EIGHTEEN

“Dad, you look great,” I said.

For a rare instant I was alone with him, no nurse, no Mom or Sofia. I tried to convince myself that I was not lying: he looked much better.

A machine sucked in and sucked out. It was too warm in the room. My dad’s face was flushed and I was sweating inside my shirt. It was Thursday afternoon, the fifth day after the shooting. A box of Swipes, white tissues like Kleenex, perched on a half table swung to one side. I touched one to his forehead, blotting moisture.

I had never done anything like this for my father. I almost expected one of us to need a joke, something to counter embarrassment. But there was no embarrassment, only his look of acknowledgment.

His eyes crinkled, asking.

“I took the test,” I said, sure he wouldn’t remember. The memory of the previous Saturday morning was a dim historical scrap, unattached to anything happening in this room. But I meant it as an offering, good news from the ordinary world. Only as I spoke did I feel the flimsiness of the report, how little it must matter to him now.

His eyes were on mine, looking into me, full of questions. A blue tube led to a button in his throat.

The words tightened up on me, but I said them anyway. “I’m pretty sure I did okay,” I said, trying to make it sound casual. I wasn’t sure at all.

He blinked. The blink meant something. His eyes rolled, taking in the room.

“A lot of equipment,” I said. “A busy place. A nice place,” I said, giddy, eager to have even a one-sided conversation with him. I almost mentioned how hard it was to park with all the cars everywhere, as though I was making small talk about shopping downtown.

His tongue licked his lips, his lips parting, then shutting again, and I could read his eyes. When I was out in the corridor again, the bustle of hospital routine passing by, I could hear what he was thinking.

Daniel put a small plastic figure into my open palm and closed my fingers around it. The space warrior was completely hidden. I wiggled my fingers so the head of the cosmic combatant stuck out of my fist. My half-brother laughed and tried to poke the helmeted head back into my grasp.

“You don’t have to draw pictures,” my mother was saying. She was already starting her spell of weight loss, a new wrinkle in her cheek. Some people balloon under stress; Mom does just the opposite. After a while she starts to look worn and dry, like a long distance runner who has been pounding marathons in Death Valley.

“It helps me as much as it helps you,” said Dr. Monrovia. A white, smooth surface of the drawing board squeaked as his marker added lines and arcs, chirping softly when he shaded in, cross-hatching carefully. The marker ink smelled like alcohol. “I always think better when I have something in my hand,” he added, trying to disarm my mother: I’m just another person doing a difficult job.

“You draw very well,” said Sofia. She was dressed in tight black pants and a full-cut flowery blouse with long, oversized sleeves, a shiny material, black and rose satin. It made her look big on top and puny below, armor that went only halfway. I found it hard to dislike Sofia now. A truce had been declared in my brain, negative thoughts piled like weapons under UN supervision.

“Red is for the spinal column,” said Dr. Monrovia.

“And black represents bone,” said my mother, swinging her foot, kick kick against nothing.

Dr. Monrovia was hard at work on the outline of the skull, blunt nose, sharp chin. “I haven’t discussed this with Mr. Madison, but I will. I have a theory about the ability of patients to absorb bad news during post-trauma recovery.”

“Tell me about your theory,” said my mother. Not us. Me. Mom always hated a certain type of person, turning on the mute whenever a weatherman blew a line, pointed to a smiling sun and saying “in this area of severe thunderstorms.”

“My views aren’t exactly the issue here,” said Dr. Monrovia. He looked even less like my dad today and seemed to have lost hair since I had seen him last, fluorescent lights gleaming off his scalp.

Mom looked into her purse, took out a bottle of Advil.

“People during trauma,” said the doctor, “are more able to absorb bad news than people generally think. The psyche goes into crisis mode, and in this frame of mind the patient can take in bad news with a calm that would be very unusual in a healthy patient.” He gave a little tilt of his head: my theory, take it or leave it.

Mom popped three of the pills, without water, like someone snapping up M & M’s, swallowing with no difficulty, practiced at this sort of thing.

“Mr. Madison is recovering from surgery, fighting infection successfully, vital signs in good shape.” He snapped the cap back onto a marker, and arranged the markers in a long convoy in the tray at the bottom of the drawing board. “He was in good physical condition before this event, and that’s a blessing.” He selected one more marker, with an air of someone putting the last, finishing touches on a work of art.

I experienced a flicker of pride. My father had always jogged, every afternoon, around San Francisco’s Lake Merced, plodding along even in the drizzle. When it rained he jockeyed in place on his exercise bike, an Airgometer that sounded like a wind machine, a digital gauge counting the calories he was burning.

“He cannot breathe on his own,” said the doctor. “He has no sensation in his extremities.”

My mother was about to say something, and the doctor hurried himself along. “I alluded to this before,” he said, sketching in the rest of the outline in blue, a profile like an ad for cough medicine, Where Colds Strike.

A dotted line stitched across the blank white, intersecting with the neck. It was a feeble drawing compared with the bullet slashes of comic books, a tender hint of real harm. “If a muscle is severed—”

I thought I could read his eyes as he considered adding more hurtful words, torn, sliced, and deciding against them, sticking to the brief lecture he had delivered many times, in this very room. “The muscle fiber can grow back. I think of muscle as being like wood, full of green sap, able to heal itself together again. But with our nervous system we face a different situation. In a child, or a young person, we might hope to see some regeneration—”

“He’s going to be paralyzed,” said my mother.

I expected the surgeon to respond: no, of course not, that’s not what I’m trying to say.

He said, “We have to anticipate that.”

I told myself the doctor had not spoken these words. My ears had tricked me, my brain making up voices on its own.

“How bad will it be?” my mother was asking, draining all the emotion out of her voice, like a pilot’s voice during turbulence, just the words, no feeling.

But there was something relentless about her, too, needing to be in charge. I wanted to tell her to just shut up. She was making it worse.

“I’m going to have a physical therapist examine Mr. Madison tomorrow. The sooner we begin the better.” He lifted a finger to beg my mother’s patience. She turned away, unable to look at him.

It’s hard to say what pause, what gesture, earned my trust. He spoke in a different voice, gentle, like the recording of a pleasant The Bay Area has suffered a major earthquake. “We have to expect the paralysis to be from the neck down, and permanent. We have to expect him never to recover normal activity.”

Sofia jammed a knuckle between her teeth. My mother looked at the tip of her shoe, breathing hard. Daniel at last wrestled the space knight from my hand and wiped it on his T-shirt.

“But it’s too soon to tell,” said Sofia.

My mother put a hand on Sofia’s sleeve and squeezed. The satin bunched in, Sofia slim under all that padding.