“HE LOOKS TERRIBLE,” I said.
Dr. Block frowned.
“What about the medication?” I asked. “What about hope?” I thought that I sounded merely petulant.
“I told you,” Dr. Block said. “We don’t know many things.” He coughed into his fist.
I studied him for a while, found nothing hidden, and then I looked around the office, saw diplomas, pictures of his children, of a brown poodle, of a young man (Dr. Block himself?) in a naval uniform.
Then I had the idea. I might have shouted Eureka! in that moment of discovery. I would take Jay home again. In the house he would grow well, nourished by what was dear and familiar. He would awaken at night and see remembered shadows cast by the friendly shapes of our furniture, and fall back into a deep and healing sleep.
How could anyone recover in a place like this, a place that fostered illness, that negated life with its sterile surroundings, its relentless routine, its gift shop, its machines that pulled and sucked away at hope? How could he become well, surrounded by illness and despair?
“I’ll take Jay home,” I said.
“Don’t be silly,” Dr. Block answered. “We’re keeping him alive here. We help him to suffer less.”
“If I take him home, maybe he’ll be less sad.” But I knew that I was pleading a hopelessly impractical case.
“What you don’t understand is that there is a certain comfort in continuity. Jay is used to it here. Routine is less fatiguing and we’re equipped for emergency. If you take him home, he’ll be in pain. He would have to leave in a screaming ambulance. He would know.”
“What do you think he knows now?” I said.
“Sometimes we know things intellectually,” he said. “But not here.” He patted his chest. It was such a nonmedical observation that my feelings were softened. A doctor who could refer to the human heart as a place where things are realized and experienced, rather than a vital organ simply doing its mechanical job.
“He has to know everything soon,” I said.
Dr. Block made some nervous little gestures, touched and patted the clock and the pens on his desk. “Yes, I think now,” he said. “Yes.”
“Then we tell him.” We. Somehow we had become allies in this threat to Jay’s innocence. We both waited then, arranging thoughts into words, and began awkwardly to speak at the same time. I smiled at the awkwardness, and Dr. Block, looking grateful, smiled back. “Go ahead,” he said.
“No, you,” I insisted.
He cleared his throat and opened his hands on the desk blotter. “Would you like me to tell him?” he asked.
Ah, easy, easy. That offscreen movie scene. While I hold my fingers in my ears and say wah wah wah until it’s over. Eyes shut, breath held. Is it all over?
“No,” I said.
“Oh.” He was clearly relieved. “Then you …?”
I nodded. Me. I. Myself. I could not imagine doing it, could not visualize the moment and the act. But I could not imagine anyone else doing it either. Certainly not Dr. Block, who was good enough, really a decent man, but a stranger to the unit that was Jay and me. Our twinship, kinship. My brother, my love. Pow! Bang! Right in the balls, in the heart. My God.
“But don’t …” Dr. Block said. “We don’t want to make it irrevocable …”
“But it is!” I said. “It is! There is nothing. Why can’t we decide once and for all if he’s to be treated like a baby or like a man?”
To my surprise there were tears in Dr. Block’s eyes. “There isn’t an easy way,” he said. “Don’t you think I know?”
“Why don’t you do something then, why don’t you perform miracles in this damned mystical place?” My voice was shrill and Dr. Block’s secretary opened the door and looked in.
He waved her away with his hand.
“I’m sorry,” I said, not feeling sorry at all, only dull and resigned.
“Do you want something for yourself?” he asked.
I shook my head and stood up.
He rushed from behind his desk so that he could open the door for me.