Lifted by the Great Nothing: A Novel

by Karim Dimechkie

  “Max,” Nadine said, “be fair.”

  The ludicrousness of the situation tightened its grip on him. While taking Rasheed’s hands off him, he asked Nadine, “What did you two talk about on the plane?”

  “What?”

  “You’ve lived across the street from each other for years, and suddenly you’re traveling to Paris together. That’s funny to me. I’d just love to know what you all chatted about.” His heartbeat throbbed up into his cheeks. “You two have become a little team, huh? Rasheed, good for you for tolerating ‘those people,’” he said, pointing at Nadine. “And Nadine, thanks for telling him where I was. It was the one thing I asked you not to do. It may even be the one thing I’ve ever asked you not to do.”

  “We came together for you, Max,” Rasheed said in an unbearably suppliant way, bending to the side a little as though he had a stomach cramp. “You killed us by disappearing like that.”

  “Us?” Max said. His anger swelled into a power he would soon have to release. “Let me guess,” he said to Rasheed, “you two have fallen in love and now you’re getting married. Oh, no, I’m being silly. You don’t like women in that way, Rasheed. You’re more of a man’s man, aren’t you?”

  Rasheed looked away from Max.

  “Max,” Nadine said.

  “Hakeem,” said Max. “Funniest thing. My name, as it turns out, is Hakeem.”

  Rasheed put his hands back on Max’s shoulders. “I need to explain many things.”

  “Get your hands off me.”

  Rasheed clenched his teeth and twisted up his face as he took one hand off Max’s shoulder to clutch at his chest like he was having heart pains. “Max,” he said, “calm it down. Please, calm it down and listen.”

  “Calm it down? No.”

  Rasheed stared at the ground like he was about to vomit. Nadine came to Rasheed’s side and put her hand on his back, saying, “He’s not well, Max.”

  “I can see that, Doctor, thank you.”

  Rasheed defended her with a grumble. “You do not need to speak to her like this, Max.”

  What the fuck was this allegiance between them? He grabbed the top of his head and felt his mind slipping.

  “Calm it down,” Rasheed whispered to the floor. “Please, calm it down.” Nadine told Rasheed he needed to be sitting.

  Max said, “It’d kill me if I calmed it down any more than I have. You are a liar.”

  Nadine said, “Stop it. Do not do this right now.”

  When he looked down at Rasheed, it maddened him. All he saw was a pitiful sagging man. A man who appeared to be saying, She is gone for good, and you are my son again. You are my son, and you will come home with me and live like me and become me. Max’s tears narrowed Rasheed’s body, turning him into a pin-man. He said, “You’re weak. You disgust me, do you know that?”

  “Hakeem,” Téta said.

  And at the same time Nadine shouted, “Max!”

  “I have grown out of you, do you understand? I don’t want to know you.” Then he whispered, so as not to let the lump in his throat win his voice, “I hate you so much.”

  Rasheed straightened his back. Panic scribbled his lips as he reached out to put his hands on Max’s shoulders again. Max shoved him as hard as he could. Rasheed caught his fall ten feet away. He took yet a few more steps back until he bumped into a small table. A phone on top of it plunged to the ground and made a lasting ding sound followed by the dial tone. He slowly sat down on the carpet and leaned against the leg of the table.

  “What are you doing?” Max said.

  Rasheed slumped to his side. Invisible hands throttled him, and his head trembled. His mouth tipped open into a muted lion’s roar. It looked like theater, like bad acting. But he wasn’t acting. His face purpled. The tendons in his neck became pronounced tree roots. A blood vessel popped in one eye and bled across the white.

  “Dad.” Max’s tears cleared, his eyes becoming brand new, and Rasheed was human-size again. Nadine dropped down and put her hand under his head as she shouted for Téta to call an ambulance. As if high voltages ran through him, Rasheed lay both stiff and vibrating at once.

  “Dad, what are you doing? Stop it. What are you doing? Get up.”

  The fright on Rasheed’s face—that absolute shivering fear—was the sole thing Max hated so much now.

  Nadine put her ear up to Rasheed’s chest. He stopped moving shortly after that.

