Fire & Water

by Betsy Graziani Fasbinder

  It was the first light news I’d had in a long time. “That’s so great! I’d love to see it. Give me the date and I’ll be on the first plane to New York.”

  “No need,” he said. The tone of his voice hinted at the huge smile I knew he must be wearing. “The bloke I ran into is from San Francisco. His gallery is on Chestnut Street. Tell Jake to get his bony arse out of bed. I expect him to give a rousing toast at my opening.”

  “I’ll do that,” I said.

  * * *

  It’s easy to hide at a teaching hospital. Everyone in the corridors looks ragged and wears bags under their eyes. Everybody works crazy hours. I appeared normal there.

  Allison Bennett had been transferred to the pediatric floor after being in the ICU for nearly a week. No infections, no complications. She was pink and perfect, her incision a precise line I hoped would hide under a bikini some day. My paperwork was more caught up than any physician’s in the history of UCSF, and my excuses for sixteen-hour shifts were fading.

  “On your way home, Dr. Murphy? I think you’ve checked that baby a thousand times today.” Dahlia de la Rosa asked. She was my favorite nurse on the pediatric floor.

  “Like you haven’t cuddled her every chance you got.”

  Dahlia smiled coyly. “Can I help it if I like them best when they’re preverbal?”

  “When do you get off?”

  “Don’t you know I live here?” she said with a sassy smirk. “This is the only place I can hide from my husband and kids. I’d come here even if they didn’t pay me.”

  I grinned, pretending we were sharing the same joke, and slid Allison’s chart back into the rack. “I’m sure the chief administrator would be willing to take that arrangement.”

  “Enjoy things while you only have one. You and Jake might even still have a shot at a romantic evening now and then, not that I remember what that is.”

  I wiped my eyes with the heels of my hands. “Romance is about the last thing on my mind right now, Dahlia.”

  “Don’t let this place take you over, Kate. It will, you know.”

  I closed my eyes. As if it were a movie being shown on the inside of my own eyelids, I saw Jake hurling the stone vase. Then the scene shifted to the terror on Ryan’s face.

  Fear clutched my heart. What if the spark in Ryan was born of the inferno of her father’s mania? Was she destined, imprisoned by her genetic code, to suffer the same creativity and the same madness? She was a fiery child, crazy smart, imaginative, and obstinate.

  “Kate?” Dahlia said, touching my shoulder with her hand. “Are you all right?”

  I used every muscle in my face to torture it into a smile. “I guess you’re right, Dahlia. I’ve been in this place too long. You can stick a fork in me, ’cause I am done.”

  “Go home, Dr. Murphy. You’re no good to anybody here.”

  * * *

  My head throbbed as I unlocked the front door of my house. It was almost noon. When I opened the door and walked toward the stairs, I expected Consuelo’s usual “The Meester, he is esleeping.” Instead, the gentle ping of metal against glass drew me to the kitchen. Jake sat at the kitchen table, a half-eaten bowl of cereal and a gallon of milk in front of him. His face was thin but shaven, and he wore his glasses for the first time since he’d taken to his bed.

  Lazarus, arisen from his tomb.

  This was what I’d been waiting for. The veil had lifted, just as Gupta had said it would, and the light had returned to his eyes; I could see it. He was back. But excitement only flickered and then faded.

  I should have been kissing him, thanking divine forces for bringing him back to life. I should feel something. Elation? Rage? Anything. Instead, I felt only deadness—the same deadness I’d witnessed in Jake for weeks. I opened my mouth to tell him that it was all over, that I had to leave him and take Ryan with me for our own survival. I didn’t want apologies or remorse. I didn’t want explanations or promises. Not this time.

  He stood. He wrapped his arms around me, his fingers combing through my hair. I leaned on him, more out of exhaustion than affection. “I thought for a minute that you’d left for good,” he said, his voice catching. “You’d have every right.” He rocked me as we stood there. “Please don’t hate me,” he whispered.

  My molars could have broken under the pressure of my bite. “I don’t hate you, Jake.” And I didn’t. I’d missed him too—this him.

  I pulled myself away from him and looked into his mossy eyes, made greener by their reddened edges. He was so fragile, so filled with remorse. His wan appearance and the desperation in his eyes were like those of patients in the oncology wards.

