What Could Be Saved

by Liese O'Halloran Schwarz

  With a blend of calculation and spontaneity, they decided each evening upon one main activity for the next day and concocted the remainder on the fly. Laura had never felt so free of striving or worry. Each day was bracketed by Philip’s morning and evening meditation; during those times Laura napped or listened to a podcast or audiobook. The third evening, when Philip sat down on his bed and closed his eyes, she clicked the sound off, took her earbuds out of her ears, and asked, “Will you teach me?”

  “I’m not sure I’m qualified to teach,” Philip said. “But I’ll tell you how I learned.” The question leapt into Laura’s mind, Who taught you? but she didn’t speak it. “First, sit up.” She did. “Get comfortable. Keep your spine straight.” Those two directives were incompatible, she thought. “You want to empty your mind. Then draw a line from the top of your head down the middle of your body.” His voice was steady, the words unfaltering as though, despite his demurral, he had taught this before. “Then hold that line in your mind and draw a second line, this one around your waist, just above your navel.” He paused with a look of mild inquiry, and she nodded to indicate Got it. “When you’ve got both lines, hold them there and focus on the place where they cross.”

  “I can’t empty my mind,” she confessed, opening her eyes after what felt like an hour but was probably two minutes. So many things were jostling around in there: not just conscious thoughts but also sensory awareness, the sound of the air-conditioning, the texture of the bedspread beneath her, a belch welling up. “Not even a little bit.”

  “It takes practice,” he said.

  “Mum has memory problems,” said Laura, surprising herself: she hadn’t planned to say it. “She can seem normal, but she often doesn’t know where she is, or who anybody is.”

  He nodded. Impassive. Had his experience, whatever it had been, drummed sadness out of him? Or did he simply feel unconnected to the mother he hadn’t seen for so long?

  “Bea’s in charge of all the Preston money,” she said. Thinking, There, Bea, I told him.

  He nodded again and closed his eyes, and after a few seconds, Laura did too. She concentrated on pushing each thought and sensation away as it entered, then awoke in the pitch-dark room with the coverlet pulled up over her.

  * * *

  Friday morning, they caught a minibus to a floating market two hours outside the city. After a couple of hours of wandering, they sat on a set of stone steps on the riverbank, watching their lunch being prepared by a woman on a boat tied up below.

  “In America, everyone thinks Bangkok is all about drugs and sex,” said Laura, accepting the bowl that was handed up to her. It contained a thin omelet, which she broke open with her spoon; noodles spilled out and a fragrant steam rose up. “It’s really about food.”

  “The food is very good,” agreed Philip.

  “Do you want to go to a muay Thai boxing match tonight?” Laura asked, thumbing through screens on her phone with her free hand.

  “No,” said Philip, one short syllable. It was so uncharacteristic of his previous yes, yes, yes to everything she’d suggested all week that Laura looked up at him, surprised. He was eating, eyes on his bowl.

  “Okay,” she said. She looked down again at the list on her phone. “We haven’t gone on the Ferris wheel yet.”

  Before he could respond, her phone dinged in her hand and a notification box slid down from the top of the screen. The DNA results were back.

  * * *

  At the consulate, an electric typewriter was rolled into the room—Laura hadn’t seen a typewriter since college—and one of the clerks seated herself and inserted a thick triplicate form. She typed as the vice consul dictated a short paragraph that attested to Philip’s identity, based on attached materials. At the bottom of each page the typist pressed and held the underline key, making long empty lines for signatures. The papers were collated, and each set was stamped with a seal; the vice consul signed under that. A five-minute signature round followed, the papers passing from Philip to Laura to one of the clerks, signing as a witness.

  When the process was done, the completed passport application laid on the desk with the affidavit and the DNA results paper-clipped to it, the vice consul looked up. His face became solemn. He stepped across the tile floor and put his hand out.

  “Welcome home, Philip Preston,” he said. They shook hands.

  * * *

  Laura sent texts to Bea, to Edward, to Sullivan. She copy-pasted the same message, We’re coming home, then shut off her phone before they could reply.

