Surface

by Stacy Robinson

Nicholas sat up and took it from her hands. He turned it over and over, running his fingers across the netting, swatting it through the air in front of him. Claire asked if he’d like to hang it over his bed again, for old time’s sake. Nicholas didn’t speak for a while; he just gripped the worn handle tightly, and she wondered if he was coming down with some kind of virus. She knelt beside his bed, and after a few moments Nicholas put it down and interlaced his long fingers with hers.

  “What does sublime mean?” he asked in that way that makes parents invoke words like precocious.

  “Sublime?” Claire sat back on her heels, “Where’d you hear that?”

  “On my radio, while I was trying to fall asleep.”

  “Sublime means something that’s beautiful and perfect.” She searched for more appropriate words. “Something . . . heavenly.” She climbed into bed next to him and spread his blanket over the both of them.

  The next morning Claire brought French toast sprinkled with powdered-sugar happy faces into the breakfast room where Nicholas was refilling his glass with orange juice. She placed their plates on the table and sat down across from him. He shoveled the French toast and some bacon into his mouth with unusual enthusiasm. After he plowed through a second helping and two more glasses of juice, Claire asked again if he felt all right, if he wanted to go to school—just to be sure.

  Around lunchtime, Claire received a phone call from the school nurse, telling her that Nicholas had been demonstrating some symptoms that concerned her, and had asked if there was a history of diabetes in the family. Claire grabbed her car keys and was out the door in a flash, grilling the nurse about other possibilities. She called Michael on his cell in Boston. And as she heard herself explain the nurse’s theory to him, she somehow knew it was the truth, that Nicholas did have this frightening thing.

  “Let’s not jump to any conclusions before you see the pediatrician, Claire,” he’d cautioned. “It could be any number of things. Right?”

  She chewed at her upper lip and felt the sting of air and blood. “When can you be on the plane?”

  There was a pause. “Why don’t you call me when we have a definitive answer from Dr. Stevens? Nicholas is going to be fine, he’s a tough kid.” His voice broke slightly. “Just be strong for him.”

  “Strong? I’m not like your parents, Michael. I won’t inflict that ‘one must not display weakness’ bullshit on him. This is a nine-year-old boy here, not a teenager with a sports injury he can suck up.”

  “Listen, this deal’s on the wire, and I’m sure I can get just about everything wrapped up by the time you’re finished at the doctor’s. And that way we’ll know for sure. Okay?” He spoke gently but convincingly. “Then I can be home within a few hours. I’ll have the plane waiting. I’m sure it’s just the flu, babe.”

  There was no point in arguing over a few hours, or anything for that matter, with him. When Michael made up his mind about something, he could convince anyone of the correctness of his decision. And mostly she admired that about him. Paused in traffic, Claire caught sight of a homeless man standing on the median, shirtless under the already raging midday sun. He held a sign that read, “ALL TAPED OUT. PLEASE HELP.” Taped, she repeated to herself as she sped toward school.

  When she and Nicholas arrived at the pediatrician’s office, Nicky went straight for the unoccupied Nintendo set, while Claire relayed the morning’s events to the nurse at the front desk. Nicholas continued battling Space Invaders as Claire sat across from him and drank in the image of her happy, carefree little boy—preserving this picture of childhood innocence in her memory.

  “The good news is that we caught things early,” Dr. Stevens told Claire after an interminable wait for the blood test results. “He’s going to be fine just as soon as we start treatment.” He explained that it was insulin dependent, or juvenile diabetes, and that they would give Nicholas an injection to bring his blood sugar down and get him feeling better.

  Claire repeated the strange diagnosis and stared at the painted fish swimming across the walls. “How do I do this, Bob? How do I tell him he’ll need shots every day for the rest of his life?”

  “Why don’t we get Michael on the phone and just get through today first?”

  She followed Dr. Stevens into his office and perched herself on the side of his desk by the telephone, where she dialed Michael and allowed the doctor to fill in the information she couldn’t convey.

