We Are Not Ourselves

by Matthew Thomas

  She considered saying something to Ed on the way back in. Then she decided the time for checking things with him had passed. If he noticed it was a different sheet tomorrow—by no means a certainty—he would just have to deal with the fact that she had messed with his arrangement.

  • • •

  She awoke to find herself alone in bed. She stumbled out to the living room and saw Ed’s light on in the study. He was hunched over, as if so many hours of sitting at the desk had sapped the energy in his back. His hair was wild. The desk lamp radiated tremendous heat. The smell of sweat mingled with the mushroom odor of old books to give the room a greenhouse quality.

  “Come to bed,” she said.

  “I’m working.”

  “It’s three in the morning. Come to bed.”

  “I have to finish this.” His voice sounded weak, as if he’d fallen asleep in the chair, but his expression was oddly alert. His eyes were sunken and dark, like he’d reached the end of a long fast.

  “Can you finish it tomorrow?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Let me see,” she said.

  She leaned over him. He shifted his body to block her view, but she could see the piles on either side of him on the desk, the calculator between them. She picked up the pile of tests and flipped through them. They all had grades on their first page, which surprised her, because what was Ed doing if not grading these things? She put the tests down and picked up the lab reports, over his protestations. The same was true of those: grades had been assigned, red numerals in distended circles emblazoning their upper right corners.

  “These are all graded,” she said. “Why don’t you come to bed?”

  “I’m still working.”

  “You have more to grade?”

  “I do.”

  He covered a pad on the desk with his hands. She could see it was the set of names and numbers he had been working with earlier. Yet another pad lay next to it.

  “What’s that?” She pointed to the second pad.

  “Will you leave me alone? Will you go back to sleep? I’ll be in when I’m done.”

  She picked up the second pad, fending off Ed’s hands. On it were written all the same names and numbers as on the first pad. They appeared to be identical.

  “What is all this?”

  She answered her own question by looking at the first test. Each number listed on the pad corresponded to the student’s performance on a section of the exam. His grade book lay splayed open at the back of his desk. She picked it up to check her hunch; indeed, the grades weren’t there. Was he that nervous about making a mistake? Just how fresh had the kids become that a teacher of his stature could be moved to such excessive scrutiny of his no-doubt flawless math well into the night? He should have been resting and quelling the psychic demons that were draining his confidence in the first place. All of this had become far bigger in his sleep-addled mind than it ever should have been allowed to be.

  “Let me help you with this,” she said, careful not to describe what “this” was. He surprised her by capitulating quickly. She gathered his things and led him to the kitchen table. “You keep the grade book,” she said. “I’ll tell you the number to enter.”

  He held his pen poised over the book. She took the first test off the pile. Edwin Alvarez had earned an 84. She flipped through the test, making sure the subsection grades added up to the indicated total. Eighty-four it was. This was probably the kind of kid Ed was proudest to see achieve, a kid from the neighborhood.

  “All right,” she said. “Edwin Alvarez.”

  “Wait!” Ed said, suddenly panicked. “Wait! Wait!”

  He stood up and bolted out of the room. Before she could follow he reappeared holding a long ruler. He squared himself in the chair and lined the ruler up under Edwin Alvarez’s row of boxes. She had to laugh at his intensity. He didn’t share the laugh, though; he didn’t look up at all, as though he had to stare unblinkingly at the name in front of him in order to prevent it from disappearing.

  “Okay,” he said. “Go.”

  “Edwin Alvarez.”

  “Edwin Alvarez,” he said hesitantly, as if cross-referencing it with the names in the list, an odd thing considering it was the first.

  “Eighty-four on the test. We’re only dealing with the test right now.”

  “Yes,” he said. “The test only.”

  “Okay? Can we move along?”

  “Eighty-four?”

  “That’s correct,” she said, biting her tongue. As disturbing as this drill was, now wasn’t the time to discuss it. She had to get them both back to bed.

  “Okay,” she said. “Lucy Amato. Give me one second.”

