The Nearness of You
Page 7
Cassie messed around with the radio, her anxious breath becoming audible. The OR was silent but for the scratchy progression of songs: country ballad, Spanish-language ballad, Bruce Springsteen singing, Baby, we were born to run…
Suzette inhaled sharply.
“I’m sorry,” said Cassie, punching the radio. “I’ve got a Mozart tape in my office?”
“Dr. Kendall,” said Brendan, goddamn Brendan, standing in the corner with his vials of sleep.
“Fine,” said Suzette. “Led Zeppelin II.”
Cassie sighed with relief. Suzette closed her eyes, saying goodbye to the mouse wedding, to all of it. She opened her eyes. “Incision,” she said, opening her palm.
“Incision,” said Cassie, handing her the knife.
—
After the TAVR, Suzette took a quick coffee break in her office, checking emails and dictating operative reports, then prepped for her 11:30 aortic valve replacement. She had told Hyland to call her with any updates, and he had not called. Leslie paused by her office door, leaning against the frame but not daring (not even Leslie) to come in. “Ummm?” she said, by way of greeting. Suzette continued typing an email.
“Ummm?” said Leslie, rapping the door with her knuckle. “Ummm, Dr. Kendall?”
“Yes?” said Suzette, not looking away from the computer screen.
“Ummm, there are reporters outside.”
Suzette sighed and turned to Leslie. “Don’t let them in,” she said.
“Oh no! Of course I wouldn’t! Goodness, no. I just thought you…”
Suzette went back to her email.
“…would want to know,” said Leslie.
Suzette had finished the note—it was a quick response to a patient who was feeling short of breath—but she continued to peck at the keys, wishing Leslie away, typing, GO AWAY LESLIE GO AWAY LESLIE.
“Well, just so you know, I’m really praying for you,” said Leslie.
GET OUT OF MY DOORWAY LESLIE, Suzette typed. “Thanks so much,” she said.
“Ummm?” said Leslie.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” said Suzette.
When Leslie finally moved on, Suzette shut her office door. She massaged her temples. She went to Amazon.com and ordered some Beethoven and Chopin and Eric Satie. She heated up a ramen noodle bowl in her microwave, ate it while evaluating patient charts. And then she went into the locker room to change.
At 11:30, Suzette scrubbed in again. The patient was an elderly woman, Judith Rabinowitz, who’d told Suzette she’d been taken from her parents by Nazi troops. “I never saw my parents again,” said Judith, sitting up in her hospital bed. She was surrounded by her husband, three daughters, and five grandchildren. “I was Germanized,” she told Suzette emphatically. “That’s what they called it. But I wasn’t Germanized enough!”
At this, Judith’s husband, a handsome brown-haired man with thick glasses, guffawed. He patted her hand. “Take care of my Judy’s heart,” he said to Suzette. “We have a trip to Warsaw planned for next spring.”
“I’m in it for the Danube cruise afterward,” confided Judith. “Unlimited buffet.”
“Oh, Mom,” said one of Judith’s daughters.
“I’ve heard they have crab claws,” said Judith dreamily.
Suzette had begun to describe the operation, but Judith held up her palms like a traffic cop. “Spare me,” she said. “I know you’ll do your best.”
Suzette smiled, and opened her mouth to say something—some reassuring platitude—but a grandson interrupted her, hurling himself from the foot of the bed into Judith’s arms.
“Abraham!” cried his mother. But Judith held up her hand again, letting the boy nuzzle close.
—
Now, Judith was sedated and prepped. Suzette entered the operating room, forgetting to ask for any music at all, and began. Hours later, when the mechanical valve was in place, Suzette changed and poured coffee. She shut her office door firmly and called Hyland, who sounded morose.
“No word,” he said.
“I figured,” said Suzette, pressing her fingertips into her forehead where the headlight bore against her skull, leaving a dent and residual pain.
“What should I do?” said Hyland.
“I’m not going to call again,” said Suzette. “If you need anything, or if there’s news, call me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Hyland. “I know you’re busy. I’ll make veal for dinner.”
“Veal?” said Suzette.
