least of
his problems, that being dead is his problem. Or
was. They only barely revived him. He objects to
the head doctor. He holds up his card, brandishes
it as he brandishes it at every visitor to the room.
Do you see this card? he says. Do you see it?
The doctor nods calmly, the bedside manner
of these new age pot-smoking I’m OK, You’re OK
quacks. I’m very sorry, he says, and Manse knows
he believes that he is. Think of it as a new lease
on life, the doctor says. We’ve got counseling
services on the first floor. And you’ll be coming
in for a follow up visit—he checks his chart—a
week from today.
Let me give you some advice, Manse says.
The doctor goes stone-eyed.
Don’t be sorry. Just get it fucking right.
I have rights, he goes on as the doctor exits the
room. I HAVE RIGHTS! he shouts once, at the
door, already closed.
twenty bucks, and my cell. Especially on night runs.
You don’t go into the mountains in the dark without
a phone.
He may well have had one. Having a phone doesn’t
stop you from dying.
It was a miracle how quick the EMTs showed
up. Like they’ d been waiting at the trailhead for
someone’s heart to stop.
No. It’s a figure of speech. I don’t think that they
were.
CPR. I had no idea how long he’ d been dead. It
could have been minutes. It probably was. So I tried
to give him a chance.
What is your name?
He does not return to the hospital for his followup visit. Only wakes promptly at six o’clock in the
morning like every other day, checking windows
to be sure nothing changed in the night, followed
by a breakfast of two eggs and one slice of wheat
toast. After, he rakes leaves. Fights his knowledge
DNR
Simon. Nice to meet you. I know CPR because I am
a doctor, Simon.
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of the time that will soon come when all the
leaves will have fallen from the trees and there
will be no more to rake, all of them bagged and
set out in the leftover pumpkin bags from past
Halloweens and taken by the city organic waste
disposal unit, a time in which the snow has not
yet begun to fall, leaving the ground bereft and
leaving Manse, during the allotted time between
breakfast and lunch, bereft of lawn work, except
for the day or two a week where he will break
down and mow the grass. He moves the rake
slowly across the yard in anticipation of this
moment, trapping single leaves in the tines and
picking them up between his fingers to place
them in the folded-over jack-o-lantern bag. It is
no secret to him that he might have avoided it
altogether, the coming absence of lawn work, the
liminal space between fall and winter, had—
If—
The Hippocratic oath. Piece of shit.
Lunch is taken indoors, at an expensive table
of copper pocked with the marks of a smith’s
hammer, or more likely a Chinese man’s in the
DISTRESSING division of some cavernous
factory. The metal is always ice cold when he rests
his forearms there. A turkey sandwich smeared
with mayonnaise in front of him, topped with
swiss cheese, garnished with a tomato. He bites
into it with his shirtsleeves rolled nearly to the
elbow. He can hear the refrigerator hum, the
mantra of the water heater in the basement. It is
noon, and even if the windows were stripped of
their blinds, the old house would still be dark.
Afternoon is a degradation.
They already had the jaws of life out and ready.
One of them running up the path with the paddles.
So I got out of the way.
No, Simon. I didn’t.
I’ve told you. I. Did. Not. Know. The man was
dead. What do you want me to do, start flipping
through his wallet?
Glad to hear it.
Two weeks later, at least. I was put off the trail for
a while, that’s for God damned sure.
Regularly.
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62
If he can—if the day has not already dismantled
him—Manse bicycles to the grocery store, where
he buys supplement upon supplement, the same
he bought for his wife, the supplements he still
believes in. She died. It doesn’t mean they didn’t
work. Quality of life, not length. She died happy.
A superstition, maybe. A ghost story. One cashier
at the grocery store knows him, a boy who never
ventures to talk and always remembers to ring
the food items and the supplements up separately.
The pill companies are generous that way. He was
a doctor. He is a doctor. He is their livelihood.
He rides home just before the sun goes down,
for if there is forgetfulness in anything there is
forgetfulness in the movement of the body, the
wind through his polypropylene gloves, the blur
of the noise of the spokes when he really gets
going.
The faint recognition that a single drunk man
could wipe him away. Dusk’s quiet way of giving
up. The headlights’ arc, sweeping over him as if
he does not exist.
