Troy had fallen, in flames and anguish, while the body of Hector, breaker of horses, bravest of the Trojans, lay on a funeral pyre ready to be consumed by the fire that was eating the city.
His mother had given him a child’s version of the Iliad for his eighth birthday; he read for himself how the bravest of all the Trojans was killed, his body dragged around the city. We named you for him, Hector, his mother said, so that he grew up expecting to meet a bloody end. The dream recurred at any failure, whether small—a loss at a cross-country meet, failure to get into Johns Hopkins—or great, as when Madeleine Carter killed herself.
His mother loomed over his bier, an enormous figure, so huge that he and the dying city might be toy figures and she alone human-sized. Before she could mock him, Starr appeared next to her. Starr’s hair was restored to its magnificent horns and curls. She picked Lily up and held her in the palm of her bronze hand until the mocking mother was small, smaller than Hector on his bier, and unable to laugh at him, or even see him. Starr leaned over him, her black eyes gleaming with compassion. “You are the bravest of all the Trojans, Hector; I am well pleased in you. The scar along your cheekbone will be your permanent reminder of your courage.”
The bonds that tied him to the bier dissolved and he sat up. He stretched his arms out toward Starr, but she vanished.
He woke sobbing, his face throbbing. He tried to wipe his eyes but found a cocoon of bandages encasing his left cheek and eye. Oh, yes, he was in his familiar place, the hospital, but in an unfamiliar posture, patient instead of doctor. He’d undergone surgery to repair his shattered cheekbone and now was lying in bed, the resident’s dream come true, bed for several days, rest for some weeks after, at a point in his life when he didn’t care if he lived or died or ever slept again.
His pain was so intense that he found it difficult to concentrate his ideas. Bandages and anesthesia made it hard to see the pages of his journal: his writing looped around like a drunkard—like Luisa—stumbling in circles on the beach. He was attached to a morphine pump but he refused to use it, cherishing the pain as a last connection to Starr.
A passing nurse scolded him: he mustn’t cry, not following surgery on the face, or his scars would seize. Against his wishes she pushed on the morphine pump and sent him down the well of sleep once more.
The morphine made him doze and wake without any sense of time. He would blink up at a nurse or a surgical resident and then drift off again. At one point he woke to Dr. Hanaper’s fingers on his wrist. He thought Dr. Stonds stood behind Hanaper, barking out orders about Luisa Montcrief. She’s not my patient, Hector said, his lips swollen from surgery not shaping the words clearly. Another time he thought he saw a priest, which frightened him: I’m dying, and they think I’m a Catholic. No last rites, he whispered, I’m a Jew, and then he tumbled back into sleep, hoping he would find Starr there once more.
He was on a high-speed train that was moving away from Starr. If he could only get off, get on a train going back, back to Saturday morning, to Starr, everything would be all right. He kept trying to stop it, the way they did in movies, pulling on a magic cord, but the train whizzed past stations. Dr. Boten, dressed as a conductor, told him it was not possible. The trains on this track went in one direction only.
Sunday morning the pain had subsided. He knew where he was again: in a room at Midwest Hospital, with Starr many stations behind him on the journey.