in the hospital bedroom with him when he died. Terri won and was with Ed as he died; as Terri puts it, "He never came up out of it." Soon afterward, Mel begins a story about an elderly couple struck by a drunk driver, a teenager who was pronounced dead at the scene. Mel was called into the hospital and saw how badly the elderly couple had been injured. He says that they had "multiple fractures, internal injuries, hemorrhaging, contusions, and lacerations." The couple were in casts and bandages from head to toe. Mel's point in telling the story is the husband's consternation when the couple was moved into the intensive care unit. Mel would visit the couple daily, and when he put his ear to the husband's mouth-hole, the latter told Mel he was upset because he could not see his wife through his eye-holes. Mel strays from the topic with more talk about Ed, his personal thoughts about love, hatred toward his ex-wife, and life as a knight. Mel feels even though one loves a person, if something were to happen to them, the survivor would grieve but love again. After finishing the second bottle of gin, the couples discuss going to dinner, but no one makes any moves to proceed with their plans. Earlier version Carver's original draft of the story "Beginners" was heavily edited by Gordon Lish, who cut out nearly half of Carver's story, adding in details of his own. Carver's original draft, released by his widow Tess Gallagher and published in a December 2007 issue of the New Yorker, reveals the extensive edits. For instance, the character Mel was originally named Herb, and the abusive boyfriend, renamed Ed by Lish, was originally named Carl. Additionally, Herb's story about the old couple was cut nearly in half, with Lish removing the story of the old couple's home life, love, and reunion in the hospital. In Carver's original version, the two had separate rooms, which caused them to pine for each other and eventually led to a scene when they met again. Lish removed all of this, rewrote the couple into the same room, but in body casts that prevented them from seeing each other, and then explained the old man's distress thus: "I mean, the accident was one thing, but it wasn't everything. I'd get up to his mouth-hole, you know, and he'd say no,