Heroic Measures

by Jill Ciment

  “Let her relax a minute.” She takes Dorothy from him. “You allergic to anything, precious?” she asks before reading Dorothy’s chart. “Strawberries! Coconuts!”

  “No more piña coladas for you, little mama,” Death says.

  Another of his assistants, a female anesthesiologist, peers around the door. “Are we ready?”

  “The radiologist isn’t in yet,” the nurse says.

  “Prep her. I’ll be right back.”

  The nurse hands Dorothy back to Death, takes out a silver tray, and begins to set out bottles and cotton balls and what look, to Dorothy, like knives and forks and spoons.

  The anesthesiologist shoulders open the door without using her hands this time and the nurse helps her put on rubber gloves. The rubber gloves reach for Dorothy. “What’s your name?” she asks.

  “Dorothy,” Death says.

  “Dorothy, you’re going to feel very sleepy in a minute.” She lays Dorothy on a table while Death prepares a syringe. “Start with twenty ccs. Let’s see how she does.”

  Death injects the plastic tube connecting Dorothy to the cloud, and tranquility saturates her. She sinks and rises at the same time. One minute the cloud is above her, the next below her.

  “It’s almost seven-fifteen for God’s sake. Find out where the hell Doctor Whitehead is,” the anesthesiologist tells the nurse.

  “I’m right here,” a man says, pushing open the door while simultaneously shedding his camel hair coat. The nurse hands him a white one. “Traffic was a nightmare. I was out in Long Island visiting my mother, she going to be eighty next week. The Midtown’s still closed. The BQE is a parking lot. Then some moron cop pulls me over to do a spot security check. Trucks are speeding by hauling God knows how many tons of explosives, and he pulls over a Porsche. I’ll be back in a second.”

  The instant the door closes behind him, Death says, “Best son in the world, risks terrorists and fights traffic to visit his old mother. Five to one, he’s banging that horse lady in the Hamptons again.”

  “You still with us, Dorothy?” the anesthesiologist asks. She pries open one of Dorothy’s eyelids with her rubber fingers. “Let’s give her another ten ccs.”

  And Death willingly complies.

  Saturday Morning

  THE INVASION

  ALEX AND RUTH DON’T NEED THE ALARM clock to wake up this morning. They’re up with the first flush of dawn. Their bedroom window faces east to a stand of black chimneys in a field of tar roofs. The view hasn’t changed since the day they moved in. Today, the roofs are wet with snow. Without yet knowing the other is awake, they each silently watch the sun scale the brick parapets and silhouette the chimneys in gold. This same view of sun rising over rooftops has been as fundamental to Alex’s understanding of color as any sky by El Greco. He has studied it during monochrome winters, varnished with spring rain, feverish from summer colds, in the throes of passion, when his life felt insufferable or heady with promise, as he and Ruth went through every season of marriage.

  For Ruth, the spectacle of sunrise is less inspiring than comforting. The rise of the sun is like the opening of a novel she’s read so many times that she can take pleasure in the details and nuances without having to race to the end to find out what happens. She watches as the sun finally clears the chimneys, igniting the snow into blinding copper. For an eyeblink, their window, curtains, ceiling and walls, her folded eyeglasses on the nightstand, all turn apocalyptic red. Then the fiery radiance abruptly dies, as if someone’s thrown water on the young sun, and a pale wintry orb ascends over the rooftops.

  Alex’s cheek is creased from sleep, his upended white hair a wave about to crash. Ruth’s eyes are jelly and bloodshot from the sedatives. Steam whistles in the pipes. Footfalls resound on the ceiling. A car alarm goes off. Everything is so ordinary that their hesitation to rise and face the upcoming day feels unreal. Then Dorothy’s absence in their bed hits them.

  “Do you think she’s had the test by now?” Ruth asks.

  “It’s too early,” Alex says. He checks the time anyway, only to find that Ruth has moved their clock, with its magnified numbers, to her side of the bed. He can see she’s set the alarm for seven, when Dorothy’s test is to be performed. The clock’s minute hand is narrowing toward the appointed hour, but Ruth doesn’t seem aware of the impending alarm. She’s still staring out the window. He reaches over her and defuses the ringer.

