by Sally Mandel
As if on cue, Walter chuckled from next door. He had arrived midaftemoon on the first plane he could find, which meant a circuitous route through Atlanta and New Orleans. Now, after all this aggravation, it looked as though Sharlie were going to make it. Thank God, of course.
Brian stared up at his fake Spanish stucco ceiling and wondered if Walter and Margaret ever thought the horrible things he did, and if so, did they ever say them to each other?
Sharlie had caught him off guard in the early hours of the morning—was it only this morning? He had imagined that her reasons for refusing to get married would intensify with the augmented severity of her illness. Here she was, trembling on the brink of death, saying yes. Maybe she thought the end was imminent and wanted to make him feel that she was truly committed? No. He’d read in her face, swollen and unfamiliar as it was, the clear communication that she wanted to marry him. But Christ, how could they do it? That girl was no longer his Sharlie but some bizarre caricature, who now and then gave him a cruel, teasing glimpse of the person he had lost.
He’d marry her. He’d gotten himself so enmired that there was no way out now, not, at least, any way that would allow him to look in the mirror ever again. Her life would be short. His stomach heaved in self-disgust at the thought.
Anyway, by the time that happened, his career would be finished, at least with Barbara’s firm. The generous leave of absence had long since run out, and her voice over the phone had become more and more remote, her conversation liberally laced with “Joe did this” and “Joe says that,” Joe being the young man she’d hired to take Brian’s place when Brian eventually took hers.
He turned over on his side, willing himself not to think about the cases he’d prepared so carefully, that still mattered despite the girl lying near death a couple of miles away. Joe could never invest the same emotional commitment into Brian’s causes—he’d have causes of his own.
With the sense of resignation toward the future marriage to Sharlie came a new awareness of the element in his attachment to her that transcended even her deterioration—mysterious dovetailing of fates that felt so inevitable that Brian suddenly recognized that if he’d been born an aborigine in the outback of Australia, he’d nonetheless be lying here in this very bed tonight contemplating his marriage to Sharlie Converse.
Finally, lulled by the monotonous murmuring from next door, he fell asleep and dreamed of Susan on the tennis court, serving him a ball that, as it whirled toward him, changed into a grinning jack-o’-lantern.
Chapter 37
Margaret sat in the waiting room while Walter went into Sharlie’s room alone. He came out a few moments later, and Margaret noticed with a shock how deeply the lines beside his mouth had eroded the square cheeks.
“She’s …” he began, then lifted his hands helplessly. Margaret took his arm and drew him down the hall toward the elevators. “She’s not our girl anymore, is she?” Walter said.
Margaret put her face against the rough wool of his sports jacket.
“We were wrong to do it,” he went on.
“It didn’t have to work out this way.”
Walter shook his head numbly, and they walked into the evening heat of the parking lot. Margaret stopped him at the car and said, “Let me take you to a place I found.” He gave her a puzzled look. “I’ll tell you how to get there,” she said, sliding into the passenger seat.
Soon they were driving along the rocky-coast road, which ran parallel to the Pacific about a mile inland. Here and there gnarled pine trees stood silhouetted against the darkening sky, their shadows like aged hands twisted by the wind off the sea. The twilight faded quickly, and by the time they turned left toward the sound of the ocean, it was dark and suddenly very windy. The road narrowed, barely wide enough now for one car. Long grass grew to the edge of the crumbling pavement, and it billowed wildly in the headlights’ glare, scratching against the windows. In the tall weeds ahead, two small lights gleamed, and a cat flashed across the road, then disappeared into the grass so quickly that Walter wondered if it had been a shadow or some ghostly mirage. He glanced briefly at Margaret. She was staring straight ahead, and he found himself unwilling to break the silence.
The wind gusted so powerfully now that he struggled to keep on the narrow track. The sky had become a deep, murky black, but intermittently a beam flickered up ahead like heat lightning. The flashing intensified, and soon they emerged from the grass tunnel onto a flat, sandy expanse, dominated by the pale-gray shadow of a lighthouse. It loomed above them, casting its blazing circle into the night.
Walter stopped the car and looked at Margaret with awe in his face. Her eyes were shining. They got out and walked silently, arm in arm, toward the rush of the sea.
They watched the black waves curl into foam, smashing against the rocks. They were silent, hypnotized by the rhythmic recurrence of light against the darkness. After a long time Margaret began to shiver against Walter’s shoulder, and they started back to the car.
Inside, Margaret smiled at him, a girlish, secret-sharing smile he’d long forgotten. Suddenly, before he had time to think, he blurted out, “I’m sorry, Margaret.” Then he sat feeling foolish and confused. What was he apologizing for anyway?
Margaret picked up his hand where it lay tense and flat on the seat, and she pressed it hard against her wet cheek.
