His body was on the operating table, convenient for the surgeon's manipulations of the knife, the drill, and the pins, both threaded and smooth, to be used to fasten the broken foot back together. There was a normal tracing on the electrocardiograph—that was what the medical personnel knew. Paul knew nothing.
He was taken to the recovery room after the operation. He drifted in and out of wakefulness. He was surprised and relieved to hear someone say, "The operation is over. It was successful." He'd lost all sense of time. He felt cranky and lonely. He was thirsty, he was cold. As the effects of the anesthesia wore off, his foot began to throb and ache with pain.
Faces appeared over him and blurred into each other, indistinguishable. The thought occurred to him of the other faces that he had missed, the faces in the audience of the Joyce Theater. They seemed like images from another life.
He didn't think about it for long. His mind could hardly dwell on anything. He was still groggy, and he closed his eyes. When he next opened them, he saw that he was in another room, with a curtain stretched down its center. His foot was in a splint and elevated on pillows. An IV was attached to one hand. "I'm thirsty," he moaned, though he didn't think anyone could hear him. He closed his eyes.
As in a dream he heard the soft voice, the slow drawl: "Are you really awake? I think you can have water only if you're really awake."
Paul opened his eyes. At first he saw no one, but the unmistakable voice seemed to come from quite close to him. "Bryce?"
"So you're up. I'm here, but you've got to look lower down."
Thus Paul discovered his first visitor, sitting in a wheelchair. It was Bryce's own wheelchair, unused for a long time, compact, and motorized.
There were obstacles between them. Still, Bryce came close enough to take Paul's free hand between his. "We ought to ring the nurse about the water," he said. "Do you know where the buzzer is? Can you get it?"
"You'll have to give me back my hand," Paul said, glad that Bryce was there, after all. "Look at us. We're a pair of cripples. You said you were fine when you called from Florida. What happened to you?"
"What happened to you?" countered Bryce, as Paul had known he would.
"Oh well," said Paul. "I was out shopping for a Champagne supper for us, for after the performance. I was planning to get back in time to meet you, but I never made it. I don't know what happened to all the food, and we missed the dance."
"When I arrived from the airport, and you weren't there, I was distraught and—I admit it—I was furious. Part of me thought you had walked out on me after all, and the rest of me didn't know what to think. Later I got a call from Jeanne Mann. She told me."
"Yes," said Paul. "I asked her to."
"I know."
"Where's Jeanne now?"
"She's here with Althea. They went over to Jeanne's apartment while you were being operated on. I met them here at the hospital. We waited together while you were in recovery. I believe they're just outside. I wanted to see you alone first." Bryce's voice softened. "But we mustn't tire you."
"Tire me?" Paul echoed. "What about you? Are you ill again?"
"It's nerves," said Bryce, repeating the old bitter joke between him and his disease. He didn't elaborate, for just then the nurse entered in response to Paul's summons. In lieu of his request for water, she gave him ice strips to suck. "Try these for now," she advised.
Gratefully Paul accepted the ice. "Is someone on the other side of the curtain?" he asked the nurse. He had been wondering.
"You're lucky. A patient was just discharged. But you might get a roommate tomorrow. Does that help at all?" she asked, referring to the ice.
"Mmm-hmm."
"How do you feel? Are you in pain?"
He murmured again in assent.
"You were given a shot of morphine. It should be taking effect."
"I do feel pretty drowsy. I wonder," he added, changing the subject, "are there two women outside?"
"Yes, they're waiting down the hall."
"Will you tell them to come in?"
"I believe the doctor will be arriving to examine you."
As if on cue, there was a knock. "Yes," said Paul.
The door opened to reveal Jeanne, with Althea behind her. "Excuse me, but we couldn't wait any longer," Jeanne began breathlessly, looking intently at Paul.
"Come in, come in," Paul replied gaily. He felt almost like a bedridden prince holding court, surrounded by subjects.
"Visiting hours were over a long time ago, and it's ten thirty now," said the nurse, frowning, as if she had only just remembered. "None of you are family, are you?" she asked, glancing at Bryce, who had remained silent.