  She flipped through the test, adding the numbers in her head. She saw how this could get to a person; late at night, numbers ran together. Ed had added them correctly again. She could see it would play out as an exercise in redundancy. It was the kind of thing you signed up for when you got married, idiosyncrasies that bordered on obsessions at times, quirks that became handicaps if allowed to thrive. It could have been worse: he could have had a wandering eye, a gambling habit.

  He had located Ms. Amato’s name; his ruler was brought to a sharp congruency with the line underscoring her performance for the semester.

  “Seventy-three,” she said.

  “Seventy-three.” The desperate edge had left his voice. Despite her tiredness, she was touched by the feeling of working together with her husband on a project; it beat being adversaries. Maybe she’d even be able to tell him about the house.

  They went through the stack, she calling out the name, he orienting himself in the ledger, she checking his addition, which grew quicker the more she saw he’d been accurate in his math, she calling out the number like a bingo caller, he repeating the number before committing it to paper, he confirming it again with a rising intonation, she reconfirming it in a tone that made her feel uncomfortably like a teacher with a student. They got to the end without incident, Ed never wavering in his focus, his laser-like application of the ruler’s metal edge. He was sweating; he paused to wipe his forehead while she did her quick math, but didn’t look up from the page.

  The last name, Arash Zahedani, also happened to be attached to the highest grade, ninety-seven, a happy coincidence that might send Ed to bed in a better mood. It was getting on four o’clock; she had to be up in a few hours. She knew she wouldn’t be able to sleep; she was far too awake now to drift off again. Still, she could lie there and rest her muscles. Tomorrow was an important day at work. The Joint Commission was examining North Central Bronx Hospital, bringing with it the usual headaches. Her people were well prepared, but she would have to dig deep to perform well on little sleep. She was already exhausted from the previous week of late nights getting ready for their arrival. She’d had ten nurses call in sick Friday, and she was going to have to fire some of them, because they’d known better than to do that at the start of the weekend. Since she’d been understaffed, she’d had to struggle to handle a room full of gang members who’d burst in after visiting hours, demanding access to the ICU to see one of their own who’d been shot in the stomach. They pushed past the security guard and through the double doors in front and were advancing on the room. It could have been two dozen of them. She ran to block their way. “You’re not allowed in there,” she said. “You can come back tomorrow.” One of them asked, “Aren’t you afraid of us, white lady?” She didn’t have the energy to be. Security backup arrived, two more guards, all three of them black. If the gang members didn’t stand down soon, the guards might draw their guns, and who knew what would happen then? She was the only white person in the room. The guards told the gang members to leave. There was a young girl among their number; she must have been the injured man’s girlfriend. She held a baby in her arms. She gave Eileen a pleading look. “I will let a few of you in, one at a time,” Eileen said, “and we will all be civil to each other. And then you can come back tomorrow. And I promise you he will be in good h
ands, and we’ll let it rest at that.” The guards relented. They had the gang members line up against the wall. She could see the leader of the gang calming everyone down. He gave her a look that said, Lady, you are all right. It had stuck with her, that look. It had meant something to be recognized, even by this thug. She wanted that young man to give her that look in front of her husband the next time Ed was half-crazed about some absurd infraction. There was more to life than Ed’s petty grievances.

  She wanted to end on a high note, but a spirit of excess caution had crept into her own thinking. “Let’s go through the numbers again,” she said, and from his look she got the feeling he hadn’t planned for it to be any other way.

  “We’ll switch,” she said. “I’ll read down the column. You call out the grades.”

  They proceeded through the tests, Ed dispatching his task with a new alacrity. Four tests from the bottom, La Shonda Washington, she asked Ed to repeat the grade he’d just read out.

  “Eighty-six,” he said.

  But the number he’d entered for Ms. Washington was sixty-seven, which also happened to be the score received by Melvin Torres, the student above her in the grade book.

  “One second.” She rose to look at the test in his hands. The glow of the sun was filtering into the air outside. It felt more like the remnant light at dusk than the herald of dawn.

  “What? What is it?”

