A Fortunate Age

by Joanna Rakoff

  She pulled the storeroom keys out of her pocket, unhooked the empty keg, scooted under the bar’s back exit, keg in hand—she was short enough that she didn’t bother to unhook the heavy counter flap—and pushed her way through the crowd, into the back room, where she sat down on a stack of boxes and let her head fall heavily to her knees. For a moment, she thought she might allow herself to fall asleep, right there on the fat brown boxes of Sam Smith Oatmeal Stout. But there was no way she could sleep, for real, with her brain having transformed into a repository for little else but anxiety. Slowly, she ran the wand of her lip gloss over her dry lips, and when she could delay it no longer, she shimmied the new, heavy keg onto its little metal cart. Hopefully, Dr. Gitter had finished his scotch and headed off to his boxy one bedroom in some blank residential tower, where he would recline on his beige couch and watch—what? football? Friends?—on an oversized television.

  Outside, in the bar’s main room, the crowd had thickened. “Coming through! Lady with the beer!” she shouted. The tricky part was maneuvering the cart behind the bar, which meant either lifting the counter flap with one hand—balancing the keg with the other—or ducking under the bar while pushing the keg, in a sort of crab walk. The floor sloped up and, regardless of which option she chose, it took strength and control to keep the cart from wobbling. Tonight, she decided to duck under, but the keg resisted her attempts to wrangle it, refusing to roll up the incline. For a bleak minute, she thought she could hold it no longer, that it was going to roll back onto her, over her, and into the small crowd clustered around the opening in the bar. But then, at the last second, grinding her teeth together, she regained her grip and pushed it, with a final jolt of strength, up and into the space behind the bar; stupidly pleased, she ducked down and followed it, emerging on the other side to clapping. A group of spiky-haired soldiers had been watching her. “Good job, Red,” one of them yelled. She smiled weakly—and did a quick check for Dr. Gitter, who appeared, thankfully, to have left—then began rolling the cart toward the taps, at the center of the long bar. But something was wrong, the wheels wouldn’t turn. She gave the right one a push with her sneakered foot and the cart released momentarily, then stopped again as a sharp pressure, hot and metallic, spread across her foot, turning, slowly, to pain. “Oh my God,” she whispered, afraid to look down.

  “Oh, shit, oh shit, oh shit,” she heard Declan say, though she couldn’t see him. “I knew it, I fucking knew it. I told you. You shouldn’t have come in tonight. It’s too much.” She nodded mutely. And then the pressure was half gone, but her foot throbbed horribly, like a beating heart, like, she thought, the heart of the frog she’d dissected in tenth-grade biology, the frog that was still alive, its brain killed by a pith, so they could slice it open and note the functions of its valves.

  “Oh my God,” she said again, for her legs were turning to something like gelatin and buckling beneath her. But someone—Declan—had anticipated this and was placing a chair under her and pressed her firmly into it, propping her foot on another.

  “Is she okay?” another voice asked. Emily’s head had dropped down again, into the palms of her hands.

  “I know her,” called yet another voice, “I know her and I’m a doctor. Can you let me through? Let me through.” In a rush, her stomach seized up and her ears began to ring. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, she thought, her brain echoing Declan’s cry. No, no, no, no, no, no. Not him, anyone but him. And then a hand—Dr. Gitter’s hand—was lifting her foot off the chair—“No, no, no, no,” she heard herself moan, like a child—and then placing it down again on something softer, more pliant, and decidedly more comfortable: a lap. “Okay, I’m just going to take your shoe off,” he said. Quickly, he pulled the laces out of her sneaker—was it good or bad that she had worn sneakers?—and pried the thing off, sending a hot needle of pain through her foot. Wordlessly—as if they were a seasoned pair of EMTs—Declan handed him a bag of ice wrapped in a towel, which he draped over Emily’s foot. She winced. “It’s okay,” Dr. Gitter said, in the same practiced voice he’d used a few weeks earlier as they’d walked down Bedford. She was no less irritated by it now. “You’re fine. I think you’ve probably broken a bone in your foot, but you’re going to be just fine. We just need to get you to the hospital for an X-ray, okay?” What do you know about broken bones, she thought. You’re a shrink. But the foot—it didn’t feel like her foot but like an inanimate object, maybe a football attached to her with glue and string—felt a little better now, cooler, and the stars, she found, were no longer whirling around her. Nervously, she pulled herself upright, but rather than facing Dr. Gitter, she turned to survey the crowd, mostly silent now, hypnotized by the Drama of the Keg and the Foot.