  “Remember how I used to sleep on the tray tables?” Laura said as she and Philip buckled in on the first flight. She distinctly recalled having lain across two or three of them to nap in-flight, with a pillow and a blanket. She must have been very small. “Where were we going?”

  “Australia, I think,” he said. Philip’s voice was light, but she’d noticed his minuscule flinch at the word remember. “Mum took us there the first year to escape the peak of the hot season. We saw a kangaroo on your birthday.” He coughed, wheezily.

  “I have literally no memory of that,” said Laura. He coughed again, and she said, “Did you take your medications this morning?”

  He nodded. “I think I’m just tired. It’s been an eventful week.”

  She dug into the bag at her feet for an inhaler, the same kind she’d used since elementary school for her own mild asthma. She so rarely had an attack these days that she’d forgotten to pack her own; she’d picked one up just in case at the pharmacy near the hotel. No prescriptions needed in Bangkok, just a pointer finger and cash. “Try this,” she said, giving it to him.

  He took two puffs, nodded thanks.

  It seemed to help: no more coughing. Laura felt reassured, watching him joke with the flight attendant in Thai. Of course he was tired; he was probably also anxious about the return home. No need to be an alarmist.

  * * *

  During the second flight, as the two of them dozed in adjacent seats, Laura awoke to an odd, repeating noise. Not loud enough to rise above the engine sound, it was more of a vibration, at regular intervals. After a few confused seconds, she realized its source was Philip. Each of his sleeping exhalations was terminating in a short grunt, something between a throat-clearing and a cough. She watched him for a little while. His face was peaceful, his breaths deep and regular; the only odd thing was the growl-grunt. He didn’t look feverish. She touched his arm: not hot. Whatever it was, it didn’t seem serious. She let herself fall back into a fretful sleep.

  When the captain’s voice came overhead, Flight crew prepare for descent, Laura’s internal hallelujah was mitigated by alarm when she attempted to rouse Philip. He’d gotten worse while they’d slept. His skin was damp. He opened glassy eyes briefly when she shook his shoulder, closed them again. “Wake up,” she said. He nodded and raised his eyebrows high as if to drag his eyes open, failing at that.

  During the plane’s descent, Laura thought fast. They wouldn’t legally be in the U.S. until they had been officially checked through Customs. If Philip was obviously ill, would he be allowed to enter? As U.S. citizens, they couldn’t be refused entry to their own country—or could they? The climate of welcome had shifted in recent years; long-naturalized Americans were being threatened with deportation. The old rules didn’t apply.

  While everyone else erupted from their seats into the aisles, Laura hailed a passing flight attendant and requested a wheelchair for my brother’s ankle. She pointed to the deformity. They stayed in their seats until the plane was empty, and then Laura put both carry-on bags over one shoulder and hauled Philip up out of his seat. Talking to him all the while as though he were simply leaning on her, she manhandled his thin frame up the aisle and deposited him into the waiting wheelchair. “Thanks,” she called merrily to the flight attendants as she wheeled him up the short jet bridge to the mobile lounge. She stared out the window as the giant vehicle moved slowly across the tarmac toward the International Arrivals Building, all the while expec
ting a hand on her shoulder, some voice of authority: He doesn’t look right. But there was no hand, no voice, and when the mobile lounge stopped, Laura pretended nonchalance as she unlocked the wheelchair and steered it up the gangway to the terminal, not first or last of the crowd but in the middle of the pack, the carry-on bags jumping in double-thumps against her back with every step.

  She’d never been so glad for the multilayered invisibility cloak she wore, of whiteness, femaleness, middle age. Immigration was a cursory passport check, and they rolled through Customs with no one looking twice at them, down the escalator and out of the building, into the American breeze.

  When they got to the front of the taxi line, Laura braked the wheelchair and pulled Philip up, pivoted him into the taxi’s back seat, got in on the other side. She turned on her phone and it burst into life in her hands, vibrating as notification after notification floated up onto the screen. She flicked them all away, opened Maps to look for the nearest hospital.

