by Samuel Shem
Now I took on the job happily, even with zest. Holding this ‘us,’ this connection, right here right now in this suddenly fine moment. Holding this connection as a father learns to hold not so much a crying baby but the connection with a crying baby, a baby overtired and needing to be held and rocked to sleep, a baby who can sense if the arms around her are constricted with anger and trying to control her, or if the arms are open to merely being there with her. If the arms are angry and controlling, the baby will struggle against sleep no matter how tired she is. If the arms are relaxed and open, she will ease down into the feather down of sleep, yes.
‘We’ve had a hard time, Christine. Can we try, together, to understand?’
She looked up at me. I sensed her seeing the depth of my concern. I felt that ‘click’ of opening that I’d felt with Zoe my first night on call.
Click. I saw Christine see it. I sensed her feeling seen. Despite herself, she smiled.
We began to talk about us, and Cherokee. Talk as good friends might, of a mutual friend. Our words were strung together to help hold us. And then all at once we stopped talking and were still. We sat awhile in stillness.
Thwop! Thwop! The sound of tennis balls being hit, coming through the open window, rising from the tennis court below. The sounds were sweet, full of resilience and bounce, reminding me of hearing, through a stethoscope, a healthy heart. The seasons had come round. We both smiled.
She said, ‘You know what you did that helped me the most?’
‘Followed you down to the tennis court.’
‘Yeah.’
‘I felt it was such a dumb thing to do at the time,’ I said. ‘What helped you, about my doing that?’
‘That it was such a dumb thing to do. It showed you were a person. People don’t do smart things all the time, they do dumb things. And you hung in with me, through all the dumb things we both did, through Cherokee and everything, you hung in with me.’
‘We hung in together, yes.’
She sat still again, her hands in her lap. ‘I guess I just don’t want to go through life not knowing if I’ve ever been loved.’
She looked up. Our eyes held. ‘Christine,’ I said, ‘you are loved.’
In the past she would have cried. Sobbed at the smallest sadness. Now she did not. She smiled, as did I. She asked, ‘Why are you leaving?’
‘I was fired.’
‘Fired? You? Why?’
‘Because I kept doing things like following people down to tennis courts.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe you don’t fit in here. I mean you’re basically a sweetie, just trying to understand. I mean the potential, Roy, is there.’
We laughed. ‘We could continue to meet. I’ll have an office outside the hospital.’
‘No. We’ve done everything we needed to do.’ She got up. I did too. She looked me squarely in the eyes and took a step toward me. I thought for a second that she was going to throw her arms around me and hug me. She held out her hand. ‘Thanks,’ she said, her grip firm. ‘You did good.’
‘We did good.’
‘Yes, we did.’ With a certain dignity, she walked out.
Berry and I talked into the small hours of that summery night.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever felt so opened up and alive,’ I said.
‘Imagine if you could live every day like that?’
‘Who could bear it?’
‘How can we bear not to?’
‘Makes me think of how we lived all last year, in China, Italy, Istanbul, Morocco – the intensity of it? Why do we settle for less?’ We were lying naked in my turret. It was hot; the windows were open to the spongy June night. ‘Great timing, eh? Just when I finally learn, I get fired.’
‘Learn to be a psychiatrist?’
‘That too. I was thinking finally learn how to be a real doctor.’
‘Now there’s an idea. A real doctor, mmm.’ She yawned, and snuggled into the crook of my neck. ‘Hold me, babe, hold me so close we won’t ever die.’
She dozed off, my arm around her. I too began to doze. But then, in that hypnagogic moment just before sleep, I jerked to attention, that black-and-white photo facing me, as if blown up on a billboard. I went cold and shivered – in that hot June night, I shivered. I was face-to-face with a demon. I shivered with fear, and sickly revulsion. I lay there alone until I couldn’t stand it anymore, and woke up Berry.
‘Wha-what?’ she said.
‘I’m sorry, but I’ve got to tell you something.’
‘’Kay.’ She sat up and faced me, eyes barely opening. ‘Give me a sec.’ She yawned, rubbed her eyes, crossed her legs. ‘’Kay.’