Manse goes out for dinner. For it is at night
that the house grows coldest and he knows that
only a strategic displacement of attention from
the tragedy that inhabits the cold rooms—his
bedroom, the den, the basement with washer
and dryer standing proudly next to each other,
so well matched—will allow him the fortitude to
trod through his remaining days on earth. After
returning from the grocery on his bicycle he
changes his shoes deliberately, slowly, as he does
everything in these latter days, and retreats once
more from the house, walking to the small café
DNR
The Portland Marathon.
Three twelve and change. I bonked. Missed
qualifying for Boston because I had to walk the last
mile and a half.
Don’t worry about it.
I did.
For fuck’s sake, Simon. How does this apply? Is this
your job? Are you a gossip columnist? Do you need
me to narrate the ins and outs of a relationship that
lasted for half a decade? Should I get started with
the birds and the bees?
You’re interested in ascertaining how.
I really don’t see how this is related.
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less than a mile from his address. He orders garlic
bread. He orders lasagna. He orders all courses
separately, eyeing the menu as he speaks to the
waiter who writes nothing down because he
knows the man, the old man, with his white hair,
his bright yellow reflective jacket and a pair of
leather walking shoes, and he knows what Manse
will get because he gets the same thing every time.
It is only on the rare day, only when he has lost
track of himself, that Manse delays his dinner at
the café and watches the sun go down. Pours
himself a scotch. Sits on his stone front porch.
Considers oblivion for a single hour, despite the
unspeakable personal cost.
Other nights, he returns to the mountains.
They call to him, as they called to him the
night he died. He takes his headlamp from the
seat of the hall tree and trades his yellow jacket
for black cashmere because as cold as it is in his
house, it is colder in the mountains. But the cold
cradles him, holds him softly. Out the door, up
the street, and through some bushes to the rocky
path.
He paces step over step, foot over foot. Leans
into it. The hills are mountains in this part of the
country, the mountains are giants. This too he
loves. To be dwarfed.
He huffs. His breath in the lamplight. The
autumn has folded.
Small steps. This is how it is done. The green
and gnarled trees flavor the oxygen a dark mint
Fine. Marta.
Things were on their way downhill already.
I’ d come home from these runs, Simon. At nine or
ten o’clock. And she’ d run her hands up and down
my ribs, sweep the sweat off of me, and say, “You’re
cold.” Then she would go to bed and I would take
a shower. I thought it was a beautiful thing at first.
But when you think about it, I would have been
quite warm. After a run. You generate a lot of body
heat. So I think she was trying to tell me something.
Something like that.
I didn’t know then. But the night I came home, you
know, after finding the body—it was late because
I had been waiting there under a tree, watching
them revive him. I walked with the EMTs to the
ambulance and watched them drive away. My pace
back was slow. It had been a long night.
Right. In any case, I got home late and Marta was
in bed. You couldn’t blame her. She had work in
the morning. But on the other hand I had been out
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64
that makes it easier to breathe. The mountain
air is aware of its own precariousness. The
mountain’s backbone, the ridge, hulking and
temporary. Foot over foot. Blood transmitted to
the quadriceps.
The rules are: He may not kill himself. He
may not willingly seek death. He may not enter
into circumstances that have no benefit outside
of risk. He may not die before he is meant to die.
Mountain lions, for example, are crepuscular.
No risk. The sun is easily down.
I believe—I believe—
Words flash through his mind like luminescent
insects through the night. Depart instantly. A
slight insanity draws him here, even after death.
Days so regimented that the nights unravel.
Most evenings he can hold on, install the day’s
regression in the dark until the next day’s (false)
promise shines through, then eyes closed. But
every seventh or ninth night, the hooks slip out.
Wild. Adolescent wild, the pulse that will not
let Manse sleep for not enough has happened, the
hope and the fear—seeing his wife again, dying
again—knock at his heavy front door, dance in
his lawn. Repression as a career. Every eighth or
tenth night it is either walk or sweat the cold night
under the frightsome covers. The covers not yet
new. Strewn with the old cells. So he walks.
Returns to the scene: willingly seeks death? Is
this a strike against him?
The one part of the woods where it seems
as if the woods will never end, the archetype of
the woods, the woods sans future, the woods as
imagined by children who have never been to the
DNR
much longer than I promised to be. She wasn’t up
worrying. She wasn’t even there to touch my body
and tell me how cold I was. She was asleep. That’s
how I knew. For all she knew, I could have died.
Yes.