"Please," Paul pleaded, "let them stay a little. I have no family here."
"It's not on my watch," she retorted, turning on her heel and striding out.
"Whew! What does she mean by that?" asked Jeanne, coming over to Paul's bed after the nurse had gone. Not waiting for a reply, she continued, "How are you, Paul?" She bent to brush his forehead with her lips.
"I think she means she doesn't want to be responsible," Bryce answered her.
Althea stood back awkwardly. Paul saw that she was clasping a bouquet of camellias. "These are for you." She held them high, shielding her face. Her voice was muffled behind the creamy blooms.
"Pretty," he said.
"Is there a pitcher I can put these in?" she asked.
"I have no idea. You can look around."
How bizarre, he thought, that we should all meet like this, when I ought to have been triumphing on the stage. He sighed. He felt sleepy, even numb. It must be the morphine, he thought, taking effect.
Althea, rummaging in the cabinet, extricated a vase, a relic of some other floral offering. She went into the bathroom to fill it with water, glad to be busy. Jeanne, meanwhile, was reporting her conversation with Kurt. She had called the theater again after the operation and left a message. Before she'd reached the end of her speech, there was another knock on the door, followed with barely a pause by the entrance of Dr. McNab.
The doctor recognized Jeanne and Althea, who was emerging from the bathroom with the flowers, with a brief nod. "If you'll excuse me, I'll have a look at the patient."
"We'll wait outside," offered Althea.
"Are you all together?" he asked. Jeanne realized that he was thinking of Bryce. "Yes," she replied, before anyone else could contradict her.
"You'll have to leave when I do," he said. "Mr. Carmichael needs his sleep."
"Of course," Althea replied. She and Jeanne stepped out, but before Bryce could stir in the wheelchair, Paul told him that he might stay. The doctor shrugged. "Why not?" He stood at the foot of the bed, squeezing Paul's toes as they peeped out from the bandages, asking him for evidence of sensation. Paul complied, and the doctor pronounced himself satisfied. "The operation went fine. You can rest, and I'll look at you again tomorrow. How's the pain?"
"Painful. But I've had some morphine, and it's helping. I don't feel quite all here." Paul's tone suddenly changed. "Doctor, please don't keep me in suspense. When do you expect my foot to heal, and how good will it be?"
Just moments earlier, when Doctor McNab had entered the room, Paul hadn't thought he'd ask this question so soon. Under the narcotic, he knew he was tense.
"There will be regular check-ups, X-rays, the removal of the pins. You’ll have a succession of fiberglass casts from non-weightbearing to partial weightbearing. If all goes well, you'll be in a removable device somewhat like a ski boot in ten to twelve weeks.”
"So I'll walk again?"
The doctor smiled. "Again—if all goes well—I don't see why not. With maybe an ache on rainy days. Well, is that all? Will you rest now?"
He approached the door as he spoke. He pressed it, in the act of leaving, but Paul wasn't yet satisfied. "A step further, doctor. If I walk, what else will I do? Will I run, play tennis, dive off boards? I'm a dancer. Will I dance? I really want to know. Please tell me."
The doc
tor had pushed the door inadvertently. Jeanne and Althea took it as a sign that they could return. They found themselves intruding on Paul's question.
There was a gravity to the moment no one could mistake. They were all waiting for the doctor to interpret fate. He hesitated. To Bryce, this pause—a threshold of silence—was enough for him to guess the answer. Jeanne and Althea stood as if frozen. Paul did not speak. Finally the doctor, choosing his words carefully, addressed Paul as if there were only the two of them in the room.
"You may want to get a second opinion. In my experience, however, though it's impossible to be entirely certain, I would be doing you and your question a disservice if I didn't tell you that for dancers, certain athletes, and the like, a Lisfranc fracture—which is what you have—is commonly a career-ending injury."
"Oh."
It was only a sound, an indication that Paul had heard. A silence settled that no one dared to break. The doctor excused himself, leaving them the void of his news. Paul had no wit to muster against the inevitable sink of depression. If Althea and Jeanne hadn't been meant to hear the exchange, he forgave them. It hardly mattered.