  “I just wanted to check something.”

  “I told you,” he said. “I told you. Eighty-six.”

  “That’s what I thought you said, honey.” Her throat constricted. “I wanted to double-check.”

  “Is there a problem? A mistake?”

  “I just need to change one thing,” she said. “Give me a second.”

  She reached for the pencil and he slammed his hand down on it. “What is it?” He was seething. “What is it?”

  “The number for the student directly above La Shonda Washington has been repeated,” she said matter-of-factly. “That’s all. I’m going to erase it and write in the correct number.”

  “Ah, Jesus!” He threw his hands up. “Jesus Christ! It’s all wrong! It’s all wrong!”

  “Just hold on while I make this one change.”

  “Forget it,” he said. “What’s the use?”

  “It was an honest mistake,” she said. “You wrote the number above it. It’s late.”

  “Yes, yes,” he said dismissively. “That’s it. Now let me finish this. I’ll be in when I’m done.”

  He took the book away and closed it, then held his head and rubbed his eyes.

  “We have three more to go,” she said.

  “It’s fine,” he said firmly. “We’re finished.”

  She should have made the switch without saying anything. She should have come out and done it after he’d fallen asleep. Now she had to convince him to leave off his vigil.

  “If we’re done,” she said, “then come to bed.”

  “I’ll be in in a while.”

  “Come now.”

  “I said I’ll be in. I’ll be in.”

  “You need some sleep.”

  He slammed his fist on the table. “I’ll be in when I’m in! What the hell else do I need to say to you? Will you leave me alone, God damn it?”

  She snatched the book out of his hands. “Don’t say a word to me,” she said slowly, giving him an icy stare. “Not one word.”

  She opened to the page with the grades and looked at the last three numbers. Whitaker, seventy-three. Williams, fifty-eight. Zahedani, ninety-seven. She checked the tests and slammed the book shut.

  “That’s it,” she said. “They’re all correct. I’m going to bed. You can come, or you can stay here. I don’t care either way.”

  She felt her hands making fists as she walked down the hall to the bedroom. She’d already wasted too much time on him. She imagined he’d spend the whole night out there, going over the numbers endlessly.

  She lay in bed, counting sheep for the first time since she was a child. She bit the pillow in frustration. Then she heard him walking down the hall. She rolled over and he climbed in bed alongside her. She moved as close to the edge as she could. Even an accidental touch might enflame her so much that she’d have to go to the couch. There was no point in trying to sleep; she would lie there until it was time to get up and shower.

  She felt the slight shaking of the bed but didn’t register the sound as what it was until the shaking grew more forceful. Ed was doing a good job of keeping it in, but the springs of the bed gave him away. The sound of gasps followed. She had trouble identifying it at first because she had formed an image in her mind of Ed as a man who didn’t cry. It wasn’t macho posturing; he simply didn’t shed tears, not even at his father’s funeral.

  She turned slowly in the bed. She was tentative with her body; there was no telling how he’d react if she touched him. It wasn’t impossible that he’d get violent, like an animal in a cage. They were in a new territory, with new rules.

  She shifted closer to him. When he didn’t stir, she reached out to touch his shoulder, expecting him to slap her hand away; he let it rest there. She gave the shoulder a consoling rub; he sobbed a little harder. She pressed her whole body against his and he folded into its curve. She brought her other arm up against him so that she was hugging him fully. She found herself holding him to her as though he were a child. She’d always resisted cradling him in such a manner, fearing it would diminish her attraction to him, but attraction was the last thing on her mind at the moment. He sobbed as she held him, and she soothed him by making shushing sounds, long and slow and quiet, until he turned and sobbed into her nightgown.

  She knew what it was about, even if he didn’t. It was about getting old. She felt it too, but somehow she knew it was different for men. They got spooked when they lost their hair, when their backs gave out. Women were better prepared to deal with death and old age, especially mothers, who, having delivered children, saw how tenuous the line was between life and death. And as a nurse she had seen so many people die, people to whom she’d grown attached. Ed had taught anatomy and physiology. He’d been in the museum of death, not on its front lines. It was irrational for him to react this much to a bit of misentered data, but what was rational about a midlife crisis? Weren’t they always a little absurd?