“I don’t know why I said that. Do you like veal?”
“I don’t know. Sure.”
“OK, forget veal. Just forget veal!”
“Are you going back to work?” asked Suzette.
“Work? How could I?” said Hyland.
Suzette bit her lip, but didn’t answer.
—
Her third operation of the day was a coronary bypass. The patient, a heavyset postal worker named Phillip Varnado, was unconscious by the time Suzette scrubbed in, a nurse anesthetist named Karen Lawrence at his side. The ventilator wheezed. Karen glanced at Suzette and nodded, then looked back down and adjusted the patient’s isoflurane. Although they’d crack the sternum to get access to the heart, the CBA did not require a heart-lung machine.
“You choose,” said Suzette, when Leslie paused by the CD player. Leslie (as could be expected) chose Guys and Dolls. Show tunes! Karen caught Suzette’s gaze, rolling her eyes playfully. It was a weird job, anesthetist—controlling a patient’s consciousness, rejiggering his memories, even erasing pain retroactively. If Suzette ever wrote a murder mystery, she’d confided to Hyland, she’d make the serial killer an anesthesiologist. “You could do anything to a patient,” Suzette had said, “and then make them forget it!”
“Fucking creepy,” Hyland had said. Suzette had laughed and agreed.
To the strains of “Luck Be a Lady,” Suzette got to work, incising a clean line down the chest, then calling for the sternal saw. Her throbbing headache and the pain in her lower back faded as she worked to expose Varnado’s diseased heart. She could operate for hours, completely focused. One of her few female colleagues had gone into full-blown labor while operating and hadn’t even realized it—she’d been rushed to the maternity ward upon completing the procedure.
The left anterior descending coronary artery and right coronary artery were obstructed. Suzette stabilized the heart and prepared to harvest the bypass grafts from the saphenous vein in Varnado’s leg. Leslie hummed along to the song, some god-awful dirge—“Follow the Fold.” Suzette felt dizzy, and took a few deep breaths.
“Are you OK?” asked Leslie.
Suzette nodded, but she saw Dorrie’s flushed face whenever she blinked. What the hell? She’d never been distracted like this before.
“Dr. Kendall?” said Leslie.
“I’m fine,” said Suzette, forcing Dorrie and the baby from her mind and harvesting the vein grafts. “Heparin,” she said.
“Heparin,” said Leslie.
Suzette’s tools were ready. She breathed evenly, sewing one end of each vein graft onto the coronary arteries beyond the obstructions, then attaching the other end to the aorta. The first graft went perfectly, but Suzette slipped during the second, piercing the vein with her scalpel, rendering it useless. “Fuck!” she said.
She looked up. Karen’s eyes above her mask were concerned. Suzette had to go back and reharvest another vein. “It’s this damn music,” said Suzette.
“I’m sorry,” said Leslie, turning it off. In silence, Suzette completed the surgery without incident. When she finished, and Varnado was wheeled from the room, Leslie hovered nearby.
“Happens to everyone,” said Karen.
“Not to me,” said Suzette.
“Turned out fine,” said Karen, pulling off her gloves and exiting.
“Well, I can only guess what you must feel like,” interjected Leslie. “You must be scared to death.”
Suzette sighed. “I don’t want you to mention the…situation
again,” she said.
“Well, my word!” said Leslie.
“Thank you,” said Suzette.
—
Changing out of her scrubs, Suzette went over her cases in her mind. She’d always suspected, deep inside, that to do her job well took all of her, all she had.
For a split second, though of course she wanted them to find Dorrie, Suzette let herself envision a life without a child. Sunsets with a good bottle of Malbec. Lazy Sundays, making love and going to galleries. Extended vacations to exotic locales. Hyland really seeing Suzette again, the way he once had—as opposed to treating her as a pal, someone with whom he could discuss the exterminator bill. Was it possible that Dorrie, wherever she had gone, could give the baby a good life? A better life, maybe, than Suzette?
