The knock at the door jolts me upright.
“So this is where you’ve been.”
Through the fog between sleep and wake, at the door, a vague figure in tweed. I know that voice.
“Sir?”
The phone slips from my hand to the floor. Diving to pick it up, I follow. Rising, I ram my head on the bottom of the couch. Professor Mendelssohn looks elsewhere with his round glasses.
“For a while, I thought you may have taken off to South America. You know, followed your red knots, for research. Why else would you have missed our meeting and not even sent those chapter edits?”
His mustache is combed, each hair straight and pristine. He looks as serene as I feel ravaged by the past few days. My clothes are coffee-stained and I must have couch prints on my cheek. I push away damp, tangled strands of hair plastered to my face. The motion revives a soreness that keeps deepening every day.
The couch is hard to sleep on; the air-conditioned room, glacial; the lights, the beeps punishing, but there is no world for me beyond this room. And yet, at its door…
“What are you doing here?”
He sidesteps the question and enters the room. His gaze is clear and placid, as though his appearance on the NICU floor at Mass General Hospital, on a Friday morning, were the most natural occurrence. I realize I have never seen him outside campus. Under the harsh spotlights, without a desk between us, he looks whiter, more silvery, smaller. Still, he smiles, and I instantly feel like a lost child who got found.
“I took the liberty of printing out my comments on the last pages you sent.”
“How did you—”
Wry smile.
“There are only so many places a pregnant woman can disappear to. Everyone on the faculty sends their best. Also, I borrowed a few books from the library I suspect you already know, but that I thought would be good company.”
He waves a brown paper bag I only just noticed.
I want to speak but my throat is sealed shut. I want to take his hand. Instead, I fumble with my sweater and try to smooth my cheek and forehead. He turns away discreetly and sets the bag beside the incubator.
“Why, hello, little friend.”
Smiling at him, he asks, “How is he?”
Still struggling to breathe. Heart rate erratic. Weak. Blood pressure low… but gaining weight, and no complications last night… and it is so good to see Mendelssohn. I open my mouth and croak. He turns to me. Gold-rimmed eyes. Water blue. Baba’s are brown. The thought appears, lightly, from nowhere.
“And how are you?”
Just as lightly, the question shatters me like a crystal vessel.
I burst into tears in a very cold, windowless place. Professor Mendelssohn does not say anything. He waits.
When I pause for air, he pulls a cotton handkerchief from his breast pocket. I used to think no one in the world but Baba still used those. The sight of that little square of cotton, thousands of miles from home… I could have cried into his shirt. I could have cried myself to Damascus. Instead, I cry into the cotton, and he waits for me to finish.
He does not speak immediately into the silence that follows. He lets it settle. Machines beep, and I am grateful. I return the hand kerchief, soggy. He folds it delicately then, with clear eyes, says, “Do you like poppy seeds?”
First, I think I misheard, then that I misunderstood. Then, while I am still deciding, he says:
“My wife sent you flódni. It’s a traditional Hungarian cake with apple, walnuts, poppy seeds, and jam. Hers is quite good. I left it at the nurses’ station.”
He continues: “Also, she wants to know if you like chicken paprikash.”
“I, I’ve never had it,” I stammer.
“It’s not too spicy. Just paprika and some pepper, I think. You will try it next time. Meanwhile…”
He reaches for the paper bag and pulls them out, one by one, old friends: The Land’s End, Birds and Green Places… W. H. Hudson. The room blurs again and I blubber:
“Sir, I—”
“Just so you don’t stray too far,” he says without looking at me and opens one at random. Midnight-blue cover.
“ ‘It has been observed that birds feel a sort of pain before taking off. A pain, almost like fear…’ Perhaps fear,” he remarks to himself. “ ‘Nothing alleviates that feeling except the rapid motion of wings.’ ”
He shuts the book and says, without checking his wristwatch, that he has a class to teach. The others will be dropping in and out, with lasagnas, pies, casseroles. If I need more books, I should just ask.
“Sir, I—”
But he waves it off and leaves me in a room that suddenly feels less cold.
At the threshold, he picks up an envelope someone must have slipped under the door.