“I’m sure I would,” I say, turning back over.
“Are you in bed?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I reply. “It’s a little early here in the world of the unemployed.”
“Can I come over?”
“No.”
“Come on,” he chides. “I want to see your place.”
“Why?” I ask.
“I want to see what you’re really like. See what books you have. Go snooping through your medicine cabinet. That sort of thing.” I think of bringing Sam to my old apartment, the one that held so much of me. David would learn nothing from this moneyed, sanitized version of my life.
“Sorry to disappoint you, but you’re not going to find out much about me here,” I reply. Then a thought occurs to me. “Hey, you want to see what I’m really like?”
The painting hangs in the Museum of Contemporary Art, where it has ever since Trevor won a commission for the lobby of the Wrigley Building two years ago and became the most in-demand young artist in Chicago. Penny was apoplectic about the whole thing, of course. It was all I could do to keep her from crashing her car when I told her.
“That pretentious weasel doesn’t have half of your talent,” she’d yelled, her voice careening around the interior of the little vehicle. “Why aren’t you more pissed about this?”
I hadn’t been, not at the time. Perhaps because I knew, in the back of my mind, that it was only a matter of time before it would be my work hanging in the galleries and the historic lobbies. Perhaps because I knew that Penny was right, that his talent couldn’t touch mine. That my time would come.
I’d come to visit the painting every once in a while before the transfer, as if it were an abandoned child, left in the city its maker had outgrown. Trevor was in New York, last I heard, dating a chef from the Food Network and failing to follow up on his early success. Now, standing in front of the painting again sends a low thrill through me, like running into an ex-lover on the street and smiling at each other a little too long. But there’s pain there, too. Because I can understand what Trevor must be feeling now, to have all the potential in the world and worry it will never be realized.
I’m quiet as David’s eyes move over it, taking in the lines, the warm color of my skin in the lamplight, the lavender tendrils of my hair, the tattoos on my arm and wrists and hip. I have an odd sense of déjà vu, of standing in front of this painting with a man and testing his reaction.
“This is you?” he asks.
“About five years ago, yeah.”
“You were a bit of a punk, huh?”
“Yes, grandpa. A bit.”
He adjusts the Cubs cap he’s wearing, no doubt an attempt to disguise himself out in the world. I wonder what he thinks of me now, now that he’s seen who I am, who I was. I wonder if he knows what he’s gotten himself into.
“It’s not how I imagined you,” he says.
“How exactly did you imagine me?” I’m a little afraid of the answer. He shifts again, and it’s then that I realize he’s uncomfortable. The great David Jenkins is uncomfortable here, standing in front of a nude painting with the girl it portrays standing next to him. Except this time, unlike last time with Sam, I doubt anyone would make the connection between me and her. How I miss her, I think, looking up at those dark lines.
“I don’t know. Not so rough, I guess.”
“Rough?” I can see his expression hardening in front of me, like he’s making the conscious decision to be a bastard. I’ve seen this look before.
“I never understood why perfectly attractive young women would want to mark themselves up like that.”
“You know, you have a real gift for paying someone a compliment while you insult them. Is that something that comes with the office?”
“All I’m saying is, it’s not my cup of tea. I’ve never been a fan of that sort of thing.”
“Well,” I say, injecting as much acid into my voice as I can muster, “Lucky I didn’t do it for men like you.”
“Did Sam like it? The tattoos and the piercings, and having a girlfriend who doesn’t mind stripping down for some schmuck with a paintbrush who couldn’t get into a decent college?” he asks. His expression is so smug, so painfully superior, that the desire to spit in his face is barely within my control.
“Even if he didn’t, he liked everything else.” It’s absurd, to be defending Sam, after everything. To be defending our relationship to the man I’ve used to break it apart.
“Not anymore, apparently.”
I walk away from him then, because staying for even one moment more would break the last thread of my control. It’s not that I’m afraid of the ferocity of my anger, or the ramifications of screaming at him in public. It’s that I’m afraid I might cry, the pressure of my anger is so intense it closes my throat, and crying is the last thing I want to do in front of David. It would ruin it, to cry in front of him, to put him in the position of having to apologize or, god forbid, comfort me. This, this interaction I have with him, it only works if I can hate him. Hating him makes it better. And even as I leave him there, winding my way through the exhibits until I reach the lobby, banging through the doors into the bracing air of the street outside, even then, even though he’s a bastard, and I certainly know better, I’m already anticipating the next time we’ll meet.
Linda
I go to see Dr. Shah. I’ve always liked Dr. Shah the best of all my doctors. I was surprised by her age when I first encountered her in the hospital, when she leaned over my still, supine anchor of a body. She comes into the examination room smelling like bubblegum, her hair held up haphazardly in a tortoise clip, her white coat loose over a precariously short pink dress. She is a half-decade younger than I am, though she possesses a list of accomplishments that would have been impressive for a doctor twice her age. Now she’s as fresh and enthusiastic as ever, almost comically so considering the program she’s charged with overseeing.
“So how’s it going, Linda?” she asks, perching on the stool across from where I sit, her eyes wide under thick, long eyelashes.
