by Hugo Wilcken
I went back to the front room, and hunted around for cigarettes. At the back of a kitchen drawer I found an ancient packet, along with a book of matches on which the name “Le Zinc” was printed. The French café where Abby and I used to meet up. I was lighting my cigarette with matches from a place that no longer existed. The harsh, stale taste of the cigarette and flow of nicotine jerked me temporarily out of the shock, back into the world. Of course, the fact that he’d gone into a coma wasn’t at all unlikely, I reasoned. The man had had so many barbiturates over the past couple of days. Totally abnormal amounts, compared with what they did in the psychiatric wards I knew. At those levels, dosage was hardly an exact science. I should never have left him alone in the room; I should have monitored him throughout the night. I should have had a shot of adrenaline at the ready. I should have called an ambulance, I should have done any number of things. Instead, I’d lain on the floor next door, lost in a haze of nonsleep.
I could still do all those things. I could still go down to the pharmacy, write myself an adrenaline script. I could still call an ambulance. Perhaps I would. But for the moment, I felt incapable of movement, like in a dream. I wondered what would happen if I did nothing at all. The man had murmured when I’d shaken him, which meant it wasn’t a profound coma. It would probably bottom out. He would resurface, regain consciousness sometime in the next few hours. Then again, it could also go the other way. He could fall further in, ever deeper, until finally he stopped breathing. I thought back to other coma patients I’d dealt with, as a young intern. There’d been a man, mid-fifties, who’d been unconscious for forty-eight hours following a stroke. He’d spent a month in the hospital, slowly recovering. Then came the day to leave. He’d carefully dressed himself and said goodbye to the nurses. As he’d walked haltingly out into the main hall, he’d turned, stopped, and said: “I think I’m going to die now.” He’d dropped on the spot.
The silence of the room was broken by the faint sound of barrel-organ music, borne on the wind and distorted by it. Sitting at the table smoking, I could see the lower half of the man’s body on the bed, or at least the shape of it under the blankets, looming in the half-light. I remembered helping him out of the Stevens Institute. It felt choreographed now, the way it had all happened, the way the cab had turned up at the exact instant I’d needed it. I’d said to the man: “I’ll help you.”
I smoked one cigarette after another until I finished the packet. I stared at the matchbook and suddenly a fantasy I’d once entertained after Abby had left came back—of her being murdered, and me hunting down the murderer. The perfect fantasy, allowing my ultimate revenge on her, and then saving her as well.
I finally forced myself to go back and check on him. I did a reflex test, got him to murmur again. I persuaded myself that he’d come out of it well enough, without further intervention. Could I trust my own judgment, though? Wasn’t it a little too convenient to think that nothing needed to be done? The sound of the ringing phone tore through the morning, pulling me out of my self-absorption. I waited for it to stop, but it rang on and on until I could bear it no more and I picked up the receiver.
“Dr. Manne?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Mrs. Esterhazy here. Excuse me for calling you at home. But I went to pick up my husband from the hospital this morning. They told me you’d taken him away, last night.”
“How did you get my number?”
“They gave it to me, at the hospital. They told me to call you.”
“I see. Yes, he’s under my care at the moment.”
“Where is he, Doctor? When can I see him? When can he come home?”
“Where are you? Are you still at the hospital?”
“No. I’m at home.”
“Downtown? Where we met before?”
“That’s right.”
“Can I ask you a question? When did you last see your husband?”
“I visited him yesterday afternoon. At the hospital. That’s when they told me he could leave today.”
“You’re sure it was him?”
“I … Of course I’m sure.”
“Will you be at home for the next hour or so?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be over right away. We have to talk.”
I put down the receiver, but then immediately picked it up again, and dialed my office number.
“Miss Stearn. I’m afraid I’m still unwell. I won’t be coming in today. Could you please cancel my appointments for the day?”
