She wakes to a commercial break. Noah’s show has ended. She stands up, looks around. The baby monitor is still quiet.
Noah picks up the booklet and pages through it.
Cass smooths the wrinkles from the wrap. “If I could figure this out,” she says, “I could have my hands free, get some things done…”
“What do you want to get done? Maybe I could help.”
Cass feels like hugging him. Will Leah be sweet like this when she’s eleven years old?
“Some things you could help me with. Folding laundry, sweeping the floor. But other things I have to do for myself—”
“Like what?”
“Reading. Writing.”
“What do you write?”
“I used to be a scholar. A philosopher.” She thinks for a minute. “That’s someone who figures out the meaning of things…”
“Like Plato and Socrates.”
Cass smiles. “Exactly.”
“So you’re really smart. My mom’s smart too. She saves people’s lives.”
“I know. She’s an impressive person.” Cass stretches the wrap between her two hands. “Your dad is too.”
Noah nods and reads from the instructions. “It says fold the fabric in half, pull it like a belt across your stomach, and wrap the tails across your back and up and over your shoulders.”
Cass threads the ends around her waist, crosses them over her shoulders, and ties them in a thick knot—then frowns at the twisted, sagging fabric hanging from her chest.
“I think you have to keep it all going one direction…” Noah shows her a picture of a smiling woman wrapping her pudgy baby.
Cass unwinds the fabric, tries again. This time she keeps the fabric smooth, front and back. But she’s tied it too tight. Small as she is, Leah will never fit. Her next attempt is better, and she thinks it might actually work.
“What’s next?” Noah asks.
“Now we wait for Leah to wake up, so we can try it out.”
“Can I hang out a little longer? My mom doesn’t get home until after six.”
“You can stay as long as you want.”
They watch the TV in silence for a few minutes. “With the baby asleep, I don’t know what to do with myself,” Cass says. She gets up and checks the dryer. She can’t remember if she started a load of laundry yesterday or not.
She did. She gathers Leah’s pajamas and burp cloths into a basket, brings them back to the couch, and she and Noah fold them, making little piles of her daughter’s tiny, sweet-smelling clothes on top of the coffee table. Cass lets her mind wander as she folds, thinking of Robby and her old paper. Thinking of the boxes full of books upstairs, and the ideas inside them.
When Leah wakes, not with screams but with happy babbles, Cass brings her downstairs and tries putting her in the wrap. She tucks her into the inner flap of fabric, and then the outer. Noah reads the next set of directions, and shows her another picture, and she lifts the loop around her waist up and over Leah’s bottom and back. She leans forward and takes a few tentative steps. She walks around the living room until she’s used to the feeling. It’s amazing, really, to have her arms free. Bolstered to her chest, the baby’s weight feels like nothing at all.
“She likes it,” Noah says.
He’s right. Leah settles her warm cheek against Cass’s chest, and after a few minutes her body goes slack and her eyelids droop. Her little hand curls around the top of Cass’s breast, as if to assure herself it won’t go anywhere while she sleeps.
She stays tucked inside the wrap while Cass finishes folding the laundry, loads the dishwasher, and makes a pot of soup for her and Noah. And then it’s nearly six o’clock. Noah will have to go home soon.
Cass has a thought. The fog is still thick outside, but it’s not raining anymore. The street is dry. “I’m going to take Bear for a walk. Want to come?”
They walk through the cul-de-sac, under the towering pines cloaked in mist, and wind downhill through the neighborhood. Noah holds on to Bear’s leash. The wrap hugs Leah tight. Cass has put her oversized rain jacket over it and Leah snuggles inside the layers of fabric. They stay on the sidewalks, wary of cars emerging out of the gloom, and squint in all directions when they cross the street. The way the fog has settled is uneven. It has depths and eddies, like a stream. It encircles houses and trees, giving the uncanny impression of roofs and treetops hovering in midair.