  “What if the test tells us nothing?” she asks. “Do we go ahead with surgery? Shouldn’t she have every chance?”

  “Let’s wait to hear what the doctor says. Maybe it’s good news.”

  Ruth reaches for her glasses; Alex inserts his hearing aids.

  They each swing their legs over their respective bedsides. To face the intrepid buyers Lily is bringing over at eight-thirty, Ruth puts on a new housedress, a cardigan, wool socks, and loafers. Alex finds a fresh white shirt and a pair of clean slacks. Ruth runs a brush lightly over her thinning gray halo; Alex slicks down his white stalks with a wet comb. Ruth starts the coffeemaker; Alex turns on the news.

  Last night’s graphic—the truck’s headlamps as seen by the night-vision robot with Danger in the Tunnel splashed across it—appears on the screen. The morning newscaster, the blond in Washington, D.C., promises that after the station break she’ll be right back with an exclusive interview with the truck driver’s family and friends.

  “Maybe they caught him and it’s over,” Alex says.

  “It’s not over or they would have changed the graphics,” Ruth says.

  She goes back to the kitchen. A minute later, one fifth of the way through the block of commercials, a delectable scent that Alex can’t quite place distracts him and he follows it. Ruth is standing over a boiling pot on the stove, using the right burner because the left’s knob is missing. At the bottom of the pot, amid the dancing bubbles, is a single stick of cinnamon.

  “Lily said it would make the place smell homier.” Ruth’s face is pink from the steam, her glasses streaked and opaque. “Why doesn’t the doctor call?”

  The truck driver’s uncle and mother have faces like walnuts, shiny tacks for eyes. They’re standing on a snowy sidewalk before a row house in Queens. Behind them, neighbors jockey for a position on the television screen. The mother wears a massive black garment under an overcoat and a headscarf, though Alex and Ruth can’t tell if the scarf is worn for warmth or for religious conviction. It looks like something their grandmothers might have worn. The uncle, a stout man with a black mustache as big as a pocket comb, reads a statement in a stiff guttural accent that goes slack with emotion: “Abdul Pamir is a devout, gentle, and caring son, husband, father, uncle, brother, and nephew. He was born in Uzbekistan, and became a proud American two years ago. We want him to come home safely.”

  A snapshot of Pamir, smiling in a Mets baseball cap, appears in the upper-left-hand corner of the television. He can’t be older than thirty. He has beautiful teeth.

  The uncle escorts the mother back into the row house, but not before the reporter, a redheaded man in an orange parka, attempts a question, “Do you think he’ll turn himself in?” The mother silences him with an outstretched hand, a root ball of fingers, and closes the door.

  The interviewer turns to a neighbor who has been waiting patiently, at military attention, for his chance to speak. “He’s a good man,” the neighbor intones into the microphone, “he helped me fix my toilet.”

  The phone rings. Ruth grabs the extension on the coffee table, while Alex mutes the set.

  “Dorothy’s holding her own. She made it through the myelogram without complications,” Dr. Rush tells her. “Unfortunately, the test indicates that the rupture is worse than we hoped, disc material is pressing directly against the cord. Her best chance now is immediate surgery.”

  “She needs the operation,” Ruth tells Alex.

  “Ask if she’ll be able to walk again?” Alex says.

  “If we go ahead, will she walk?”

  “I don’t kno
w.”

  “He doesn’t know,” she tells Alex.

  “Ask what her chances are?”

  “Can you give us odds?” Ruth asks.

  “Seventy-thirty, but it’s only a guess.”

  “In her favor?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Thirty percent,” Ruth tells Alex.

  “Of pulling through or walking?”

  “Walking,” Ruth says.

  “Ask what her chances are without the surgery.”

  “If we decide not to?” Ruth asks the doctor.

  “Miracles happen, but that’s what it’ll be, a miracle.”

  “It will be a miracle,” Ruth tells Alex, then cups her hand over the phone. “What should we do? I can’t lose her, Alex. I’m not counting on miracles.”

  “Are we doing this for Dorothy?”

  “She’s under sedation,” Dr. Rush prompts. “The longer she’s under, the more stress on her heart.”

  “Are you sure?” Alex asks Ruth.