‘I know what killed Ike White.’ She blinked. ‘Ike was in that photo, standing apart from Schlomo and A.K. Schlomo was Ike’s analyst too, at the same time as A.K.’s. Ike and A.K. were best friends. They were in the same class at the Freudian Institute, going to seminars together three times a week. They each saw Schlomo in analysis every day. They were close.’
‘So?’
‘So in that photo, Ike looked like a young boy. He was slender, clean-shaven. His hair was cut short, like A.K.’s, and Lily’s, and Zoe’s.’
‘Oh God.’
‘Yeah. Schlomo was fucking Ike too. Shit.’ I took a deep breath and tried to breathe out hard, to breathe it all away. ‘On Ike’s face, in that photo, was a look of such sadness. He and A.K. must have suspected Schlomo was screwing each of them.’ I shook my head. ‘That first time I met with Cherokee, at six in the morning when he’d told me he thought Schlomo was fucking his wife, I went to Ike for supervision, and told him. I didn’t get anywhere with Ike – he said I had to investigate what was probably a delusion. But he didn’t totally dismiss it, and when I asked if I should talk directly to Schlomo, he said I definitely should. Almost like he wanted me, or was choosing me, to find out the truth.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that same morning I went to see Schlomo, and told him all about it. He said Cherokee was crazy. But later that day, after he’d talked with me, Schlomo called up Ike. And that night, after saying good-bye to me, Ike killed himself. Was that what had killed him? Hearing, from me, that Schlomo was still at it? Hearing, from Schlomo, that he’d better keep his mouth shut or else?’
‘It’s sick,’ Berry said. ‘It is so so sick.’
‘That’s their word,’ I said, ‘and their excuse. Calling it “sick” is way too easy, it lets ’em off the hook, lets ’em say they’re not responsible. Not just sick, no. What it really is, is evil.’
In academic medicine the first of July is ‘change day,’ when one year ends and we doctors move on to the next. Friends, you enter an academic hospital early in July at no small peril to your life.
I awoke on the morning of June 30 feeling sad. Solini and Hannah had flights booked out that night. Henry was flying to Jamaica, Hannah to Wyoming. Malik, too, was taking a plane that night. Athough he wouldn’t tell us his destination, I had a sense that he would be going back home to Chicago, to be near his family. We would all meet at the airport that night.
The day dawned crisp and clear. Against the fading forsythia and daffodils, the hell-bent tulips and daredevil lilac blossomed with even more passion. I drove toward the hospital. As Mount Misery rose in the distance it seemed stunningly beautiful. The way college always looked to me the day after the last exam. Misery’s high crown of oaked hill seemed a solid underlay to her red-brick buildings set like rubies in green rings of lawn, lawn flowing down the hill and around the lake and then under the massive iron fence and gate, giving way to normal turf, scraggly fields and hills heading toward the mountains. On the Misery campus people strolled to and fro with seeming purpose. Though I now could tell a patient from a doctor on sight, I could no longer tell whose purpose was authentic.
I stayed just long enough to meet Henry in the attic of Toshiba, to help each other empty out our offices.
On the way out, as Henry and I passed Malik’s office, we ran into Mr K. and Solini’s
reggae man, Carter. They were hoping to catch Malik to say goodbye. Henry asked Carter if there was anything more he could do for him.
‘Nope. I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.’
‘And you, Mr K.?’ I asked. ‘How you doing?’
‘Lobotomy’s not so bad,’ he said, ‘if they botch it. A botched lobotomy’s almost a match for a perfect birth. Yesterday was my eightieth birthday.’
‘Eighty?’ Solini and I cried out in unison. He looked maybe sixty, tops seventy.
‘But you seem so young!’ I said. ‘How have you managed to stay so young?’
‘Yes, er, no,’ he said, as if confused. But then his eyes lit up and he went on, ‘My secret is this: always stay a little bit out of it.’
I drove down off Mount Misery for the last time. Workmen were replacing the sign THOREAU with a sign and logo HEALTHCARE HOUSE. For an instant I felt a stab of regret, recalling the high hope with which I had first ridden up the hill to my first interview with Ike White, where I’d been so dazzled by his compassion and intelligence that I’d enlisted right away to work with him. In the next instant, seeing Misery made small in my rearview mirror, I felt relieved. I would no longer be using the mirrors of sadism and authority to try to catch a glimpse of any truth, in this strange place that those locked up inside had nicknamed ‘Heaven on the Hill.’
