Contrafactuales
Гипотезы
反事实
Kontra
Αντιπαραδείγματα
Tényellentétes
Controfattuali
反事実
Alternatívy
Kontrafaktiska
Phản thực
It’s oddly quiet as she weaves through the maze of cubicles and offices irregularly carved from the building’s original 1950s floor plan. She pauses at her own cubicle, one of several brown boxes in the middle of a yellow-carpeted hallway. There are still papers on the desk, graded essays that students forgot to pick up. Tacked to the cubical wall is a postcard portrait of Anne Conway, and a snapshot of Amar and Bear on the porch of her old student apartment.
She keeps going. All the faculty office doors she passes are shut. At the end of the hallway metal heaters blast warm air. With Leah’s body pressed against her own, she feels sweat collecting under her arms and between her breasts. She takes off her coat and shifts Leah’s weight inside the wrap.
She thinks of the relative cool of Robby’s office. He always kept his window cracked, even on icy January days. When she reaches Office 707, she wants to knock, to wait for Robby’s answer. The room’s dark—and tidier than she’s ever seen. She turns to the adjacent office, belonging to Robby’s secretary, Mrs. Trevy, but it’s dark too.
She returns to the lobby. The big clock on the wall above the bookcases says 9:55. Almost ten on a Thursday. That’s why it’s so quiet. Everyone’s in the weekly department meeting. In just a few seconds they’ll all stream out of the conference room across the lobby. She turns quickly toward the graduate student lounge because she’s not ready to say hello to everyone all at once. But then the conference room doors open with a shrill creak and Leah startles. She chokes and sputters, and spits up curdled milk down Cass’s chest.
As people spill from the conference room, she pulls a blanket from the diaper bag and, wiping furiously, turns away from the crowd even as she sees recognition in two or three of the approaching faces. Leah’s sputters turn to ah, ah, ahs, and Cass hurries to the women’s bathroom.
The heavy bathroom door is on a spring and it closes…so…very…slowly.
Inside the yellow-and-white-tiled bathroom, she pushes her hair away from her sweaty face. Pink powdered soap has made little messes on top of the sinks. Quiet drips escape from the faucets. She searches the diaper bag for a change of clothes while Leah cranes her neck to gaze at the globe-shaped lights above the streaked mirrors.
After Cass has pulled Leah from the wrap, she lays her down on the green vinyl sofa in the corner, positioning her own body so Leah won’t roll off. Leah’s eyes find the lights again. Cass peels off her damp clothes and changes her diaper. “I only have one change of clothes for you, teacup, so please”—she holds her hands together in prayer—“please keep these clean.” Leah wiggles in her diaper on the slippery couch and watches Cass’s face.
Once Leah’s dressed, Cass uses wipes to clean her own sour-smelling shirt. She’s waving the baby wrap through the air, in an attempt to dry it out, when Ellen Porchet bumps into the bathroom with two overstuffed tote bags. Cass hurries to gather up the pile of dirty wipes, but the linguistics professor, who wears a fluttering, asymmetrical shirt and woolly gray clogs, doesn’t look in her direction. She heads straight for a toilet stall. The door shuts; there’s a sigh and a long stream of urine.
When Professor Porchet comes out of the stall, she sets her totes on the ground, and turns on a faucet. Her dangling earrings wobble as she washes her hands. She finally nods in Cass’s direction. “I’m glad I ran into you.” She dries her hands, taking no notice of Leah. “My research fellow has won a lectureship in Germany, which is great for him but terrible timing for me. Could you help me out? It’s just ten hours a week.”
“I would love to, but—” Cass clears her throat. She’s spoken to practically no one in days, aside from Noah, and her voice sounds slow and thick.
Professor Porchet interrupts her before she can begin again. “Because I’m in the middle of correcting the galleys for my new book on morphemes, and I just know they’re going to stick me with some first-year graduate student who’ll be no help at all.” She scowls and digs in one of her totes, finds a stick of Blistex, and rubs it over her lips.