  “Yes,” Ruth says. “Yes,” she tells the doctor, “go ahead.”

  Dr. Rush hangs up, but Ruth doesn’t let go of the receiver. She still has more questions. “Should I have asked if the surgery had other complications?”

  “Maybe it’s better we don’t know,” Alex says.

  The buzzer sounds at eight-thirty sharp.

  “Will you let Lily in? I need a moment to myself.” But as soon as Ruth says it, she finds she can’t bear to be alone. She follows Alex to the front door, and while he attends to the intercom and buzzer, she unlocks their apartment, though Lily has a key.

  “Are you inside?” she shouts down the stairwell.

  Three sets of footsteps start up. Ruth can tell already that the climbers aren’t used to such a steep ascent. They’re expending all their energy on the first flight and not conserving any for the fifth. What if Dorothy can’t walk? Have they done the right thing?

  A lanky young man clad in leather and his even taller wife, breathtakingly beautiful with enough black hair to stuff a pillow, trot up the last steps. They’re not even winded, but Lily is. She huffs up behind them. She’s almost Ruth’s age with a figure like a gym sock stuffed with tennis balls. Her red hair sports white roots, but she always wears a fresh coating of crimson lipstick. She’s been selling walk-ups in the East Village since mid-century, but recently, she confided to Ruth, the stairs have become too much for her, too, and she doubts she’ll be able to make the transition to the new elevator condos springing up on every corner. The management companies don’t want to deal with an old battle-ax like her.

  “Where’s your little dog?” she asks when Dorothy doesn’t appear as usual, barking at the top of the stairs.

  “She’s having surgery,” Ruth says.

  “Oh, my,” Lily says.

  The lanky young man, the black mane, Lily holding an armful of open house fliers, Ruth and Alex walk Indian-file through the narrow doorway into the apartment. Ruth can’t help but take note of the couple’s first reactions: his icy appraisal of the living room’s length and breadth, its ceiling height; her restrained but evident distaste for their decor—the Ikea bookcases, the blond Danish coffee table, their plaid sofa that was the rage in the seventies, and the muted, glowing TV. A map of Uzbekistan flickers on the screen: Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan flank its borders, one -stan amid many. The couple wanders toward the kitchen.

  “Turn off the news,” Lily whispers to Ruth and Alex as she passes by, then calls after the young couple. “You have to wear sunglasses to eat breakfast in there.”

  Lily’s waving hand catches Alex’s attention; she’s motioning the couple into his studio. He hurries down the hall after them. He can’t leave his work unattended, unprotected.

  “It’s a good size for a guest bedroom and there’s plenty of light with the air shaft,” Lily says.

  Thumbnail sketches on paper napkins, pictures torn from magazines and newspapers, Polaroid snapshots, small pieces of canvas are stapled, tacked, or taped to every wall; paint-smudged doilies dry on chair backs; Xeroxed memos, all bearing the FBI’s seal, are piled on the floor; paintings choke the remaining space.

  “It could be a nursery someday,” Lily says.

  Alex watches the young couple’s faces as they struggle to imagine the room—a madman’s cell—cleared of his history.

  Lily leads them into his and Ruth’s bedroom. “There’s nothing obstructing the view, you wake up to sunshine,” she says, parting the curtain to reveal the tar roofs.

  Alex can see by the couple’s disappointment that the chimneys won’t be a daily lesson in color, but an eyesore. They open the closet—his ten-year-old tartan robe hangs from a hook, Ruth’s favorite housedress, with the missing button, droops beside it.

  The entourage heads toward the bathroom, but Alex doesn’t follow. He and Ruth scrubbed every tile in preparation for today. They bought a new shower curtain and even scoured the grout around the tub with bleach and Q-tips.

  “Only one bathroom?” he hears the young man ask.

  “Yes, but it has a window,” Lily quickly points out.

  Alex finds Ruth. She’s waiting by the bedroom phone. Dorothy’s been in surgery for almost an hour. Before the couple leaves, they thank him and Ruth for giving them a first look. Lily follows them into the hall, closing the door behind her.

  “Do you think that went well?” Ruth asks.

  “There’s good news and bad,” Lily tells them. “They like the apartment, and they love the neighborhood, but they’re worried about the tunnel, like the rest of us. Is there any news?”