  “Dad, get up. Stop it, Dad. Get up.”

  NINTEEN

  In the hospital, at around ten that evening, a doctor came out to tell Nadine what was going on. She translated for Max, explaining that Rasheed had suffered some kind of attack that led to a devastating stroke.

  “A heart attack?” Max said. He had felt he was dreaming when he shoved Rasheed across the room and watched him sit down. The dream had since crumbled only to reveal another, even more impossible reality.

  Nadine said, “It mimics a heart attack. It’s called transient apical ballooning syndrome.” She tried to embrace him, but he put his hand up to stop her.

  “No,” he said. “No, no. This is wrong. This is a mistake.”

  A clot had formed in the left ventricle, the main pumping chamber, where the clot embolized to the brain, causing the major stroke.

  They said to expect significant change in Rasheed’s behavior when he woke up. He might not remember people. There’d been brain damage, but they didn’t know how limited his motor skills would be quite yet. He’d probably need intense physical and occupational therapy. Other than that, there were only blood thinners to take, to prevent another clot, and lots of vitamins.

  Rasheed was not connected to any machines. The doctors had even removed the IV drip. It created swelling in his brain because his water retention was too high.

  When Rasheed came to, muscle seemed to be clinging to his right cheekbone with a last bit of strength, moments away from dripping off his face. His eye on that same side was slanted, the heaviness of his brow too much to support. Half of his mouth dragged to a frown, like a dead fish being held up in the middle. They warned Max that Rasheed might have lost a fair amount of lucidity.

  “Hi, Dad, it’s me.” Max sat at his side. Everyone else left the room.

  Rasheed’s voice crackled. “Who else would you be?”

  Max scanned his face a long time, still unsure if Rasheed recognized him. He saw his nose hair poking out like little witch brooms. His nails were curled and yellowish. “Do you remember my name?”

  “Why? Have you forgotten it?”

  “It’s Max.”

  “I know that. I named you myself. Squeeze my hand, Maxie.”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  “Squeeze it harder. As hard as you can. I don’t feel anything. Harder. Don’t look like that. It’s nice not to feel anything.” He gave a crooked smile. “Tell me a story.” After a moment, he said, “No? Okay. You are tired of stories. Did you know that some of the stories about Kip and his Man-Dog brother— What was his name again?”

  Max felt as if the ball in his throat was about to pull off him, like a rock breaking free from a cliff. “I’m. I’m so sorry.”

  “Stop that. Tell me, what was his name? The Man-Dog.”

  He took a big breath. “Paul.”

  “Ah, yes. I remember now. His name was Brandon. You always think it is Paul. I don’t know why. Anyway. Please, stop crying. Do you want me to say what I was going to say? Or not?”

  “You need lots of rest, Dad, okay? You need lots of rest to get better. That’s how you’re going to get better.”

  “I have too much time for rest. Now I want to confess to you something about Kip and his Man-Dog brother. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Some of the time, when I couldn’t think of a new adventure for them, I borrowed adventures from other stories. Adventures from Tintin and Peter Pan, and so on and so on.”

  “I know, Dad.”

  “You know? You know and you didn’t say anything? You’re a good son. Don�
�t shake your head. You’ll upset me. I’m feeling under the weather. Tell me—they gave me so many drugs I can’t see perfectly—how do I look? Really.”

  “Handsome. Handsome as ever.”

  “It bothers me when you cry like this. I’ll tell you about all of my other tales. Do you want me to tell you all of the truth so help me God?” He gave another faint smile.

  “That’s all right, Dad, not now.”

  “Squeeze my hand.” Max studied this new face for a few minutes before Rasheed spoke again, his eyes shut: “Let me ask you something.”

  “Anything.”

  “Do you love Nadine?”

  “What?”

  “The black woman neighbor. Do you love her? If I knew I was going to be dying in a hospital one of these days, I would have asked you many more things. And maybe told you some more things too.”

  “You are not dying.”

  “Do you love her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does she love you?”

  “Maybe not the same way, but yeah. I think so.”

  “Do you two make love?”

  “What?”

