Page 102 of How to Lose Yourself Completely

He plops the dog on Troy’s chest, where it seems stunned. Of course, nothing happens. And you chastise yourself for thinking there would be a miracle. The nurse pushes against the door, and it pops open a crack. But you push back and quickly close the gap again.

“I’m calling security!” says the nurse.

“Now what?!” says Will, and he looks on the verge of tears.

He kicks a chair across the room.

“It doesn’t count if one of us doesn’t make it,” he says. “It doesn’t count!”

And you know he’s right. None of you need another absence in your life. You all have too many. There’s no more room for absence and uncertainty. This, your therapist often said, was actually at the very root of your anxiety. The fact that life is always barreling toward you and always uncertain. And it keeps going until the second it stops. What you want—what every person alive wants—is to control it. But that is impossible.

Because no matter how much you try, you might find yourself in the middle of nowhere with no idea how to survive. Or stuck on a rapidly warming planet. Or in love with someone, entirely and aggressively against your will. Or trying to help a complicated person who can’t find his way to accepting it. Or you just might find yourself in a hospital in suburban Minnesota, barricading a door while your new friend tries unsuccessfully to wake your other new friend from his coma with the use of a dog.

You don’t have much time for revelations at this juncture. The pressure on the door is too great. And Will is starting to break down. But you know, if only for a second, that it’s never going tostop. None of this. The absurdity and the peril and the absolute heartbreak of this life is going to keep going. But you also know with equal, fleeting certainty that you have to actually be there for it all.

Two things happen then in quick succession.

The first is that the door flies open, sending you and Diana to the floor. The nurse and two befuddled security guards stumble in, and you’re not sure what they were expecting but it’s not this. The second thing that happens is that Turbo seems to finally understand where he is. He takes a long hard look at the creature he loves most in the world, and then he proceeds to release the loudest, most mournful cry an animal has ever made. It is earsplitting and tragic and seems to contain the entire history of grief on earth in one canine bay. Everyone covers their ears and freezes in place as he howls again and again.

You look over then, and Diana is mouthing something to you. But you can’t hear her. You move closer to her, and you take your hand off your ear for just a second. You feel her lips graze your ear, and when you turn toward her, you’re surprised to see her smiling.

“We’re here!” she says.

And then, it’s as if something shifts in your brain. As all the mayhem unfolds around you, you feel like you’re in a body again.Yourbody. And you are I.

Even though you know your brain will best you again, for now, there’s a moment of total calm, and you hear each thought so clearly.

Yes, I am here.

I don’t know why.

I might never know.

But that’s okay for now.

At least I am here.

And then I watch as Troy opens his eyes.