“I’m not actually enrolled this term.” Cass stands up and holds Leah with one arm and stuffs the wipes into the trash can with the other.
Professor Porchet seems to see Leah for the first time. “You’ve quit the Ph.D. program?”
Leah wriggles in Cass’s arms and she turns her around so she can stare at the lights. “I didn’t say that. I plan to come back.”
“Good.”
“I’m available next year. If you’ll need an assistant then—”
“Possibly.” She drops the Blistex back into her bag. “What’s the name of your friend? He sat next to you in class. Andrew something—”
“Andrew Morrison.”
“I thought his paper on split ergativity was solid…although not as good as yours.” She fluffs her hair in the mirror and her earrings swing. “I’ll ask him if he’s interested in the assistantship.”
She eyes the door to the hallway and Cass moves aside to let her pass.
“Don’t take too much time off.” She wags her finger at Cass before she goes. “I had a graduate student a few years ago. Very talented. Brilliant even. She took a year off to have a baby. Or maybe it was to take care of her sick baby…” She tilts her head to one side. “Doesn’t matter. The point is, the year turned into two years. And then I never heard from her again.”
Once she’s gone Cass winds the wrap around her body and tells herself she doesn’t care what Professor Porchet thinks. She’s not her mentor or her friend. What she has to say doesn’t matter. She remembers Robby’s words in her head: I expect great things from you, Cassandra.
She pulls the fabric over her left shoulder, and over her right shoulder, and ties it around the back. This time she manages to get the tautness just right. She tucks Leah in, puts her coat on so it’ll cover the wet spot on the wrap, and shoulders the diaper bag. Then she walks back to Robby’s secretary’s office. This time the light is on.
“Cass. And your baby. A girl?” Mrs. Trevy leans across her desk and smiles.
“Yes. Leah.” Cass steps inside. Unlike Robby’s office, Mrs. Trevy’s is full of plants and tidy piles of paper. No books.
“Listen, I can’t get ahold of Robby,” Cass says. “He’s not answering his phone. They say he’s on leave—”
Mrs. Trevy’s smile disappears. “I left you a message months ago. You didn’t get it?”
“We moved. I had Leah.” It’s hot under her coat, with Leah pressed close. “I didn’t.”
Mrs. Trevy gestures to Robby’s office. “I found him on the floor.” There’s panic in her gold-flecked eyes, and behind that, something else. Anger maybe. “I thought he was dead.”
“What was wrong with him—”
“He drank himself into a coma.”
“Oh my god.” She covers Leah’s head with her hands. “When was this?” She has an awful feeling she knows what Mrs. Trevy is going to say.
“The end of spring semester. You saw him that day, I think—”
“Where is he now?”
“His sons moved him out of his house. He’s living with one of them now. Ben.” She turns her gold rings around on her fingers. “He’s been in and out of the hospital all summer.”
“That’s why his house is empty.”
“I think they’re planning to sell it.”
Cass pulls off her jacket, not caring about her stained shirt. Leah presses her face against Cass’s chest and squashes her nose; her mouth makes little wet circles against Cass’s skin. “She’s hungry,”
Cass says. “She’s always hungry—”
“Sit. I’ll shut the door.”
Cass sets the diaper bag on the floor, sits down in a chair. She loosens Leah, unhooks her bra, and covers the baby’s head with the wrap. “I can’t believe I didn’t know about Robby.”
Mrs. Trevy sighs. “He’s never been what other people want him to be. But at least when Lillian was alive he took better care of himself.”
“He never talks about her.”
“He’s heartbroken, even all these years later.”
“I only know two things about her—that she played piano, and read all his drafts.”
“She did. Every word. That’s probably why he can’t seem to finish that second book.” She pauses. “But the last few years something’s brought him out of his funk.”
“What?”
“You.”
Cass peeks at Leah under the wrap. Her sucking has slowed.
