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Alfred | May 14 2005

Did you know that David’s heart stopped for twenty minutes? He almost died. It happened in the hospital, just as the doctors completed some surgery related to his heart. (Not super-serious surgery, but serious enough.) The doctors told him that only five percent of the people this happens to survive with functioning brains. If it had happened just a few minutes later, after they wheeled him into the recovery room, he would have died for sure. What saved him was the fact that they were able to get oxygen to his brain almost immediately, because the machine was right there. (Later the anesthesiologist said that this was the first time this happened to him in twenty-two years. His hands shook the entire time, he said, which I can totally imagine: you take five seconds too long and David ends up a vegetable.)

I saw him last week, and he told me about a radio play he wrote in the hospital called Alfred Saves Himself (except the name wasn’t Alfred but another man’s name; the actual title is a play on the name of a sixteenth century French poet).

The play is almost entirely silence. It lasts five or six hours. Periodically you hear the sounds of different machines. A phone rings, but no one picks it up. Then it rings again, and this time it’s answered. There’s some terse dialogue about Alfred deciding not to come over. At one point you hear the wheels of two janitor carts and distance voices. (Actually, the wheel sounds were my idea. I suggested them after David explained that the voices belong to janitors.)

He’s so close to death now, and I don’t know how to think about it or what to say. I want to say, “What’s it like to be close to death?” but it’s difficult. I know I should, though. It must be lonely.