I saw Hamilton a few weeks ago and I can’t stop thinking about it. Not about Hamilton itself — it was good and I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.*

I’m referring instead to something else that was happening in the theater that night, six feet to my right and directly across the aisle from where we were sitting.

It started with what I thought was the sound of someone going ‘shhhhhhhh’ really loudly and really consistently. Like every 30 seconds. The first three or four times it happened I’m not even sure I noticed it because the musical itself was so loud and insistent and my brain was busy trying to figure out how the characters were able to move around the stage so quickly.**

By the fifth or sixth time I, along with everyone in my section, definitely noticed it and we began to twist and fret in our seats as we looked around in an effort to pinpoint the asshole who needed to be shushed. And also the asshole who kept shushing the original asshole so loudly they needed to be shushed as well.

But it wasn’t anyone shushing anyone. It was instead a very, very sick young man slumped in his seat, with an oxygen tank lying on the floor next to his feet and clear tubes coming out of it and snaking off into the darkness between seats. The ‘shhhhhhhh’ sound was him breathing through an oxygen mask. Helpfully, he was trying to time it so that the sound of his breathing would be masked by the louder parts of the musical. Which, if you’ve seen Hamilton, know that this is basically impossible because the music lurches all over the place. Not unpleasantly, but good luck trying to time your breathing to it.

Upon realizing what was happening, my annoyance, so clear and righteous moments earlier, now felt small and dumb. I watched him for a few moments, careful not to openly stare but unable to avoid looking at him. He was around 24, at once somehow both sallow and pale and and slim to the point of emaciation. He wasn’t sick — he was dying. Not that I could tell you exactly what the difference is between the two, but I felt it coming off of him in waves.

This budding narrative in my head was buttressed during intermission, when a woman who had been sitting behind him leaned over the seat to say something inaudible and kind to the mother, who immediately started crying.

I have no way of knowing how or why he was at Hamilton that night. My instinctive urge was to invent some sort of Make-A-Wish scenario. Like Hamilton was one of the last things on his bucket list and he was going to see it come hell or high water. Even if he had to be wheel-chaired in by a small army of solicitous family members exchanging worried glances at each other over their armrests.

Even if he had to lie with his head on the armrest for half of it because he didn’t have the strength to sit upright.

Even, and this is the part I can’t stop thinking about, he had to sit there and weigh his need to breathe against the silent wrath and disapproval of half the theater due to the noise his oxygen tank made.

Meanwhile me. Just sitting there trying desperately not to stare. Totally watching Hamilton and totally not watching Hamilton. Feeling completely invested in the drama unfolding within the drama — the simple brutality of watching a play about Alexander Hamilton “running out of time” while a young man sits noisily dying in his seat 6 feet away.

About two-thirds in he started coughing, and it got so bad his family had to wheel him out. I didn’t see him again until we were leaving. He was sitting in his wheelchair near the lobby doors, surrounded by nervous, hovering family members. The mom had stopped crying by then and was talking to what I assumed was his older brother.

I didn’t say anything to them. Didn’t even sneak a small, sympathetic smile. I was already feeling like a clumsy intruder so I just walked past them and out onto the sidewalk underneath the marquee overhang. As if they were any other family that night.

Maybe, especially, because they weren’t.

*- I don’t know that I’d ever run out and buy the soundtrack, but I will admit to hearing echoes of Non-stop in my head for a few days afterwards.

**- Turns out the middle circle of the stage had some sort of Lazy Susan embedded in it. As it rotated, the characters could walk into the rotation or against it, making for a lot of interesting movement dynamics. I kept losing track of where anyone was in any given scene until BAM! — they’d materialize out of nowhere, center stage with a spotlight on them. The relentless (but mild) disorientation I felt trying to track everyone visually reminded me of that infamous video where it asks you to count the number of times a group of people pass a basketball around. The whole mise-en-scène was insanely well crafted and crafty.