  “I’m on my way to the airport now. Have you told Nicholas yet?” he asked.

  “Not yet. But he needs insulin.” The thought bore down on her again. It would be one of those visceral images seared into memory—the moment before her boy’s first shot as a diabetic, separating him from the afterward of a thousand more.

  “Christ.” Michael paused. “What does this mean for . . . his future? What about school and sports? Can he still be a normal kid?”

  Claire waited for the answer to Michael’s question.

  “Nicholas can still be a normal kid. It just won’t be easy, particularly in the beginning when you’re all making adjustments. But this is a manageable disease.”

  Over the speaker came the sound of static and muffled voices.

  “Who’s there with you?” Claire asked, angry that he was so far away at such a crucial moment.

  “What?”

  “I thought I heard voices in the car.”

  “It’s just a couple of the attorneys on the deal. They’re flying back with me.” More lowered voices. “Why don’t we talk to Nicholas together now? I want him to know I’m here for him.”

  When the nurse brought Nicky in, his polo shirt was untucked and his hair stood up in sweaty tufts from his scalp. He plopped down onto the doctor’s couch and announced that he was starving. Dr. Bob told him he’d be able to eat just as soon as they talked about what his blood test results meant, and after he got some special medicine. Claire rubbed his back while Dr. Stevens explained to him, and to his parents, what it meant to have a pancreas that decided it no longer wanted to work.

  Nicholas listened quietly, his feet frozen throughout the doctor’s G-rated description of the disease. But with the mention of daily shots and finger pokes, Nicholas’s body tensed and the flush drained from his face. Claire held him tightly, watching the tears tremble on his eyelids.

  Nicholas wriggled free from his mother’s embrace, scooted off the edge of the couch and walked over to Dr. Bob’s desk. “Daddy,” Nicholas asked the telephone, “are you mad at me?”

  Claire closed her eyes and turned her head away.

  “Of course I’m not mad at you, pal. I’m just upset that this had to happen.”

  Claire bent down next to him. “You’re gonna be fine, honey, just fine.”

  He looked at her, studying her face and nodding.

  “Nick Montgomery, you’re a champ and you’re going to be good as new in no time. You’ll be playing baseball and lacrosse all summer,” Michael said through the static. “You just stay tough.”

  “When will you be home, Daddy?”

  “Before dinner tonight, sport.”

  Nicholas smiled through his tears and squared his shoulders.

  CHAPTER 7

  The following afternoon, Claire waited in the corner of the hospital room as they shaved Nicholas’s head and prepped him for brain surgery. His hair fell to the floor in thick clumps, forming a downy brown blanket over the attendant’s feet. When it was done she wept at the pale scalp she hadn’t seen since he was a baby and ran her palm over the moony surface from his crown to his nose. She kissed his forehead and fingers. “I love you, Nicky,” she said, picking up a small handful of hair. “I love you.”

  As Claire stood there thinking about the ever-changing landscape of experience, this was not a picture she could have ever fathomed. Seeing her boy against such a backdrop of upended lives and frantic hope, she felt a vein open and begin to bleed somewhere inside her, just as she’d felt before his first insulin shot all those years before. Because as desperately
as she wished, she couldn’t trade places with him.

  She rolled bits of Nick’s shorn hair between her thumb and middle finger until they resembled a feather—wispy and supple. “I’ll be waiting for you, honey,” she whispered on her way out. In the corridor Claire propped herself up against the shiny white wall and let Michael have a moment before they wheeled Nicholas to the OR.

  When the time came, she and Michael helped roll the gurney as far as the double-door entrance to the operating room. They kept a two-foot distance between them on the side rail, making sure their hands didn’t brush as they made the tense walk. The bars they gripped were no longer shiny and reflective, but dull and somber-edged—what remorse would feel like, Claire imagined, if she held it in her hands. She wiped a sweaty palm onto her pant leg and said a silent prayer.

