That’s what she saw when it was her own father lying there. She hated the thin hospital gown that barely covered his broad chest. She hated the nurses and doctors standing over him, checking and prodding and poking, taking up every minute of whatever life he had left. She tries not to think about her dad at work…or her husband, or her son. She keeps things separate, home and family on the one side, and work on the other. But tonight she can’t seem to help mixing up the two.
The spell is broken when Dr. Harper starts talking. He makes the speech about the difficulty of prognosis, using all the words and phrases she tends to use. His tone is compassionate but matter-of-fact. He gets to the point quickly and doesn’t diverge into further conversation. He does a good job. She has taught him something after all.
Once Dr. Harper’s done, Greg nods and sits down heavily in a chair. Ben thanks them, and she motions to her intern to open the door. “We’ll be monitoring your father’s intra-abdominal pressure closely overnight,” she says. “Good night.”
Outside she tells Dr. Harper to set up Mr. Morales’s chest tube, and then ducks into the doctors’ lounge, where it smells like popcorn and dirty socks. One of the anesthesiologists snores on the sofa, in spite of CNN blaring from the wall-mounted TV. She opens the fridge and stares at the tiny bottles of water and soda, and the brown paper sack labeled THIS IS VANESSA’S DINNER, NOT YOURS. She takes a Coke and drinks the whole thing. She reaches for one of the bananas on the counter, but the hunger she felt an hour ago has evaporated. She puts it back.
She’s been letting things get to her today. She feels…thin-skinned somehow. Not herself. She throws the soda bottle into the recycling. It’s because of what happened with Edith. She’s got to stop thinking about it. She’ll talk to her, tell her the kiss was a mistake. She grabs another Coke and drinks it as she walks to Mr. Morales’s room. At the nurses’ station she pauses. “Can you call down to the OR and find out if Edith is still there. I need her to stop by Room 509 on her way out.”
SIXTEEN
DR. HARPER HAS everything laid out at Mr. Morales’s bedside: topical anesthetic, a chest tube, Kelly clamps, and a needle driver. In his gown and mask, his shoulders are set; his eyes are dark and close together under his puffy cap.
Mr. Morales lies back on his pillows. His worried eyes shift from Ginny to Dr. Harper.
“You’ve explained the procedure?” Ginny puts on a pair of gloves. Dr. Harper nods.
She leans close to Mr. Morales’s ear, because he’s a little deaf. “There’s going to be some pressure right before we place the tube. We’ll be as quick as we can.”
“So I’m going to inject one percent lidocaine with epi”—Dr. Harper holds up a syringe—“with a 22-gauge needle.” His voice sounds cottony from behind his mask.
“Yes.”
“At the fourth intercostal space.”
“Correct.”
Dr. Harper pushes the needle in between the patient’s ribs and Mr. Morales winces. He presses the needle’s plunger and checks his watch. He picks up the scalpel. “I make a three-centimeter cut.” He bends down and makes the small incision, and Ginny hands him some gauze. He holds it over the incision and picks up the Kelly clamps. Sweat shines on his brow.
“Take your time. Visualize the action before you perform it.”
“I use the clamps to punch through the intercostal muscles and into the pleural cavity. Then I spread the clamps.”
“Now, Matt—” She wants to warn him not to spread the clamps too fast, but before she can finish her sentence he’s thrusting the clamps through the cut. He spreads them open and out, all in one swift motion, and Mr. Morales’s body recoils. A spurt of pleural fluid gushes from the hole as the patient swears in Spanish and thumps his arms against the bed.
“Oh shit,” Dr. Harper says.
“Don’t stop now. Keep going.” She holds Mr. Morales’s arms steady. “Sweep with your finger to make sure the lung isn’t in the way, and then get the tube in.” She leans over the patient. “That was the worst part,” she says loudly.