Cass counts the streets. Robby’s house is only two more blocks away. They pass fifties-era ranches and cottage-style homes with bikes leaning against their front porches, an empty pocket park, a community garden overgrown with tall sunflower stalks and furry green sage. At the corner Bear lunges at some turkeys that strut out of the mist. But Noah keeps hold of the leash and laughs. Bear barks, and the turkeys scamper into the bushes.
When they get to Arden Street Cass slows. Something occurs to her. It’s true that she didn’t call Robby all summer. But he didn’t call her either. He must have remembered the baby was due in August. Was he really so angry not to get in touch, even then?
His house is up ahead, a blue ranch with fog blanketing its front lawn. No lights on. “I’m just going to see if someone I know is home,” she tells Noah. She shifts Leah in the wrap and walks to the front door.
She rings the doorbell. No answer. She peers into the windows but can’t see past the blue curtains. She’s been inside a few times, when she was Robby’s research assistant her first year in graduate school. She remembers the walls lined with bookcases, the piles of papers on every surface—on the dining room table, on top of the piano. The house was full of stuff and yet it felt empty and still. One time she peeked into Robby’s bedroom and his wife’s things were still on top of the dresser, a brush, a paperback novel, some bobby pins in a dish.
Leah whimpers and Cass runs her hands over the wrap to warm her small body. She moves around the side of the house, along a moss-covered path, and tries to get a look inside the garage. It’s empty. And clean. So clean it’s almost as if no one lives here at all. There used to be a key under an urn—she used it a few times when she dropped off books Robby had requested from the library. She turns over some pots but finds nothing.
She goes back to the front door and rings the doorbell again, calls out, “Robby,” but there’s still no answer.
“Who lives here?” Noah asks.
“My advisor. He’s a philosopher too.”
“I don’t think anyone’s home.” He points. All the other houses on the block have their recycling bins on the curb, but the sidewalk in front of Robby’s house is empty. “Maybe he’s away.”
Cass hugs her jacket around Leah. It’s getting dark, and the temperature has dropped. “It’s late,” she says. “Your mom will be wondering where you are.” She turns back the way they came, up the hill, the murky early evening light disappearing behind the mountain, Leah heavier now than she was before.
THIRTEEN
GINNY SNAPS ON the light in Mrs. Carlyle’s hospital room and her residents file in after her. She’s shorter than both of them but her voice fills up the cold, quiet room. This is exactly what she needs. The sight of the two of them, her chief resident, Patrice Dawson, and her intern, Seth Harper, in their white coats and scrubs. They look like they do every morning. Like nothing’s happened and it’s business as usual. She kissed Edith in her car yesterday—the memory is like a flash of color in a dark room. That’s why she needs work. Cold, clearheaded, chlorine-scented work. The regimented routine of the surgical floor, the methodical pace of the OR. She needs to hear the sound of her own firm voice, and the expression on her residents’ faces as they listen to what she has to say.
“Mrs. Carlyle is post-op day three. Status post, open cholecystectomy.” She taps some keys on a computer that displays her gallbladder patient’s electronic records. “Positive flatus overnight. White count droppe
d from 14 to 12. We’ve started her on clears. And her Foley is out.”
Mrs. Carlyle squints at Ginny. “I’m blind without my glasses.” Her quavering voice is almost inaudible. She reaches out a thin arm to pull the wheeled bedside table closer and gropes along its surface. Her face is sallow; her lips and cheeks the same color.
Ginny hands her the glasses, and Mrs. Carlyle puts them on and adjusts them. “That’s better.” She lays her head back down.
“Dr. Harper, do we have cultures back?”
Her intern stands with his hands stuffed in his pockets. He appears confused by this basic question. “I don’t know.”
Normally she would tell him: Get it together, and while you’re at it, take your hands out of your damn pockets. But instead she lets Dr. Dawson explain that they’re waiting on results from the lab and will keep Mrs. Carlyle on broad-spectrum antibiotics for now. Ginny taught him how to speak this way, how to convey confidence and deference at the same time. Now if he could just teach Dr. Harper the same.
She moves closer to Mrs. Carlyle. The whites of her eyes are yellow-tinged. “What about her bilirubin?”
