Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

'For fans of Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Halle Butler' LEIGH STEIN, author of Self Care

Emily Austin

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781838953751
• eBook ISBN:
  9781838953744
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

'Funny about death, real about anxiety, witty about the things that worry us the most' Emma Gannon, author of Olive

'So fundamentally kind that you can feel the warmth coming off each page' Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Starling Days

Meet Gilda. She cannot stop thinking about death. Desperate for relief from her anxious mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local church and finds herself abruptly hired to replace the deceased receptionist Grace. It's not the most obvious job - she's queer and an atheist for starters - and so in between trying to learn mass, hiding her new maybe-girlfriend and conducting an amateur investigation into Grace's death, Gilda must avoid revealing the truth of her mortifying existence.

A blend of warmth, deadpan humour, and pitch-perfect observations about the human condition, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is a crackling exploration of what it takes to stay afloat in a world where your expiration - and the expiration of those you love - is the only certainty.

part one

Advent

There must have been an explosion. I hear ringing interspersed with a woman’s muffled screams. Everything is black. I blink repeatedly.

Black. Black. Black.

I blink once more and see sunlight. The towering silhouette of a streetlight forms in front of me. The light is green, but I am not moving. I glance behind me. A beige van is expelling smoke from its bent hood. There is shattered glass across the concrete road—

I remember now. I was about to sip my coffee. I heard a car horn, looked into my rearview mirror, and watched as that minivan plowed into the trunk of my car. My airbag exploded, and I involuntarily punched myself in the face.

I am now covered in both the scorching guts of my erupted thermos, as well as a concerning gray dust that was emitted when my airbag detonated. I turn my hazard lights on and glance again at my mirror. The screaming woman has emerged from her van. She is rushing toward me.

I am overwhelmed by the smell of my deceased coffee as it resurrects itself in the form of stains on my car’s upholstery and burn scars on my chest. Sunlight beams directly into my eyes, and I still hear ringing. I close my eyes and focus on the blackness behind my eyelids.

The woman raps her knuckles on my window, but I keep my eyes sealed shut. I tend to cry when I am overstimulated. Keeping my eyes closed might stop me from succumbing to that humbling tendency.

“She’s not opening her eyes!” The woman’s muffled voice shrieks through my window.

“Is she dead?”

I keep my eyes closed but wave an arm to demonstrate that I am alive.

“Why are your eyes shut?” she asks. “I thought I’d killed you!”

Does this woman think that all dead people shut their eyes?

“Can you hear me?” She knocks on the window again.

Rather than fill her in regarding how I am closing my eyes to avoid crying in public or exposing her to the dark realities of wide-eyed death, I decide the easiest thing to do now is open my eyes.

White light floods my vision.

I hear the woman say, “Oh, honey,” pacifyingly as tears begin to throw themselves off the cliff of my nose.

“I’m fine,” I lie.

I discovered the corpse of my pet rabbit when I was ten years old. I was planning to split my apple with her. Instead of sharing a moment and some fruit with my pet, I came face-to-face with her lifeless remains. Eyes wide open. Dead.

“Are you okay? You’re bleeding, you know.”

I lean my face closer to the rearview mirror and stare into my reflection. My nose is bleeding. My moment with the mirror also reveals that I have bloodshot eyes and a pale, watery complexion; however, it is possible that these afflictions beset me before the accident. I haven’t been looking in mirrors that much lately.

“And your arm . . .” She gestures toward my arm.

I look down to discover that one of my arms is sitting abnormally in my lap. The impact of the airbag has either broken or dislocated it.

Despite both my car and my arm being broken, I am driving myself to the emergency room. I resolved not to involve an ambulance because I do not like to be a spectacle. I would rather be run over by another van than be surrounded by paramedics touching me inside such a conspicuous vehicle.

My foot is pressing down on my gas pedal so delicately that I am barely moving. I am crawling down the road with the airbag hanging out of my steering wheel like it has been disemboweled.

A large white truck is tailgating me. Its driver keeps honking its horn.

I grip the steering wheel, cognizant of the fact that if another car rear-ends me right now, there will be nothing left to cushion the blow.

I glare at the truck as it passes me like it is a predator hunting me. I clench my steering wheel while I stew intensely with the reality that I am a living, breathing thing that is one day going to die. Reckless drivers can snuff me out. I am trapped inside this fragile body. I could be run off the road. I could be crushed by a van. I could choke on a grape. I could be allergic to bees; I am so impermanent that a measly bug could hop from a daisy to my arm, sting me, and I could be erased. Black. Nothing.

I stare at the creases in my knuckles and begin consciously breathing.

I am an animal; an organism made up of bones and blood.

I study the trees as I crawl past them. I do this to occupy my mind with thoughts that are not related to my own fragile mortality.

That is a pine tree.

A maple.

Another pine.

Spruce.

My death, and the death of everyone I love, is inevitable.

Pine again.

I head toward the receptionist’s desk and position myself in the center of his view. I wait patiently for him to look up from his paperwork to greet me. I read the posters plastered on the wall behind his desk, to appear occupied, and to distract myself from the fact that every passing moment brings me closer to my ultimate destination. (Death.)

One poster is titled: THE HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUS! The odd use of an exclamation mark is what drew my eye. The model hired to pose for the poster is grinning so aggressively that I can see every single one of her enormous teeth. I am staring into her beaming eyes, wondering how I too can achieve happiness. Does living a life unburdened by the fear of catching HPV result in that level of euphoria? If so, shoot me up.

“What’s the problem today?” the nurse finally asks me.

I want to tell him that my problem might be that I have yet to receive my HPV vaccine; however, I have already been mentally reciting what to say, and so I announce: “I was just in a small car accident.”

“What?” He glances up at me, surprised. “Were you really?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, dear. Are you okay?”

That is a strange question, I think. My presence as a prospective patient in this emergency room implies that I am not okay.

Despite thinking the question is strange, I tell him, “Yes, I’m fine.” I add, “Well, I think that I may have broken my arm, but I am okay in general. How are you?”

He stands up to look at my arm. He then looks me dead in the eyes and squints. “You are a lot calmer than you usually are when you come in here.”

Failing to fashion a more articulate response, I stammer, “Th-thank you.”

Compelled now to direct the conversation away from my usual lack of composure, I decide now is the moment to share: “And I would like to be immunized for HPV, please.”

While waiting for my number to be called, I occupy myself by amateurishly diagnosing everyone in the waiting room with the condition that I imagine they are suffering from.

That man has the flu.

That lady has cancer.

That kid is faking it.

After completing my assessment of everyone in the room, I hear a familiar voice shout, “Hey there!”

I can see through my peripheral vision that a nurse is waving at me.

I pretend not to see her. I act very focused on the floor tiles.

Not intuitive enough to recognize that I do not want to be addressed, she re-shouts, “Hello!”

I grit my back molars and look up at her.

“Nice to see you!” she hollers.

I smile weakly. “Nice to see you too, Ethel.”

She smiles back at me while a different nurse, whose name is Larry, walks toward her. Larry also looks over at me. He waves. “Back again, are we?”

I nod.

“Do you work here, or something?” the patient sitting next to me pries.

“No,” I reply—just as Frank, one of the hospital janitors, points at me and shouts, “Hey, girl!”

I am being interviewed before I can see the doctor.

“Are you on any medication?”

“No,” I reply. “Well, I have been taking a lot of vitamin D recently.”

Last week when I came to the ER th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Part One: Advent
• Part Two: Twelvetide
• Part Three: Ordinary Time
• Part Four: Lent
• Part Five: Easter
• Acknowledgments