After the doctor's exit, Paul lay still. His question and the doctor's answer repeated in his mind, making sense, making too much sense.
He was so tired. He didn't remember saying goodbye to Bryce, Jeanne, or Althea, or hearing them leave. He was asleep, and he might have slept all through the night had he not been wakened so that the nurse might take his temperature, feel his pulse, record his blood pressure, and monitor the IV. There was only one dream that he recalled, and in that dream only one action: he was running. That was all. He was running and running in a field without trees, without boundaries. Glowing with exhilaration, he hurtled faster and faster over the dense grasses, never tripping, never falling. Then the nurse's voice roused him, and he found himself in the hospital bed in the middle of the night, with the injured foot throbbing.
At the instant when the foot was broken, the pain had been clear and sharp—a breathtaking pain, literally, for it had made him faint. Now he felt a muddied, excruciating ache all through the damaged appendage, reaching up his leg. Once awake, he was grateful for more pain medication. Then he sought to expunge the sounds of the hospital from his mind, and to sleep again.
Chapter 22
As they were leaving the hospital, Jeanne invited Althea and Bryce out for coffee, but Bryce excused himself. He was too tired, he said. Althea suggested that she return uptown with him, wondering, as she spoke, if he would accept her implicit offer of help. She wasn't sure she wanted him to accept, and, in fact, she anticipated that he would refuse, leaving her with no obligation and a clear conscience.
To her surprise he agreed. "Will you hail a cab? The chair will fold up in the trunk." His voice was low, as if he were distancing himself from the evidence of handicap.
She nodded, but Jeanne, who was faster, had already flagged a taxi, which pulled up at the curb. The driver hadn't seen Bryce waiting in a wheelchair. Jeanne called out to him, "We need your help!" The driver got out reluctantly. Then she stepped back to watch while he helped Bryce into the back seat and, following instructions, safely stowed the wheelchair in the trunk. Althea climbed in beside Bryce and shut the door. Jeanne waved as they sped away.
Althea and Bryce were silent on the way uptown. She didn't know what to say, and nor did she feel the desire to speak. The driver went up Sixth Avenue, following a trail of lights: the lights of the other cars, the traffic lights, and the cobra-head streetlights. It wasn't yet Thanksgiving, but many of the display windows of the ground-floor stores they passed were already decorated for Christmas.
The orange numbers danced on the meter, computing the fare. Althea stole a glance at Bryce. His head leaned back, his eyes were closed. No wonder he was fatigued, she reflected. She was exhausted, too. At least he wasn't scrutinizing her, as when he had entered the hospital waiting room to meet them, and she had felt his suspicious gaze on her and Jeanne.
She, on the other hand, though disconcerted, had deliberately not stared, and, she noticed, Jeanne hadn't stared either.
The taxi passed midtown and went around Columbus Circle. Althea felt she ought to say something. "Paul made it through the operation fine, didn't he?" In the semi-dark of the cab, she could see Bryce raise one eyebrow, a trick she had never been able to master. "I mean," she continued, feeling embarrassed, "it could have been a lot worse."
"It could always be worse. I don't necessarily think that's a reason to count your blessings."
"I guess you're right." Rebuked, Althea fell silent again. She grew depressed. Bryce has no reason to like me, she thought, nor I him, so why do I feel pressure to be agreeable? I want to hide the truth of my relationship with Paul from Bryce, not so much to protect Paul, she realized, as myself.
After a while she spoke again, asking how long he thought Paul would be in the hospital.
"I don't know any more about it than you," Bryce replied.
Clearly, he wasn't going to make it easy for her. Yet, when they reached his building, he asked her to come up with him. She accepted, thinking of how all during the autumn she had waited for such an invitation from Paul but had never received it. How ironic, she thought, to hear it issuing from Bryce's lips instead! Imagining herself in those rooms, she grew excited.
Bryce paid for the cab. He refused the wheelchair, saying that he wasn't sure he really needed it now, and with her there he felt secure. "I just brought it to the hospital because I'd fallen and was nervous," he told her. "Would you mind taking it up?"
"Not at all."