“He thinks you’re going to be the next him,” Mrs. Trevy says. “But do you want to be?”
“I thought I did.” Cass unlatches Leah, pulls her from the wrap, and lays her against her chest. “But now I don’t know.”
Mrs. Trevy gets up from her desk. “May I?”
“Sure.” Cass pulls a cloth from the diaper bag.
Mrs. Trevy takes the baby in her arms and lays the cloth over her shoulder, like she’s done it many times before. She pats Leah firmly on the back. “She’s beautiful.”
“She’s small.”
“Waste of time to worry about stuff like that,” Mrs. Trevy says. Then her face softens. “It’s not easy.” She strokes Leah’s patchy hair. “I remember.”
“I love her. But everything’s different since she was born.”
“I remember that part. It doesn’t last forever. Well,” she laughs. “Maybe it does.” She hands Leah back.
The sound of rain comes from the window, pinpricks of water against the glass.
“Mrs. Trevy, were you the one who sent me my old paper?” Cass asks.
“Oh, yes. I did.”
Leah kicks at Cass’s hip. “Why?”
“After you met with Robby…he told me he needed to get something to you, that it was important. He said he’d leave it on his desk.” She sits back down. “I left before he did that day, and when I arrived the next morning—”
“That’s when you found him.”
“I started tidying up his office, after the ambulance took him away, after I phoned his kids. I don’t know why. I just needed something to do. I knew he was in bad shape, but I never thought…” She presses her hands together on top of the desk.
“Then I remembered what he said about leaving something for you,” she says. “I found the folder under a pile of sophomore exams.”
Leah wiggles in Cass’s arms, and she tucks her back into the wrap. “He wrote something on that paper—a note.” She shh shhs in Leah’s ear. “But the last page is missing.”
“That doesn’t surprise me. His office was always such a spectacular mess. I’ve finally got it into some kind of order—”
“I’ve been trying to find the lost page.”
“Go and see him. He’s in Room 507 at the hospital. Ask him what he wrote. Isn’t that better than reading it?”
She’s right of course.
“I should have tried calling you again,” Mrs. Trevy says. “I knew it wasn’t like you to not call back.”
“It’s my fault. I’ve been…I don’t know. Preoccupied. Not myself.”
“You’ve been taking care of your baby, and that’s what you should be doing.”
“I don’t know if Robby would agree—”
“He would.” Her smile is rueful. “Even if he wouldn’t admit it. I know he would.”
FIFTEEN
GINNY CLOSES HERSELF in a bathroom stall, sits down on the toilet seat, and rests her head in her hands. It’s the first time she’s sat down in fifteen hours. Her arms ache from reaching over the operating table; her throat is bone dry. Her lap chole case started late because of an OR scheduling delay, and then she discovered her patient’s belly was full of scar tissue. She doesn’t like the boundary lines she got around the mesenteric vein, but it was the best she could do without jeopardizing the pancreas. Not good enough.
She hasn’t seen Edith again, and what happened in her car yesterday feels far away. She rubs her hands over her face. She hasn’t eaten all day. It’s been several days, really, since she ate a real meal. Her stomach feels concave.
She stays inside the bathroom stall and pulls her phone from her pocket. She dials her husband, and when he answers she asks to talk to Noah.
“He’s already asleep,” Mark says. “He was so beat.”
“Damn. All right.” She feels a surge of disappointment that she can’t hear her son’s voice. That it was Mark who tucked him in and turned on his night-light, not her. “How did his game go?”
“He did great. They won. Listen, I was working outside and found a leak. The water company can’t come to fix it until morning, so you better shower before you come home.”
“Really?” She groans and the sound echoes against the tile walls. “All right. I’ll be home in a few hours.”
After she hangs up she pulls her scrub shirt away from her chest and smells sweat and antiseptic. She doesn’t have any soap or shampoo at work, so all she has to look forward to after rounds is a lukewarm rinse in the moldy hospital locker room.