  “What, what? I am a curious man.”

  “Sort of.”

  “Sort of you have made love to her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. I know, wow.”

  “And she is a good friend to you also?”

  “Definitely.”

  “She is a good woman. Much too old maybe, but you have chosen a good woman.”

  “I’ve always liked Coach Tim too.”

  Rasheed let out an amused puff from his nose, and then said, “Don’t let this go on too long, okay?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This. Me like this. I don’t care for this to go on too long.”

  “What?”

  “I know you hear what I’m saying. Remember what I’m telling you. I do not want this for too long. Squeeze my hand. Harder. Harder, please. Max?”

  He spoke so softly now that Max had to put his ear right up to his mouth. Rasheed said, “You were too happy for a long while with me, I think.”

  “Yeah, I was.” Max watched him sleep.

  When Max reported this coherent conversation to the doctors, they looked at him as though he’d imagined the whole thing. The horrifying part was that the next time Rasheed woke up, fifteen hours later, he didn’t speak to anyone. He had the expression of a mystified baby. Innocent again, he absorbed the visual overstimulation of the people around him, maybe recognizing some of them but not knowing from where. He moved incredibly slowly. He looked down at where Max touched his arm, confused by the contact. His jaw wobbled left to right, in what looked like unceasing worry.

  He cried for a woman named Noor. Whoever came, he called out that name, Noor! Noor! When Téta arrived, she said that Noor had been Rasheed’s nanny when he was a young child. Max asked the doctors why they were giving him so many drugs, and they said they weren’t. He wasn’t on any drugs at all.

  Rasheed couldn’t form comprehensible sentences anymore. He gave up trying to communicate. Nadine believed he still understood what they said to him. No one knew how long he’d be stuck like this, but for the moment, his brain functions were breaking down one section at a time.

  He could move his arms and hands, but had little coordination. He had trouble keeping his back straight in the wheelchair on the way to labs and to get CAT scans and MRIs, so Max or Nadine had to pin his chest to the back of the chair with a hand. The nurses spoon-fed him soft foods. He could have anything that slipped down his throat without any chewing required. Max developed a weak stomach and vomited a few times a day at random, and had clanging headaches that made it hard to see or hear properly.

  Nadine went back to work in Clarence. The world had to carry on. Max stayed at the hospital for a week, and Rasheed’s condition stabilized, not improving but not getting any worse either. He looked frozen in a state of astonishment. When the occupational therapists came in, his incessant look of alarm intensified, as if they were there to torture him.

  The doctors said that 50 percent of subarachnoid hemorrhage stroke victims, the kind Rasheed suffered from, do survive. Fifty percent, Max thought, like flipping a coin. They told him that 10 percent of the ones who do not survive die within a week, 20 percent within a month, and 30 percent within a year. Nadine called Max and the doctors every day. Not being a citizen, Rasheed couldn’t benefit from the French health care system for any sensible price. Eventually everyone agreed Rasheed could be flown home and cared for in his own house.

  Téta bought them the plane tickets and told Max, “You will take the credit card, okay? Now you are in charge of the money.” She looked at Rasheed again. “Until he is feeling better.” It was the card linked to the Banque du Liban account that held the Ziad Jabbir deposits.

  They checked out of the hospital and flew to Clarence. Nadine was there to pick them up once they landed.

  When they got back to Marion Street late in the night, the house felt foreign. Max went to turn on the lights, but Rasheed grunted. It sounded more like a no than a yes, so he kept them off. Nadine rolled Rasheed to his room. Walking in darkness did one or the other to Max: compressed space so that walls and corners seemed inches away from smashing his face, or made him feel he was about to walk off a precipice to his death. Now he experienced both of these sensations intermittently, the claustrophobic tightness with each inhalation and an unendurable openness with every exhalation. He was apprehensive about where his feet landed, as if he were at the edge of a hole that could bring him under and into a space like his tree house. When his eyes adjusted, the silhouettes of the couch and TV and table looked like they’d been cut out of the blue darkness.