  They were beginning the next phase of their lives together. She was not afraid of it. Let it come, she thought. He’ll be in good hands.

  Within minutes he was sound asleep, the crying having exhausted him. She lay awake until the alarm clock went off. He slept through her getting dressed. She made a neat stack of the papers on the table.

  • • •

  The Joint Commission sent eight people to do the inspection. She and the other administrators went into a conference room to make their presentations. She was glad she’d taken some extra time doing her hair and makeup that morning, and that she’d worn her gray skirt suit, which clung enough to give her some sex appeal while still looking professional, because the team was mostly male.

  She was exhausted, but she felt confident about her staff’s preparedness. She’d been readying the nurses for a year, training them in how to answer questions. They were up to date on all the standards: pharmacy, equipment, staff knowledge, patient care. It was the patient interviews that troubled her. Usually the patients were generous in their comments. Still, one disgruntled patient was all it took to get the commission sniffing around. “How is the service?” “Terrible.” “How is your room?” “The place is filthy.” “Are you getting the medicines you need in a timely fashion?” “I can never get anyone around here to answer my call.”

  She gave a rundown of the state of affairs in nursing and took a seat. She struggled to stay awake through the other administrators’ presentations. Then they loosed the team.

  She wasn’t allowed to follow them around. It made her feel like a criminal. Accreditation was at stake; there were standards to uphold. Still, they were so damned humorless
about it. They stalked the place like stormtroopers. They went through labs, making sure everything was cleaned and stored properly. They looked at every chart in the place. They pored over paperwork like district attorneys looking for a break in a prosecution. They grilled staff members. No one knew exactly how long they’d be there once they showed up. It could be three days; it could be the whole week.

  Her staff could have withstood a press conference after all the paces she’d run them through. Still, things don’t always go as planned. One inspector found an expired IV solution while interviewing a patient. That got the others digging. They found an expired medicine in one of the carts. The expirations killed you. You could have nurses trained to say all the right things, but if they found one bottle a couple of weeks past its prime in a lineup of fifty good ones, it negated weeks of coaching. A crash cart wasn’t in the locked cabinet it was supposed to be in. They didn’t tell her where it was, of course, only that it wasn’t where it was supposed to be. That one hurt. She prided herself on running a tip-top ER. No one in her hospital was ever going to expire after cardiac arrest because the cart didn’t have the proper medications on it. If the cart wasn’t where it was supposed to be, though, it didn’t matter what was on it.

  Before they left for the day, they gave her a list of citations. Too many and the accreditation could be compromised. They gave her a chance to follow up the next day. It was a simple matter of a few fixes—switching out the old medicine, changing the IV, putting the cart back where it belonged—but it also served to tell her that she was on notice. She’d get through it; North Central Bronx would retain its accreditation. Nothing about it promised to be easy, though. They seemed like the kind of crew that wouldn’t give them a pass on anything. It was going to be a long week. In the meantime, life continued at the hospital. People didn’t stop getting sick. People didn’t stop having heart attacks. One kid came in having blown off his hand with a firecracker.

  She dozed off at a red light on the way home. When she pulled into the driveway she saw the sheet still over the pile in the back. In the tumult of the day she’d forgotten about it. She walked over to it and lifted a corner. It was all there, untouched. She didn’t have the energy to spare Ed’s ego. She whipped the sheet off. If it was a bonfire he was after, he’d have to find another way to exorcise his demons. She gathered up the pieces of lumber and put them in the garbage can; they stuck out jagged and tall. She dragged the can to the curb for pickup the next day. Ed would flip out when he saw it; in fact, that was the point. Fatigue was hardening her toward him. His vulnerability last night, and her tenderness—it felt as if it had happened a year ago. She hardly remembered it at all; it could have been a dream. It was all so stupid; how could she have indulged him in it?