Dr. Harper sticks his finger into the incision and squints at the ceiling. He inches the tube through and hooks it up to the Pleur-evac. “Whew.” He wipes his forehead with the back of his gloved hand and grins. Ginny feels fluid seeping into her scrub pants. She’s soaked from the waist down.
She leaves Dr. Harper to deal with the cleanup and grabs a handful of paper towels on her way out. In the hallway, she bends down to wipe off her clogs. Fluid has dripped into her left sock and the wet cotton sticks to her heel. She is so done with this day. But the thought of home doesn’t improve her mood. There’s nothing to look forward to there. Noah’s already asleep, and Mark will be sitting in front of the TV. She’ll eat leftovers in the kitchen by herself and go to bed.
When she straightens up Edith’s right in front of her. Her freckles are bright under the fluorescent lights. “You wanted to see me?”
Ginny’s empty stomach flips. “Yeah, I wanted to tell you—” But she can’t bring herself to say what she intended.
“What happened to you?”
“I took a bath in pleural fluid.” A trickle runs down her arm and she wipes it with the paper towels. “Just a little something extra to end my disaster of a day.”
“That bad?”
“Listen, thanks for keeping me company”—Ginny’s face warms—“during my MRI.”
“That’s all you wanted to talk to me about?” Edith’s tone is playful, teasing even.
There’s an awkward pause. Finally Ginny gestures at her soaked scrubs. “I’m going to head home and take a—” She frowns and squashes the wet paper towels into a ball. “A shower.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Oh, the water’s out at my house. I have to brave the second-floor locker room.”
Edith makes a face. “It smells in there.”
“It does.” Ginny sighs. “But no worse than me right now, I guess.” She throws the ball of towels into a nearby trash can, and then wishes she hadn’t, because now she doesn’t know what to do with her hands.
“You could come borrow my shower,” Edith says softly.
Ginny thinks again of Mark, at home in front of the TV, and Noah, asleep in his room.
They look at each other.
“Do you remember where I live?” Edith asks. “Right by the university.”
“Yellow house on Starker Drive.”
“That’s right.”
* * *
—
Edith’s house is a tiny bungalow the color of honeycomb. Its porch is clear of all the stuff heaped on her neighbors’, like gardening tools and watering cans and extra bike wheels. Two pots of rosemary stand on the steps and a single beach-cruiser-style bicycle rests against the porch railing.
“Hello?” Ginny calls through the half-open front door. The rain patters against the porch steps. She’s nervous. She’s been here a couple of times, when Edith needed a ride to work. But it feels completely different this time.
She hears Edith’s voice from inside, telling her to come in. She waits in the entryway on the hardwood floors. She can hear water running. A slipcovered sofa, its bright pillows pressed flat, divides the living and dining room. An open paperback perches on one of its arms. The front curtains are drawn.
Edith appears with a green towel in her hands. Her crinkly hair is down around her shoulders.
“I don’t want to touch anything,” Ginny says. Her scrubs are still damp, her left sock gummy. In the car she sat on a couple of surgical towels to keep her seats clean.
“I’m running you a bath,” Edith says.
“Oh, that’s okay.”
“No arguments—it’ll be just the thing.”
She follows Edith through a narrow, yellow-tiled kitchen that smells, faintly, of burnt toast. “Where’s your cat?” Ginny asks.
“Oh he’s around here somewhere. Probably hiding behind the couch.”
Ginny thinks of Fisher and Pinky asleep on Noah’s bed, and looks back at the front door. She hesitates. What if Noah wakes up and looks for her and she’s not there? But he doesn’t do that anymore. He hasn’t since he was three or four.
“Are you hungry?” Edith doesn’t wait for her answer; she reaches for a plate sitting on the counter and unsticks its Saran wrap. “I made jam cake.” She cuts a thick slice and puts it on a napkin. Then she leads Ginny down a short hallway and into the bathroom.