At rounds her residents are beat down too. Blood splatter dots the hem of Dr. Dawson’s scrub pants. There’s a dent in Dr. Harper’s hair from the elastic band of his scrub cap. She lets them do the talking as they wind through their patients’ rooms. She asks only a few questions.
A floor nurse waves at her chief resident from down the hall. “Your patient’s blood pressure isn’t looking good.”
“My Whipple?”
“Go ahead,” Ginny says. “We’re nearly done anyway.”
“What about the chest tube for Mr. Morales?” Dr. Dawson asks.
Ginny rubs her forehead. “We’ll do it. Another hour isn’t going to make a difference.”
He hurries away.
“We’ll check Professor Kells’s vitals again,” she tells Dr. Harper, “do the tube, and then go home.”
Dr. Harper takes an energy bar from his pocket. “Sorry,” he says with his mouth full. “I haven’t eaten…I don’t know, since this morning I think.”
When they get to Professor Kells’s room, he’s still chewing. She waits. “Do you see me eating right now?”
“No…” He hesitates. “But maybe you should be.”
She stares at him.
“When was the last time you ate anything? You look like you’re wasting away.”
“Dr. Harper, I’m not your friend.”
“Sorry?”
“We aren’t friends. I’m your boss.”
“I just thought—” He stands up straighter. “I’m sorry. It’s none of my business. I shouldn’t have said anything.” He throws the half-eaten energy bar into a trash can. “I’m going to stop talking now.”
“Good idea.”
In Professor Kells’s room his sons stand by the window talking. One wears jeans and a gray checked shirt and the other a loose-fitting suit. Both have thick hair like their dad, and both are tall, over six feet. She glances at her patient’s long legs underneath the sheet. She’s never seen him upright, but he must be a tall man too.
She says a quick hello and checks the bandages covering the incisions in Professor Kells’s abdomen. His eyes are sunken slits below his bushy eyebrows; his lips are colorless around his endotracheal tube. But his vitals are good—strong for his age and what his body’s been through over the last four days. He doesn’t have the look of someone who’s about to die. His cheeks have some color in t
hem. His body still has bulk in the bed. Again he reminds her of her father. Something about the shape of his head, and his body’s stubborn will to live.
The two sons are arguing about something. The one wearing jeans addresses Ginny: “When are we going to see my dad’s doctor?”
“That’s me.”
The man in the suit reaches out his hand. “Hello again. I’m Ben. We met the other day. This is my brother, Greg.”
“Because there have been ten different people coming in and out of this room,” Greg says, “we’re getting confused—”
“Don’t mind Greg,” Ben says to Ginny. “Hospitals stress him out.”
“Was there a specific question you had about your father’s care?” Ginny waits while Greg walks over to his dad’s bed.
“I want to know how my dad’s doing.”
“I think he’s doing surprisingly well given his age and history of liver disease. His vitals are good, but we need to get his bladder pressure normalized.”
Greg gestures at his father’s gauze-covered belly. “He doesn’t look like he’s doing well.” His face contorts. “I mean, good god.” He reaches out, tentatively, and squeezes his father’s limp hand.
“When will you take that out?” Ben gestures to his dad’s endotracheal tube.
“If he does well overnight, we’ll extubate him in the morning,” Ginny says.
Greg pulls a chair close to his dad. “He wasn’t around a lot when we were growing up. We’ve seen him even less since our mom died,” he says. “His work was always more important. Now he’s finally taking a break. He says he wants to get to know us.” He turns to Ginny. “But you don’t really know what’s going to happen to him. Do you?”
There’s a pause, in which she would normally repeat the speech she’s made hundreds of times, about the challenges of making an accurate prognosis when there are so many variables involved. About the strength of the care provided at University Hospital. But instead she looks at Professor Kells the way his son sees him, at his sunken eyes and pallid skin, at the needles and tubes that snake from his nose and arms.
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