Chapter 38
Sharlie woke up at two o’clock in the morning feeling as if something deadly, a poisonous smog, had lifted from her body and floated out her window into the cool night. She put her hands to her cheeks and thought she could make out the lines of her cheekbones. She was flooded with memories of the scene in old movies where a kindly old doctor emerges from the sickroom to tell an anxious family that “the crisis has passed—little Jimmy will be all right.” The compulsion to whoop with joy was tempered only by her awareness of the patients down the hall, whose tenuous grip on life might snap if they were to hear a great, victorious shout from Room 841. She reached for the phone instead.
It took a dozen rings before Brian’s voice mumbled on the other end. She pictured his hair all pressed down against his forehead, making him look like a little boy. He had told her that he slept facedown, and imagining his head burrowed into his pillow, she marveled that he didn’t suffocate in the night.
“What happens is this, Bri,” she said into the phone. “You can sleep on your face because when the sun goes down, you grow gills and breathe through your armpits. I don’t know why I didn’t figure it out before.”
“Ungh erm,” said Brian groggily.
Sharlie went on in her wide-awake voice. “You even talk like something that lives underwater.”
“Sharlie?” He was beginning to wake up.
She said, “Except that you do sleep in the daytime too, sometimes. Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with the sunset. Maybe it’s your alpha waves that trigger the gill response. You think?”
“What time is it?” he murmured.
“I’m not going to tell you because you’ll pull all my plugs. But you saved at least one life by picking up the phone.”
“Yours?”
“No, the lady in 831, who would have died of fright when she heard me scream at the top of my lungs that I FEEL FANTASTIC!” Instantly she was whispering again. “But I had to tell somebody.”
Brian asked, “Who’s on the desk?”
“I don’t know. Vinnie, I guess.”
“I’m coming over.”
“You can’t…”
But the phone clicked, and Sharlie lay there with the receiver buzzing, cradled against her cheek.
She must have fallen asleep for a few minutes, because it seemed as if she’d just gotten off the phone and now there was somebody crawling under her sheet.
“Brian!” she whispered. “How did you ever get in here at this hour?”
He kissed her to keep her quiet. It had been a long time since they’d really kissed each other, a
nd once they got started, her curiosity about hospital security began to feel irrelevant Brian ran his hands down her backbone and said, “You could use a pizza.”
She moaned. “Oh, pizza …”
“You’ll have one for breakfast,” he said and kissed her again, murmuring something about oral gratification.
“They’re going to catch us,” she protested, as he moved his hand along her side and down her hip.
“The shame of it. Think they’ll make us get married?”
“Oh, my,” she said.
“Oh, your what?” he muttered, but he didn’t let her answer.
Margaret and Walter held hands as they entered Sharlie’s room. They stood beside her bed and waited for her to open her eyes, enjoying the sound of her easy breathing. Finally she looked up at them but then quickly turned her head aside to face the wall.
“What’s the matter, Chuck?” Walter asked.
There was no response.
“Are you all right, darling?” Margaret pressed.
Silence. Margaret looked up at Walter in alarm and whispered, “We’d better call the nurse.”
Sharlie turned her head to glare at them. “Don’t,” she said. “Just get out.”
Walter made a shocked, choking sound that was almost a laugh. But Margaret heard the fury in her daughter’s voice and began to move away from the bed, pulling Walter by the hand. After they had left, Sharlie stared at the center of her door where the image of their bewildered faces lingered, until finally the rage in her eyes turned to fear, and she began to cry.
Sharlie sat in her wheelchair looking out Dr. Rosen’s window. Today the view behind the soft red hair was blurred with rain. The tree limbs bowed under the heavy downpour, and Sharlie felt warm and safe in the cluttered room.
“Have the side effects of the medication disappeared?” Dr. Rosen was asking.
Sharlie nodded. The doctor watched the reflection from the window wash waves of shadows across her patient’s face.
“Then how do you account for the episode?”
Sharlie sat withdrawn inside her clouded face.
“It’s unusual for a postoperative reaction to occur at this late date,” Dr. Rosen pressed.
Sharlie nodded again but kept her face averted.
“What is it, Charlotte?”
Sharlie’s eyes fastened on the doctor for a moment, their dark light disturbing the pale fragility of her face.
“If I told you, you’d lock me up,” she answered softly.
“I doubt it. Try me.”
Sharlie opened her mouth, attempting unsuccessfully to speak, then smiled, embarrassed. “I know it’s ridiculous. But I can’t persuade my head.”
Dr. Rosen waited, and Sharlie faltered, “I think, I mean, I believe that … that man is affecting what I do.”
“You mean the donor.”
Sharlie nodded.
“How?”
“By being inside.”
“No,” said Dr. Rosen. “How affecting what you do?”
“I get this swelling feeling like I’m all hot and bursting and I can’t control it. It’s not just my parents. I was dreadful to poor Dr. Diller.” Her face flamed with mortification. “My God, the man saved my life. He performed a miracle for me, and I humiliated him in front of all those people.”
“What about throwing the newspaper at Brian? Was that you or the donor?”
“Him,” Sharlie said firmly, then with a small, frightened smile. “I’m losing my grip, aren’t I?” But her eyes weren’t smiling, and Dr. Rosen recognized the terror in them. Sharlie didn’t wait for an answer, just kept on talking now, the words pouring out and tumbling over one another like too many hatboxes when the closet door is finally opened.