In the small green-and-white room, steam hovers above the half-filled tub. Palm fronds sway and twirl across the wallpaper, and a square of rug the color of new grass covers the black-and-white tile floor. For the second time in two days, the two women stand together in a confined space. Edith hands Ginny the towel and she hugs it to her chest. Then Edith sets the piece of cake on the sink and stoops to dip her hand into the water. She adjusts the faucet handle by a fraction of an inch. “It’s temperamental. Let me get it just right.”
She straightens up. “That one.” She points to one of the bottles sitting near the tub, a container with flowers on its label. “That’s the antidote to being doused in pleural fluid.” She picks it up, squeezes some of it under the tap, and leaves the room, closing the door behind her.
Ginny eats the cake—dense and sweet with orange peel and powered sugar—in three bites, and wishes there was more. She undresses, pushes her stained scrubs into a corner with her bare foot, and steps into the hot, fizzing water. She scrubs her whole body with a washcloth and the tropical-smelling soap, quickly, listening for sounds outside the room. She hears the rattle of dishes in the sink, the faint noise of the radio.
She lays her head against the porcelain and feels the heavy air settle on her skin. She looks at each object in the room and thinks: that belongs to Edith. A single toothbrush set atop the shallow sink. Three hair ties in a silver dish on the windowsill. A pink razor balanced on the rim of the tub.
When there’s a knock at the door, she startles, splashing water onto the green rug. She sits up and the gauzy shower curtain billows.
Edith calls, “I have a glass of wine. A glass of wine and a beer. Whichever you like. Can I come in?”
Ginny sinks down into the bubbles so only the tops of her knees poke out. She runs her hand over the pucker of skin just below her belly button—her C-section scar—and says, “Okay.”
Edith keeps her eyes on Ginny’s face and sets the beer down on the side of the bathtub. “You look good, relaxed.” She sits on the toilet seat and begins talking—about work, about her house, and about the road trip she took to the redwoods this past summer. Ginny sips her cold beer and says little in response, but Edith doesn’t seem to mind.
They’ve talked like this before, in the staff room at the hospital, or standing outside in the parking lot, the hoods of their jackets shielding their faces from the rain. But it doesn’t feel like it did those other times. Edith relates the entire plot of the last movie she saw, in minute detail, even standing up to act out some of the scenes. She goes on and on. Ginny wants something to happen, but she doesn’t know how to make it happen. She stops following Edith’s words and just listens to the way her accent stretches out the vowels in words like you and do, wonder and drawer.
The bubbles dissipate. Edith is laughing about something, revealing three silver fillings in the back of her mouth. When she stops laughing the room goes quiet. The only sound is the gentle tunk tunk of the tub stopper’s chain. Edith sets her glass on the windowsill. “That water must be cold by now,” she says, and Ginny nods, even though it’s not true. The water, the air, and her body are all the same temperature.
Ginny sits up and folds her hands over her breasts. She waits for Edith to hold open the towel for her. But Edith kneels next to the tub instead. She lowers her hand into the soapy water, like she did earlier to check the temperature, and her fingers skim the hollow of Ginny’s knee. “Lay back,” she says. “I’m going to warm you up.”
Ginny sinks back into the water; she closes her eyes. She trembles as Edith’s hand follows the curve of her thigh, up, up…
When Edith’s fingers dip inside her, they are soft, then hard, grazing, kneading. Slow, too slow. Ginny turns her head away, arches her back, but Edith braces her with the heel of her hand. She can hear her own breath, loud against the tile. Edith’s fingers keep moving. Faster. Until it feels like everything inside her body is being scooped out. All of it—skin, muscles, blood, bones. Until she’s all hollowed out, and there’s nothing left. Nothing but a last, choking breath.
SEVENTEEN
SAMARA REACHES FOR the kettle in her parents’ kitchen, pauses, and looks around the room with a feeling of disorientation. The blender’s gone from its spot on the counter. So is the basket full of restaurant napkins and hot-sauce packets her mother would never throw out. The prescription and vitamin bottles have disappeared from the lazy Susan, and there’s a bare spot next to the toaster oven where an appliance used to be. A juicer? A bread maker? She runs her fingers over its faint sticky outline.
