By the beginning of February 2002, I'm caught in a holding pattern, trying to turn a squeaky wheel that takes more and more of my energy to move. Day after day, the ache of my bed sores is constant. I am bone thin, covered with Kaposi Sarcoma lesions, and in need of a walker to travel even the shortest of distances. My legs refuse to get strong and remain strong. I've given up on my physical therapy exercises. I've been here for over half a year. Shouldn't I already be dead?

With my hands and feet burning from peripheral neuropathy, I fall asleep tonight with the aid of an Ambien. Waking up nowhere near morning, coming to the realization that I've reached the threshold of my endurance, silently yet caustically I shout to the heavens, not for relief but for an answer. No more prayers – I'm depleted, devoid of prayers. It's time to try giving orders. Demanding to know why I've been getting neither better nor worse, I send out a command for some attention from above. Caught in a stasis of misery, no tears fall, for I am far beyond the realms of weeping.

Desperately, I search for relief. Kicking my feet beneath my sweaty sheets only makes the soles of my feet feel hotter. I wring my hands and try to shrink. Crawling away from my skin, to the best of my ability I dissociate and push my mind down to a cavity of complete darkness deep within what's left of my body. Mercifully, the crevice of pitch I find swallows up my consciousness.

But I wake up again. I don't know how long I've been asleep. The low level of light in the room informs me it's still night. A shadow of someone stands by my bed. I assume a nurse has come to take my temperature or blood pressure -- if not that, then to inject me with something or to extract something from me. But who is this? A new night nurse? The visitor's face is obscured. As my eyes adjust to the wee bit of dim light seeping through the tiny glass window of my room's shut door, I see he's wearing what looks like a black hooded robe.

Unbelievability reigns. Is this really happening? Who is this extraordinarily tall being? Am I hallucinating? Am I seeing my doppelganger? Perhaps I'm still asleep and dreaming. Whether conscious or unconscious, my state of being doesn't matter, for a focused communication begins. Words are produced, not in the usual manner, but fantastically, without sound. He questions me, "You ... want ... me ... come ... now? You want ... me come ... later?"

If I were stronger, I would sit bolt upright. All I can do is question him back, not with my vocal cords, but with something I guess you might call telepathy. "Who are you?” No answer comes. And then I believe I know his name. He must be. Here's the answer I've been waiting for. He's my ultimate reprieve. "You're the Angel of Death, aren't you? Thank you for coming. I'm ready. Let's go."

Unfortunately, his hooded head moves slowly to signify a negative response, left to right and right to left. "To ... have it all, one must go ... through it all."

How can I make out his words yet not comprehend what he means? "What? I don't understand you. Explain. Explain to me."

"To have it all ... you ... must go through it all."

Wait a damn second. This is not what I asked for. My rage takes over the words I project. "What the hell ya talkin' 'bout? I don't want it all. Why should I? I've already been through enough. I've already been through too much!"

"Yes. Too much. All is too much. Why not be too much? Then nothing will be too much."

"Oh, no. Don't you question me. You start answering my questions. My doctor threw me in this wretched place to die. I'm way past the point of being ready to die. So why am I still here?"

"There is no rest, but there is no rush. There is no escape, but always a choice. Come with me now, or come with me later. You want me come now or you want . . ."

"Now. Now. Now. I don't care where. Now!" Suddenly, dead doldrums perfuse the air. Remaining thoughts of disbelief flee as my visitor takes a step forward, bends over, and covers my eyes with the sleeve of his robe. His fabric feels like scratchy steel wool against my eyelids. The impressions of words are no longer needed for communication. Combined with spontaneous knowingness, pictures form in my mind's eye.

The first image I see is a white picket fence. I'm straddling the fence. My crotch is impaled. The pain is intense, but I'm too scared to move. I understand. The image is a symbol of my subconscious being unwilling to choose one side of the fence over the other. Underneath my obnoxious yellow-bellied belligerent rebellion, I'm scared to die.

The next picture I see becomes a series of images, appearing so quickly in rapid succession that I'm soon watching what looks like a movie. Floating up toward heaven, at first I am happy and without pain. But then someone stops me midair. I can rise no farther. This new stranger, who wears a white hooded robe, pulls out a scroll of parchment, unrolls it, and points a bleached bony finger at an unfinished sentence followed by an expansive blank space.

Knowing immediately the meaning of what is symbolized, my heart falls faster than an anchor thrown off the top of Coit Tower. If I were to choose death now, my choice would necessitate my coming back to Earth and incarnating for another go-'round. Since I didn't complete the mission of my soul's journey this time around, starting all over as a baby would be a requirement.

Well, no thank you! Go through another childhood? My next life will probably be worse than this one.

The rest of me falls down, following the path of my heart, when the realization that I don't know my life's purpose grabs me by the scruff of the neck. I look up at the one in the white robe and scream out to the diminishing figure, "Hey, you! What's my mission?"

No answer comes from above. My anger returns, reinforced. "Shit. Forget it. Goddamn it. All right. So be it. I'll summon my might. I'll stay here and fight." Sensing the hard mattress beneath me, with concerted effort from my pneumocystis pneumonia-filled lungs, thrush-coated throat and tongue, I shout loudly to my night visitor, "Come ... for ... me ... later!"

No longer feeling the steel wool of his sleeve on my lids, my eyes open. He has disappeared. Now I know how Jacob of the Old Testament felt after wrestling with his angel: abused and abandoned.

The door of my room is punched open. A nurse I'm all too familiar with asks me about the commotion. She is one of the nasty ones. Her magnolia-scented perfume offends my nostrils to the point of making me want to puke. Holding back a gag, I respond, "Oh ... just another one of my nightmares. Can I have another sleeping pill?"

She announces as she turns to leave, "Only one per customer per night."

How did I know she would say that? Because she always says that! I would love to fling something at her gyrating ass as she exits, but she's really not worth the effort. Instead, I close my eyes to focus on my strategy to make an escape from this holding pen of a facility. My bed sores feel sorer. The prickly burning in my hands and feet spurns me, yet spurs me on. The time for making requests here is over. Now is the time for making demands.

Waiting for sunrise, I come up with bullet points for the diatribe I intend to reel off and onto my charlatan of a doctor:

1) I need stronger sleeping pills.

2) I want to change my AIDS medications to a regimen less gruesome. (A melee of up to twenty pills a day is ridiculous.) And if that doesn't help alleviate the pain in my extremities, then I need stronger pain meds.

3) I want to take warm salt water baths to leech out my body's toxins. These severe cold-water showers they force me to take aren't helping. They have a bathtub here. Why can't I use it?

4) I need to yell in my doc's ear, "Damn you for giving me the false hope of believing this place would be the sanctuary where I would forever be banished from life, where I wouldn't need to die alone. There's no dying here. There's no living here. So, you quack, help me get off this persistently, inflexibly, unbearably stubborn fence already."