  The surgery would last nearly four hours. Four hours to insert a lumbar drain, drill open Nick’s skull, dissect and retract the membranes, locate and expose the aneurysm, clip it, drain the excess blood, and close his skull with staples. Four swift hours of exacting precision in the operating room; four protracted hours of angst and uncertainty in the waiting room.

  Claire and Michael didn’t find comfort in anxious chatter or mutual reassurances. After the previous night’s tense and blame-riddled vigil, they were both drained and barely spoke at all. She: chipped away the last remnants of her nail polish and feigned interest in Sudoku. He: text messaged and disappeared for longer than usual phone breaks, the food he brought back going cold and uneaten. Jackie sat with them briefly doing her best to encourage, but Claire had sent her home to be with her own family until the evening. And the room filled with the sound of two people breathing the heavy air of their guilt and resentment.

  Claire thought about the last conversation she’d had with Nick, how he had twisted out of her arms to escape the library and all the awkwardness. How Andrew’s presence would forever stain the memory of that brief hug and kiss. And how she hadn’t realized in that moment that she might not have a thousand more chances at I love you. The silence bore down on her, pushing her deeper into a sinkhole. To speak or not to speak—such a strange question for two parents, she thought, as she listened to her own shallow breathing. The pungent warmth from the coffee urn in the corner suited the jittery mood of the room. From that day on, she knew she’d never be able to grab a latte to go without smelling June, hospital. Hyperventilation suddenly seemed likely on her list of waiting room possibilities.

  “What did you and Nick talk about before you left for London?” Claire finally asked, well into the second hour. “You two seemed liked you were having a pretty intense conversation when I came by the study the night before you went.”

  Michael startled up from his phone with swollen eyes and stared at her, though really he appeared to be looking into the past. His lips were moving as if he were having a dialogue with someone in his head, and after a prolonged silence, his mumblings found voice in a distracted whisper. “I should never have tried to keep . . . It was all so—” He buried his face in his hands. “Christ. Kids do stupid things.”

  “Keep what?” she asked, confused, but recognizing the strangled remorse in his words. His last conversation with Nicholas had clearly not been a happy one either, their last memory together unpleasant as well.

  Michael focused back in on her and winced. “Nothing.” His voice splintered and he clamped his lips.

  In the cheerless bubble of their new world, Claire had at last found common ground with her husband. She pulled a quarter-sized clump of Nick’s hair from her pocket and held out her palm. Michael dipped a finger into it.

  When Dr. Marks finally came in to speak with them, a lurid yellow sun was beginning its descent across the frame of the waiting-room window. He reported that the surgery had gone well. No intraoperative ruptures, no injury to the surrounding arteries. He’d had to remove a significant amount of blood from the hemorrhage, but with that, the pressure on Nicholas’s brain was also reduced. “Things looked good in there,” he told them.

  Claire cried as she walked in small circles, her hands laced tightly under her chin. “Thank you,” she repeated over and over.

  “And what about his recovery?” Michael asked.

  “I’m hopeful we’ve minimized any damage. But based on the location of the aneurysm, your son will likely need physical and cognitive therapy when he emerges from the coma. To what extent, I can’t yet be certain.”

  Claire stopped. “So now what?”

  “Now we wait.”

  CHAPTER 8

  Four days after the surgery, as Claire uncoiled from the cot on which she’d sporadically dozed in Nick’s room, Dr. Sheldon sat down opposite her. The early hopeful hours of watching Nicholas for any indication that he was emerging from the coma had given way to bleak, restless days. All the testing and monitoring were yielding no clear answers. Michael had developed an aversion to anything but the most brusque exchange of words with anyone—unless he was having one of his frequently distraught and unintelligible monologues en route to the elevator—while Claire had developed a constant twitch to her mouth and eyelids from lack of any real sleep.

  With a fatherly voice, Dr. Sheldon encouraged her to go home. “You need to rest, Claire. You’ve been running on adrenaline and pretty soon you’re going to crash.”

  “I’m fine,” she said curtly.

  “You need to take care of yourself and save your energy for what comes later. This isn’t a sprint.”