She starts pulling at cabinets and drawers and they rattle open hollowly. She moves into the living room: the bookshelf has no books in it and the coffee table no magazines. Her mother’s collection of porcelain birds is missing from the mantel and her classical music CDs are gone from the stereo cabinet.
“Dad!” Samara yells, but he doesn’t answer. She searches the house. Then the extendable ladder rattles from the front yard. She pushes her feet into some shoes and goes outside. He’s up on the ladder again, pasting squares of tinfoil to the side of the house, a supposed deterrent to the woodpeckers. She folds her arms across her chest and surprises herself by saying, to the heels of his worn-down ASICS sneakers, “Mom bought a house in Costa Rica. She was going to move there.”
He turns, keeping his grip on the sides of the ladder. The sun appears from behind the clouds, and he squints. “I know.”
She lets her hands fall to her sides. “You know?”
He doesn’t answer until he’s climbed down from the ladder. The tinfoil in his front shirt pocket sparks and flares in the light. “Of course.”
“But, why? Have you ever been there?”
“No, never.”
“Then why on earth—”
“You know how your mom would fixate on things. She watched a documentary on PBS about bird migration—about how birds from North America spend the winter in Central America. She started reading everything on the subject and announced she wanted to buy property down there. I thought she’d lost her mind.”
“You and Mom were going to move to Costa Rica, together.”
He bats a gnat away from his face. “That’s right.”
“You, in the middle of the rainforest.”
“Yes.”
“But the house, it’s in her name only. And I found all this stuff…all this outdoor gear. All of it was for her. None of it was for you.”
“The house was in her name for some tax reason. And all the gear—” He laughs, but his eyes are shining. “She wanted me to lose some weight before she bought anything for me.” He frowns. “Did you really think your mom was going to leave the country without me?”
“So you know about everything. You know she was going to sell the house?”
He seems to hesitate. “That’s why I’ve been sorting through her things. I want to carry out our plan.”
Samara blinks. She tries to reorganize the facts in her mind. What she thought she knew about her parents, and what she knows now.
“You have your life to get back to, Sammy,” he says. “You don’t need to stick around just for me.”
“I want to be here.”
“I’ll feel closer to your mother at the cottage in Sarapiquí than I do here. At least, I hope I will.”
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“There’s no place more full of Mom than this house.”
“I don’t feel that way.” His face is set, determined. “This house just reminds me of how she died.”
“That’s because of Dr. McDonnell.” Samara gestures to Ginny and Mark’s house, and then lowers her voice, because her neighbor Cass has come out of her house with her dog. “She should move, not us—”
“Sammy, you have to stop with this. Your mother’s death wasn’t Dr. McDonnell’s fault. It was nobody’s fault.”
“She could have had more time with us. She didn’t have to do the surgery.”
“It was her decision.”
“Dr. McDonnell talked her into it. She was the one—”
“Sammy, that’s just not true. Dr. McDonnell was very clear about the risks.”
Samara kicks the wet grass with her foot. “What were you and Mom going to do in the middle of the rainforest?”
“Watch birds. Learn how to grow tropical plants—”
“You don’t know anything about those things.”
“That was the point, Sammy. We were going to learn. We were going to try something new.” There’s an eagerness in his expression she remembers from childhood, when they would pack up the car and go on meandering road trips mapped out by her mother. She always got carsick on those trips.
“You’re going to do all that by yourself now.”
“I’m going to try.”
“You’ll hate it. You know you will—”
“Maybe it’s a bad idea. But it’s what she wanted. So I’m going to do it.” He turns back to the ladder and starts climbing up.
“I want to know what you’ve done with all of it.”
He turns around and the foil in his pocket flashes. He doesn’t say anything.
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