“The rejection, I think I did that to myself. It seemed like I had to get rid of him or make some kind of compromise and accept him as part of me, and I couldn’t do that, and my body knew, and even now I don’t see how I can live with this. I mean, the man was a homicidal maniac, and how am I supposed to cope with that? Even when I didn’t know for a fact I still had this creepy … communion. Oh, it sounds so ludicrous, I feel like a perfect asshole…” She looked up at Dr. Rosen in surprise. “I never used that word in my life. Excuse me.”
“How did it feel, saying it out loud?”
Sharlie gave her a shy smile, but instantly fear replaced it, darkening her face. “Where is this going to take me? That man was crazy.”
Dr. Rosen’s voice was soft. “Charlotte, most transplant patients have strong emotional responses to their operations. Some, like you, experience a feeling of identification with their donors. The adjustment takes time. Give yourself a chance to heal. Don’t fight it. You can damage yourself.”
Sharlie looked thoughtful. The rain had tapered off, and the shadow from the gardenia tree reached through the window to cast a dark web across the girl’s face.
“Are you angry with your parents?” Dr. Rosen asked.
Sharlie’s eyes were wet. “They’ve kept me alive. They’ve given up so much.”
“But are you angry with them?”
“How could I be?” Sharlie whispered.
“Do you still plan to get married?” Sharlie’s face lifted a little, and the psychiatrist smiled. “Well, then?”
Sharlie smiled back. “Well, then…
The room seemed to be a kind of ballroom, an expanse of polished floor and a balcony along three walls suspended halfway to the lofty ceiling. Benches with red plush cushions were set in rows. Cologned, clean-shaven men sat beside women in flowered hats. At the front of the hall was a stage or altar, upon which, pushed to one side, stood a shiny black coffin. It was open, and she reclined inside it, head raised on a satin pillow so that she could watch the proceedings. Organ music played softly—Bach’s “Sheep May Safely Graze”—and then it suddenly swelled, and all the guests rose, turning toward the entrance behind them. At first she didn’t recognize the music, but then she realized it was the Wedding March, only distorted into a minor key and played very slowly.
Brain appeared in the doorway, and she sat up in the coffin, watching him approach her, straight and handsome, a young woman holding his arm and leaning against him. She was blond and suntanned and glowing, and instead of flowers, she carried a bouquet of diminutive tennis racquets.
When they reached the altar, Brian glanced at Sharlie, who gazed at him from her satin perch. His face was fond, as if to say, “I’m glad you’re here to share my happiness, dear friend.” Sharlie smiled back at him, her throat constricted with longing. Then Brian turned to his bride and kissed her.
Sharlie awoke into the semidarkness of her room and spent the rest of the night watching her window change from black to gray and finally to the reassuring clear blue of daylight.
Chapter 39
The prospect of a wedding sent the medical center into an upheaval unlike anything since Dr. Lewis’s first successful transplant operation. Everyone wanted to get into the act, from the chief of surgery himself down to the people who cleaned garbage cans in the kitchen.
“It’s like I’m royalty or something,” Sharlie complained unconvincingly to Mary MacDonald. They were in the solarium leafing through Bride magazine. Mary stopped at a photograph of an emaciated mannequin in a severe white gown.
“This one looks like she could use a transplant herself,” she muttered.
“Queen of Hearts,” Sharlie said dreamily.
“Come on, concentrate,” Mary said. “You’re going to be walking down the aisle in your birthday suit at this rate.”
“Brian would like that”
Sharlie stood and cinched her hospital gown at the waist, pirouetting. “Maybe I’ll wear this…”
“My ass you’ll wear that,” Mary grumbled.
“One would think you weren’t enjoying this, Mary. Maybe I ought to elope.”
“Just you try it, my girl,” Mary said menacingly, and Sharlie grinned at her.
Vinnie arrived with a tray of medications for Sharlie. “Is it true we’re all going to come?” The young nurse was seven months pregnant and moved awkwardly.
“They’re going to work out a rotating schedule,” Sharlie said, swallowing a blue capsule, “so everybody can stay for part of the ceremony. We’re making it extra long.”
“It’s so wonderful,” Vinnie chattered as she poured out another cup of water for Sharlie. “I bet they do your life story on television or something. I mean, it’s so fantastic. I bet the guy’s mother is really happy. It makes up a little for what he did…”
Mary’s head snapped up from the magazine, and she gave Vinnie a ferocious look.
“I’m sorry. I forgot … I didn’t mean—”
Mary broke in, “Give Miss Converse her medication and get out please.”
Vinnie seemed to be paralyzed, so Mary grabbed the pills and yelled, “Move, girl.”
Sharlie swallowed automatically, her eyes wide. Vinnie rushed out She tripped at the doorway, nearly spilling her tray. Mary and Sharlie sat absolutely still, like overgrown children playing statue. Neither looked at the other until finally Mary breathed a heavy sigh.