We all converged on the Boston airport that night.
I drove Solini. He was wearing jeans and a bright flowery Hawaiian shirt and his round woolen Rasta cap. He was traveling light, in one hand a new valise, in the other his battered black doctor’s bag. The little guy, who had always seemed so cynical, was doing something wildly idealistic – signing up to be the only white doctor in Trenchtown, Jamaica. Bob’s hometown.
Hannah and Gilda were already there, traveling heavy, with masses of suitcases, skis and a cello case piled in front of them as they waited in line. Both wore ‘farmer’ jeans, the kind with the bibs and straps and brass buttons, and cow-woman hats. The rancher outfit looked great on the gutsy, broad Gilda, but Hannah, thin down to the hips and dark-haired and looking brittle, reminded me of a city girl having her picture taken on a pony on a day trip to the Catskill Game Farm.
Finally we all sat together on the hard plastic seats that would outlive not only us but civilization. In this polymeric ambience of the airport, we joined those from all walks of life who were taking the leap of faith that heavy metal machines could sail through air. Our own faith had been diminished by having had pilots and mechanics as patients. Often they were alcoholics or addicts or so depressed that they wanted to kill themselves and couldn’t care less if they took whole plane-loads down with them. I’d seen one pilot in the West with the fixed delusion that metal of course cannot sail through air and that in fact God picked up each plane on takeoff and set each down gently on landing, and that given the sins of the world, God was fed up and about to stop doing it and there would be a rash of crashes. When his insurance ran out he was turfed out on six drugs, and last I heard he was back flying.
Of all the airports I’d seen in my trip around the world, Boston’s Logan was the worst. The night before, there had been a screwup. Flights all day had been canceled or delayed. By the time we got there, the place had the feel of a Third World outpost. People were camped out, little families of refugees huddled over candy bars and soft drinks, staring blankly through the foul canned air at nothing, having long ago run out of things to say to each other. Children shrieked and cried.
We waited anxiously for Malik. To our surprise we were joined by Zoe and Thorny. Zoe was beaming. She, and then Lily, had been interviewed by the Globe.
‘The reporter was great,’ Zoe said. ‘She’ll protect our identities. And after what A.K. did in public, she’s just got to come forward. Yesterday another Schlomo victim called TALL! Listen!’ She spoke with clarity, and power. The transformation was striking, given where she’d been a year ago, when she came into Misery – a frightened college girl who’d sought power only through men. ‘So we’ve got an even better case now. Right, Gilda?’
‘Better than better, sweetheart. You may even have a chance. Yeah, if it does go to trial, I reckon you got a chance to nail that predator, for good.’
‘And what about you, Thorny-babe?’ Solini asked.
Before he could answer, Malik appeared. He was dressed in a khaki safari suit and new black Nikes. He too was carrying his black medical bag. Bronia was carrying two of those black mesh knapsack/suitcases made of everything-proof material, a spin-off from the outer space program. Thinking intergalactic, I flashed on Jill. Jill in the jungle now, Jill naked but for a purple velvet choker, Jill gone. Sad.
Malik seemed healthier, not coughing. His eyes behind those tinty lenses were intense and curious, as when I’d first met him. Greetings all around. Zoe took out a camera and asked a woman to take a group photo. At her urging, we smiled. Flash. Done. I realized that Thorny had gotten cut off, and asked, ‘What about you, Thorny?’
‘The South Pacific!’ he cried. ‘An atoll! Thorny and the Rainbow Warrior against the dickhead French!’
‘Greenpeace?’ I asked.
‘Thorny!’
‘Thorny?’
‘Greenpeace! I leave next week!’
‘Good for you!’ I cried.
‘Good for us all! No more “Family Tree” bullshit – “Tree Family!”’ He smiled, all adazzle. ‘Dickheads Go Green!’ We laughed. But then Thorny seemed to crumple a little.
‘What’s wrong?’ Malik asked.