  Thoughts formed and melted and formed again in my pounding head. Words withered. “Ryan and I can’t go through this again. You need to know how much this hurt us.”

  Jake hung his head. “I don’t want to hurt you.” He stepped close to me and rested his head on my shoulder. Part of me wanted to step away, while another wanted to enfold him in my arms. He’d missed so much: Ryan losing her first tooth and then her second; Burt getting his gallery show; my reunion with my family.

  “I know,” I sighed. “You have to stay on your meds. And not just until the dark mood passes. Forever.”

  He sniffed and wiped his nose with the edge of his sweatshirt sleeve. “I know, Kat. I know. I started taking them again two weeks ago. I’ll take them every day. I think that’s what helped me get enough energy to get out of bed.”

  “Where’s Consuelo?” I asked, suddenly aware of her absence.

  “I paid her and let her go.”

  “Let her go? You shouldn’t be alone.”

  “I don’t need a babysitter. All she did was drive me nuts with the Spanish soap operas.” He shrugged. “Maybe those damned novelas actually got me up.”

  I searched his face for any hint of the feral cat or surly hermit. Instead I saw the tender expression, his kind, loving eyes. “Where’s Ryan?”

  “School right now. Then my dad will pick her up and keep her at the pub until I pick her up tonight. She’s kind of the bridge right now between us all.” Jake gave a half-smile.

  The shrill tone of my pager sliced the air between us. I recognized the number as the nurse’s station in pediatrics. I stepped to the phone in the kitchen and Jake slumped back into his chair, drained of all of the energy he’d had a moment ago.

  “Dr. Murphy returning a page.”

  Dahlia’s voice was controlled alarm. “Kate. I’m glad I’ve found you. It’s Allison. She spiked a temp of 105 and she’s been seizing.”

  “I’m there.”

  I turned to Jake. “You’ll be all right here?”

  “I’m fine. Go, your patient needs you.”

  * * *

  “She’s still febrile, Dr. Murphy. She’s having no urinary output. Toxicology came back gram positive. Her breathing is labored.” Nora Martin, a pediatric ICU nurse, wore a sleek ponytail and scrubs covered in multi-colored kittens. Nora checked the tubing to Allison’s IV. She stroked her sweaty forehead with her fingers. The baby’s face was swollen with edema and her fingers fattened with fluid retention. Her tiny arm was strapped down, keeping her from pulling out the IV that pierced her dimpled hand.

  “Dammit. I thought we’d avoided infection,” I said.

  Nora continued to stroke the baby’s face. Allison’s puckered lips began to suck. “I’ve got cucumbers in my fridge older than her.”

  “Remind me not to have a salad at your house.” We shared half-smiles and resumed examining Allison’s chart. “Her parents?”

  “In the waiting room. Completely freaking out.”

  My tiny patient lay in her crib, her rag doll body limp. “Hang in there, Allison.” Even as I spoke the words, my hope faded.

  After sitting with the Bennetts and explaining the toxicology results, every intervention we could try, and the likelihood of their effects, I spent the rest of the afternoon watching Allison fighting her battle. None of the IV fluids, antibiotics, or analgesics r
educed her fever. She did not respond to alcohol rubs or ice baths. By late in the day she was in respiratory distress.

  Finally, cardiac arrest obliterated the last of our hope.

  * * *

  “Hi, Mommy,” Ryan’s voice was as cheerful as Minnie Mouse’s.

  “Hi, honey,” I said into my office phone. I had to hear her voice. I could envision her tucked into the same nest of quilts I’d slept under a hundred times in Alice’s bed when I was little.

  “Alice said we could paint our toenails tonight.”

  I pushed aside a stack of research articles on pediatric infection control. I’d been searching for something I might have missed in Allison’s post-op medication regimen.

  “We had the best day. I helped Grandpa put some new records in the jukebox and then Uncle Tully took me to stir paint for a real fancy house he’s painting and…”

  Ryan’s story meandered as she rendered all of the details of her day. I uh-huhed enough to sound interested, but could think of little else but Allison as the nurses removed the last of the equipment, preparing her body for its transport to the morgue. Allison had never crawled, had never eaten solid food. I suddenly ached to touch Ryan’s curls and smell her sweet, powdered skin.