All I’m saying is, that’s how I knew. I started paying
attention. Within the week it became clear that she
was only sticking around because she felt she ought
to. She felt it made sense. I was making a lot of
money at the time.
Hell with paranoid. Have you ever been in love?
No. God damn it, Simon. I want to know if you’ve
ever been in love.
No what?
All right. Thank you. Proceed.
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woods, conveyed via the collective unconscious
into the mind of man. After the long up, the trail
lowers, crosses a dry stream, flattens out. The
pine needles are brown, dead, and soft. The soles
of his walking shoes crush them. One could not
say which tree hovered over him as he died. All
the trees are the same. He is still walking. This is
where—that was where—it went black.
I know you’ ll find this hard to believe, but I work
all day. So I run afterward. It allows me to relax.
Yes.
Yes, I began to run more after Marta and I
separated.
There is no one to give his house to. No one to
give his lawnmower to, pat on the shoulder, say,
now you have your own home, get used to it,
then laugh. The waking times have their own
darkness. He calls Lino on the telephone. Lunch
was an hour ago. Then the process of doing the
dishes, drawn out, breaths after every stroke of
the sponge. Before he can remain still too long,
staring out the window into the lawn, boxed by
cured wood, he reaches for the phone.
Howdy, Doctor.
Lino.
Everything copasetic here. Swinging right
along. Got these new—what do you call them—
treadmills. Supposed to walk on them while you
work. Supposed to be good for you.
That’s a good idea.
Your professional opinion, Doctor? (It is
loud in the law office. Jingling. Lino’s pantlegs
swishing back and forth.)
The body relies on movement for its wellbeing. Relies on movement to be able to continue
You find something to do in the absence. A lot of
people turn to running after this kind of thing.
Because there’s nothing else left.
You can’t stop yourself.
Yes. I saw him one other time.
I did. I’m certain it was him. On the trail near
where he died.
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66
to move.
Brilliant. Well said. Hey. The testament is
looking great.
Oh.
Yeah. Really polished. We’re ready for you! Ha
ha!
You know, I did die, Manse says.
(Swish. Swish. Swish.)
You know.
What do you mean by that, Harry?
Collapsed on the trail a few weeks ago. They
zapped me back.
God damn, Harry.
So.
Hey. We’re glad you’re all right, all right? (A
ring. A female voice in the background.)
I hear you.
What are you doing out there at night,
though, Doctor? Harry, you know? What are
you thinking?
Movement. Right? I hear you walking.
Listen now. Be careful. For Christ’s sake. Stay
in your God damned house.
Good talking, Lino.
All right, Harry. Take care now, you hear?
All it was was a flash. I wasn’t sure if it was him
at first but I saw that grizzled face—I remembered
it dead, that’s why it was such a surprise to see it
living—with no light or anything, just walking
through the forest like a ghost. I whipped by him. I
wasn’t going to stop for death.
It could have been anybody. But it was him.
A coincidence. I was past in a second.
And then he found me.
Yes. Two weeks later.
If that’s how you want to put it. The way I saved
his, even though he wanted to die.
Surely the rules have changed. If he has already
died.
Returns that night to the mountain. Second
time in five days. Up the steady side, through
the medial parking lot—pause, look out on the
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city, Manse moved here for this city, Manse has
seen this city, tendons and muscles strained in
reaching, one hundred thousand people who
don’t know their limits, a doctor’s dream—then
up further, around the red stone bursting from
the ground and through the brief expanse of
steep hillside meadow before the timelessness of
the evergreens, just high enough that the plants
start bowing out, where only the big ones survive,
where pine needles are the only carpet.
This is the way it was. No particular thoughts,
no particular stress outside of being a human
being alive in the world. The perfect way to die.
And what a comeuppance, heaven as a fluorescent
light waking you. It is ice cold up here. Ice cold.
And it’s only October. It is far too cold, he is
thinking, when suddenly a light appears at the
crest. Bounces down the stone stairs. Bright,
tractor trailer bright. Manse, shaking, stops his
crunch of steps. Hinges his body to the side of
the path. Watches the light come on.
The runner glides past, pointing toes downhill.
The huff of breath, huff like he is being chased
by something, and the fear arrives, flourishes
in Manse in its dear instant, fills him like an
inward fire only to be itself frightened away by
consciousness, for some men do this without
being chased, sprint through the night. The last
reek of sweat, and gone.