  “She’s okay?” called one of the soldiers. I’m not dead, she thought. You can ask me that question.

  “Yeah, she’s fine,” Dr. Gitter replied. “We just need to get her to the hospital. Can you guys clear a path?” The soldiers immediately flew into action. And Emily, reluctantly, turned to face Dr. Gitter, who was, to her annoyance, grinning. This is funny to you, she thought. What an ass. But she said nothing and thankfully, neither did he. He looked, absurdly, like a doctor on a hospital drama, with his short, light hair and his dark, round eyes and his long nose with its wide nostrils.

  “Okay, Emily,” he said finally. “I’m going to put your foot down for a second, so I can come around and lift you up.” And before she knew what was what, she was being carried outside into the cold, cold air, the odd sensation of a stranger’s arms around her. Declan ran after, awkwardly holding out her bag and coat. Dr. Gitter slung them over his shoulder—again, he himself didn’t have a coat; what was wrong with him?—and slid her into the cab that had pulled up, seemingly without being hailed.

  “We can walk,” she said, “it’s only a few blocks.” But he just raised his eyebrows at her, his face too white in the cab’s reflected light, and in a moment they’d arrived at the hospital’s emergency entrance. Dr. Gitter carried her past the dozens of people waiting, directly to the nurse’s station at the front. “I’m really okay to walk,” she said.

  “No, you’re not, honey,” said the nurse, padded, Filipino, her hair a funny maroon color. “You can take her right back if you want,” she told Dr. Gitter. “Saul’s on. And Ashwari.”

  “Thanks, Lucy,” he said, depositing Emily on a stretcher and covering her with a pile of itchy blankets. Wouldn’t, she wondered, a wheelchair do? A stretcher seemed a bit over the top, but she was, suddenly, too tired to speak. And it felt so good to lie down, even on the cold, hard stretcher. If only she could roll over and go to sleep. “Are you cold?” he asked. Emily nodded. “You’re in shock.” She nodded again. “We’re going to go right up to X-ray,” he told her. She felt strange, lying prone on her back like that, and looking up into his face from below. “This is one of the few benefits of working in this place. No waiting in line at the ER. Those people have been sitting there all night. But you get to cut straight to the chase.”

  “Good,” replied Emily, trying to smile, but her eyes would no longer stay open.

  She drifted in and out of sleep for what seemed like hours, as her beleaguered foot was X-rayed, injected with a local anesthetic, and operated on, the broken bone—the metatarsal, the doctor told her—snapped and pinned back into place. She was propped on pillows in a high hospital bed, her foot in a plaster cast. A different Filipino nurse fed her pills (“for swelling and pain”), handed her a baggie of the same to take home with her, and ushered Dr. Gitter into the room. Seeing the clear set of his face, remorse immediately washed over her; she’d dragged some nice person into her troubles, exactly the sort of thing she wanted to avoid—exactly the sort of thing that Clara did, that borderlines, she knew, did—and, worse, she’d been a bitch to him, if not in action then in thought. It must, she knew, be almost two in the morning, and here this man—this stranger—was forced into having to take care of her. “I’m sorry,” she said, discovering that her throat ach
ed. Why? Instinctually, she reached a hand up to her neck.

  “The anesthetic,” he said. “It can do that. It’s weird.” Emily nodded.

