Forever, page 12
“What’s going on?” the doc said as he checked the vitals monitor on what was clearly a reflex—given that Daniel wasn’t hooked up to it. Yet. “What’s wrong.”
“Nothing,” Lydia said as she fell back into her chair by the desk.
Gus didn’t look at her, but stayed focused on Daniel, his dark eyes narrowing like he was reading heart rate, blood pressure, and body temperature from across the room. The Coke can in his hand was a reminder that that enormous power plant of a brain seemed to run on carbonated caffeine and carbs that came out of a vending machine.
“I’m okay,” Daniel said. Medically, that was.
Well, except for the cancahhhh.
Too soon? he thought to himself. Yeah, probably.
Gus did a back-and-forth as he cracked his Coke open. Then he took a drink like he wanted to give either of them the chance to change their mind.
“Well, anyway, I got your bloods back.” Gus went over to the workstation and signed in to the computer. “They look better already. How’s your eating? Your weight is low and I’m thinking we should add some Ensure throughout the day…”
The rest of the doctor-talk drifted away, becoming background music of no interest. Over on her chair, Lydia was nodding intently, still in that forward position, her eyes rapt as she focused on the screen. She was in what Daniel thought of as her uniform, trail shoes, loose Patagonia pants that were the color of a cream-and-sugar coffee, and a turtleneck in a heather gray that really brought out her eyes.
Her mouth was moving as she spoke. Then she licked her lips as if they were dry. Meanwhile, Gus was doing a lot of nodding and pointing to the screen, his blunt finger with its trimmed nail tracing over glowing lines of text and numbers—
Daniel’s first clue that he’d decided to leave was pressure on his mostly numb feet. Looking down, he was surprised to find that he’d shifted off the exam bed—and the next autonomous motion was his right hand going to his left forearm, where it peeled off the clear bandage that was anchoring the IV and took the needle right out of his vein.
He tied the tubing in a knot with his shaking hands in a sloppy fashion. The inefficiency was, as always, galling, but he didn’t want to leave a mess on the floor for Gus or his nursing staff to clean up.
Neither of the other two people in the room noticed him going to vertical, and an uncharitable part of him felt like that was apt. They were so focused on the lab results, they weren’t seeing him anymore, the physician/caregiver equivalent of nose-blindness to some kind of stink.
He thought back to standing with Lydia in the carport, the two of them embracing, coming to terms with shit—and then when they’d told Gus and C.P. what they’d decided. He’d felt like he and Lydia had an accord, like everything that had been a grind had gone smooth again. But that easy street hadn’t lasted and that was cruelest thing about their situation. With time running out, they needed to spend the moments that mattered together.
Truly together. Not as partners in a catastrophe, each brave-facing it and dealing with their truths on their own.
Daniel was all the way to the door, and even opening things up, when the other two got up in a rush and reached for him.
“No,” he said sharply as he took a step back.
Catching his balance on the jamb, he forced his voice to be even. “I’ve got to get out of here. I just—give me a minute.”
“Daniel, let me come with you—”
“I’m sorry,” he said to Lydia with a voice that cracked. “I just—let me clear my head. I don’t want to be a shit, I really don’t. I just… I need to breathe for a minute, ’kay? You listen to everything he has to say and fill me in when we’re back upstairs.”
From inside the exam room, Gus murmured, “Let him go.”
“Take your cane,” Lydia said urgently. “Here.”
She ducked back in. Leaned all the way out again. “Please. Take this.”
He watched from a vast distance as his hand reached forward and locked on to the metal shaft’s hook. Then, before he said something he was going to regret, he nodded at her and walked away. Shuffled away. Limped away.
It was a while before the larger laboratory sank in, all the researchers busy at their stretches of stainless-steel counters, so many white coats and faces hiding behind clear safety glasses, their nitrile-gloved hands reminding him of ads for the Blue Man Group that he’d seen in the New York City subway once.
Glances were discreetly sent his way, and he could feel their disappointment in him.
Or maybe he was dubbing that in.
As he continued along, he assumed he was going for a short wander. That he’d return to the exam room and pull his mind and emotions together. Instead, he found himself all the way down at the elevators.
Well, looked like he was headed back to the house.
When he hit the up button, the doors opened immediately.
Maybe it was a sign.
He stepped in, turned himself around, and punched the button marked “L.” For “Lobby.” When there was a shrill buzzing noise, he couldn’t think of why—
Oh, right.
Fumbling in his back pocket, he took out his swipe card and did the duty with the reader. The doors shut. And up he went.
Not a staircase to heaven, as it were. But an Otis elevator to C.P.’s crib.
Then again, there was no eternal peace waiting for him at the end of this short ascension. Or at the end of his road, either. Funny how being an atheist had never particularly affected him one way or the other. That pragmatism stung, though, as he confronted the worm-food option that his refusal to believe in a higher power promised him.
Salvation might just be a fantasy he was going to need to embrace.
“Shit,” he muttered to himself.
* * *
“He needs to blow off some steam,” Gus said. “It’s been a lot lately.”
As the good doctor sat down in front of his computer again, Lydia’s instinct was to go after Daniel and make sure he was all right. Whatever that meant.
