The Wave Theory of Angels

by Alison Macleod

  His eyes water in the glare of the day. He wonders if he’s said too much. He didn’t mention the phone calls. He tells himself he shouldn’t have mentioned his daughters. At the same time he’s aware of the absurdity of the situation as it unfolds in front of Something’s Brewing on Oak Park Avenue: Dr Giles Carver, a middle-aged professional, is talking to a complete stranger like they are after him.

  He knows his mind can tip into paranoia. Jen used to point it out. Didn’t his final days in the department give him reason enough? But he wants it said. ‘I don’t care who’s asking. Faculty. Fringe element. M-theory acolyte. There’s no key to any universe on my chain. Got it?’

  His face is rimmed with sweat. He squints at the shadow of your face. Is he waiting for an apology? A demand? He turns and walks on, a Milky Way wrapper flapping from the sole of his shoe.

  Words move through you, catalysing the moment. ‘You can’t leave her there.’

  Giles Carver stops short. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘Your daughter.’

  ‘What do you know about my daughter?’

  ‘You can’t leave her there.’

  He stares, bewildered.

  The rain comes at last. A downpour in an Indian summer. Commuters, on the home stretch, dive for doors and bus shelters. They huddle for cover under awnings and newspapers. Across the street someone darts out of a shop to save a table of second-hand paperbacks. In a moment, he’ll walk on, lost to his thoughts, to whatever it is he won’t say out loud.

  Don’t lose him.

  You nod at the streaming window of Something’s Brewing. He blinks like someone coming up for air. ‘Why not?’ he says.

  Inside, he shakes himself off. There’s a spree of rain. Two women at a neighbouring table look up, pained. He grabs a booth. Flings down his coat. ‘Mine’s a double espresso,’ he calls to you.

  You understand. You’re soaked through. In here, he thinks, you’ll drop the hood and take off your jacket. He’s telling himself that things at last will begin to make sense.

  You stand at the counter, dripping. The kid behind the counter is telling a customer how Calista Flockhart came in once. How she ordered a fruit infusion. How that had to be her carbs for the week: one fruit infusion. How a teaspoon of honey would have made her cry.

  No, he couldn’t remember whether it was persimmon and vanilla, or ginseng, raspberry and elderflower. Maybe she wanted to look at Hemingway’s old house. Or the Frank Lloyd Wright stuff. Maybe, right now, she’s starting a retro trend in prairie architecture among famous people.

  ‘Can I get some service over here?’ you ask. People don’t always seem to notice you.

  At last, the kid behind the counter is pouring the coffees, punching the register and taking your money. He’s explaining something about stamps and loyalty cards as a cellphone goes off.

  ‘Of course it’s me – who else were you expecting on your old dad’s phone? No, sweetheart, I’m not sure where she’s got to . . .’ Carver’s voice is light, easy, but when you turn to look, he’s staring at the ceiling, his face strained. He remembers his surroundings, turns to the wall. ‘Of course I haven’t left you there. No, listen, Christina. I keep saying. No one’s left you anywhere . . . Well, what does Bishop say?’

  You cross to the table and lower the tray.

  ‘I’m just asking, Christina. I’m just asking if he had anything new to say. Maybe something about medication? No, of course he’s not God. I’m merely . . . Well, don’t worry about them . . . Again? As in again today? Well, who authorized that?’ He pushes his hand through the wet thickness of his hair. ‘What sort of questions?’

  He meets your eyes briefly.

  ‘Okay. Christina. Christina? Listen to me. Listen. I’m coming now. Are you listening? Yes, right now.’ He reaches for his coat, sliding one arm awkwardly in. ‘No . . . Like I said, ladybug, I don’t know where Maggie is but . . . Christina, listen. I’m leaving now.’ He glances at his watch. ‘It’s six fifteen. I should be with you by seven. Quarter past at the latest. Do you have a clock in your room? Good. So I’ll be there soon.’ He shuts his eyes, like he’s making a wish. ‘The video’s yours for the choosing on the way home. Anything but Dr Zhivago again.’ He forces a laugh. ‘A benign dictator? Me? Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy here?’ He winces – he’s just said the wrong thing. ‘That’s what I said, didn’t I? Okay . . . Yup. Bye . . . Bye, ladybug.’