  With her hands on her hips, Nadine looked at the one tiny window high above Rasheed’s bed. “No lights going to come in here, is it?” She said this would not do at all. He’d be spending a lot of time in one place and needed a room with more natural light; she wasn’t open to letting him sit in the dark all day as he would have preferred. They wheeled him to Max’s bedroom, where the three big windows kept it lit most all of the day.

  Rocket smelled cleaner than usual, and Max picked up on Mrs. Yang’s perfume. Nadine grabbed Rocket’s face, kissed her between the eyes, and whispered severely, “I love you so much.” Rocket sneezed as soon as Nadine let her go.

  She had to show Max how to transfer Rasheed from the chair to the bed, how to undress him, how to clean the catheter condom and put it back on him, and how to roll him over to avoid bed sores. She’d already called Complete Home Health Care and arranged for a telephone meeting for Max in the morning so he could introduce himself as Rasheed’s official guardian and caretaker. The nurses would watch Rasheed at the house during the day, continuing his occupational therapy while Max went to school and Nadine was at work. He said he’d call, but though tomorrow was his first day of his senior year, he wasn’t going back to school yet. He’d tell the nurses they could stop in to do the therapy sessions but that he didn’t want them staying all day.

  Max and Nadine tucked Rasheed in like a little boy and sat on the bed until they heard him snoring. Then they gushed silently.

  Nadine got her pajamas from her place and came to bed with him. She didn’t want to leave him alone and admitted to needing the company too.

  The next day, Nadine brought pills that Max was to give to Rasheed if he couldn’t sleep. But since the attack, Rasheed had been sleeping sixteen or more hours a day. Max took the pills himself to get rest he wouldn’t have otherwise, and Nadine did the same.

  She pretty much moved in. In the mornings, he made her breakfast while she got ready for work. At first they put Rasheed in the wheelchair and sat him at the kitchen table, but later they decided it easier to eat in his room by his bed. Nadine returned home from the hospital with more blood thinners and supplies, like new pillows for his wheelchair, a hot water bottle, vitamins, sponges, and lubricating ointment for crack
ed lips.

  When Mr. Yang showed up, he said, “Hello, Mr. Boulos!” with his usual enthusiasm. “Ah, Mr. Boulos”—he shook his head, looking around the room as though it were terribly messy—“we must change the environmental feeling in here. Then you will feel much better. You will see.”

  With his garden wagon, he carted over all the plants and flowers from his greenhouse that he thought could survive in the bedroom: around sixty or seventy of them in all. The room overflowed with greenery, the floor and windowsills covered with ceramic pots, stems holding up leaves and bulbs at various heights, corn silk orchids and black orchids, cacti, ferns, and small trees. Mr. Yang dropped by every day to teach Max how to tend to them. Watering the soil, spraying the leaves, pruning, and positioning them in the light at certain times of day was both a distraction from and an extension of taking care of Rasheed.

  Mrs. Yang spent a couple of hours a day in the room with Rasheed and Robby, knitting and humming, feeding Rasheed mashed-up grapes, telling stories loosely based on Chinese folklore and about a brother of hers who’d had an attack like Rasheed’s and recovered fully within a couple of months. She claimed her brother was now even sharper than he was before the attack. People said he was much nicer now too! When Mrs. Yang laughed, Rasheed’s eyes brightened, became a little less fearful.

  Nadine told Max she’d managed to get his mother’s phone number from Téta before leaving, so whenever he was ready to give her a call, he could. He said he’d get it from her some other time. He had all but forgotten his mother and would now give anything to have another conversation with Rasheed. Most of all, he dreamed of Rasheed nodding his head and acknowledging how much Max loved him. Because when Max said “I love you,” Rasheed only looked back at him with that stupefied expression and trembling jaw.

  It’d been ten days since the end of Max’s summer break, and his school had been calling to check in on him, asking when he thought he’d be coming back. He said he didn’t know yet. Physiotherapists arrived in the afternoons to bend and twist Rasheed around. Max could tell he hated it. In the evenings that Nadine didn’t work, she and Max had drinks and ate dinner at Rasheed’s bedside, feeding him and talking about their days. Rasheed watched them like a startled cat.