“Well, I’m still on my feet,” I say with a meager smile.
“Phenomenal, isn’t it?”
“Most days,” I reply.
She nods, sagely. There’s a small imprint on her nose that I’m sure once held a piercing.
“Having a hard time? Let me say first, it’s very normal for survivors to have a difficult time reentering their lives in the beginning. You’ve been through a very intense physical and psychological trauma, even if it wasn’t in this particular body.” She speaks in the way I imagine a sorority girl might when explaining the house rules to new pledges. But I listen with rapt attention because I know her manner belies an almost savant-like understanding of medicine.
“I’m pregnant,” I say, all at once, the way I couldn’t with Connie on the street. And then I think I’ve said absolutely the wrong thing, because Dr. Shah’s brow creases so severely I wonder if it makes her forehead ache.
“Pregnant,” she says, and then everything in her forehead smoothes out and she smiles, a little less exuberantly than before, but no less genuinely. “That’s wonderful Linda. Congratulations.”
“The problem is, I think,” I say, stumbling a bit in the middle. “I think maybe I don’t want to go through with it.”
“With the pregnancy?” she asks, as if I could be talking about anything else.
“I think it’s too soon after the transfer,” I say, trying to remember all the things that Connie said that made her argument seem so bulletproof. “I’ve only just gotten my life back. I don’t think I can handle any more complications.”
Dr. Shah taps her forefinger to her lips. I look down at her from my perch and wonder if I’ve ever seen the bubbly light in her so dimmed.
“The thing is, Linda,” she says, looking up at me with her huge, earnest eyes. “I don’t have authorization to allow you to terminate a pregnancy.”
“What?” The examination room seems to be growing colder by the minu
te, the harsh bite of alcohol in the air chilling the insides of my lungs.
“I would have to get authorization from the SUBlife committee to even prescribe the most basic of medications to you. I don’t have authorization to perform a surgical procedure, much less terminate a pregnancy.” It’s as if she’s explaining the rules of bridge. It’s all I can do not to pull on my clothes and run from the room.
“Can you get authorization?” I ask, my voice a little more pinched than a moment ago.
“Linda, the sort of data this pregnancy provides the study is literally unprecedented. I can’t see them approving anything that would limit the sort of knowledge they could gain from this.”
“It’s my body,” I whisper. She nods, looking a little sick.
“Of course it is, of course it is. But in the paperwork you signed before the transfer, you specifically consented to allow the SUBlife committee discretion in your medical treatment for the next five years.”
“My husband.”
“What?” she asks.
“My husband signed that paperwork. Not me.” I must be pale. I must be shaking. Something. Because she rises quickly from her seat, placing a steadying hand on each of my shoulders.
“Think of this as an opportunity, Linda. To begin again with your family. This could be the beginning of something . . .” she searches for the word, and breaks into her cheerleader grin again. “Something great.”
I consider how wonderful it must be, to be a brilliant young doctor, now that we live in the time of a miracle cure. When there are fewer lost causes, when nothing is incurable. I think of the future, a future in which people will only fear the most acute sort of deaths. Car accidents. Gunshot wounds. Unexpected, irreversible conditions. How lucky she is to be able to administer the cure without needing it herself.
I nod, giving her my well-practiced smile. Make her think it will be all right, that it could even be great, though none of it is true. It’s the story I’ve told myself every day since the transfer, but none of it is true.
Hannah
The story breaks on a Thursday morning and it takes me a moment to realize it’s Sam’s name in the byline. I’m too caught up in the fact that it’s happened, so soon, and so completely. The Chicago Tribune has published a piece about the Northwestern SUBlife trials. And worse, it names Congressman David Jenkins as one of the study’s participants.
I’m actually a few paragraphs into the article, skimming through a brief description of the transfer procedure and details about David’s illness, before I recognize the writing. I’ve read so much of Sam’s work—everything, really, that he’s published since we’ve been together—that the voice is immediately familiar. I barely have to glance at the byline to know that it’s him.
And, of course, it’s all there. Everything I’ve mentioned to Sam in the months since the transfer, all of those little details I’d foolishly assumed I could trust him to keep secret or, at the very least, not write about for the papers. Mercifully, the rest of us are only mentioned in passing, as the “three other members of Jenkins’s support group, each with their own terminal or degenerative condition.” But David is drawn in pitiless detail, everything from the number of times he’s voted to cut Medicaid, to allegations that he used his political influence to buy his way into the pilot program.
And there’s more. Things I didn’t know, paragraphs I have to re-read standing up at my table after I’ve kicked over the nearest chair. Confirmed phone calls from David to an official at the FDA. Threatening calls. Mounting evidence that David has been trying to keep SUBlife from being approved.
I stuff the paper into my purse and bang my way out of the apartment. There is only one place in the world I can be right now. And even though group doesn’t begin for another three hours, I have the sneaking suspicion that I won’t be the only one arriving early today.
There are already protesters outside the hospital. It’s almost impressive that they can congregate so quickly, considering the story just broke this morning. As if they’re all part of some sort of Evangelical call-tree, like mothers who phone each other when school is cancelled because of snow. Maybe all it takes is a phone call to mobilize twenty people who don’t mind screaming at strangers in the name of Jesus.