I could hear the surprise and uncertainty in her voice as she replied. It was true that in the two or three years she’d worked for me, I hadn’t so much as taken an afternoon off, not until last Friday. But her astonishment somehow goaded me on, and without having quite thought it through, I heard myself continuing, “In fact, my doctor told me that what I need is complete rest. I think it would be for the best if you canceled my appointments for the next two weeks. As it is, I don’t think I have much scheduled after the current week.”
“Yes, but … of course, but … what will I do, Doctor? I mean, while you’re not here?”
“This week, I’m sure there are administrative duties to keep you occupied. Next week … didn’t you say something about a wedding in California? Your sister or something?”
“You told me you couldn’t give me the time off.”
“I’ve changed my mind. Take a week’s paid leave.”
I showered and dressed in minutes, in a daze. So that was it. I’d told my secretary I was off for two weeks, but the fact was that I’d finished with my office, my practice. A wave of conflicting emotions hit me. Relief, anxiety. Again that sense of the insubstantiality of things. I made one last check on the man in my bed. No real change, although his breathing seemed a little more regular now. I imagined him waking up in a strange room, in strange clothes, projected into another life, wondering what on earth had happened to him. I should leave him a note, perhaps. I cast around for pen and paper, but couldn’t find anything. What could I write, in any case? In all probability I’d be back—with or without Mrs. Esterhazy—before he awoke. But what if I were wrong? What if he woke up, and simply walked out of my apartment, swallowed up by the city? There would be something perfect about that. He couldn’t do it, though, because once I’d left, and locked the door behind me, he’d be unable to get out. I fished around in a drawer for the spare key, which I placed on the small table by the entrance, where he couldn’t miss it. I hardly wanted to be accused of holding a man in my apartment against his will, on top of everything else.
On the way out, I opened my mailbox in the lobby. It was part of my morning ritual, and I only realized its absurdity once I’d done it. I pulled out a black-bordered card with the details of Abby’s funeral. Tomorrow morning, at a church on the Upper West Side. Speelman had scrawled something over the top: “I have an urgent matter to discuss with you. If you can’t be at the funeral, please call me on the number below.”
I was walking toward the subway. I was floating, in shock from the events of the past thirty-six hours. The sun had climbed over the buildings opposite, its harsh light exposing the city with an implacable clarity. Despite the noise and movement, the street seemed silent and static, as if certain receptors inside me had been switched off. I had the impression that the passing people might be actors, precisely reenacting some day that had happened maybe sixty years before. An old man was walking down the street. Decades ago, he’d been a young man, perhaps walking down the same street. A mother was pushing a baby in a pram. Far from being newborn, the baby looked impossibly ancient. Street lamps, fire hydrants, traffic lights—all stage trappings, placed here and there, geometric objects without meaning.
Once I’d entered the subway, the shock dissipated again. Now I was filled with practical concerns. What was I going to say to Mrs. Esterhazy? Would she tell me anything about the man in my apartment? I wondered whether her phone call hadn’t been some kind of ploy, to get me to leave the house. After all, how ha
d she even gotten hold of my home number? The hospital certainly wouldn’t have had it.
I fished about in my pocket for a nickel for the turnstile. My wallet was in there, but it felt bulkier than usual. I pulled it out, and was momentarily puzzled to see that it wasn’t mine. It must belong to the man in my bed: I had the vaguest of memories of seeing it on his bedside table at the Stevens Institute, and sweeping it into my pocket while trying to help him up. I looked inside: a couple of dollar bills, various business cards, a phone number scribbled on a scrap of paper, receipts, a social security card in the name of Smith. There was a photo as well. A passport-sized picture of a smiling young woman. The kind you might well keep in your wallet, of your wife or fiancée. Judging by the hairstyle, it dated from before the war. But it wasn’t Mrs. Esterhazy, I was sure of that. I closed the wallet and shoved it back deep in my pocket—I’d study the contents more carefully later. I wondered what I’d done with my own wallet, and then saw it in my mind’s eye, sitting on the bathroom shelf, beside the water glass and toothbrush.
