“Plus your counts are high enough that we can take you off the Coumadin. So no more blood thinners for you.”
“Even this feels collapsed,” Fatima mumbled.
Aware of the nurse now, Bhakti spoke politely. “You tried the cephalic?”
A glare in return: What do you think?
“Could someone go to the trouble of bringing me more blankets, please?” Alice asked. “It’s chilly in here.”
“Well, we have to get this line started.” Bhakti tossed her hair behind her ear and was apparently oblivious to how such a maneuver might be taken by a bald chemo patient. Recrossing her arms, she lifted a pen to her mouth. “You’ve got a blood transfusion scheduled, then nutrition.” She bit, gnawing at the pen’s end, an action incongruous with everything Alice had assumed about her. Now Bhakti’s voice sounded like someone consulting with a waitress about unfamiliar menu items. “The thing about the IV team, if we call, we’re committed. Then add two hours to whatever time they estimate for arrival.”
When Alice had been in New Hampshire, and it was time to remove the catheter from her clavicle area, the doctor had told her to hum. As soon as she started, he’d yanked. There had been a sting and it had been over, like that. “I had a central line the last time,” Alice said. “I’m sure you both know that.” She sought out Tilda, explaining. “First they tried to go into my wrist. This monstrous harpoon of a needle. I was horrified, but I don’t think I even had the energy to start shaking, that’s what kind of shape I was in. Oliver told me some stupid joke he loves — it doesn’t matter what, trust me, it isn’t funny.”
“Shocker there,” Tilda said.
“It makes him laugh,” Alice continued, “and that always makes me laugh, and so I love the joke. He brought it up because he knew I enjoyed his pleasure. And at that moment, it was so ridiculous, I couldn’t help be surprised. That helped me calm.”
Tilda’s eyes rolled upward; Alice recognized her skepticism. “I know you and he butt heads, Tilapia. But he’s always showing me new forms of love. It’s how we survived that horrid month.”
The overhead lights kept humming.
“Let’s just put in a central line and hook everything to that,” Bhakti said, shrugging at Alice. “I mean, you’re already scheduled for a port.”
—
She was rising, propelling herself upward from the bottom of the ocean, kicking against gravity’s pull, pressure on her face, her lungs burning, ascending through pockets of warmth, layers of freezing cold. Breaking out of the depths, into consciousness, awakening, gulping, taking deep breaths. Overhead light panels were graceless and harsh. Running across her clavicle, aftershocks were like electricity through thin aluminum bars.
It took some time, but, muddling through the thickest parts of her Percocet haze, she realized that the clear plastic tube was new, and this catheter was different, a new device had been placed in her body, but in the exact location as the one in New Hampshire.
“This one hurts more,” Alice mumbled. “Lots more.”
—
She still wasn’t coherent when the familiar voice nagged, through her fugue, coming from some outpost: They think they might not have used enough morphine. Tilda, bless her. Wearing one of those infernal masks and a pair of gloves that would be de rigueur for as long as Alice was stuck here. Only something didn’t make sense: Alice was accustomed to seeing the minty green accoutrements of New Hampshire. Tilda’s mask was the soft yellow of light filtered through a picture window on a lazy morning—aeons more pleasing. Alice did not understand how Tilda had gotten to the hospital so fast — somehow she’d made it up to the Granite State before they’d even gotten off the phone, Alice terrified, sharing the news in a blubbering, hysterical conversation.
The deep part of another evening: Oliver had been snuggled next to her in the bed, on a break from watching whatever movie he’d rented from some video place near campus. He’d wanted to know if they’d get to watch the little scrap of mask go brown on Tilda’s face.
Alice had smiled, blown a parched kiss.
More of her surroundings were recognizably mundane: intravenous glass bottles and plastic expanding fluid bags hanging above her, all of them connected to a large aluminum tree and a robotic battery pack; that orange plastic bin by the room’s entrance, specifically there for needles and radioactive trash; Alice’s patient folder open on a tan linoleum counter. Tilda sat in a cushioned seat beside her. Directly across from them, a wall of windows ran the length of the room. What was unexpected: about five yards away on Alice’s right side, a mud-green curtain acted as a separating wall. From behind the curtain came the spreading applause of a studio audience, loud enough to shatter eardrums.
Tilda flipped open a notebook. While Alice was unconscious, she’d taken notes. Not much, she said. Then she let Alice get acclimated to the land of the living, poured and handed her some water, gave her some ice chips. And only then, not wanting to leave out any last detail, did Tilda unpack her list, anything that might be moderately worthwhile: that Dr. Eisenstatt apparently had been detained by some emergency, but was still hoping to visit this afternoon; that the sheets and pillowcases were indeed hypoallergenic, the nurse had double-checked. Also, Alice was scheduled for tests today—“an EKG, an echocardiogram to make sure your heart’s okay, um, a CAT scan.” Oh, pills. Alice was supposed to take her pills: the little red one, that was an antifungal, and the white one, right, ay-psych-lo-veer, that was an antiviral, which meant no STDs, which meant Tilda probably needed “to grab a few for myself.”
They enjoyed one another’s laughter, a nice break, before Tilda continued. The pills: Alice was overdue to take the bunch on the counter in a plastic cup. Alice recognized the third one — a yellow horse-looking number of thickly packed potassium. In New Hampshire she’d been assured it would help with digestion. “Only my diarrhea hit, and every time, that huge pill passed right out of the other end.”
Tilda called it a koan worthy of the Buddha: How does one digest a pill for diarrhea if the diarrhea forces the pill through you before it can be digested? Alice was still enjoying the quandary when Tilda chugged forward again, this time to the little old woman on the other side of the curtain. Mrs. Woo. “She’s pretty much trapped in bed. They’ve got a tube in her throat,” Tilda said. Whenever any of the nurses came to talk to Mrs. Woo, they talked slowly and loudly, Tilda could not believe how bad, patronizing beyond words. Mrs. Woo had two full-grown grandchildren, and they came and went from the room at will, according to Tilda, apparently unable to speak English, but nevertheless possessing quite an endearing game show fetish, along with a preternatural aversion to turning off their television set.
“I asked about a private room. The nurse told me you could contact your insurance and see if they want to pay the extra fee. Five hundred and fifty more a night.” Tilda snorted. “I can call if you want?”
Glowing appreciation in the direction of her friend, Alice wished she was clever enough, that her mind was working well enough, for a proper counter. She wished she could keep this banter going. Then she recognized a sound — that beeping. She’d hoped she was done with it.
Congruent red light flashed from the top of the battery apparatus. Feeling around for the intercom system, Alice told the floor operator, “My IV’s beeping.”
In the window on the opposite wall, blankets of snow were coming down with speed and violence, falling so fast and hard that it was difficult to see the building just outside the window — a structure from some other century, stone and bricks worn down by time and the elements. She could barely recognize decorative flourishes on the marble window molding, a dancing cherub, its carved, curving belly. Fresh snow had accumulated into a thick pile on the ledge. It all looked close enough that if a person had a ladder, she might finagle it out the window, fight through the blizzard, and reach that other floor. She just might make her escape.