He meets my eyes.
“Fine, thank you,” he says, his English accented. Iranian, I think. I once shocked a clinic nurse when I took one look into the waiting room and correctly guessed a patient was originally from Kyrgyzstan. She told me that if I ever quit medicine, I had a bright career in either the CIA or the circus.
“I’m Dr. Shephard. Tell me about yourself.”
He looks at me then, as some people do, seeing something in my face that doesn’t quite match my name.
“What do you do?” I ask to nudge the conversation along.
“I work in parking garage.”
I picture him dressed in a uniform, sitting in a booth and reaching for credit cards from drivers. I picture him patrolling a dimly lit lot, and suddenly my heart skips a beat. But my eyes do this sometimes, seeing people I cannot possibly be seeing. Usually, I can talk quick sense into my mind, but not now. Not this time.
I roll the stool backward a few inches and take a long look at his face, his hands.
It cannot be.
He clears his throat to tell me more, but I stand. I mumble something that sounds like Excuse me and open the door, my hand fumbling on the handle as if it’s too hot to touch, as if the office has been engulfed in flames. Red sparks explode in my periphery.
I don’t draw a breath until I’m on the other side of that door. I scramble to get in front of a computer.
I could be wrong. Thirty years and thousands of miles stretch between then and now. And in those thirty years, though I am unrecognizable to anyone who knew me as a ten-year-old girl, I’ve never stopped looking over my shoulder. I arrived in this country disabused of happily-ever-after stories.
I log on and scan the list of names for today’s clinic. And then I see it.
I sit back in the chair. An inexplicable laugh escapes my lips. I should not be surprised. Hormones rise and fall in cycles. The earth spins round and round on an axis and moves in an elliptical course around the sun. Nearly everything with momentum ends up back where it started.
I’ve imagined this moment. I’ve also feared this moment. I have even searched for him on the internet but didn’t get far with only a first name. I have created a hundred different scenarios in which we would meet again, but none of them looked like this.
Abdul Shair Nabi. He’s taken on a last name he didn’t have in Kabul, but I have no doubt it’s him. Shair, the guard who turned his gun on my family, is sitting in a small exam room, waiting for me to see him.
I am shaking, just slightly. The walls of the clinic look like they might fold.
I breathe deeply. I have prepared for this, not knowing when or if the moment would ever come. I can stand before him now as an adult, as a person he cannot silence at gunpoint. For three decades, I have wanted to hold him accountable. I have craved the chance to make him answer my simple questions.
Did you pull the trigger? Where did you take their bodies?
I stand, ready to march into the room and squeeze the answers out of him. But a flicker of doubt flashes across my mind. I can’t make a mistake, especially not here. But just seeing his name on the computer screen, I can almost feel his hand clapped over my mouth.
I walk to the exam room, take a deep breath, and compose myself. I am here to ask questions.
“Sorry about that, Mr. Nabi,” I say, careful to pronounce the name as if I weren’t born with those vowels on my tongue. “I had to check on something rather urgently. Could you come to the exam table please?”
Shair rises and repositions himself at the end of the table. I remain standing.
“So you work in a parking garage?”
“Yes, I have ten years with same company,” he says with a note of pride.
“That’s a long time. What did you do before then?” I ask, throwing breadcrumbs.
“Before then, I am security guard. I work in office building. Thirty floors,” he says. He draws a line from his lap to the ceiling to show the height of the building, and thereby the importance of his job. I nod in appreciation. “But now, I have pain every day,” he says, pointing to his sternum. He tells me his doctor sent him for a CT scan that showed it wasn’t simply heartburn.
“Have you lost weight?”
He nods.
“Before I am eighty kilos. Now I have seventy kilos.”
The pain stops him from eating, not that he’s feeling hungry anyway. He’s been vomiting too. The mass growing inside him has sent molecules into the air of this room, a metallic and meaty scent.
“Who lives with you, Mr. Nabi?”
His heavy eyebrows form a steeple.
“My wife,” he says. “And one daughter.”
“Do you have any other children?”
“Two more,” he says, then becomes tight-lipped, as if he will offer nothing more about them.
I picture the children staring at me, his son revolted by the blood on my clothes. That boy is a man now.
“Are any of them here with you today?”
He shakes his head.
“No, I’m driving no problem,” he says, as if transportation is the issue.
Sons rarely accompany parents to their visits. Typically, it’s daughters and spouses who help navigate appointments and medical care. Sometimes I find out a loved one has chosen to sit in the waiting room and needs to be invited in, because there’s no way they won’t be involved in the care.
It is highly unusual for a man with a family to come alone.
“Does your family know you are here?” I ask.
“I tell them I go for checkup,” he says, which means he has kept this to himself.
I pause.
“Mr. Nabi,” I say, doing my best to sound curious and not accusing. “Where are you originally from?”
“Afghanistan,” he says. “But I am here long time. Fifteen years. I never have this problem before.”
