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Summary
Mateo is disappointed in himself for not being more outgoing, and he’s surprised when Rufus goes into the hospital with him. Visiting hours haven’t begun, but Rufus gets the clerk to let Mateo in and stays in the waiting room while Mateo goes to his father’s room. His dad had a stroke and has been in a coma for two weeks. Mateo takes out his dad’s favorite photo of the two of them that he brought from home, writes a note on the back, and leaves it on the top of the chest next to the bed. A nurse comes in and talks to Mateo. She knows it’s his End Day, and she asks Mateo to tell her about his father. Mateo tells her stories, and Rufus joins them and listens. Mateo asks to be alone with his dad and tells Rufus to come back to get him in ten minutes. When Rufus returns, Mateo has a hard time leaving, but Rufus tells him his dad wouldn’t want him there and that Rufus needs him to be his friend on their End Day. They leave.
Mateo considers going back and just spending the day by his father’s side, but he doesn’t want to put others at risk if his death might hurt them. As he and Rufus leave, they see a homeless man who asks them for money. Rufus questions if they should give him anything, and Mateo says it’s not his place to judge worthiness. They give the man all their cash, and he is grateful and hugs Mateo. As Mateo and Rufus are reflecting on their experience with the homeless man, Death-Cast calls a woman named Delilah Grey to let her know it is her End Day. She doesn’t believe it. Her ex-fiancé, Victor, works at Death-Cast, and Delilah thinks he’s playing a prank on her in retribution for her breaking up with him. She decides to focus on her job as an editorial assistant at Infinite Weekly. When she hears that movie star Howie Maldonado got a call from Death-Cast that morning, she resolves to be the one to report the story.
Mateo and Rufus head to Lidia’s apartment after Mateo stops and withdraws $400 from an ATM to give to her. Before the visit, they go for breakfast in Rufus’s favorite diner, where they reveal to the waitress that they’re Deckers. Mateo questions whether it’s fair to share that information since it might ruin someone’s day to know. Rufus shrugs it off, but Mateo says he’s not going to burden Lidia by telling her it’s his End Day. They talk about how Rufus wanted to be a professional photographer and Mateo wanted to be an architect, and then they leave. Rufus waits outside as Mateo visits his best friend. At Lidia’s, Mateo helps her clean up the apartment while trying to behave normally. He plays with Penny while Lidia cleans up another part of the apartment, and he reflects on his friendship with her and how much he’ll miss her and seeing Penny grow up. It’s clear that Lidia is suspicious, but Mateo leaves the money for her and runs out before she can confront him.
Analysis
Mateo embodies the idea of how one must be brave to live an authentic life. His anxieties keep him from fully engaging in the world even though he wants to be more outgoing, make friends, and live a full and happy life. Instead, Mateo questions every risk and doesn’t dare to try new things. It’s only when he realizes there is not much to lose that he begins to overcome his fears and attempt to create an End Day that represents the kind of life he’s always wanted for himself. Even though he only has hours left to enjoy exploring who he really is, Mateo intends to embrace the idea of living like he’s dying with nothing to hold him back. In addition to things like making a new friend and getting out of his apartment to experience the world, Mateo wants to be brave in his final meeting with his father. Unfortunately, there is one fear Mateo can’t bring himself to face. Although he wants to come out to his father, he admits that it's a secret he’s not ready to reveal even to himself. In this scene, Mateo demonstrates how fears hold people back not only from living their best lives but from being their truest selves.
During his last meeting with his father, Mateo considers how people can achieve a kind of immortality through the stories people tell about them. As he talks to the nurse and tells her about his dad, Mateo makes his father become much more than a comatose patient for her as well as for Rufus. Mateo thinks about how his father kept his mother alive through his stories about her, implying that he is wondering who will keep him and his memory alive when he’s gone. The fact that Mateo enjoys sharing stories about his father with two relative strangers is indicative of his philosophy of how important it is to connect with other people. Whether writing notes to neighbors so they won’t worry or doing acts of kindness for random people he encounters, Mateo creates his own narrative of what it means to live a good life and be a part of the interconnected humanity of the world. Even though he says he’s not concerned with people knowing about or praising him for his good acts, his own epitaph speaks to the story he wants others to tell about him and how he wants to carve out a little bit of immortality for himself: he wants to be known as someone who lived in care and service of others.
Mateo’s interactions with the homeless man emphasize the theme that every life is important. When Rufus questions Mateo’s actions and cautions him that the man might not actually be homeless but just trying to scam people out of money, Mateo reveals one of his core values: that he doesn’t judge other people’s worthiness for help. In his estimation, Mateo believes asking for help is enough to inspire others to provide that help. This philosophy is first seen when Mateo buries the bird, and giving all his cash to the homeless man furthers the idea that everyone deserves to be seen and treated with dignity. This contrasts with Andrea, the Death-Cast herald, who tries to make her job and life easier by shutting down her humanity and reducing people, especially Deckers, to categories. For Andrea, Deckers cease being humans when they get their Death-Cast call. For Mateo, however, nothing and no one ever gives up the right to be treated humanely, not even a bird.