Gus leaned over and patted the seat she’d been in. “He’ll be back.”
“Maybe he’s gone to have another smoke.” As she felt the man look up sharply, she shrugged. “He goes out into the woods and lights up. With a Jack Daniel’s. I found him there last night. No, wait, it was two nights ago? I can’t remember.”
Time had ceased to be linear for her. It was more a fruit salad of minutes and hours, everything mixed up in a big bowl of sadness.
Who knew that there was a vinaigrette that tasted like grief.
Gus patted the chair again. “Sit with me. Let’s keep talking.”
Lydia did what she was told because she couldn’t think of anything else other than following Daniel out into the larger lab. But then what was going to happen? An argument in front of the researchers? Yup, that was going to go well.
And what exactly were they fighting over?
“So how bad is it between you two?” Gus nodded at his computer. “I have the clinical picture. How’s the interpersonal one going?”
Oh, we’re great. You know, it’s a hard situation, but with love, two people can get through anything—
“We’re just bouncing all over the place,” she said. “One minute connected, the next… flying apart. There’s no stride to any of it anymore. And the idea that we’re wasting today doing anything other than holding each other or—I’m babbling. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.”
“Yeah, you do.” Gus eased back. “You know exactly what you’re saying.”
“I want to change the channel on this TV show. How ’bout that.”
“I totally believe that’s true, too. Look, I’m a medical doctor, not a psych guy, but this will work itself out. You guys are adjusting to where things are and it’s heavy shit. It’ll come around, especially as he feels better.”
“Temporarily feels better.” She held up her hand. “Sorry, did that sound bitchy?”
“No, and no offense taken. Trust me, I know exactly where you’re at as the one who’s not sick. The wanting to be a paragon of perfection, give all the right reactions, do all the perfect things. And meanwhile, you’re losing your fucking mind and scared to death.”
“I guess you’ve seen this a lot in your patients, huh.”
Gus moved the mouse around, making circles of the little arrow on the screen, and after a moment of watching the rotations, she was able to focus on the lab report. On the left-hand side, there was a listing of tests, in the middle was a column of values, and over on the right, blocks of color. Red, yellow, and green. She wasn’t exactly sure what had been assessed, but she understood the coding. Everything was red and yellow. No greens. And Gus thought things were going better?
Or would go better?
He clicked out of the report, his email account taking over the screen as the last thing he’d checked.
“I lived it, actually.”
Lydia blinked and tried to remember what they’d been talking about. Those traffic light tiles were distracting as hell, a road map of this trip she didn’t want to be on promising construction delays at best… twelve-car pileups on the highway at worst.
“Wait, what?” She snapped to attention, as Gus’s words sank in. “You’ve—”
“My sister was eight when she died. I was fourteen. It was fucking awful—and I made it worse. I was a total shithead to my parents. Been trying to make it up to them and to her ever since. So yup, I know exactly where you’re at.”
He circled the mouse again, and the list of emails bumped down as a new one came in. For a second he frowned, as if the subject or sender was significant. But then he kept talking.
“It’s a pretty typical story,” he said. “Lot of us in this field are survivors one way or the other—and I’ll tell you, regret is one hell of a motivator. You either do something with it or it eats you alive from the inside out. And sometimes, it’s both.”
Lydia put her hand on top of his, stopping the circling. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thanks.” His reply was crisp, and she wasn’t surprised when he moved away from her. “Anyway, back to Daniel—”
“What was her name.”
More with the mouse. And beneath Gus’s rolling chair, his heel started tapping on the tiled floor.
“Anicia,” he said. “She was… my younger sister. She was eight. When she died. I was… fourteen.”
The words came out of his mouth, but they were more like a mantra than information he was sharing. And in the silence afterward, she pictured him in all different parts of his life, all different eras, repeating those same combination of syllables, the meaning definitive for him and also a blur now, after so many repetitions.
He seemed lost in the world of his familiar.
And it was helpful, although she wouldn’t have wanted him to suffer.
“You know,” he said absently, “I hated her sometimes. She was the focal point around which we all spun, whether we wanted to or not. I had dreams of being Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, you know.”
She waited for him to continue. “And?”
“All those games I played. I waited to see one of them in the stands. Even for a quarter. Just five minutes of playtime, I didn’t give a shit. I was a starter, you know. I played every game.” He looked at her. “Mom was always at the hospital with her. Dad… did the best he could, but we still lost the house.” Gus lifted his forefinger to make his point. “Do you have any idea how selfish that was? I was all bitched out because I didn’t have an audience, and meanwhile my dad was getting four hours of sleep a night and losing ground, and my mom was having a big old fucking party watching her daughter scream her way through another bone marrow biopsy. Fun, fun.”
“You had things you needed.” Lydia looked down at her hands, twisting them in her lap. “Things… you wished for. Things you missed.”
“She was in hell.”
“So were you.” Tears filled her eyes and she brushed them aside. “You weren’t being selfish. There was no room for you in your own life. That was the problem.”
He was quiet for a while and a couple more emails came in. Then he released a long, slow exhale.