  “Dr. Gitter. You don’t have to stay here with me. It’s late.” And yet, as she uttered these words, she realized she was almost desperate for him to stay. What would she do without him? How would she get home? She had no cash on her. (My tips, she thought suddenly. Will Declan hold my tips for me?) She couldn’t walk. Who could she call? Not Beth or Sadie, not at this hour, not anymore; and not Lil, who could barely take care of herself, much less Emily, and whom she hadn’t spoken to in at least a month. There was Dave, she supposed. And Clara. Clara, of course, would come in a second; she was probably still up. But she didn’t want Clara. Which left Tal, who wasn’t even around, as far as she knew. Dave had told her he was in Israel again, despite the dire situation there, not filming but on some sort of retreat. “Maybe kabbalah?” Dave had said, grimacing. But she herself had heard nothing from him since last spring, when he’d given her passes to that show at Circle in the Square—a new play, with Holly Hunter, whom Emily loved, but kind of boring and Gurney-ish. They’d had a drink after, she and Curtis and Tal, making stiff, awkward conversation, Tal gingerly asking about her play (she could see now that he, too, was skeptical of her hopes, but too politic to say anything). Lately, she wondered if he’d pulled away from her because it was all too strange: the contrast between his success and her failure. She still didn’t understand why he’d never offered her any help during all her years of struggle. Could he not have put her in touch with his agent? Could he not have suggested her for roles? Did he think so little of her talents? In college, he’d been her biggest fan. They’d played opposite each other in The Rehearsal, her favorite production from undergrad. “You really can go,” she told the doctor.

  But he ignored her. “Cool cast,” he said, smiling. “Can I sign it?”

  “I guess.” She laughed, struggling to contain her annoyance that he hadn’t listened to her. The thought of him pitying her or staying out of obligation was too much. “Listen, you really don’t need to stay. I can get home okay myself. I’m completely fine.”

  Abruptly, he sat down in the chair beside her bed. “Let’s drop the tough-girl act for a second,” he said. Taken aback, she pushed herself up on her elbows—she’d never thought of herself as anything remotely similar to a “tough girl”—but pain shot through her foot and up her leg, and she lost, for a moment, her ability to breathe. Dr. Gitter slid his arm behind her shoulders and lowered her down against the high bed. “Okay,” he said, puffing out his cheeks and blowing out a stream of air. “Okay, okay. Try to lie still, okay? Try to rest. You really did a number on your foot, okay.” Sitting down in the chair, he inched it closer to her bed. “Now, listen, we need to talk.” She crossed her arms and looked at him. It was two in the morning. She had a broken foot. She did not want to talk. “What are you doing at McKinney’s? I thought you worked at a bank.”

  How did he know this? Oh, she realized. Dr. Lang. She smiled. “I do. I just needed a little Christmas money. You know.”

  He looked at her strangely. “No, I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

  “Well, things are kind of tight and the holidays are coming up.” She reached up and touched her hair, which felt wiry and stiff. She must look awful. “So I thought I’d get a, you know, temporary job, just until things even out a bit.” He shook his head sadly, and shame flooded through her, though she wasn’t sure why.

  “Emily, I need to explain to you how things look from my perspective. Will you listen to me for a minute?” She nodded, though she really, truly didn’t want to hear what he had to say.

  “Okay, I meet a young woman whose sister has a history of serious mental illness, substance abuse, and even occasional violence, not to mention a substantial criminal record—”

  “No—”

  He held up his hand. “I’ve seen her records, Emily. You signed the releases. Brattleboro, Holly Hill, Chestnut Ridge, Duke. So, I know, okay. I know everything—”

  “But—”

  “Let me finish. So this young woman’s sister has now come to live with her, basically because their parents have washed their hands of the sister. They’ve been supporting her for years and it’s killing them, which is common, actually. This young woman loves her sister and her parents, and she wants to do right by them. It seems like the sister is in better shape. Even the parents are starting to think she’s okay and cut her a bit of slack. But she still should be under a psychiatrist’s care.” He slowed down on these words, for emphasis. “Her medication definitely needs to be monitored. And so does her lifestyle. She can’t be drinking alcohol or taking any other meds—which she very well might, since she’s done so in the past. And there are little signs—little glimmers of a psychotic break—that this nice young woman has noticed, which is why she came to my colleague for help in the first place. And I meet the sister and I see why this nice young woman is afraid. The sister is out of control. She’s going to crash. There’s no doubt.” He pressed his fingertips together and shook his head.