They have signs. Some of them hold the newspaper in front of them, David’s campaign-smile showing in the muddy black and white of its photo. Others have hurriedly painted posters in the same shade of bright red. Abomination. Sin. Satan. I can only see single words, something in my brain has clicked off, something that has made it difficult to comprehend anything beyond single words and the mass of angry voices being hurled at anyone who dares enter the hospital. Adrenaline, I think, feeling my heart still pounding as I get through the doors and escape into an elevator. Fight or flight. It’s not important to be able to read when you’re running for your life.
I’m the last to arrive, in fact. Even Dr. Bernard sits with his hands cupping his jaw, waiting for me to appear. I feel like I might be late, forgetting for a moment that none of us are supposed to be here yet, not for hours, but I am too cracked open to think clearly. David is on his feet, though, and my vision tunnels around him. I fish the paper out of my purse.
“What have you been doing?” I ask, my voice so much calmer than I would have expected.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he replies, not calm, not even a little. Almost shouting, stepping toward me. I throw the paper at him, halting him as he bats it away.
“Okay,” Dr. Bernard says, on his feet as well now, stepping between us. “I think we all need to take a minute here.”
“Yeah, sure, doc,” Connie says. She’s sitting with her arms folded, unreadable. I’d think she was bored, if I didn’t know her so well. Linda’s face is half covered, her nose and mouth eclipsed by both of her hands.
“You think I don’t know who Sam Foster is?” David yells, flushed down to his collar, the veins standing cable-rigid in his arms as he gestures at me. I realize, for the first time despite the nights that we’ve spent unclothed together, that David has become physically formidable in these months since the transfer. “Your self-righteous journalist boyfriend? You think I don’t know where he got his information? Where he got my name?”
This is not my fault. He cannot possibly make this my fault. I’m worried, suddenly, that I might cry. It was a lifelong annoyance, the tendency of my old body to dissolve into stupid, useless tears when I was angry. That particular weakness seems to have trailed me into this new form, and it makes me doubly furious, as I swallow against the raw ache in my throat, that this body has retained all of the wrong things.
“Well I certainly didn’t tell him that you’ve been trying to keep SUBlife from getting FDA approval.” Good, my voice has some volume now. I think Linda may be crying, but I can’t stop. “What is it, David? Is it okay with God that you saved yourself as long as you make sure no one else can?”
“You rotten bitch.”
I can’t recognize any of the man I’ve known in David. I have known his wants, the way every bit of him feels. But I’ve never before known his anger, the venomous rage in him. He’s probably more alive than I’ve ever seen him.
“All right, that’s enough,” Dr. Bernard snaps. Then one quiet voice comes through, clearer than all of the rest.
“What are we going to do?” Linda asks, raising her face from her hands. She’s not crying, after all. I wonder what it would take to make this woman cry, this woman who has withstood more horror than the rest of us can imagine. “Did you see the people outside? How are we going to be able to meet here, with them out there?”
David laughs, a bitter sound. He reaches down and picks up the newspaper at his feet. “This? This means that everyone knows what’s happening here. You honestly think we’re going to be able to keep meeting after this? Come on, Linda. That’s naive even for you.”
“Get out, David.” It’s Connie who speaks. She’s calm. Her face is a study in well-controlled wrath, and
it’s a fearsome thing to behold. “Get out of here. This is over for you now.” We are all still, waiting to see what comes next.
“Fine. Fuck it,” David says, pulling a cigarette out of the pack in his jacket pocket and lighting it up right there, his pose careless, flouting the rules. There he is, the boy who would joyride in stolen cars as a teenager. No wonder I was drawn to him. “It’s not like this was doing any goddamn good anyway,” he says. Then he drops the barely smoked cigarette on the floor, stomps it out with the toe of his shoe, and heads for the door. Dr. Bernard sits back down, smoothing out the fabric of his dress pants as if he’s been in a scuffle. I, too, drop into one of the open seats.
“What do we do now?” Linda repeats, looking from Dr. Bernard to Connie to me.
“I’ll confer with the other doctors involved in the study,” Dr. Bernard says. “This is a serious breach of confidentiality. And if the lottery was compromised, it might put the whole study at risk. The FDA votes in only a few months . . .” He chews on the inside of his cheek as his eyes land in middle space, vacant with the furious calculations that must be going on in his head.
“No one else recognized him?” I ask, but no one answers. I am left to wonder what it means, that I’m the only one who knew exactly who he was, all along.
June
Hannah
I run into Linda at Trader Joe’s. At first, I can’t place her. She’s out of context, away from the hospital and the rest of the group, dressed in ill-fitting jeans and a baggy T-shirt. She has her kids with her, a skinny, sullen-looking girl in a Chicago Sky T-shirt and a boy whose smile reveals half-grown-in front teeth. We spot each other at the same time, at opposite ends of the aisle. At first we both hesitate, unsure of the rules, if we’re allowed to acknowledge each other after everything that has happened. But then Linda starts toward me and so I maneuver around other families with carts until we meet in front of the shelves of dried fruit.
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