“Here’s all I know for sure.” Gus held up his forefinger in that way he did. “Life’s meaning is nothing more than the intersection of Murphy’s Law with our random catalogue of dreams—while we hurtle through cold space on a rock and wait to die ourselves. So make the shit count where and when you can, Lydia. You’re going to have to live with what happens in the next month or two for longer than you’ll be going through it. Trust me, the aftermath is worse than the during. Make every second count now with him.”
“I’m trying to. Daniel’s on my mind every second of the day, all through the night. All I think about is—”
“But you need to still feel him. As a man, not as a patient. Let me be his doctor, so you can be his partner. I got the clinical side of things, okay? And one last thing. It’s too late to save yourself. Pulling back from him now isn’t going to make the goodbye any less painful. You’re already in this with him.”
“I’m not pulling away. I haven’t…”
Last night, she thought. In the bathroom. When she’d covered herself… as if Daniel were a friend. Or a stranger—
Lydia got to her feet in a rush. “I’ve got to go find him. Ah—do you need him back down here?”
“No, we’ve replenished his fluids and I’m waiting for a couple more test results. I’ll let you guys know if he needs to see me again.”
“Thanks, Gus.”
“Always.”
When she opened the door, he said, “Remember, he’s still the man you fell in love with. Inside his body, his soul is what it always has been. That hasn’t changed—and neither have you.”
“I need to believe that, Gus.”
“So be like Nike.”
“You mean, Mikey? From the Life cereal ads?” she asked, confused.
The best doctor she’d ever met lifted one of his feet and pointed at his sneaker. “No, Nike. Just do it.”
FOURTEEN
XHEX! XHEX—WAKE UP!”
At the sound of her name, Xhex whipped up her head so fast, she nearly spiked her skull like a volleyball. Blinking furiously, she ground her fists into her eyes.
“Wha-what—what?” She started talking before she realized what she was saying. Then again, there was only one thing that mattered. “Where’s Doc Jane—we need—”
“He’s awake.”
Focusing on her mahmen, Xhex couldn’t understand the words at first. But when they sank in, she jumped up and looked around Autumn’s robed figure. There… on the hospital bed… John was in the exact same position he’d been in, slightly elevated, a cannula under his nose and looped around his ears, his arms out straight by his sides, his lower body covered by a precisely folded blanket that she had tucked around him herself. Down the center of his bare chest, the incision that had been sutured closed was a good twelve inches long, no bandages covering it so that the superfast healing of the species could be monitored for evidence of infection.
So yeah, everything was exactly how she’d left it when she’d put her head down on the rolling table for just a moment—except for one small and extraordinary thing.
His eyes were open.
“John,” she choked out as she launched herself up to the head of the bed. “John.”
That blue stare was the kind of thing that she hadn’t realized she’d resigned to never see again. But now it was locked on her, the pupils evenly dilated, the whites only slightly bloodshot.
What about the stroke risk, she thought. That had been a concern, hadn’t it?
Down at his hips, one of his hands flexed, and she clasped his palm. “Hi—hello. Oh, God, I’m so—” As his lips moved, she shook her head. “Don’t force yourself to—”
The squeeze was stronger than she would have thought possible. And then he lifted up his other hand. In slow, halting positions, he spelled out in American Sign Language:
I. L. O. V. E. U.
Maybe she was just dreaming. Maybe this was one of those moments in the middle of a tragedy when you fell asleep and your subconscious performed miracles to make you feel better.
“I love you, too.” She leaned over him and brushed his hair back. “You’re going to be okay.”
She didn’t know if that was true—but assuming this was not a figment of a sleep cycle, an “okay” outcome was a helluva lot more likely now than it had been before she’d passed out on her forearm. Glancing over her shoulder, she met her mahmen’s tear-filled eyes and mouthed, Get Jane. Autumn nodded and left as quickly as she could, the door easing shut as she limped off.
“One squeeze for yes, two squeezes for no,” she said. “Are you in pain?”
Squeeze. Squeeze.
“Are you ready to feed if Doc Jane says it’s okay?”
Squeeeeeeeeeeze—
The door was thrown open, and yeah, wow, it was like they’d won the doctor lottery: Doc Jane, Vishous, Manny, and Ehlena streamed in like they had been pacing just outside the recovery room. Instantly, activity bloomed around John, the staff checking his monitors, his vitals, his pupils, his lungs, like the pit crew at an Indy 500 race—and Xhex stayed right in the middle of it all, even though she was in the way. No one asked her to step back, though.
Not that she would have under any circumstance.
Doc Jane was the one who drew her aside toward the end of the assessment. “He really wants to be here,” V’s mate said with a smile. “He’s doing so well, it’s flat-out miraculous.”
Xhex focused over the female’s shoulder, noting the way John’s eyes followed the activity like he was tracking it all: who was in the room, what they were doing, why it was necessary. Where she was.
“Can you tell me which foot I’m touching?” Manny was asking. “Raise the corresponding hand.”
Left palm went up. Right one went up. Then Manny asked John to point his toes. Lift his legs. Lift his arms.
“Holy shit,” the doctor muttered under his breath. “Amazing.”