  “He doesn’t look good,” the taxi driver said in a syncopated West African bass. Laura looked up. The man, hand on the gearshift, was eyeing Philip in the rearview mirror.

  Laura scooted up the seat to speak through the gap in the Plexiglas. “He can’t drink like he used to,” she invented. Under the driver’s gaze, she affected a languid annoyance. “There was a going-away party last night, and then today we were in the airplane, and he drank only two of those little bottles of water.…” She looked at Philip with feigned exasperation. “I think he might still be drunk.”

  “He needs intravenous fluids,” the driver pronounced. He named the nearest hospital. “Okay?”

  Laura nodded. She found the hospital on Maps and typed in a text to Bea, adding a dropped pin.

  En route to hospital. Philip sick.

  The driver shifted out of park but kept his foot on the brake as he asked, “Where did you fly from?”

  “Paris.” Another lie, to cap the others. No contagious tropical nasties in France. The driver nodded and lifted his foot from the brake. As they merged into traffic, Laura settled back into her seat, pressed Send on the text to Bea.

  At the exit for the hospital she said, “I’m not sure how I’ll get him into the ER without the wheelchair.”

  “No problem,” said the driver. He swung the taxi past all the AMBULANCES ONLY signs, right up to the glass double doors marked EMERGENCY. He stopped; his eyes met Laura’s in the rearview mirror.

  “Pay me now, please,” he said.

  Laura slid her card through the reader and put in her PIN. She tipped twenty dollars; the driver dipped his chin in acknowledgment before pressing the heel of his hand against the horn. Five seconds, ten, of blaring continuous noise before the glass doors parted and personnel surged out. They surrounded the taxi, yanked open all of the doors.

  “Where is he shot?” a silver-haired woman in blue scrubs bawled into Laura’s face as she scrambled out of the back seat. “How many times?”

  “He’s not,” said Laura, confused.

  Young men in burgundy scrubs push-pulled Philip out of the car and dropped him into a wheelchair. They rolled it away at a run as the taxi drove off, leaving the two bags on the ground.

  “Come on.” The woman in the blue scrubs stood outside the doors, scooping the air in a huge, impatient arm wave.

  Laura took up the bags and hurried after, through the doors and down the hallway in the wake of the disappearing wheelchair, the woman firing questions and Laura answering mostly I don’t know. Any allergies to medication? I don’t know. Any fever? I don’t know. Does he take any medicines? Some pills—I don’t know what they are. From the doorway of the hospital room she watched them heave Philip onto a stretcher and swarm around him. A doctor stalked past Laura into the room, whipping his stethoscope from around his neck, rapping out orders. He asked Laura the same questions the nurse had already asked and some others, with growing incredulity at each successive I don’t know.

  “Well, what do you know?” he asked, finally.

  “We just got off a plane from Bangkok,” said Laura. “Well, from Tokyo, but we started in Bangkok. He’s been living there.” The doctor waited. “He had some difficulty breathing on the plane. I gave him an inhaler.” She produced it from her pocket, and the doctor took it from her, turned it to read the label. “It seemed to help at first.”

  By that time, Philip was surrounded by machines, an IV going into one arm, wires trailing off his chest, a mist-filled mask over his face. His eyes were still closed.

  “Does he have asthma?” asked the doctor. “Let me guess—you don’t know.”

  “He’s been taking some pills,” Laura said. “I have them here.” She crouched to unzip the blue bag, took out the boxes and passed them up to the doctor.

  “Okay,” he said, a fissure of warmth creeping into his voice: I can work with this. “These are for high blood pressure and congestive heart failure. Did you ever hear a doctor say he had those things?”

  “I didn’t talk to his doctor,” said Laura.

  “So you came from Bangkok with him, but you know nothing about him.” His eyes were narrowed; he was working to make the connection—Bangkok, international city of sin, was this something kinky?

  “I’m his sister,” she said, feeling like she was lying. “But we haven’t seen each other since we were children.”