  He flips his phone shut. ‘Have to be somewhere.’ He slides out of the booth. Studies you for a moment. ‘See you around.’

  By 9 p.m. he’ll be home. He’ll throw the keys on the kitchen table. He’ll walk from room to room, pulling blinds and curtains. He’ll peel off the damp skin of his coat. Finally, he’ll hit the button on the answering machine. One message. From 6.10. Just before she tried his cellphone.

  Maggie? Dad? It’s me. Will you pick up? Are you there?

  He’ll play it again. He’ll listen to every pause, to every hesitation in her voice. He’ll hear the final beat of frustration. Are you there? He’ll listen as if his daughter is speaking to him from whatever place it is that passes for the Beyond these days.

  2

  We begin again.

  It was a phone call in the middle of the night. Her heart stopped before she could say hello.

  Maggie had woken too. Had gone to the top of the stairs to listen and found her sister moments later on the kitchen floor, a woman’s faraway voice insisting that she please hang up and try her call again.

  Forget an ambulance, he said. Maple Avenue was five minutes in the car. Less that time of night if he ran the reds.

  They got her on to the back seat. Maggie crouched over her sister’s slack face. She positioned her head. She cleared her airway. She pinched her nostrils and covered her blue lips with her own. Then she blew into her chest like she’d learned to do in the Girl Scouts years ago on a Saturday afternoon. (Blow. Blow. Blow. Turn to the chest. Watch for movement. Blow. Blow. Blow.)

  And suddenly she was no longer in the car, passing William Street and Bonnie Brae, all the houses asleep. Suddenly she was standing next to Tina, in front of Mills Brothers’ window, where they stood every Christmas to see Snow White laid out, pale and beautiful on her bier, and the dwarves, gathered round her, sighing and weeping diamante tears and sighing and blowing silent noses in an endless, automated cycle of loss. And it’s hard to leave, to walk on, past this moving drama, past this scene without close, as long as Snow White’s breast moves (up and down, up and down, up and down) below her high-necked, gauzy gown; as long as there is the terrible tease of life we know as hope.

  He noticed his feet were still bare as he hit the gas.

  Outside Emergency, he left the car running and told Maggie to stay where she was. ‘Stop crying, Maggie. Do you hear me? I do not want to hear you crying.’ He took Christina into his arms again. How many years since he’d last held her? He swore at someone running towards him with a wheelchair. Ignored shouts from reception and headed for a corridor marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Flung back a curtain. Passed her into the surprised arms of a bleary-eyed MD. ‘She’s not breathing,’ he said. ‘My daughter’s not breathing.’

  It was just ten minutes since she’d run for the phone. Ten minutes since the night had turned inside out.

  What are the wild electrics of the heart?

  The crucial spark is struck at its very core. A signal is relayed from the power cable of the sinus node to the atria to the second node. The first of five. Together, a smooth wave of energy spreading across the membrane of the heart. The ventricles contracting. The heart relaxing. A heartbeat.

  Sixty to a hundred of them a minute for most of us. Though of course your heart can race. Or miss a beat. There are, too, palpitations, flutters and the occasional poundings. Extra heartbeats are commonly noticed just before going to sleep, when resting quietly or when changing positions. This is the conventional wisdom. The beat of a healthy heart is regular. It does not vary to any signific
ant extent. Disease, malfunction and ageing arise from stress on an otherwise orderly system.

  The human heart an orderly system? Don’t believe it.

  Chaoticians examining beat-by-beat analyses of the human heart have found, on the contrary, ‘a surprisingly erratic pattern’ in the heart rate of healthy subjects – a pattern formerly dismissed as mere ‘noise’ in the quest for physiological order. A healthy heartbeat, it turns out, shows unexpectedly random dynamics. Health, it seems, is the natural ability of the heart to adapt to disorder; youth, the body’s ease with complexity. With fluctuations. Perturbations. Chaos.