This problem is gastric cancer. It has spread beyond his stomach. Strange as it seems, cancers can be ranked, and this is one of the worst ones to have. I tell him he will need surgery, chemotherapy, and maybe radiation. I tell him we will need to take more pictures before surgery, and that he should bring his family in with him when he returns. We must move quickly. I watch for his reaction.
His face is serious, self-possessed. I can already tell he will not share this news with his wife or children because, if he cannot contain the cancer’s spread in his body, he will at least control how news of it spreads through his family.
I will not confront him today. I want him to trust me, to come back to me ready to talk.
Adam meets me at the subway station. I wrap my arms around him. It’s a simple show of affection, but it’s taken me a long time to make it look like it comes easy.
“Rough day?” he asks, planting a kiss on my cheek.
“I’ve seen worse,” I reply, taking in the scent of his cologne. I normally don’t mind it, but today it tightens the vise on my head. I squeeze his hand before pulling away from him.
Once on an overnight shift in residency, I walked into a conference room where two of my fellow residents were ironing out the details for a website that would help define the rules of dating.
We use algorithms to make sound medical decisions. If we had algorithms for dating, we could create healthier relationships, Danny had said.
Relationships are all managed online now anyway. You find your person online and then click over to our site to not mess it up, Serj replied.
For example. Danny looked down at his notes. Previous marriage should be date one. Previous engagement should be date three. But snoring?
Date four, Serj replied.
Regular snoring or the noise your airways create? I had asked. Having shared a call room with you, I say that needs to be bumped up.
Damn, Aryana.
They don’t call her the ice queen for nothing. Serj laughed. I let it slide. At least he hadn’t called me hormonal. But a child is date one for sure.
What if you don’t have custody?
First date, I insisted.
The list of disclosures had become long and complicated: a DUI, a history of cheating on an exam, a trust fund, car sickness, a personal history of addiction, undesirable recessive genes, cold sores, and a predilection for porn.
They never talked about at what point a person should reveal a history like mine. They didn’t even get close.
There is never a right moment to bring up a dark past. It will ruin a good night. It will totally destroy a bad night. I was certain that knowing my history would scare Adam away before I could conquer my demons and let myself sink into this relationship with eyes wide open. I needed time.
At first, it was too early to tell him. In a blink, it became too late.
“Let’s get something to eat and you can vent,” Adam suggests. Before heading up to my apartment, we stop by two different shops to get our dinner: custom salads, organic brownies, and a bottle of wine. Adam sets the table, and I get a corkscrew out of a drawer. “So. What did you resect in the OR today?”
Adam gets a kick out of using the jargon. And he knows that my worst days are when something goes wrong. Sometimes, that happens during surgery. Tumors grow a lot of blood vessels. Months of chemo changes how organs function. Cancer cells hide in lymph vessels and nodes, out of sight. And even though the disease isn’t my fault, I feel responsible for even the smallest complication.
“I have this speech therapist with colon cancer. She’s been skipping her chemo because it’s not fully covered by her insurance. Such BS. Now she’s been having headaches on and off. We sent her to the ER for a head scan, and I have a really bad feeling about what we’re going to find.”
“That’s criminal.”
“Yeah. But good luck putting an insurance company behind bars.”
“Does she have kids?” Adam asks.
“Two little girls. Of course. All three of them volunteer at the animal shelter together. Of course. Honestly, the best protection against cancer is to be a jerk. Jerks are totally immune.”
“Is there any research to support this theory?” He unpacks the salad containers and digs forks out of a drawer.
“Who’s going to give out that grant? There’s no national jerk lobby.”
Adam laughs out loud, and I feel a warmth I can’t deny when I look at him, his midnight-blue shirt untucked and sleeves rolled up. He’s already changed out of his slacks and into a pair of sweats. To be around him is to have a taste of a life that always seemed beyond reach—a life propelled by the future, not dragged by the past.
I could have a lovely life with Adam. But we cannot have that life if I don’t come out of the shadows. I have told myself a thousand times that Adam will still love me even when he knows everything because it changes nothing about me.
And he deserves to know.
Adam sets two wineglasses on the table and watches me pour a rippling vermillion stream into each.
“You’re the most amazing woman,” he says tenderly. His raised glass shines like a chalice in the hands of a king.
“For not spilling a drop?” I demur.
He drops his head and I press my lips together. It’s not the first time I’ve done this. I take a perfectly warm, loving moment and drop it into ice water.
Back in high school, Mom floated the idea of giving therapy a second try. I refused, but knew there was something wrong with me. In college, I took a couple of psychology classes that helped me name what I was feeling. In medical school, trauma and PTSD and treatment methods were covered in one lecture. For those of us not going into psychiatry, that was the end of it.
I could see my own pathology. I knew why I pushed men away and broke down at the sound of a tabla or the smell of my mother’s perfume. I read about treatment too. I learned about cognitive behavioral therapy and desensitization and medications that were available. But I’d also heard that medical license applications asked about any history of mental health issues. If I stepped foot in a therapist’s office or took a week of antidepressants, they might not license me. I couldn’t risk my career to talk through my feelings with someone. I’d been doing the work myself and thought I was making good progress.