“It’s normal, 2.1,” Dr. Harper says. “Which is weird, right? She still looks jaundiced.”
“Is something wrong?” Mrs. Carlyle asks.
Ginny pulls out her stethoscope. “Everything’s fine.” She opens the top of Mrs. Carlyle’s gown and listens to her heartbeat. “I’m going to have you sit up a bit—” She slips the stethoscope between the pillow and her patient’s narrow, birdlike back.
She listens to her lungs and helps her lay back down. “Let’s repeat the bilirubin. Something’s not adding up.”
Mrs. Carlyle grabs Ginny’s hand and she can feel the bones in the woman’s fingers. “Am I going to be all right?” Her brown eyes are large and shiny behind her glasses.
Ginny blinks, feels an unexpected wave of emotion. She pats her patient’s hand.
“You’re getting the very best care,” Dr. Dawson says in a firm voice.
But Mrs. Carlyle holds Ginny’s gaze. “Thank you, Dr. McDonnell,” she whispers.
When Ginny speaks her voice is thick. “No thanks required.” She moves to the sink, rolls up her sleeves, and turns on the hot water. She squeezes pink soap into her hands, rubs her palms together under the tap, and feels the steam from the hot water on her cheeks. She recalls the fogged windshield in her car yesterday. The weight of the MRI scans in her hands. The feeling of Edith’s wet hair under her fingers and the melting softness of her lips. And she remembers the woman she saw in her kitchen, her doppelgänger, her twin, who stood nose to nose with Edith and smiled.
She wipes her face with a wet paper towel. When she moves back to the bed Dr. Harper gives her a curious look. She grabs a pair of blue latex gloves, size small, from a box by the door, and the gloves make a satisfying snap as she pulls them on. She makes sure her voice is steady. “I’m going to check under your dressings,” she tells her patient.
She pulls the sheet down and opens the woman’s hospital gown. Mrs. Carlyle shivers; goosebumps appear on her stomach. Layers of gauze, secured by surgical tape, cover the right subcostal incision. Ginny presses her fingers against the skin, pulling it taut, before tugging the white surgical tape loose. The skin around the incision is puckered and shiny with antibiotic ointment. The staples are clean. Ginny replaces the dressings and gown, and pulls the sheet back up. “Looks good.”
Mrs. Carlyle nods, shivers again, and closes her eyes. Ginny reaches for the blanket at the foot of the bed but it’s not there.
Dr. Dawson holds up his buzzing pager. “That’s my Whipple.”
“Go ahead. I want you to see Dr. Jory’s approach. It’s different from mine.”
The door closes behind him, and Ginny looks under the bed for the blanket.
“What are you doing?” Dr. Harper points to the button to call the nurses’ station. “I can call the nurse.”
She finally finds the blanket under a chair and spreads it over her patient. “She looks cold.”
* * *
—
Out in the hallway Ginny tells Dr. Harper to find the floor nurse. “Remind her that Mrs. Carlyle needs to be ambulatory today.”
One of the internal medicine doctors types at the nurses’ station computer, and once Dr. Harper’s gone, Ginny taps him on the shoulder: “I have a question for you.”
“Sure.” He has a small cut on his chin that looks like it’s from shaving.
“I saw a patient in clinic yesterday. A follow-up visit.” She pauses for a second, distracted by the smear of blood on his chin. “She says she’s been hearing and seeing things. There’s no history of mental illness or substance abuse. The only medication she’s taking is a beta-blocker. Inderal.”
“Hearing and seeing things—”
“—that aren’t there. Hallucinations.”
“How long has she been on the blocker?”
“About a month.”
“Vivid dreams are a common complaint. And every once in a while I get someone who says they were drinking coffee in their kitchen, or whatever, and suddenly their dead brother appeared. Or their dead dog. Some variation on that.”
She lets out the breath she was holding. “No kidding.”
Dr. Harper hovers behind her. “Which patient is this?”
“Don’t worry about it.”
The internist asks, “Why is she taking the Inderal?”