  Alex turns on the television: Live Press Conference pulses in the screen’s upper corner. Camera lights, as bright as competing suns, irradiate a makeshift stage in the lobby at city hall. A burly man, captioned FBI Spokesman, the short mayor, and the buzz-cut police chief in full regalia approach a lectern crowned by microphones. The burly spokesman reads a statement: “At eight twenty-two, the aqua-bomb detector finished its sweep of the tank. As of this hour, we believe there is no bomb.” Barrages of questions are hailed at him, but he ignores them. “We’re asking New Yorkers to stay on high alert until the driver’s in custody.” The mayor leans into the microphones. “Keep your eyes and ears open, but go about your lives. Soon as the city engineers give the go-ahead, mine will be the first car through the tunnel. We will not take questions at this time.”

  The screen bisects into halves—the basset-eyed newscaster in New York and the blond in Washington.

  “What they’re not saying,” the blond says, “is that Pamir might be wearing the bomb and that’s why they didn’t find one in the truck.”

  “You’re right, Kat, the device could be on him and he could be anywhere at this point.”

  The buzzer sounds. Ruth jumps. Not because she thought she heard a bomb go off, but because for a split second, it sounded like the phone had rung.

  The next couple, two middle-aged women, one tall and dour, one short and dreamy, have brought their dog, a boisterous adolescent labrador.

  “It turns out there’s no bomb!” Lily greets them at the top of the stairs. “Isn’t that wonderful!”

  “They caught Pamir?” the tall one asks.

  “Not yet,” Lily says.

  Tugging on the lead, exhilarated from the cold, heady from the climb, intoxicated by the new smells, the labrador rushes past Lily into the apartment.

  “What’s your dog’s name?” Ruth asks.

  “Harold.”

  Harold spots Dorothy’s rubber mailman and lunges toward it. It takes everything in Ruth’s power not to grab the lead and stop him. Once Harold has the mailman in his jaws, though, he loses interest in him; the mailman might as well be a piece of old gum. Harold spits him out and spots the tennis ball. He bolts forward, chomps down on it, drops it, rolls it with his nose, and chases it into the kitchen.

  “I guess Harold wants to see the kitchen first,” Lily jokes.

  In hot pu
rsuit, Harold skids across the tiles and then abruptly freezes. Something of greater urgency has caught his attention. Lead by his nose, he searches for it. He sniffs under the counters, around the table legs, the garbage pail, the refrigerator, Dorothy’s bowls, but it’s not there. He zigzags across the kitchen floor until he finds it. Ruth recognizes the spot. It’s where Dorothy lost control of her bladder.

  “You have to wear sunglasses to eat breakfast in here,” Lily says.

  The phone finally rings. They excuse themselves to take the call in the bedroom. Alex shuts the door, while Ruth answers the phone.

  “Dorothy’s out of surgery. She’s being moved to recovery now,” Dr. Rush tells her. “She’s breathing on her own and all her vitals look normal, but as we were closing her, she had a seizure. We’re not sure what caused it and we’re not sure if the seizure will have lasting effects. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “What kind of effects?” Ruth asks.

  “The anesthesia should start to wear off in the next few hours. She’ll either come out of it or not.”

  Someone raps on the door. Alex opens it: Lily, the two women, and Harold fill the hall.

  “Could they see the bedroom before they leave?” Lily asks.

  Alex widens the door. The two women peer in. Ruth hangs up. She sits stiffly on the bed’s edge, cast in cold Vermeer window light, her stare lost on something outside the picture frame. The women realize they’ve interrupted a moment of grave privacy and withdraw, but not Harold. If it weren’t for the grip on his lead, he would fly onto the bed with Ruth.

  “Dorothy had a seizure,” she tells Alex, as soon as they’re alone. “She may or may not wake up.”

  “When will they know?”

  “When the anesthesia wears off.”

  “Did the surgery go all right?”

  The stoic forbearing in Ruth’s veneer cracks. She looks at Alex as if he’d asked her his name and she couldn’t remember it. “I forgot to ask.”

  Alex picks up the phone, dials the hospital, and asks for Dr. Rush.