  Michael and Jackie appeared in the doorway, and Claire wondered how long they’d been waiting outside, if they’d put him up to his speech. Michael looked only marginally better than Claire, still spending his nights at the house and coming in before and after work.

  “You should go for a few hours,” Michael said with the forced smile he reserved for the presence of the hospital staff. “Go home and get some rest.” The gray rings under his eyes were growing more pronounced by the day, she noticed, and he seemed to look at Nick with as much regret as she did. But it was the first time since she’d set up camp that Michael had encouraged this, the first time since the waiting room that he’d truly engaged with her. The prospect gave her limited hope, even if he wasn’t exactly asking her to join him. Still, how could she leave? Claire looked at Nicholas, hoping that he would wake up and resolve this ridiculous standoff. But the only sounds he made were the gurgling, labored breaths that the ventilator pumped through his lungs. He looked to her like a broken puppet, flimsier and paler by the day—not the vital boy who had skied circles around her and closed his e-mails to her with I love ya. She blinked her eyes at the sting.

  “Come on,” Jackie said, removing keys from her pocket, “let’s get you out of here for a while.”

  When Jackie pulled her minivan into the long circular drive of her sister’s home, the sight of pink peonies and roses immediately struck Claire. They were the first vibrant things she’d seen in days. She smiled and tried to banish the hospital images, and wondered if she had been wrong about Nick’s surgery.

  “You okay?” Jackie asked.

  Claire nodded and followed her inside. The lilies in the foyer vase had been replaced with blooming yellow gladioli. She ran her fingers across the stems, rippling them like wind chimes, grateful for Maria’s thoroughness, and even more grateful that she was off for the day. The thought of Maria’s reaction to her beloved Nicky’s condition would be too dramatic for her to handle. She followed Jackie up the stairs.

  Walking into her bedroom, Claire counted backward the days that had passed since she’d last slept there. “I feel like I’m in a bad cable melodrama,” she said after a long silence. She picked up a small leopard-print pillow and began to tug at it from both sides of its corded border as she spoke. “How did this get to be our story?” As Jackie approached, Claire chucked the pillow to the floor. “I’ve destroyed his life,” she said, tears grazing her lips.

  “Nicholas made a choice.”

  “No, I made the choice.” Claire
turned her head away.

  “Look at me, honey. You can’t take all the blame for this. Nick is seventeen, Claire. He’s not a baby.” Jackie wiped hair from Claire’s mouth and eyes.

  Claire stared at the ceiling, trapped in the bright moment of rushing emotions. “Please, just go back to the hospital and be with him.”

  Jackie wrapped Claire in her arms, and together they rocked, slowly and steadily as they had done when Claire had miscarried her first baby, and when their father had died during Jackie’s breast cancer treatment, and on the countless other life-changing events they’d braced each other through—locking out the pain of the present, if only for a while. When the dance ended Claire urged her again to go.

  “Claire, please lie down and get some rest, okay?”

  “You’ll call me, right?”

  “I’ll call you.”

  “Because Michael, well . . . you know. He can barely speak to me, and he seems so . . . off.”

  “Um, yeah,” Jackie said, her stupefied expression communicating the unspoken obvious.

  Claire sucked in a sharp lungful of air. “I mean, it’s like there’s something else other than Nicky and . . . what happened that’s preoccupying him. Something’s different about him now. You know?”

  “Honey, you really look like hell.”

  “Nothing’s making sense anymore.” She rubbed circles on both of her temples, trying to erase the pressure between them.

  Jackie paused, as if debating whether or not to say what she was thinking.

  “What?” Claire finally asked. “What else?”

  “Mother’s been calling nonstop since yesterday.”

  “I’ve been ignoring it. It was hard enough going through the insulin overdose story with her before the surgery. And it’s not helpful that I keep having to tell her there’s been no change.”

  “She wants to come out here, Claire.”

  “Ugh.” She flopped down into the pillows on the bed. “I can’t face anyone now. Especially Cora.”