“Sorry, hon,” I say, walking over to him to offer a kiss. “Forgive this sarcastic girlfriend?”
He looks at me, his face drawn.
“Why do you do this? I don’t get it. I’ve asked you not to, but here we are again.”
“It was a tiny joke,” I contend.
“They’re all tiny little jokes. Everything’s a tiny little joke,” he snaps.
“Adam, we were setting the table. It’s not like we were in the middle of a candlelit dinner.”
“Think of how long we’ve been together, and you still treat the L word like it’s a nuclear bomb. It’s three little words, Ary. Three little words that could change everything.”
“You know I love you. You also know that I’m not the type to profess my love every five minutes.”
Adam scoffs. He puts both hands on the kitchen counter and shakes his head.
“It’s not a cashmere scarf, Aryana. If you only take it out on special occasions—”
“It’ll be moth-eaten and I’ll be alone and cold. I understand you’re upset,” I say, trying to figure out how to deescalate this situation.
“Don’t patronize me,” he warns. “Hell, it’s supposed to be the other way around. I’m not supposed to be the nagging girlfriend.”
I throw my hands up in frustration. Does that mean I’m supposed to be the nagging girlfriend? If I profess my love for him right now, he’ll say it was forced. And if I don’t, I’m still being emotionally frigid. He has boxed me into a corner.
“You win, Adam. You’re the emotionally capable one here, and you’ve managed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that I’m a callous wench. Point taken.”
Just an hour ago, I was thinking it might be time to finally tell Adam the truth about my childhood and maybe even about seeing Shair. Just an hour ago, I loved him.
“This is on you. I’ve invested a lot into this, and I want to know I’m getting something in return. So don’t confuse how we got here.”
“We got here by you deciding to act more like a shareholder than a boyfriend,” I reply.
He is quiet then, as am I. The furnace hisses, the steam summoned by the chill in the room. It’s an argument we’ve had before, but somehow tonight feels different, heavier.
“We will not have this argument again,” he says.
“No, we will not,” I agree from the opposite side of the table, two untouched glasses of wine between us.
Chapter 39
Books are a tiny string connecting me to my parents. To be a reader is to be like them. To be around books and readers has brought me comfort too.
In residency, I studied in a bookstore’s coffee shop, which was where a clutch of women gathered monthly for book club. They would set their library books and blueberry scones on the table. I started eavesdropping and realized that the books they read were just an excuse to talk about their own lives. Every character, every broken heart, every twist of fate inspired a story about an unruly mother-in-law, a philandering father, or the cousin who came out to his unforgiving parents. Sometimes it sounded more like a therapy session than a book discussion.
I could never join a book club.
About a year ago, I started attending book talks. I could listen and offer an anonymous comment or none at all.
The bookstore I’m going to tonight is in the middle of a downtown block, between a nail salon and a dry cleaner. I walk past the tables of new releases and the bestseller shelf, picking up a copy of the book being discussed tonight along the way. At the far end of the shop, with the local authors shelf as their backdrop, I see the author and the bookseller sitting on a small dais. I slide into one of the folding chairs toward the back of the space.
Clay Porter is a war journalist who spent time embedded with troops in Afghanistan. I check the time on my phone. Adam is runni
ng late. I asked him to join me tonight because I’m hoping this talk will be a stepping-stone to a long-overdue conversation with him. We’ll listen to Clay Porter share his experience in Afghanistan and then maybe grab some hot cocoa at the chocolatier at the end of the block, where I will tell Adam all he doesn’t know.
The owner of the shop adjusts the ruby-red frames of her glasses and flashes a smile at the small audience. Clay Porter picks up his microphone and lets it hang between his knees while she recites his biography from an oversized index card.
“As any telling of war would be, this is a tough read,” she begins. “But it’s also a portrait of courage—the men and women in uniform and the civilians in the backdrop. And you as well. You willingly put yourself on the front lines. Did you feel fearless?”
Clay is thoughtful.
“Look, there were risks, but I was more protected than the civilians. I wasn’t as much of a target as the soldiers,” he says. “And I still wouldn’t say I was fearless. I definitely felt fear. And I think all the people you mentioned felt fear too. That’s what makes it courage, I guess. Now, courage without fear? That’s just bravado.”
The interviewer asks him about the people he got to know along the way. Some of the soldiers saw Clay as a confidant. One woman revealed that she’d been sexually assaulted by a superior. She reported the assault, but nothing happened, despite having a witness to back up her claims. Six months later, her superior was demoted—for stealing a cell phone. Another soldier on his second tour said he was almost glad to be back. He wasn’t himself at home anymore, feeling too restless and anxious to be with his girlfriend. But he reported none of it, for fear of being classified as unfit to serve.
I’m pretty sure I’m unfit to do anything else, though, he had told Clay.
Adam slides into the empty chair beside me. He takes the book out of my hands, scans the back cover, and hands it back to me.
“Thank you for taking my question,” a woman says, her mouth too close to the microphone. From where we’re sitting, six rows back, I can see only a mop of curly hair. “Can you talk about what made you want to see this war up close?”
Sparks Like Stars Page 23