He was polite, delaying the elevator door for her, waiting for her to enter first. They were the only passengers. Carrying the wheelchair, she felt awkward and self-conscious. She anticipated the arrival at the building's top landing and, after that, the door to the roof.
"Just leave the chair here," said Bryce, pointing to a corner of the landing.
Emerging on the roof, Althea felt the cold wind on her face. She saw darkness above her, the risen moon to the east, and the city below her. Bryce turned on the floodlights, revealing the penthouse and the remains of the garden—the bare trees and the desolate beds. Greedily she took in the scene, thinking of how often during the fall she had pictured it. How strange it was to be accompanying Bryce, after she had so fruitlessly imagined being here with Paul!
She followed Bryce across the roof and waited while he unlocked the door to the penthouse and opened it for her. Just inside the entrance, she suffered an attack of nerves. Perhaps it isn't wise for me to be here after all, she considered. Maybe I ought to excuse myself. It must be late, around midnight.
But as she was about to take her leave, Bryce asked her if she would like some tea. She found herself nodding automatically. He added, "But you'll have to make it. I'm wiped out. I'm going to sit down."
"That's fine. Just tell me where everything is."
Althea remained in the kitchen by herself until the water boiled. What a nice kitchen it is, she noted, with new cabinets, a shining range, a dishwasher, and ceramic tiles of fruits and vegetables mounted on the walls around the sink and counters. She opened one of the drawers under the counter. It slid easily on rollers. She thought of the old wooden drawers in her kitchen, encrusted with paint she had never bothered to remove, which were always getting stuck. She found china cups and a teapot, a lacquer tray. She measured out tea, poured the boiling water.
She carried the tray out to the living room. Bryce was lounging on the green velvet sofa. He had removed his jacket and donned a cherry-red sweater. A figured shawl was laid over his knees. It struck her that he looked rather beautiful, although pale and fragile, arranged as if in a theatrical set.
She put the tray down on the low table. "What's that?" she asked, indicating a long, rectangular wooden box, resting among the bubble wrap in a large cardboard package.
"That's an Aeolian harp. A gift from Paul. I haven't yet installed it."
"I've heard a
bout them, but I've never seen one. It fits in a window, doesn't it?"
"Yes. The wind makes the music. There's a brochure that tells you all about it, if you'd like to read it. We get plenty of wind up here."
"I'm sure you do. I've heard this is the windiest part of Manhattan." Althea surprised herself by how matter-of-fact she sounded. She did not want to betray herself to Bryce. She was trying so hard to pretend that she and Paul were simply friends that she could almost believe it.
She wanted to pinch herself to make certain this meeting was real. She thought again of how she had tried to imagine herself in this apartment, as inaccessible to her as a fortress. While she had been waiting for the phone call that never came, she had obsessively dwelled on Bryce's shared life here with Paul.
As she poured out the tea, serving Bryce and then herself, she pondered Jeanne's confession that she had spent the Columbus Day weekend with Paul in Connecticut, and that afterwards Paul had gone on tour with his dance company. In August Bryce had been in Mississippi, she recalled, but when had he come back? She felt the presence of secrets, not only her own, hiding and withheld.
If Bryce confronted her, what would she say? She began to imagine telling him the truth about herself and Paul. Part of her wanted to tell him at least part of it, she realized. Was this perverse? She remembered Bryce's unfriendliness towards her last spring when Paul had invited her up to see the garden. She could still recall the sound of his voice, sharp and critical. But now he seemed different. He did not question her, after all. He merely leaned back and sipped his tea.
"I've been thinking," he began, "that I'd like to give a party for Paul when he's better. I'm grateful for what you and Jeanne have done for him, and I'd like to invite you both."
"We really didn't do much. We just happened to arrive on the spot. It was a coincidence."
Bryce looked skeptical. Hurriedly Althea assured him, "Of course, it's thoughtful of you to include us."
"Naturally the plans are tentative. But my intention is to do it," Bryce clarified. He laid his head back against the sofa and closed his eyes. It seemed to Althea that his thoughts were wandering. When he opened his eyes again, he spoke without apology, "I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to go now. I suddenly feel exhausted. Thanks, though, for accompanying me."
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