  “How’s Daddy? Is he still sleeping?” Ryan asked.

  “He got up and ate three bowls of cereal today.”

  “Maybe he’ll make something new in the garden.”

  “Maybe so, honey. He misses you.”

  “I miss him too. Tell him I found some raven feathers today. Tell him we have to use them for our garden sculptures.”

  “I’ll tell him. I love you, Noodle.”

  “I love you more,” Ryan announced, then her giggle rang over the phone lines. The phone clicked in my ear, declaring her the winner of the game she and Jake so often played.

  Watching the grief etched on the Bennetts’ faces shamed me. I couldn’t let myself imagine Ryan hooked up to IVs. Couldn’t let myself think of a scalpel slicing the smooth skin on her perfect tummy.

  I walked over the waxed floors of the hospital corridor, into the sluggish elevator and out to the garage. All I wanted was to go home and hold Jake in my arms and tell him about the feathers our daughter would bring him. I missed my companion, my friend, my lover. I needed to tell him about Allison and have him comfort me.

  Never again would I take Jake’s health for granted. I could no longer trust him to keep his medication regimen stable over time. Despite its hibernation, the sleeping lion of Jake’s mental illness had been awakened, and I could no longer deny its existence.

  * * *

  The porch light glowed. I carried freshly made wonton soup from The Pot and Pan on 7th Avenue, our favorite chicken soup substitute. Our version of penicillin, its rich broth had nursed our colds countless times. When I opened the door, dozens of white candles in the stucco niches of the living room made the place seem like midnight mass at St. Anne’s on Christmas Eve. James Taylor crooned softly in the background. I set the soup on the entryway table.

  On the coffee table sat an open bottle of merlot, a vintage Jake and I had discovered on a romantic drive through the Napa Valley. A single ruby glass was poured. Next to it stood a vase filled with a bouquet of creamy white orchids, with rich purple veins through the petals—an intricate web of capillaries. The blossoms dangled, each one an origami bird. The color in the veins in each blossom matched the wine so precisely that it seemed the orchids had bled themselves into the glass.

  I sipped the wine and moved toward the stairs.

  “Jake, I brought penicillin!” I sang up the stairwell. In the kitchen, every dish had been washed. The counter sparkled, and the stale smell of the trash can had been replaced by the antiseptic odors of cleansers. Around the house, dead plant leaves were nipped, and the pile of ashes was gone from the fireplace. My blankets and pillows were put away, and the chenille throw was returned to the chocolate brown chaise. I brushed my fingers across the butter-soft suede, recalling the first night that Jake and I had made love there. On the hearth sat the earthen bowl of black stones, solid reminders of a gossamer memory.

  I called up the stairs. “Did you hire a cleaning crew or what?”

  Only James Taylor’s voice replied. “I fix broken hearts Baby, I’m your handyman.”

  “Jake?” I called. The wood floors of the stairs gleamed and smelled of lemon; the upstairs hallway was free of the clutter that I’d ignored for weeks.

  An uneasy itch began at the nape of my neck and crawled over my scalp. I stepped into our bedroom. It was immaculate. The bed that had been Jake’s lair for weeks was now a fluffy, white invitation. Candlelight flickered in the breeze from the open window. A foghorn moaned from the distant sea. I walked through the room to the master bath. My breath grew shallow and my heart began to race. “Jake?”

  Candles glowed—the only light in the room. The glass of the mirror was clear of the steam that usually gathered during baths. I looked along the tile floor to the glistening white of the claw-foot tub.

  “Jake?” My voice was a surprising whisper. I could see only the top of his head. He’d fallen asleep in the bath. Hadn’t I done the same a thousand times? But over his shoulder I could see no shimmering surface of water.

  I inched toward him. Jake lay naked in the waterless tub. From his throat to the tops of his feet was a latticework of shallow incisions. Scarlet rivulets trickled in a perfect crosshatch pattern over his shaved body. The blood flowed across his torso, weaving another layer of pattern over the slices. His genitals were covered with trickles of blood, a woven pattern that covered him completely. Blood flowed from his wrists, gouged from the heel of each hand to the crooks of his elbows. He rested in a bloody lake the same hue of the wine in the glass downstairs. On his face, Jake wore an expression of beatific peace: no flicker of his eyelids, no twitch of his lips. From behind his hip peeked the shiny silver edge of a scalpel. I could smell the earthy richness of his blood.