  When you reach equilibrium, you’re dead.

  And Christina?

  She was not yet awake as her feet hit the carpet that night. Nor did she wake as she opened her bedroom door, flew down the corridor, down the stairs and lifted the receiver of the kitchen phone, breathless with panic.

  Her records indicate a history of parasomnia dating approximately from a death in her immediate family. As a child Christina experienced bed-wetting and sleeptalking. In her teens, sleepwalking. More recently, attacks of breathlessness and panic during sleep. Sometimes, the sensation of a weight on her chest in deep sleep – or, in sleep-lab jargon, the incubus. A Latin leftover of a word.

  Picture it again. Five electrical pulses from the heart of the heart. Yet instead of one smooth wave of energy, there is a signalling blockage in the electrical pathway of a single cardiovascular cell. One cell falls out of rhythm. Neighbouring cells cease to act as one. Asynchronous riot spreads, cell to cell. The rhythm section of the heart is thrown.

  Arrhythmia. And Maggie lifting the slab of her sister’s cheek from the cold of the kitchen linoleum.

  Yet what of youth? What of health? What of her heart’s natural ability to adapt to chaos, to complexity? Certainly, late that Friday night, the heart of Christina Carver failed. It lost strength and force. Perhaps a single cell did lie, like a terrible secret within, congenitally flawed. A bud of disorder.

  Or did her heart strain towards something? Did it beat, not faster and faster, but higher and higher, yearning towards something other as Christina moved through the sleepscape of the night?

  What, after all, is the cardiology of Transport?

  Hush. She is sleeping. There, below the plastic cloud of the oxygen mask. It is not yet clear how far she has travelled.

  Voices.

  Please understand. Sometimes a person in this condition is not entirely unconscious but is unable to respond to external stimuli. A stupor, medically speaking, is something less than a coma. A persistent vegetative state is clearly something more. A coma, it’s worth pointing out, is a fairly generalized term that refers to a deep state of unconsciousness. That she is suffering from ‘decreased consciousness’ is all that can be confirmed at this point.

  Yes. As you can see. She will not wake up.

  It is impossible at this time to comment on the quality of any eventual recovery. Or whether it will happen in a day or a year.

  Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

  The EEG results indicate that a seizure was not the cause of collapse; electrical activity in the brain is registering normal. You will be glad to hear that an eye examination has not revealed any swelling at the back of the eye, which means increased intracranial pressure is not an immediate concern. So there is no need for a tap, at least at this point. Rest assured, her ICP will be monitored at all times.

  Her cardiovascular function is also, of course, being monitored. A stress-EKG would be a sensible precaution upon any eventual recovery, though, for obvious reasons, it is not feasible now. They will, however, run a routine test for electrolyte irregularities – sometimes associated with cardiac arrhythmia.

  Sorry. A failure in the electrical signalling system of the heart. Precise cause unknown, though sudden physical stress or emotional arousal has been implicated. It is little consolation, but it is a fortunate few who experience a faint or a coma rather than sudden death.

  You need to know that Christina may have suffered a loss of blood flow or a diminished blood flow to the brain. Brain cells are extremely sensitive to oxygen deprivation; they can begin to die within five minutes. Cerebral hypoxia may lead to temporary and/or permanent damage. It is difficult to say more at this point.

  Fortunately, she did not aspirate upon collapse, and her breathing seems to have stabilized. The probe you will have noticed on her finger will allow staff to monitor her oxygen levels. For the time being, they’ll keep her on the 24 per cent – a low delivery – mask. They might switch to a pair of nasal prongs in the morning.

  There are no noticeable abnormalities of the skin or limbs. And you should be neither alarmed nor unduly hopeful should her body move spontaneously. It is possible, for example, that she will start to shake or make jerking movements. Patients in her condition have even been known to sit up. It is possible that her eyes may move abnormally. She may even open her eyes as if suddenly awake. Bear in mind it is unlikely, in any such instance, that she will be awake. You may need to close her eyes for her, or you may ask a nurse to do so if you prefer.

