Saving Elijah

with books, so many books, and the rabbi, with his glasses and neatly trimmed beard. "Not every rabbi would support it," I say.
    "Suddenly you're worried about what the ultra-Orthodox would say?" He sighs, and sits down on the bed. "You can't expect that everyone in the world would support this, Dinah. But Jane supports it. This new neurologist supports it. The courts would support it. When, Dinah? Two more years? Five?"
    In two more years I will have bought Elijah two new sets of clothes, in five years, five new sets. They dress the stone children every day, they pretend this is life. In two years he will be twelve, fifteen, then twenty. I will be fifty-one, fifty-four, then fifty-nine.
    "Dinah, you have to let go," Sam says. "He's almost ten years old now. This is killing us. This is killing you."
    "Fine. Maybe that's for the best. But that's no reason to kill him. " I am the living dead.
    "Kill him?. I'd like to kill that Moore for saying that. Besides, all he meant was that we should wait. We waited. As far as I'm concerned, there is no other moral decision, Dinah. We can't just leave him there like this forever."
    I look down at my hands. "He's my son. You haven't read a single book on the subject."
    "He's my son, too. You've read a hundred and you still can't bring yourself to do what needs to be done." He shakes the glass again, looks down into it. "I just can't be in this every minute of every day the way you are."
    It's the only way I can be.
    He downs the rest of the scotch and says into the glass, "Someone has to pay the bills."
    "Are you saying you think I should go back to work?" My work isn't like his work. The living dead don't have great stores of wisdom to dish out to patients. I can't write really amusing little columns about my vegetable son.
    "I want you to do whatever you feel you can," Sam says, and stands up again.
    "He doesn't mean it," the ghost says, his voice drifting like ether into the vision. "He's sick to death of you. He's got a new girlfriend. He's thinking of leaving you."
    "If we went back to Moore now, even he'd agree. Even your mother and father—"
    "You talked about this with Charlotte?"
    "Dinah, I'm sorry, your mother only wants what's best."
    "Yeah, well, it's not up to her. Your mother wouldn't support it."
    "I haven't asked her, Dinah. I don't care what she thinks, I know what's right. And you won't make a decision, you won't be logical."
    "I don't want to be logical. I want my son back." I turn away, not wanting him to see the tears that are always a surprise when they come.
    Round and round. Usually when I cry, Sam puts his arms around me, or tries to. This time, he stands with his arms at his sides. He reaches for his drink again. "Yeah, well, that isn't your son. And you can't have him back. It's time enough. You've got to face it. We've both got to face it. Dinah, what he is now isn't living. It isn't right. It's crazy. Let him go."

    *    *    *

    Forward, this accursed vision: Elijah is thirteen years old. His body is drenched in sweat and again raging with fever. I am standing by his bed, watching Jane and the nurses huddle over him, suction him, adjust all the tubes and machines. I can hear the rattle in his throat, in his chest. The machine pump-whooshes, pump-whooshes, and still his color is bluish. He isn't getting enough air, and the machine is at full throttle.
    "His lungs are failing." Jane is very calm. She is tap-tapping his skin, looking for another vein to put back the IV antibiotic drip.
    "Turn it off," I whisper. "Turn it off."

    *    *    *

    Jane withdraws the tube from his mouth, then herself from the room.
    I am surprised by the moment of death. I expect something very different, maybe that he will look at peace, finally. He doesn't look at peace. Elijah breathes for a moment, then opens his mouth for the next breath, and then he stops. It is quick. His mouth goes slack. His arms are curled in like claws and his head is grotesque.
    Sam goes out to tell them. Jane comes in and examines him and says it's over. She hugs each of us. "You did everything you could," she says.
    Oh yes.
    The hospital chaplain comes into the room and we all hold hands around his bed over his body, and she says words and thanks God for Elijah's life. But words mean nothing to me. Words are no comfort, none at all.
    They leave us alone with him again. I place my face next to his face, my cheek to his cheek, I lift his shirt, touch the skin on his belly with my