  The sound of my own gasp jerked me into motion from my split-second paralysis. I yanked towels from the rod and twisted them into tourniquets. His body was cool, but not cold. I pressed my hand against his carotid artery to find a pulse. “Jake! Jake!” I closed my eyes to concentrate. I felt again for a pulse. “Jake!” Had I felt it? It was faint, but yes, there had been a tiny throb beneath my fingers. I bolted to the bedroom and grabbed the phone. My blood-covered fingers found the nine, then the one. After one more press, I somehow managed to give the location and medical status of the patient in my bathroom.

  Later I would absorb the beautiful horror he’d created—as intricate as any of his installations, as awe-inspiring as any of his sculptures. He’d transformed himself. He’d become the finely formed orchid in a porcelain vase, his own body one of his exquisite manipulations of nature.

  He had become his own work of art.

  As I watched the EMTs rush Jake toward the ambulance, I looked down for the first time at my blood-soaked clothes. “Take him to General. Ask for Dr. Gupta to be called.”

  I drove behind the flashing red light of the ambulance reciting a silent prayer. Please, please. Please—let him die.

  Serenity

  From the barstool that I had always considered Dr. Schwartz’s spot, I signaled for Mike to replenish my glass. I’d taken to occupying the stool nightly since Jake’s suicide attempt. Once he was medically stable, he had been transferred from San Francisco General to Serenity Glen, an inpatient psychiatric hospital in Napa County.

  All I could tell Ryan was that Jake needed to go away for a while to rest. Mary K, Burt, and my pub family knew Jake was voluntarily hospitalized, though I couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone about finding Jake in the bathtub afloat in a lake of his own blood. To escape the torture of my own memories, I worked longer and longer days and parked myself at the bar each night.

  Murphy’s Pub had become home again. Tully picked Ryan up from school. Dr. Schwartz helped her with her science fair project. Alice and Dad took care
of her each afternoon, fed her supper, and tucked her into bed, often before I ever got there. Once I’d gotten drunk enough that my mind was too soggy to form cogent thoughts, I crawled into my childhood bed beside her.

  I’d established a new routine.

  Mike brought the bottle of Glenfiddich and a sour expression. “Two fingers, Mikey. On second thought, just leave the bottle, will you?” Lines of disapproval cut through Mike’s usually smiling face. It grew easier to ignore his expression after the third or fourth drink.

  Tully sat beside me. Mike refilled his coffee cup and the two exchanged furtive looks.

  “I saw that,” I said to their reflections in the mirror behind the bar, and I raised my glass in a mock toast.

  Dad walked in from the storage room carrying a huge bag of peanuts. He took a quick assessment of the beverages in front of Tully and me. “There’s plenty of stew left,” he said to me. “You might want to eat a little something. Your stomach will be kinder to you in the morning.”

  On days I didn’t have surgery, I’d drive to Napa to the ironically named Serenity Glen. At first, Jake was either morose and wept most of the time or he seemed lost in a fog—a stupor of sedatives. A hard shell grew around my heart, and rather than behaving like a visiting loved one, I was the consulting physician inquiring about his care, his medication, and the treatment plan. I’d sit with Jake for an hour—all I could tolerate—and then drive back to Murphy’s. This went on for weeks.

  Our house was a sticky web of memories, and I went there only to gather the growing pile of bills and late notices. With the huge mortgage and the past-due bills, the fees for Serenity Glen, it became apparent that maintaining our Sea Cliff home—even with Burt’s secret nest egg—was no longer possible. I put it up for sale.

  As weeks wore on, Ryan’s mood shifted. Usually happy and energetic, she became irritable and demanding. I was the recipient of her worst explosions of temper. She wanted to see Jake, to talk to him on the phone, and I was the obstacle. “He can’t be reached by phone,” I’d explain. Yet another of the half-truths I’d begun to tell. As she grew moodier and threw more tantrums, it got easier to justify leaving her with my family. She was happier with them.