  Christina is moved to a private room. From the window, in the far distance, one can just see the green haze of the forest preserve. Come morning, Maggie will bring relics to her bedside in two plastic bags.

  An old snapshot of their mother. The print on the white border says NOVEMBER 1979, but it is summertime – she’s wearing a halter top – so the film must have sat in the camera for months. She is turning into the wind, her long hair catching in her sudden smile. There is a blur of birds and architecture behind her. On the back, in ballpoint, it says, ‘Paris, Jardin du Luxembourg (where Hemingway gunned down pigeons for his din-din!).’ Their dad’s writing. The pressure of it comes through to the other side.

  Her nightgown too. The one she wore before she lost her own smell to the toxins of the chemo. Their father helped them wrap it in Mills Brothers’ tissue paper and cellophane before their neighbour, Mrs Ingram, came to take her clothes away.

  An old cassette of music from the 70s with ‘Honey’ by Bobby Goldsboro. Their mom had always sung along, not very well – one of her favourite songs, she’d tell them with her big, big smile. And as children, Maggie and Christina had loved the way the chorus of angels burst into song as Honey died.

  French for Beginners. A twelve-week course. She is on week three and Tina is on week two.

  Her new burgundy fishnet stockings, still pristine in their package.

  Her garnet ring. Their father found it only the day before in the drum of the washing machine.

  Her big spiral sketchpad with her studies. Loads of them, Maggie realizes. Page after page. Some in chalks, some in pastels. Wild hyacinth. Trout lily. Golden alexander. Woodland sunflowers. A white lady’s slipper. A bumblebee on a stalk of sweet joe pyeweed. A wood thrush. A great blue heron. A crested flycatcher. A hummingbird drinking from a cup of wild columbine.

  She’s a volunteer in Thatcher Woods, less than half a mile from their house; part of a small team that catalogues native flora and fauna. They meet at weekends at the edge of the woods, though, more often than not, Christina heads out on her own.

  Near the end of the pad: a charcoal drawing of a group of oak trees on the river bank. The oldest ones in the wood, each over three feet round. And in the sketch, a canopy of new leaves. It must have been May? June? At the base of the trunks, there’s a surge of sweetgrass and spangled light. In the background, a trace of the West Line and the smudge of the railway bridge.

  But this is not another nature study for the museum’s catalogue. Here, her sister is after something more: the gravitas of the ancient trunks; the tangled energy of their branches; maybe what their mother used to call the spirit of the place.

  The sketch is still unfinished. There’s a figure. Someone coming down the embankment. A vague half shape only.

  3

  When he arrives back at the house – to sleep, to wash, to wake Maggie so she can take his
place at the hospital – when he arrives back at the house, he slips off the surgeon’s slippers someone offered him in the night, walks into the kitchen, eases the receiver from the hook and dials *69.

  The last number has been blocked. Again.

  Other nights, he’s caught the call on the first few rings, on the phone by his bed. Since June, four or five calls in all. But always the click in his ear. When the girls asked, what else was there to say? ‘Just another crank call.’

  He phones Ameritech. Says he wants a call traced.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. That’s not a service we offer our residential customers.’

  ‘It’s important. I – ’

  ‘Have you been the victim of abusive calls, sir?’

  ‘No – ’

  ‘Could your request relate, for example, to a judicial issue?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like the breakdown of the terms of a current restraining order.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘If you can inform us of the number, sir, we can arrange for that number to be blocked.’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to tell you. That’s the problem. I don’t know the number.’

  ‘How can I help you, sir?’

  He hangs up.

  He goes to Maggie’s room. He coaxes her from sleep. He reminds her Christina must not be alone when she wakes up.

  The day of that first late-night call, he’d met Nat for coffee. June sunshine. Cappuccinos and biscotti at Starbucks. The first time they’d seen each other in more than a year. He’d had to stop himself from kissing her cheek as she arrived – she would have thought him false. Of course she would have.