By Nolo Segundo
At one of his 7 mansions [appraised at $77.5 million], the one close to the world famous hospital, he lay on the custom made hospital bed [$36,500] with IV’s in each arm. Classical music was playing on low volume on a stereophile’s dream of an audio system [quad speakers: $182,400; CD player: $ 7,800; pre-amp: $12,000; 300 watt-amp, $9150; a custom built turntable, $23,700, with a diamond needle, $4,250; hand-made cables, $8,400; custom built cabinet handmade from rare woods from Brazil, Sri Lanka, and Hungary, $62, 000].
The attendant nurse sat in a 17th century French armchair [$ 45,000] quietly scrolling through her text messages and feeling a little sad that her patient was dying on his very expensive death bed. She was making over three times what she would get anywhere else as a hospice nurse and she couldn’t help wishing he would live a few months longer, long enough at least so she could get that luxury car she had long dreamt of. But the doctor had just said he did not have long now, a few hours at most. She sighed and thought to count her blessings.
He had fought the disease with all the money in the world, it seemed– well, he would have spent the tens of billions he had made through a life of high finance if money would have done the trick– but money was useless against his disease, powerless before the caprices of nature. He remembered a poem he once read by some underpaid and probably by now forgotten poet [he had a secret weakness for poetry] about Death smiling at the brave soldier on a deadly battlefield, or shrugging at the preacher in his pulpit moments before an earthquake leveled his church, or laughing uproariously at the rich man who thought he, Death, could be bought off.
He realized now his folly in thinking that as a rich man he could bribe Death if he only saw the right doctors, spent enough money in the right hospitals. But it was all a waste– he was told it would be in the beginning, by the young pathologist who said he had six months at most, it didn’t matter what he did or did not do. Almost six months to the day, he thought—I shouldn’t have yelled at the kid. I was a jerk when I was poor, and I’m a jerk now I’m rich.
But he was not a man given to regrets, so he didn’t think about the six wives he had had, how he would grow tired of one after another every few years. Each of them accepted the pre-nups but never seemed to think it would apply to her.
He looked at his hand holding the buzzer– he was not even 50 yet– how could he be dying? He wanted to shout it out the window but the nearest neighbor was 2 miles away. Of course his chauffeur, 4 maids, a butler, gardener, and 2 cooks would hear, since he required all of them to live on the estate.
But none of them would answer him. Besides, they were all wondering where they could get their next job, and if they’d be left anything in his will. None of them were hopeful.
Then suddenly, with a bitterness he hadn’t felt much since his childhood, he remembered he had never gotten around to making a will! He felt like laughing at his own stupidity, but now even a good belly laugh might finish him off, he feared. Why didn’t he ever respond when his lawyer reminded him every few years he should draw up a will, or else the state would? ‘Do it for those you love’ his lawyer would tell him, and the rich man would smile his tight little smile, knowing he did not love anyone in the world, and no one in the world loved him.
That tight little smile was on his lips as death entered his body and so it froze. Afterwards his servants, nurses, doctors, all wondered why he was smiling at the end.
* * *
Nolo Segundo is the pen name of a retired teacher who became published in his 8th decade in over 240 literary journals in 21 countries on 4 continents and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, thrice for Best of the Net. Cyberwit.net has published 3 poetry collections in softcover, the latest titled ‘Soul Songs’.