The Place Between Breaths

by An Na

  I walk into the large refrigerated room where vials of blood sit waiting to be centrifuged so the high-speed spinning will force the blood to separate into layers of plasma, white blood cells and platelets, and red blood cells. I check my list against the ones that I load onto my tray, each tube fitting neatly, perfectly, into its slot and grouping.

  The centrifuge machines are located at the end of the hall. They sit outside randomly in front of various offices like they are copy machines. I load one group of tubes into one machine and set the timer for one hour. Down the hall at the second machine, I load the second group of vials and this time set the timer for thirty minutes. Back at the first machine I sit down on the floor to do my calculus homework. The low-decibel humming almost rocks me to sleep as I plow methodically through a dozen equations.

  A set of footsteps echoes through the hall. I glance up and find myself staring at the guy with the animals from the elevator earlier. One hand is shoved into the pocket of his lab coat; the other one holds two vials.

  “How long you going to be?” he asks.

  I check my watch. “Another four minutes.”

  He nods and looks back down the hall as though trying to decide whether to wait or come back. He pushes back his shoulder-length, sun-bleached hair and checks his wristwatch. His white lab coat splays open, revealing a black T-shirt with a half-illuminated skull that looks like a waning moon if you glance at it quickly. Something caught in the air vent duct clicks the passing of time.

  I return to my math. He moves closer to the centrifuge, eyeing the timer. He’s clicking his tongue on the roof of his mouth. I can almost hear the saliva moving around. I put down my pencil.

  “There’s a free machine down the hall, past the C block offices.”

  He smiles and nods at me, but doesn’t budge.

  I go back to my math. He continues to click his tongue. There is such a slurping quality to the noise, I swear if I look up right at this moment I will find him making saliva bubbles with his mouth. I sneak a peek. He has turned his back to me.

  “Do you mind?” I say.

  He turns around. “What?”

  I try to find his badge, which would tell me his name, but of course, he is too cool for requirements. “Could you stop making that noise?”

  “What noise?’

  “That clicking.” I wave at my mouth and refrain from using an adjective to elaborate my disgust.

  He presses his lips together and brings his finger up to his shocked face in a shushing motion. Jerk. I turn back to my math. And on closer inspection, I realize that his tan is not fake but real. The huge amount of peeling on the bridge of his nose, which I didn’t see earlier in the dim lights of the elevator, attest to that. He must be a new lab tech from the state university. A group of them just started working on some work-study program.

  He clears his throat.

  I don’t look up.

  He starts talking anyway. “Is there a special feature on this machine?”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, still scribbling away.

  “Dr. Mendelson specifically underlined centrifuge number five on my instructions.”

  Now I look up. “Dr. Mendelson?”

  He is checking out the machine, scanning the buttons. Dr. Mendelson doesn’t let just any tech work with her. She is very specific about her team. In fact, you have to establish your brilliance before she even asks you to clean her equipment. Sunburn looks too young and definitely not brilliant enough to be taking orders from Dr. Mendelson. He finishes his inspection and steps back.

  “What’s so special about number five?” he asks.

  I tuck a strand of hair behind my ear and think about whether or not I will answer him. Not everyone deserves to know everything. I continue to go over my homework, sitting in silence as though we are playing chicken to see who speaks first. He holds something out to me. I slide my eyes over. Bazooka.

  Goddamn it, I love these hard-as-hell pieces of gum that make my jaw hurt so bad after five minutes of chewing that I start to believe I have TMJ. But they come with a comic, and how can anyone resist that? I take the gum.

  He leans back against the wall and crosses his arms. I carefully unwrap the gum and pop it into my mouth as I look over the comic of the blond boy with an eye patch.

  Not everyone knows how Dr. Mendelson has certain attachments, superstitions as it were, about the machines. This one, number five, Dad had it shipped over from the Salk Institute when he recruited her. Part of the sweetening package.

  Sunburn makes that awful noise again with his mouth. I slip the comic into my lab coat pocket to read over later when I don’t have to deal with a certain impatient slurping person.

  “It was involved in helping her locate the repetition in the gene for Huntington’s,” I finally tell him.

  He raises an eyebrow. “She definitely has her quirks,” he says, “but with a mind like that, how can you not?”

  I return to my math, chewing my hard-earned reward with some effort when I feel his eyes on me again. This time I refuse to make eye contact.

  “Hey.” Sunburn snaps his fingers. “We’ve met before, right?”

  I ignore him.

  “Where did we meet?” He directs the question more to himself than to me.

  I can feel him leaning down as though he is getting ready to sit on the floor beside me. I check my watch again. Two more minutes.

  Sunburn lowers himself down next to me and sits cross-legged, his hands in his lap, palms up. I see a large scar slashing across one palm and continuing over to the other as though someone pulled a sword blade through his hands. He catches me staring and balls them up into loose fists.

  “It’s so quiet out in the halls. It’s kind of funny that they leave the machines out here,” he says.

  I have often thought the same thing.

  “But I like it,” he adds. “It’s the only time I get to think. When I hear the hum of the machines and wait those last few minutes for the cycle to finish. You know?”