I was heading toward the platform, jostling through the thousands of people on the way to their offices. I, too, had an office. I had patients I’d been scheduled to see, whom my secretary was probably at this very moment phoning, to cancel the appointments. I couldn’t think of them right now. They belonged to another life, a former existence. The mystery into which I’d been plunged, the Esterhazy case, that was what seemed real. I jerked my head around. All of a sudden I thought I’d caught a glimpse of the man in the fedora a few steps behind me. I’d have turned back and tried to catch him, if I hadn’t been practically borne forward by the tide of people moving along the platform. The downtown train was twisting its way along a curve, heading into the station, almost insect-like with its two beaming headlights. I was standing right at the edge now. Hands lightly pressed against my back. With the train only yards from me, they gave a violent shove. I fought it for a second or two, tried to keep my balance, grabbed at the passengers beside me. The train headlights dazzled me. The moment seemed to stretch out into eternity. The image in my mind was that of the café where Abby and I used to go, the one that was now something else. Everything had once been something else.
Then I let go, and swung off into the emptiness.
PART TWO
1
My eyes opened to a blazing whiteness. After a minute or two of accustoming myself to the light, I saw that I was staring up at a ceiling. Later, I realized that I was only seeing out of one eye. I experimentally moved a hand to the left side of my face and touched some material. With difficulty I turned my head, one way, then the other. I was wearing a pale green open gown; there was a drip in my other arm. The room was empty, other than the bed I was in, a bedside table with nothing on it, and the drip stand. I supposed that the drip contained some sort of sedative, since when I came to, I’d felt deadened, cotton-headed, unable to think clearly. It wasn’t necessarily an unpleasant feeling. At the same time, I was aware of something darker at my periphery. An anguish, which remained just out of reach.
The door opened. A nurse and a male orderly came in. I struggled to sit up, say something, but nothing would come out. The orderly stood by the door while the nurse expertly gave me a bed bath then eased me onto the bedpan. I had the impression she’d done this to me before, many times even, only I’d been too drugged to notice. When it was all done, I tried to speak again. The nurse smiled, shook her head and said: “There’ll be plenty of time for that later.” She inspected the bandage on my head, wrote something on a clipboard, then went out again. Once she’d gone, I lay there replaying the whole sequence of events in my mind. I kept repeating to myself her sole utterance: “There’ll be plenty of time for that later.”
Over the next few days, the periods of consciousness became longer, my powers of reasoning sharper. A dull ache in my left temple was with me almost permanently. I’d had a head injury, that much was obvious. I assumed that they’d been keeping me in an induced coma, and were now letting me come out of it gradually, with the sedation increasingly lighter each day. In my bed, in this blank room, I felt almost fetal.
A week or so passed. By now, I was usually awake when the nurse came to wash and administer to me. She’d also started bringing some sort of broth, which she said I was to eat, although I rarely felt hungry. I was thin, far thinner than I’d been before my hospitalization. Sometimes I’d catch sight of my spindly legs or arms and feel a surprise and almost a disgust that they were mine. My powers of speech were returning; I could answer the nurse’s simple questions, formulate my own. But speaking had become something of an ordeal. Every time I started to say something, I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was there beside me, throwing his voice, making it appear to come out of my own mouth, but in a way that was not quite synchronized. I’d hesitate after the first word or two, disorientated by this effect, and it was some time before I could rid myself of the illusion.
A doctor came with the nurse one morning. With his pince-nez and gray, pointed beard, he was the caricature of the aging physician—just as the nurse, too, seemed to be a caricature, with her brisk manner, matronly bust, hair severely pinned back. She undid my bandages and the doctor inspected my head, without addressing a word to me. He murmured something to the nurse, and then abruptly disappeared. The nurse carried on washing me as usual. At first I’d thought the doctor had simply gone to the corridor to grab something, as the examination had been so extremely brief. But once the nurse had finished washing me, she too left, and I was alone once more.