  He stared at her briefly, too buffeted by whatever had happened to him already, in his life or just in this day, to summon curiosity or surprise. “You can wait in the waiting room,” he said, and went back to Philip.

  * * *

  Bea’s eyes were very close, intense like blue fire. Her husband, Clement, loomed behind her with his customary abstracted, genial expression.

  “What happened?” Bea demanded.

  “He got sick on the second plane,” said Laura, pushing herself up from the slump she’d slid down into while asleep. She rubbed her eyes carefully; they felt as though they had grains of sand in them.

  The waiting room was half-filled, clusters of people on the joined plastic seats sleeping, or talking in low voices, or staring at their phones. A baby cried against its mother’s shoulder; she patted its back as she watched the television playing soundlessly under the ceiling.

  “What have the doctors said?” said Clement, moving forward, setting a small cooler down on the empty seat beside Laura and opening the lid, taking out a wax-paper-wrapped square. “Sandwich?”

  “Nothing yet,” said Laura. She accepted the sandwich, untucked the pleat of waxed paper. A delicious aroma breathed up; she was abruptly ravenous. “My God,” she said, with her mouth full. Thick bread, balsamic dressing, brawny tomato, feathery mozzarella, peppery arugula. “This is gorgeous.”

  “It’s just a sandwich,” Bea said, but there was a thread of satisfaction in the words.

  “I told you the mozzarella came out well,” said Clement, and to Laura, “She thought it might be rubbery.”

  “Mm-hm,” said Laura, totally occupied with the eating.

  “We took a cheesemaking course last summer,” said Clement, producing a glass bottle of lemonade from the cooler and holding it out.

  Of course you did, Laura didn’t say, taking the cold bottle and twisting the cap; it came free with a breathy pop and she took a long tart-sweet swallow.

  She felt a cheerful giddiness, the child’s joy of passing a burden to grown-ups. It was done, she’d done it. It had been such a long, bizarre journey. From the Oz moment when the gate in the wall of that drab alley had opened onto the serene green compound, through the week of carefree tourism ending with the vice consul shaking Philip’s hand, and the rest: the anxious second flight and the Lucy Ricardo–ridiculous performance that had followed, the wheelchair and the stream of lies, the taxi driver’s suspicion, his Pay me now, please. Laura took another bite of the sandwich and felt tears prick her closed eyes. Blessed are the cheesemakers. Wonderful Bea. Thank goodness for Bea. Her older sister was here. Everything was going to be okay.
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  “So what did he tell you?” said Bea. “What did he say happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” said Laura. More I don’t knows to add to the mountain. “He was living in that house, Claudette’s father’s house, since 1980.”

  “What about before that?” Laura shook her head. “You didn’t ask him anything?” Beatrice was incredulous.

  “I did ask,” said Laura. “But—you don’t know how it was, Bea. You weren’t there.” Bea looked unmoved. Laura felt defensive. “I figured you’d want to interrogate him, once the DNA matched.”

  “The DNA matched?” said Bea. Her face alive with astonishment.

  “Well, yeah,” said Laura. She realized she hadn’t put that information into her preflight text. “That’s how we got him the passport.”

  At that moment, the doctors appeared. Two of them, a man and a woman. They announced Preston and then crossed the blue industrial carpet to introduce themselves as Philip’s admitting doctors. They stood like imperturbable white-coated statues and catalogued rapid-fire what was wrong with Philip, their eyes raking the sisters’ faces for signs of comprehension.

  He had malaria—but not the worst kind, the female doctor put in—and at least one kind of intestinal worm, and a moderate degree of chronic heart failure, and pneumonia. His liver was okay, they said, as if going down a checklist of organs, and his kidneys were struggling but not too bad. The real problem was the heart; it wasn’t squeezing strongly enough. They invited the sisters into a back hallway, showed them an X-ray on a monitor screen.

  “That’s his heart,” said the male doctor, pointing to a slump of white. He moved his finger to a lacy hovering fog above it and said, “This shouldn’t be there.” He dabbed two other places and said, “Neither should that.”