  How many times have I found myself just standing here, staring at the swirling drum, caught in the cage of my thoughts?

  “The cycle times,” I say awkwardly. “Sometimes it’s too short to leave and come back, so you just end up hanging out.”

  “It’s kind of a limbo place as you wonder what the results will be,” he says. “Anything could happen.”

  I shrug. “Or nothing at all.”

  Our eyes meet as I finally look up from my notebook. The blueness startles me.

  “I know I’ve seen your face somewhere. Damn. I hate that feeling of knowing it’s on the edge of your brain. Did you have shorter hair before?”

  The timer on the centrifuge machine beeps three times in quick succession. I close my notebook and grab my tray as I stand up.

  “Do you ever hitchhike? I give lifts to people sometimes.”

  I shake my head, open the lid, and begin removing the vials and loading them onto my tray.

  Sunburn scrambles up and gazes down at my badge.

  “Grace.” He snaps his fingers. “I saw your picture . . . at your house! I knew I recognized you.”

  I slowly place the last vial into its slot on my tray.

  “Your father—he was the one who recruited me. He made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. You know what I mean? He came all the way to Australia where I was on vacation, just so he could talk me into coming for a visit and interviewing. Can you believe that?”

  Dad recruited Sunburn? So he wasn’t from the university. A junior postdoc? Sunburn isn’t the first to talk about how great Dad is. How much money and other perks he would throw into the deal to sweeten the offer. Dad’s a master at that game. If he knows someone likes tennis, he’ll always manage to get them a membership at the place with the best courts. Or if they like wines, he’ll add onto their contract a weekend getaway to Sonoma during harvest season. Special equipment shipped across country for superstitions. Stuff like that makes all the difference. Not to mention the name
s he would throw around. The best people in their field. The best minds. Who wouldn’t want to be associated with that?

  “I’m Will, by the way.” He holds out his hand. “I didn’t know you worked here too.”

  I reach forward and shake his hand. The raised ridge of his scar feels hardened and tough. “I have an internship,” I state, and then immediately wish I could take back my words.

  “Ohhh, one of the coveted internships,” he says with a smile, making me wonder whether he is teasing or insinuating that Dad helped me get this position.

  Annoyance bundles my nerves, but I try not to show him any reaction as I lower the lid to the centrifuge. I don’t have to justify myself to him or anyone around here.

  “Grace.” He shifts his balance back and forth. “Your dad, he saved my life during a really hard time. My sister had just died, and I didn’t know what I was going to do. But he understood things about me. What I was feeling . . . I just want to say how much your dad—”

  I turn on my heels. How dare he call it the coveted internship. I’m the one who got this internship. I didn’t even use my full name, just so the judging would be fair. So they wouldn’t recognize me as his daughter. I want to tell Will all this. Tell him that I earned this internship without any help. Instead I try to act nonchalant. Unfazed. Cool as the breeze blowing outside.

  “All yours,” I toss over my shoulder. I’m here because I belong here. Not because my father, who is not a researcher and insists on holding on to the most unrealistic hopes, got me a job. I begin counting the sound of my footfalls on the hard concrete floor to keep my mind off what Will is saying to me. Fifty-three steps that take me farther and farther away from all his insinuations. At the door to my lab, I stop and reach up to tie my hair back in a ponytail. I am a scientist and I know what is and is not within the realm of possibility. Hope is just a four-letter word.

  Autumn

  Fifty-one, fifty-two, fifty-three . . . Her misaligned pigtails shook every time she bowed her head rhythmically to the silent counting in her head as she peeled each paper muffin liner away from the stack. She pushed her tongue through the gap where her baby tooth had just fallen out. The rawness of her gum felt strange, but she couldn’t help but worry that new empty spot. Daddy had promised a new tooth would soon grow in. She wondered how her body knew to shed things like a tooth and grow a new one in its place. Someday she would study the body and its cells just like her father and know everything about how it worked. She set down the muffin cup, making sure it was perfectly in line with the others. The ghostly ridged paper forms were in neat rows one after the other across the middle of the kitchen floor.

  The high-pitched whistle of the noon freight train passing through town broke her concentration. She lifted her head, stopped her counting. Dropping the paper muffin cups, she raced over to the kitchen door. She threw open the door and a breeze whipped her pigtails back. Over the side fence, beyond the deserted parking lot, between the abandoned buildings, she spied the train cars slowly passing through the town as they traveled toward the port city 108 miles away. She began counting.

  Her mother stood at the sink washing dishes, but once the cold air rushed inside, she turned and said, “Bugaboo, please close the door. It’s close to thirty degrees outside.”

  She pretended not to have understood and kept the door open, continuing her counting until the final car passed out of sight. Twenty-three. A long train today. She would report that to her father when he came home, and they would mark it on her calendar beside her bed.

  Her mother came to stand behind her and placed her warm, damp hands on the soft baby fat of her cheeks. “How many today?”

  “Twenty-three.”

  Mama’s eyes gazed out to the tracks. “That’s too many.”

  She stared up at Mama’s face. They used to count together, but more and more Mama didn’t want to watch them the way they had when they first moved into the house. Mama had insisted on this house because she liked making sure she could see the trains. She said she needed to know they were real.