The bend in the mountainside path. The bend
of the earth upward from itself. Manse realizes
he is squatting on a bed of lichen, everything
completely black. No headlamp, nothing. No
idea how he got up here without a light. The
As far as I know. I can’t say I was conscious for it.
Sure. I was training hard. There was an ultra
coming up in Pagosa Springs and I was really trying
to fill up the tank. During the week I ran two-adays, before and after work. Then on the weekends
I would take the day and do a longer run. I mean a
lot longer. Hours. I wore a watch, but I didn’t look
at it. You forget that you are ever going to stop.
By ultra I mean ultra-marathon. A race that is
more than twenty-six point two miles. This one was
fifty.
Miles. Yes.
I wouldn’t recommend it, no.
That day was long before it even started. I hadn’t
slept well. I got up late, had breakfast, and left the
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fear returns, sharp and hot. He remains still for
a further, panicked minute. Then picks his way
down, blind, lightless, the way he must have
come.
Turkey and swiss on wheat. Every last leaf in the
yard picked up with tines and fingers. Sits at the
table, back hunched, table long. Eats the sandwich
with both of his hands. Lettuce crunches in his
mouth. Manse thinks of the chores: Fridge is
stocked. More pills than a lifetime. Hell, windows
clean. Cleaned them a week ago.
Stands. Dishes in the sink. Walks to the
phone, takes it in his hand, holds it that way for
a quarter hour.
Then stumbles into the proverbial family
room, looks around, sits in front of the television.
Has always hated television, but has in recent
times begun to watch. What America always
knew and believed in: the most efficient way to
allow time to pass. Unwilling to set the alarm
clock back even when the night has called him
into the mountains, he is a tired man. Head
collapses backward into the folds of leather in
his easy chair, someone droning on, some song
playing, someone demonstrating what to buy.
Wakes, suddenly, to the image of a talking
head denying the allegations.
The hedges need trimming. The stones on the
front embankment are falling out, mortar eaten
by lizards. The grass will always grow.
DNR
house around noon. First I ran west on the Mesa
Trail, about ten miles. There’s a short prairie loop
at the end of that, so I did that twice then turned
around. On the way back I headed up the canyon
toward Green Mountain, where there are a couple
trails that lead farther up—
A long time, yes. I had been training a lot. I know
how to listen to my legs, and my heart, and my
lungs. None of them wanted to stop. Still, when
the sun started going down, I figured I should head
home. I hadn’t brought a headlamp because Christ,
I left at noon. So I promised myself one more loop
around Green Mountain. That’s where, on the way
back, right around the saddle, by the set of stone
stairs before the little post sticking out of the pine
needles—
A few feet from where I found him, yes.
I do believe in coincidence. What do you believe in?
Muscle glycogen. I had used it all up. And I didn’t
have much in the way of reserves. In the way of body
fat, I mean. I had some energy chews I was eating,
but like I said, I had been running for a long time.
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Two nights later, he is called again. Called by the
forest in which he died and so even tonight—
another night, a great continuous night—Manse
returns, remembering his light now, pulling his
black cashmere on. Aware fully of the darkness
of the world. Sets out, heaving breaths. The
altitude. The path never flattens.
Past the thrust red rock, through the meadow.
The stretch of forest that cannot be
distinguished from other stretches of forest,
from other times in the same stretch of forest,
the stretch of forest that is every stretch of forest,
the stretch of forest where Manse died, sprawled
across the trail.
Then sees the body. On its back, headlamp
up, spotlighting the branches above.
Its pallor. One leg bent inward with the fall.
Shaking. Manse is shaking. Takes out his
cellular phone, slowly. Makes the call. The
stretch of trail, he says, with the. The saddle.
Saddle rock.
Hangs up. Now the blackness is truly black.
Shines his headlamp anywhere but the body, the
pines whispering. Crouches next to one of the
trunks, shivering in wait. Lamp off. The runner
isn’t breathing. Has to be some cardiopulmonary
failure. God.
He rises, turns his light back on.
Approaches the form.
Reaches forward with two fingers, cold fingers
to cold neck. The body is most certainly dead.
At least eight hours.
I’ve been there, Simon. I know that to become a
better athlete, you have to run through the pain. So
I did. The pain is funny that way. If you learn to,
you can inhabit it for a long time.
Right. Until then.
Luck had nothing to do with it.
That’s right. The old man wasn’t going to let me
die. Not if he had anything to say about it.
I’m just glad it was my body they found.
Crazyhorse