9
Dorrie
Until my time in New Orleans, every day of my life had always ended with a book. But as the days in the Motel Claiborne passed, hot and stultifying, something seemed to go wrong in my brain: I couldn’t read. I had two paperbacks in my knapsack, but neither Endless Love nor Love Story provided relief.
I saw each individual word. But I never fell through the words into the story. I’d never dwelled on the mechanics of reading before—it just worked, subconsciously, like breathing. I would open a book, fall through the words, and exist in an alternate universe. Once, after a 60 Minutes episode condemning solitary confinement in prisons, I’d said to Patsy, “How bad could it be? You could just read all day.” My mother had made that clucking sound (half bemusement, half condemnation) and refilled her wineglass.
I was overcome by paranoia, terrified every time I left the room, certain that someone would recognize me and turn me in. I hoarded snacks from the vending machine down the hall: peanuts, granola bars, cookies, gum. My cash supply dwindled, and my mind was overtaken by worries and what-ifs.
What if someone reported my car? How was I going to pay for more time at the Motel Claiborne? If I used a credit card, I’d be found. I was probably all over the news—if I ventured into the city, I’d be identified, I was sure of it. And though I was not breaking the law, I was frightened of your father and Suzette’s power.
I tied myself in mental knots trying to formulate a plan. Days and then a week went by. Room 29 was horrible. The window unit rumbled loudly but didn’t seem to cool the stifling air. The room smelled of urine and a pungent, salty smell that was undeniably (and revoltingly) sexual. Besides the broken TV, Room 29 had a bedside table with a glued-shut drawer, a large mirror I didn’t want to peer into, and the single bed, which was still covered with the cheap, rumpled sheets I’d discovered on my first night.
The sun shot through the window like a hot fist. I was so tired, too tired. My head began to ache no matter how much water I drank from the sink. My nose was clogged and my throat felt parched. When I swallowed, it felt as if there were knives in my throat. My joints ached and I shivered with a chill I was afraid meant I had a fever.
I was so low I decided I would call my mother. Though she had never understood me—what I wanted, who I was—she was the only one I could think to reach out to. I’d always been a loner. The other girls in school thought I thought I was better than them. It was true: I did. I’d always figured I’d make real friends when my true life began. So when I needed help, I was in trouble.
(This is an important lesson for you, one I wish I had learned earlier. Choosing friends is not an aspirational exercise. Your friends don’t have to be as rich as you want to be, or even to share your dreams. You meet kind people, and you return their kindness. That’s what friendship is. You take care of someone and they become yours. I have three close friends now: Martha, the town librarian; Paul, who works in the Photo Department at Walgreens and kayaks every evening; and Jayne. I’ll tell you about her in a minute.)
—
When I picked up the receiver in Room 29, there was no dial tone. I decided to ask to use the phone at the front desk. I struggled to stand. In the mirror, my face was yellowish. I locked the door behind me and climbed slowly down the metal stairs that led to a dilapidated pool and the parking lot. Someone was cleaning the pool, and I stood and watched a young man skim leaves and algae from the water’s surface. Noticing me, the young man nodded.
“Gotta try to better your surroundings,” he said.
“That’s true,” I said.
As I made my way to the motel office, I saw a girl—maybe twelve, maybe younger—sitting in a broken chaise lounge near the parking lot. The girl was reading, her tangled blond hair stuck behind her ears, her freckled face angled downward. She was all bones in a T-shirt and shorts, her legs crossed underneath her, knees poking out. When I passed, the girl did not look up. She was reading Forever….I loved Forever….I loved everything by Judy Blume.
The office was closed and locked. I rested my head against the door. When I had gathered my strength, I started back to Room 29. A woman, a druggie, opened one of the doors on the ground floor.
The woman was in bad shape: alarmingly thin, her face droopy, wearing a dingy sundress and no shoes. Behind her, a man fastened his belt, pushed the woman aside, and exited. The woman sat down in the doorway, her privates exposed.
The woman’s blank eyes reminded me of my mother’s, though selling funnel cakes at Sea-O-Rama was a far cry from prostitution. Sadness fell across me—a wave, a shadow.
