Brian’s fear catapulted him up Third Avenue as if he were a wad of paper shot out of a giant rubber band. Despite the almost wintry chill of the April afternoon, he arrived at Saint Joseph’s with body steaming. He eyed the crowd waiting for the elevator as it descended haltingly to the ground floor. Certain that the crammed cubicle couldn’t contain the anxiety exploding from his chest, he vaulted up the eleven flights to the Intensive Care Unit and raced down the hall to the waiting room.
The sight of Walter and Margaret sitting across the room from each other stopped him at the doorway as if the atmosphere on the other side of the threshold were a solid block of ice, impenetrable. The two gazed at him, white faces marooned on separate frozen islands of animosity and bitterness. Silently Brian’s eyes absorbed Walter’s sagging shoulders, the pale-blue shirt grimy and wrinkled, and Margaret’s stiff posture, arms held tightly to her midsection, legs pressed together in a straight line. Their misery, unmitigated by sharing, seemed instead exaggerated by the other’s presence.
Their fault. Whatever happened to Sharlie. Martha’s voice on the telephone half an hour ago had replied noncommittally to Brian’s urgent questions, but he had responded to the careful words with a violent and visceral hatred for Sharlie’s parents, a hatred that distracted him from his fear for her. But the angry speeches that boiled inside him all the way uptown cooled into silence now as he looked at the two guilty ones, staring from their ice block. Rather than melt that barrier with his hot rage, he turned, wordless, and walked away from their frightened eyes.
Walter’s and Margaret’s images dissolved like puffs of cold winter breath as Brian stood gazing down at their daughter. It was Sharlie all right, but he imagined this was how she looked as a young girl, perhaps about twelve years old. Her eyelids had the translucent fragility of the very young, and her figure appeared diminished in the midst of all the wires and machinery. Her face was so still that the lines of her mouth seemed carved. There was no movement, even along the delicate curves of her nostrils. He glanced at the machines ticking steadily, marveling that somewhere in her body life continued.
Sharlie! Open your eyes and smile at me and say something ridiculous about this place you’re in—what did you call it? The Incredibly Complicated Udder? Tell me about the mail-order heart you sent for from L. L. Bean—the down-filled one to make you extra warm-hearted. As if you needed that.
Someone touched his shoulder, and he swung around ferociously. The startled nurse motioned that it was time to leave. He walked out through the double swinging doors into the empty corridor, and when he couldn’t think of anything else to do, he pulled back his right fist and slammed it into the wall.
Later, in Diller’s office, he stared down at his hand, wrapped in a light plaster cast. A hairline fracture, they’d said down in X ray. Amazingly, the release of frustration seemed worth the pain and embarrassment, but he knew the relief was momentary. Every day another plaster cast, perhaps? Left hand tomorrow, feet next, then head—which took him to the weekend. He’d have to content himself with the walls in his own apartment so as not to find himself expelled from the hospital for malicious mischief.
He knew that Walter and Margaret would not have included him in the conference, so he had just barged in and sat down with them. But now he found it difficult to pay attention. Diller’s voice droned on, something about Jason Lewis—the Santa Bel heart surgeon—tests, flight arrangements. Brian watched Walter’s hands, moving in a restless, helpless rhythm, one on top of the other in his lap.
Then Diller was standing, so Brian rose with Margaret and Walter, and they filed out of the office in silence. Brian didn’t feel like asking, but he got the impression that Sharlie was about to leave for California.
Sharlie swam through the pale-blue sea, only she knew it wasn’t water, it was sky. She floated easily, turning with the slightest movement of her arms. She took a quick look over her shoulder, just to make absolutely sure there were no wings. It was peaceful up here, quiet except for the faint ticking sound above her—God’s wristwatch, no doubt, she thought, and felt herself begin to giggle.
But then the light dimmed, and suddenly she began to shiver. So cold. She tried to work her arms faster, but they were pinioned to her sides, and she started to fall, hurtling through the cold darkness toward the ticking that, below her now, grew louder and louder. She fought against the restraints, trying to free her arms so that she could perhaps cling to something to break her fall, and in her struggle she roused herself and stared straight up into Brian’s face. She gazed expressionlessly at him for a long moment, and finally, as if they were in midconversation and had been briefly interrupted by a cough or a sneeze, said in a clear voice, “Bastards won’t let me out of here.”
Brian began to laugh, and he grasped her hand. She smiled vaguely at him, wondering why he seemed so ecstatic when she was lying around with all these wretched wires sticking out of her.
“Where are my parents?” she asked.
“Down the hall. Want to see them now?”
She shook her head. “No. I’m going to sleep. Hold my hand until I go, all right?”
He nodded, and she fell asleep almost instantly.
The same nurse who had been on duty when Brian made his first visit to ICU stood behind him now, well out of reach of his remaining unbroken fist. “Time to go,” she said warily, eyes focused on the plaster cast.
Brian moved reluctantly from the bedside, and the nurse backed off a bit, giving him a wide berth as he passed through the doors.