How long had I been here? I guessed at least a couple of weeks, but it might just as well have been a couple of months. Whenever I’d asked the nurse anything beyond the immediately practical, she’d quickly shut me up with one or another of her trite phrases: “There’ll be plenty of time for that later” or “You must rest up and not tire yourself out with all these questions.” After a few days of this I’d decided to be persistent about one thing at least. I wanted to see my face. And now every time the nurse came, I asked for a mirror. At first she smiled and shook her head. Later, she became annoyed, and in the end she simply ignored the request. But then, just when I’d given up hope, she appeared one morning and produced a compact mirror.
A queasy dread invaded me as the nurse unwound the bandage from the left side of my face. And yet with that first glance in the small mirror, the initial reaction was relief. It didn’t seem as bad as I’d feared. My left temple had been shaved and there was a line of staples across the side of my head. It looked gruesome, but once the staples were removed and my hair had grown back, there probably wouldn’t be anything to see. Worse, though, was the scar that split my cheek. It hadn’t healed well—the damaged skin hadn’t properly knitted together. Why had they stapled my head, but not stitched up my cheek? The scar was surrounded by big red blotches. Perhaps the wound had become too infected to stitch. In time, the blotches would fade, the scar too. In a few months, my face probably wouldn’t look too awful. It wouldn’t be the same, either. It didn’t have the same balance as before. When I tried out various expressions, they came out different. Staring into the mirror, all I could feel was puzzlement. Not because my face now looked like somebody else’s, but because I felt strangely myself.
Memories came back slowly, in haphazard fashion, as one might blindly pull balls from a bag. The feelings returned first. One morning I awoke overwhelmed with sadness. Only hours later did Abby’s death come back to me. Long after I’d been struck by a horrified bewilderment, the image of the comatose man in my apartment flashed into my mind. When I finally recalled the push onto the subway tracks, my terror was mixed with a sense of liberation that I was at a loss to explain to myself.
My world had shrunk to this bare room. Strange to think that outside the door, the life of the hospital went on. And that beyond that, there was a city with its millions of people, whose fates were utterly unconnected to mine. A small window that looked onto a courtyard was my sole evidence of
this outside world. Sometimes, even it felt as if it were not an opening but a screen onto which images were being projected. Sitting up I could see French windows opposite, leading onto a tiny balcony with an equally tiny washing line. Every morning, a woman in a housecoat would fling the windows open. She had a trim figure and dark hair in a bob; I imagined her to be in her early thirties, but actually she was too far away for me to tell. There’d be days on which she’d hang out washing. Other days, she’d simply stand on the balcony only large enough for one person, and stare out, smoking a cigarette. I fancied I could perceive a certain reflective melancholy in her as she smoked, staring out onto the courtyard below. From those ten minutes she spent on the balcony each morning, I tried to construct a life. Judging from the clothes on the washing line, I supposed that she had a husband and a small boy, although I never saw them either. I imagined her in the morning, busily preparing her husband’s breakfast, and getting her son ready for school. And then when she’d finally sent them both out the door, that’s when she’d come on the balcony. It would be her time. A moment of respite before the day properly got going, before washing the breakfast things, the housework, perhaps some menial job to go to. Her few minutes of withdrawal, of blanking out the drudgery of life.
The drip was removed. The periods during which I could sit up without inducing nausea or dizziness became longer. One day I decided to try getting up from my bed. On my feet, I felt fragile, lightheaded, but nothing more. I took a few experimental steps, and found myself by the door. Without thinking I tried the handle—locked. I returned to my bed, exhausted by my little expedition.
The doctor came again, unannounced. This time he stayed longer. He looked at my head, listened to my heart with his stethoscope, asked me to breathe in and out, tapped me here and there to test my reactions. It felt perfunctory, as if he were simply putting on a performance for me. Once he’d finished, he stood there in silence for a minute or so, leaving me perplexed. Finally, he said: “When you sit up, do you feel dizzy?”
