On the 15th of August 2000 in a small and orderly hospital room with a romantic view over an extensive parking garage, Michael Scott died leaving behind no surviving heirs and no estate. At his death, he had no hair, little dignity, and although he was almost certainly not aware of it, he was holding my hand. His death was recorded as being caused by pulmonary pneumonia, instigated by a weakened immunity due to acute myelogenous leukemia. That was his official death. The death I knew of was a long, painful, humanity – robbing process that saw the man I loved stripped down and humiliated by a body that he ultimately lost the rights to. I had spent the last months watching him as he suffered the ignominy of dying.

I awoke at his bedside, holding a slack and cold hand. I had missed even being able to say goodbye. Michael had passed away and was gone and he had done so in his own stubborn way, that way that served only his purposes, the way that we had always lived – he the wind, me the reeds the bent.

Michael’s death was the most commonplace of occurrences in the hospital. Paperwork which had been pre-filled out was signed and dated by a consultant who came in, patted me on the shoulder while checking his watch, and left with a click of his expensive shoes. He hadn’t been expected to survive and in this at least he lived up to his expectations. I was in a daze. As his partner of five years it was expected for me to be so. The man I loved was dead. The man I wanted to live the rest of my life with would not be fulfilling his end of the bargain.

I looked over at Michael and his motionless body. I reached up to cautiously touch his leg and run my hand up to his knee. He was ticklish to an extent that was nearly annoying, and I braced for moving my arm back off of his leg’s reaction. The jump of the knee and the “Hey, stop that!” never came, and for the first time in my life I was able to touch the soft underside of his knee with no consequence. I don’t know what I expected. I don’t know what I wanted.

Instead, I cried.

An orderly came in, smiling apologetically at me. He was tall and pale and had multiple hooped earrings down his left ear that struck me as irreverent, bordering on profane. Death calls for pulling out hoops. “Stay as long as you need to say goodbye,” he said softly. I didn’t move or make a reply because staying hadn’t really been something I had been considering or dismissing, so I merely looked back at him without expression. “No really,” he added. “You can stay. We are going to need the room at some point though, and we need to take him downstairs.”

Ah. Downstairs. I imagined them tying a tag to his toe and instigating his insufferable ticklish nature, and found myself inappropriately fighting back hysterical giggles at the image.

The orderly tucked the sheet and waffle blanket up under the no longer cold chin of the one I had stared at almost every night before falling asleep. He moved things away from Michael (Michael’s body). The IV was turned off and pulled away. Empty plastic packaging from tubing was crumbled up into a ball. The medical detritus – the thermometer, the used syringe box, the stupid fucking cardboard vomit pan that every hospital wheeze pretended was a hat – was swept away apologetically. He turned to me and, looking past me at the window, he smiled a half-apologetic smile, bade me to contact him should I need anything and, upon drinking in the skyline, he exited with relief. I decided I hated him.

I continued to sit there on the chair, trying to make sense of it. Of all the people in all the planes of the world, the one who would always be there, the one who would never die, the one who would outlive me and everyone around me, would be Michael. The man who never had so much as the flu had done something as bourgeois as die on me. The man on the bed, who turned greyer by the minute.

All of which did little to explain why Michael was standing in the liquid flow of the window, completely naked. His body was thin but not ravaged as it had been in illness, and his head was shadowed with the dark fuzz of stubble. I could see his reflection, with his hands in a V against his chin as he frowned, looking out into the London skyline and studying the situation with a mild degree of confusion and consternation, as though it was a maths equation that he could very nearly solve.

If anyone were to wear out their welcome, it would be Michael.