“High blood pressure.”
“Is this Mrs. Wong we’re talking about?” Dr. Harper asks.
“No, it isn’t.”
“Tell her to follow up with her PCP, and they can switch her to a different blocker,” the internist says, “and that should solve the issue.” He stands up from the computer. “Make sure she knows she shouldn’t stop all at once. The dosage will need to be reduced gradually, and the side effects could continue for a week or two.” He shrugs. “Better hallucinations than a heart attack.”
“Right. Thanks.” Of course there’s a medical reason for what she saw. The world is made of concrete causes and effects. She motions for her intern to follow her down the hall. Then she turns back: “You’ve got a bit of blood on your chin.” She grabs a tissue from a box on a nearby cart and hands it to the internist.
He frowns at her and takes the tissue. “Thanks.”
As they walk down the hallway she reminds Dr. Harper about tests that need to be ordered, consults that need to be called. She feels better, more in control, more like herself. “I want you to keep a close eye on Mr. Morales’s breathing,” she tells him.
He pulls half a bagel out of his white coat pocket and takes a bite. “Got it,” he says with his mouth full.
Her stomach rumbles. “Where did you get that?”
“They’re in the doctors’ lounge.” He frowns when he sees her exasperated expression. “Did you want one?”
“No.”
He stuffs the rest of the bagel into his mouth.
“If Mr. Morales’s sats keep dropping, he’ll need to be tubed. Have you done a chest tube yet?” A flash of red appears at the end of the hallway. Edith walks toward them, taking the shortcut to the OR through the surgical floor.
Ginny stops short, but there’s nowhere to go. Dr. Harper’s ahead of her now. “Hold up,” she calls after him. “We need to go over the new electronic inventory system.” She waves him behind the nurses’ station and around the back of a tall glass cabinet.
“Really?” He looks confused.
“Come on.” She’s talking very fast, or maybe it just feels like she is. “Quickly now.”
Dr. Harper glances behind him, as if sensing there’s another reason for her sudden interest in proper protocol for the clean utility cabinet.
“Go ahead, take me through it,” she prompts.
He starts jabbi
ng at a touch-screen computer attached to the cabinet. There’s only about four square feet of space and she can smell the raisin bagel on his breath. She hears Edith say hello to the floor nurse. They start talking about a patient on the sixth floor whose finger was bitten off by an alpaca. Edith laughs, soft and melodic.
As Dr. Harper narrates how he would input two rolls of nonwoven elastic bandage, Ginny watches the little squares of Edith that show through the glass shelves of gauze, tape, and tubing: the freckles above the V-neck of her scrub top, the gold watch band that squeezes her wrist, the pale pink strip of scalp where she parts her hair. Looking at that pink skin, Ginny’s face feels warm and her body soft. She remembers the invertebrate animals she studied in college, comb jellies, trumpet anemone, and orange cup coral. Their pulpy, transparent forms.
Dr. Harper waves the bar-code scanner through the air, trying to get it to work. He shakes it, blows on it.
Ginny takes it from him and shows him how it works. She hears Edith saying goodbye to the other nurse. “I suppose it’s going to take some practice,” Ginny says, her eyes on Edith, who’s now walking away from the nurses’ station.
She regrets hiding now. She ought to go say something. But once they are out from behind the cabinet, Edith’s already halfway down the hallway. She turns the corner, her ponytail floating behind her like some kind of rare bird taking flight.
Ginny watches her go, and Dr. Harper watches her watching Edith. “Are we waiting for something?”
“No.” She readjusts the stethoscope around her neck. “Let’s go.”
FOURTEEN
STANDING IN THE lobby of the Department of Philosophy, inhaling its familiar scent of photocopier ink and soggy windowsills, Cass fights the feeling she doesn’t belong here anymore. It’s so strange to be back here with Leah. The last time she stood in this spot she was pregnant, and Leah was balled up inside her belly, instead of curled against her chest in the baby wrap. She walks past a line of bookcases displaying faculty publications, where the foreign translations of Counterfactuals take up a full shelf:
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