As I took the stairs up to my room, I saw the blond girl with the Judy Blume book approach the druggie. My stomach clenched. But the girl helped the woman up gently and led her into the motel room. Before shutting the door, the girl turned around and saw that I was staring. She lifted her chin and met my gaze. The girl’s face was like an angel’s.
This was Jayne.
10
Jayne
A mystery Jayne would ponder later, much later: what if you are in pain—terrible, ceaseless pain—but you are a mother? What do you do when your husband, once your love, comes home from Afghanistan and is haunted by whatever he’d seen, so haunted that he takes his father’s hunting rifle and hunts himself, doing it in the barn where you once dreamed of raising baby goats? What do you do, after you’ve tried your best to make a life for your daughter, when a hurricane all but washes out your town, and an acquaintance tells you that if you crush your dead mother’s pain pills and snort them up your nose you’ll feel better—can you seek relief and remain a mother? Did the act of giving birth mean that you were no longer allowed to yearn for happiness for yourself—or, not even happiness, but the absence of sorrow?
—
Jayne remembers her father only vaguely. She was in kindergarten when he returned from a war she didn’t understand. Everybody’s father was gone; going away was the only job in town. Her father surprised her in the lunchroom, coming up behind her and tapping her on the shoulder. She thought it was a trick (which it was, actually) and refused to turn around. On the home video made by her mother, Jayne shakes her head and looks down at her sandwich. But then her father whispers in her ear. He says, “Hey, Noodle Girl.”
Jayne knows then; she whirls into his arms and begins weeping. Her mother must have cried, too—the camera begins to shake. Jayne clutches her father tightly. He grins, looking up at the camera, at Jayne’s mother, giving a thumbs-up. You can see Jayne’s mother’s name tattooed on his forearm. He is twenty-one.
There must have been some happy times, but her father came back to them volatile—you never knew what would upset him. Don’t run up the goddamn stairs. Don’t surprise me when I’m not expecting it. Don’t you dare lock me out of my house. Don’t tell me what to do. For the love of Christ, can you just, for one fucking second, be quiet?
Jayne was at school when he shot himself—by the time she came home, her mother had cleaned the barn and a neighbor had brought them dinner. It was fried chicken with Kraft macaroni and cheese. Her mother was probably more upset than she seemed, but what Jayne remembers from that night is a sense of relief. She and her mother ate dinner and watched TV.
“Look at those stars,” said her mother.
“Yes,” whispered Jayne, looking out her window.
“One of those stars is your daddy. The brightest one.”
Jayne pointed. “I see him.”
“He’s watching over us now,” said Jayne’s mother. “Everything’s going to be OK now.”
This was a comfort to Jayne, but in truth, she’d always loved her mother best. She curled in tight, put her thumb in her mouth, pulled a piece of her mother’s hair to her cheek. She held on.
—
Jayne’s mother got a job at the Dollar General, but then the Dollar General closed down. She got a job at the Silver Eagle, serving beer. Jayne came in after school and did her homework at the bar, loving her mother, loving the Shirley Temples her mother made her, each with three maraschino cherries.
Her mother began wearing shorter skirts, but at night, she still put on her quilted robe and let Jayne sit in her lap in the nook and watch the stars. “Which one is Daddy?” Jayne asked.
Sometimes, her mother would point, but sometimes, her mother said, “Oh, Noodle, if only I knew.”
—
Even after she crushed her grandmother’s pills and snorted them, Jayne’s mother still belonged to Jayne. But when she came home from the Silver Eagle, she would go into the bathroom and come out dewy and euphoric, even her eyes calm. Jayne didn’t mind making dinner. She’d eat fast so she could lie next to her mother in the nook, talking and talking, saying everything that came to mind, trying to believe that her mother was listening.
If it weren’t for her grandmother’s medicine, Jayne’s mother would have left—Jayne knows this. It was only the false joy from the pills that allowed Jayne’s mother to stay in the house on Chevron Avenue, to be immobile for hours as her daughter prattled on. The medicine helped her forget that she’d had dreams. The medicine quieted the voice that told her she was getting older, going nowhere, that this was her life and she hated it.