‘Lotta shit comin’ down, Doc. The last few months, out there on my own sellin’ software, well, I got into a relationship with a lady, and, well, it was like puttin’ Miracle-Gro on my character defects. Even the South Pacific may not be far away enough!’
Malik took him and Zoe aside. Zoe shook Malik’s hand goodbye. Thorny gave him a big hug, shouting out, ‘Remember, Malik. Before you met me, you was drinkin’ Aqua Velva. And no matter where you are, Lenny, I’ll be on you in spirit, like white on rice!’
Zoe and Thorny walked away. I felt worried for them, seeing them, still, as too opened up for the world. Yet I also felt envious, seeing them both as having, over the year, found such clear purpose in their lives, while any purpose I’d entered with had, over the year, been lost. I had no idea what I’d be doing, even tomorrow.
‘What did you say to them?’ I asked Malik.
‘I told ’em how, after I got sober, early in my recovery when I was going through hell, I kept saying to my sponsor, George: “I’m going insane, George! I’m going insane!” and he said back to me, “No, no, Malik, you got it wrong. You’re goin’ sane. You’re goin’ sane.”’
‘Nu, I’ll check us in,’ said Bronia, her sabra body armor seeming, suddenly, to be falling like wet clothes to the floor, leaving merely a woman in love with a dying man. She marched off into the wilderness of Departures.
‘So where are you going, Malik?’ Hannah asked.
‘Dalhousie, in the Himalayas. There’s an orphanage there, run by a woman I studied with, a spiritual teacher. Two hundred children, three attendants, no doctors – until the day after tomor—’ A fit of coughing. We waited.
In the wake of this paroxysm it hit home – this was it, the last time we’d all be together. We began to really talk, that rare, intense, back-and-forth you have late at night, say in college, and in love. Malik said how grateful he was to us, for being with him through the year, for hearing the alarm, for waking up. We talked about our love for him, but soon we were talking about our doubt about what we had done all year long – ‘a year,’ von Nott had written in a memo recently, ‘rather typical for Mount Misery’ – and doubt about what we could do now.
‘And that’s it!’ Malik said. ‘That’s their power, to get us to doubt. But don’t confuse self-doubt with radical questioning. We’ve each had a hit of vitality this year – each of us – and no institution can stand too much vitality. Not medicine, business, government, not
religion, education – none of ’em! And the amazing thing is, is that our doubt is our faith, OK?’
He looked to us, each to each, eye-to-eye, asking, his gaze once again sharp yet kind, the false line between conscious and unconscious revealed and gone, jolting me out of the ordinary, like that feel of grit, that morning, on my cheek. My heart beat harder, my head cleared, my vision sharpened, I was eye-to-eye with him, volt-to-volt. Anything was possible right then.
‘And faith itself, in this day and age, is a revolutionary act.’ He looked from face to face in our little circle. Then he smiled. ‘Like sports.’
‘Last call for USAir flight 1492 to Miami, Boarding Gate Thirty-one.’
‘Shit,’ Solini cried. ‘U.S. Scare and I didn’t even hear it.’ The little guy’s good-byes were rushed. ‘So, man,’ Henry said, embracing Malik last of all, gulping back sobs, ‘like what’s the last question?’
‘Isn’t that it?’ Malik asked.
‘No, no, I mean for real. Gimme one anyway.’
‘OK, hotshot, here you go: “What’s yours?”’
‘Good question,’ Solini said. He stopped rolling and was still. He knitted up his brow and, starting to roll once again to his internal beat, said, ‘Mine is this: there’s a lot of life out there, man, but you gotta open your eyes to see it? And hey – I got one for you, Malik?’
‘I’m all ears.’
‘Meditate all you want, babe, but tie up your camel?’
‘Cool,’ Malik said.
‘So,’ Solini said, biting his lower lip to keep control, feet and knees and legs and arms starting to rock and roll. ‘So, Malik, babe. You cool on all a this?’
‘I’m cool. You?’
‘There it is.’ The little guy blew his nose in his flowery shirt and hurried off. As he got smaller and smaller he became his shirt and rainbow Rasta cap, and then his shirt and cap became only pops of color, and finally an afterimage of green and yellow and scarlet, like an island on a map of an equatorial sea.
‘United proudly announces the departure of flight 699 to Denver.’
