the last book I ever read (3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool, excerpt sixteen)

from 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the Lost Empire of Cool by James Kaplan:

Verchomin took the opportunity to address a serious subject—the pianist’s incessant financial woes—in a lighthearted way. “Hey, Bill,” she said, “what do you think about having a memorial concert to raise money for you?”

“You mean a tribute, my dear, as I’m still alive,” he said, dryly.

The three of them laughed again, and Evans began to cough up blood. In a moment a steady stream was flowing from his mouth; hilarity turned to horror. Evans gave LaBarbera directions to Mount Sinai Hospital. “Lay on the horn, Joe,” he said. “Tell them it’s an emergency.”

Verchomin turned in her seat, keeping a desperate watch on Evans. “He gives me the fear in his eyes,” she writes. “I want to tell him that I need more, that we aren’t done yet. He tells me, ‘I think I’m going to drown.’ I’m not sure a person can lose that much blood.”

They pulled up to the hospital. LaBarbera: “I remember picking him up—he weighed almost nothing—and carrying him into the emergency room.” Evans’s blood was everywhere, leaving a trail through the waiting room. He was laid on a gurney, and doctors and nurses took over. Back in the waiting room, sitting with his jacket on her lap, Verchomin watched a janitor mop up his blood. "A nurse appears and in a soothing voice describes Bill’s condition as something similar to a nosebleed that just needs cauterizing.” A woman sitting next to Verchomin told her, in great detail, about a similar experience her husband had gone through. She spoke of him in the present tense. A young doctor came out and took Verchomin into a small office. “We couldn’t save him,” he said.