  “I tell the young woman that I could, very possibly, arrange for her sister to come to one of the best clinics in the country for free, but she would need to stay at the hospital, as an inpatient. And this nice young woman says no, no, that her sister is getting better, really, and it would make things worse for her to be put into another hospital, because part of the sister’s problem—which is, by the way, common to borderlines—is that she hates that people think she’s crazy, and she’s just found a group of friends and is settling into some sort of new life—”

  “Dr. Gitter,” Emily cut in wearily. “I’m so tired. Do we really need to do this now? Could you maybe just tell me your point?”

  “My point?” he asked, shaking his head, as if he couldn’t believe she’d asked such a ludicrous question. “My point is that I told you to rein her in. I told you to keep her on a fixed budget, to mete out her meds, to watch her—”

  “I did. I did—”

  “Then why, tell me why—the next thing I know, I see the young woman—”

  “Could we stop with ‘the young woman’—”

  “—pulling beers at the crappy bar in my neighborhood, waiting on the asshole frat guys.” His hands, she saw, were gripping the rail at the side of her bed. “And she looks like she’s lost twenty pounds in the last three weeks and she has dark circles the size of the Grand Canyon under her eyes, which are beautiful, by the way.” Emily squirmed. Had he really just said that? A man she barely knew? Did men do things like that—tell women they had beautiful eyes? Wasn’t that kind of creepy? Or had her year with Curtis—and her years alone—made her jaded? “Now, what exactly am I supposed to think?”

  “I—”

  “That she didn’t listen to anything I said. That she’s just letting her sister wreck both their lives.”

  Oh, don’t be a drama queen, she thought, but she said, “She’s not—”

  “No,” the doctor retorted. “She is. Clearly, she’s burning through your cash. You’re working yourself to the bone. You can’t control her. This is big trouble, Emily.”

  Emily shook her head. “I’m not,” she insisted. “It’s just a difficult time. We’ve had so many expenses. Our rent doubled. And—” Her hands fluttered uselessly on the blanket. She was too tired to explain. Why couldn’t he simply understand, without her having to utter the words? But then that was the problem, wasn’t it: he did understand, despite everything she said. “We took this larger apartment and I didn’t realize how the utilities would go up. And we needed stuff for it. I didn’t have anything. I could live with just a plate and a saucepan and a mug.” She laughed and shrugged. “And I did. Clara wanted to live like normal people.”

  Dr. Gitter looked at her sternly. “Normal people don’t work—what—sixteen hours a day. And I live just fine with a plate, a saucepan, and a mug. And a coffeemaker.”

  Emily smiled gratefu
lly. “Yes, definitely a coffeemaker.”

  “Emily,” he said, softly now. “Your sister is ill. She needs to be hospitalized.”

  “No,” Emily said. “It’s not an option.”

  He leaned in closer. “It’s the only option. You can’t take care of her. Your parents can’t take care of her. She can’t take care of herself. If you just cut her off and try to let her manage on her own, she’s going to wind up dead or in jail—”

  “She’s fine now.”

  With a sort of groan, he stood up and let his head fall into his hand. “You know that’s not true.”

  The kindness in his voice was too much for her. It had been so long, months, since she’d spoken, really spoken with her friends—since she’d really talked to anyone honestly—and the force of his attention made her nervous, as nervous as his million messages on her voice mail. When she opened her mouth to speak, a dry, weak sound came out. She closed her lips, swallowed, hugged her arms close around her, and then, embarrassingly, began to cry, in great, huge, pitiful sobs, burrowing her face into her hands, snot streaming from her nose. The doctor stood stiffly for a moment, looking down on her, then moved to the side of the bed and twined his arms around her, causing her body to shudder and collapse. “It’s okay,” he whispered.

  “No, no, it’s not, it’s not,” Emily sobbed, her face pressed against his sweater. “Everything is wrong. I was in a play and it went to Broadway without me. And it was my one chance. And I wasted a year with this stupid guy and . . .” She broke into a loud, hiccuping sob. “And then Clara said she was coming and I was so glad to have my sister with me. I always wanted to be close to her, like in Little Women, you know?” He nodded. “But she always hated me. She always, always hated me and I thought now we could be real sisters. We could have fun. And I thought she was getting better, but I made a mess of that, too. I’m a failure. And I hate her, too. I hate her.”