  “Okay, bug. Let’s close this door. It’s freezing.”

  Mama shut the door to the brisk wind signaling the approaching winter and walked back to the sink. Along the way, she swiftly bent down, scooping up the muffin papers on the floor. “Bug, the muffins are already in the oven.”

  “But Mama, I was counting those.”

  Mama sighed and then slowly held them out.

  She ran over and grabbed them.

  Mama pointed to the small table in the corner covered with a cream tablecloth dotted with periwinkle-blue forget-me-nots. “It’s too cold on the floor. Why don’t you sit at the table?”

  She nodded obediently and sat down. Her mother hated any kind of floor that did not have some form of carpet on it. Even at the sink, Mama wore slippers as she stood on a fuzzy floor mat. Mama hated her feet being cold. Said it reminded her of a place that she had lived in once upon a time. Once upon a time, so long ago.

  She licked her thumb and rubbed the crinkly paper between it and her pointer finger, trying to separate each liner from the next. Mama sang softly as she finished washing the rest of the dishes. The running water muffled the words, but she could still hear the melody. She hummed along to Mama’s song as she counted. Without the door open to the breeze, the bright sun streaming through the windows warmed the tiny kitchen, thickening the scent of the buttery muffins baking in the oven. She glanced at the timer sitting on the counter. One more minute and the muffins would be ready. She scowled at the remaining muffin papers in her hand. She had better hurry. Her heart raced as she counted, her ears straining to hear every click of the timer. Fifty-four, fifty-five, fifty-six. The train whistle echoed faintly one last time in the background.

  Spring

  The distant howl of the train splits the night. Long, piercing shrieks slicing through my mind. I look up from the homework that I am trying to finish before bed and leap from my desk. Run to the window. But as I part the curtain, my fingers trembling, my eyes close shut.

  Strange, how the body knows instinctually to protect itself. Eyes blinking before the blast of sand. Arm rising before the blow. The will to survive is not a conscious choice, but encoded into every cell. The body acts to defend and protect itself even against one’s own mind.

  I force my eyes open to confront the darkness. The cold reassures me as I lean my forehead against the pane of glass and stare out into the frozen landscape barely illuminated by the crescent moon. We live so far from anything. Just meadows and trees as far as the eye can see. Out here, even the sound of a passing car is an event. Legions of bare fields surround me. I am an island.

  The scream of the train recedes until the high-pitched whistle only echoes like an abandoned TV talking to itself in the other room. Perspiration pools under my arms, a drop rolling down the side of my rib cage until it soaks into the cotton of my T-shirt. I let the curtain fall back into place.

  There are no train tracks. I know this for a fact. A conscious fact that I repeat to myself over and over again as I sit on my bed and open the nightstand drawer. Inside, there is a black journal and pen. I need to keep track of what is happening. I check my clock and note the time: 1:07 a.m.

  As I leaf through the pages, searching for the last entry, my heart fists when I see all the notes. The pages are filled with my handwriting, each entry dated and notated. Some days there are multiple entries about moving shadows in my peripheral vision, clanking noises from radiators that are not in this house, but from two houses ago. On other pages, there’s just one entry, mostly about missing Dad as he traveled, but those were at the beginning of the journal. The recent entries are short, sometimes just one word, “train,” with a date next to it. By the end, all my handwriting crowds together, one entry flowing into the other like codes of data. Though I know I am the only one logging this information, I cannot remember how the pages have gotten filled. How can I have no memory of entering these notes? And now there is no more room
in the journal. I stare at my handwriting and a realization forces my lips together against the nausea. There are only a few possibilities for this disorientation, this lapse of memory. And I know them as well as I know this house. I have researched extensively. The first time when I was old enough to understand why and how my mother could have abandoned me. The next time when I started this journal. But to lose track of all the entries, the compromised state of my memory . . . This is another piece of evidence that I cannot ignore.

  Sitting on the edge of the mattress, my feet placed firmly on the ground, I force myself to feel the frigid wooden floors. Force my thoughts, my ears to the other noises in the house. The creaks and movements, each physical sound a reminder of where I am. This room, this house, this place. My reality comes into focus.

  I don’t scare easily, having lived in so many cities and countrysides of one kind or another. But a house so completely removed from any noise of civilization seemed, at first, uncanny. Only over the last few months have I grown used to this place. I know the blueprint of each room, having charted every sound meticulously, like a doctor hunting for a disease. The popping in the attic comes from a crossbeam that only moves when the wind is strong enough to dip the birch saplings in the field. A ticking from downstairs like a cartoon time bomb signals that the woodstove is cooling down and the baseboard heaters are warming up. The spastic seasonal rattle in the window above the kitchen sink has only been quiet on the most humid summer days, when the wood swollen with moisture shuts down on itself. Every little noise registers as though the house is talking to me.

  I slip my cold feet under the sheets and pull the comforter over my shoulders before lying back. Though spring has officially started, winter grips on by its fingernails. My frozen hands slide neatly under my pillow, the cool envelope making me sigh. I force my eyes shut, but my mind continues to roam.