“Are you all right?” she asked. “I’m so sorry!”
He looked down at her, peering into her eyes. Jemma looked away.
“You’re all fucked up,” he said.
“You’d better go. It’s not safe here. Something’s coming, but I can hide you. Come on.” She stood up and grabbed his arm.
“Don’t touch me, you nasty junkie whore,” he said calmly, shrugging her off and walking away.
“Not that way!” Jemma called. “It’s coming from that way!” He turned the corner, and she could not muster the courage to step around it and call after him again. She ran, instead, feeling the thing behind her, the skin of her back burning as it got closer. She flew down the stairs three and four steps at a time, and took a winding path through the fourth floor back to the room where she’d left Vivian.
“Vivian!” she said hoarsely, trying to whisper and shout at the same time. “There’s something behind me! I think it’s the why. I think it’s the reason. It’s coming to get us, because we were thinking about it. We called it to us, don’t you see? Like when you say Nancy Reagan’s name seven times into a mirror and she leaps out to kill you with her big red claws!” She called Vivian’s name again, but there was no answer, and as she looked harder through the darkness she saw that the room was empty. Jemma pushed the table against the door and sat with her back against the window, her head just at the surface of the water. She watched the door, trying not to imagine the form that the thing must take as it came to destroy her, imagining instead what it would do to her. She saw her blood smeared over the walls and windows, and her guts strung up, over and under the struts of the suspended ceiling, and her head preserved in the little brown refrigerator, with somebody else’s retainer stuck in her mouth. She watched and watched, as the thing never came, until she was finally distracted by the advent of a cold bright light. Her shadow appeared on the floor as suddenly as a monster, but it did not frighten her. She felt as if the tea were nearly out of her, by then. She turned and saw the full moon peeping around the top edge of the window. She had noticed before the face in it, but it had never seemed as sad as it did tonight, and the crater mouth had never seemed opened wide in horror like tonight. Over the next hour, while Jemma sat perfectly still, not sure if she was even blinking, it sank down into the water, as if it were seeking to drown. When it was fully immersed Jemma at last closed her eyes, and felt herself sinking too, and in the last fling of her trip imagined the moon a stone tied to her foot, the glowing opposite of a balloon, so as it sank in the water it pulled her after it in slow degrees, farther and deeper, back to the former surface of the world, and below that, and below that, and below.
You get heavy, I get light. I rise and rise and rise, through the dark water and the bright hospital and the blue air, and stretch myself over everyone, listening to Vivian weeping again — now she is all sadness and no rage. She cowers in the linen closet in the oncology ward, so sorry for what she has done, and for what you have done. She has convinced herself that you and she are responsible for the whole thing. It’s a pain no one should have to bear, and my sister, sensitive to such things, gasses her gently with strawberry-scented sevofluorane, sending her to dream of fragrant plastic ponies and live for a few hours as a child in the old world. Dr. Snood passes by the closet, on one of his own late-night walks, trying to decide whether or not to continue with the tradition of grand rounds — maybe there is a better name, or a better thing altogether, a new tradition he should start, grander rounds, a shared time of useful consciousness, or a town-hall style meeting to discuss issues of hospital governance — and thinking of his wife. Her picture has been hanging all day in his mind, and he considers again how it would have been their anniversary in three days. It is the first time in five years that he has remembered it.
Rob Dickens passes him on the ramp, not looking up, walking slowly back to the call room. He got the femoral line but it was a small joy, because the kid was actually doing extraordinarily well and had actually yelled out, “Stop, stop that! Why are you poking me?” as Rob drove the needle into his thigh. He wasn’t supposed to do that. Rob starts crying again as he walks, turning his head into his shoulder and hurrying now, not even sure why he’s so sad — when he tries to think of his mom or Greta or Gillian all he can see is the heart kid’s face, and he should be happy for that kid, and happy that he was asking for ice cream as they wheeled him off to the PICU. He starts to run as he passes the fifth floor, wanting very much to put his face between your shoulders because he knows it will stop up the crying some if he does that.
I could make a false Jemma, my sister says. Give me a summer squash, he will never know the difference.
It is not necessary, I say.
Cruel angel, she says, and sighs. Something wonderful has happened. Already she has put forth her hand.
I say it too, Something wonderful! A shout over the whole blue earth, loud enough for anyone with ears to hear, but the hospital is still a sadness on the waters, and still my brother is gathering himself up from within the deep, from bits of bone and flesh, an eye here, an ear there, from a hundred thousand patches of skin he is formed to be perfect in his flesh and perfect in his fury and already he is coming.
12
Our doctrine be tested by this rule and our victory is secure. For what accords better and more aptly with faith than to acknowledge ourselves divested of all virtue that we may be clothed by God, devoid of all goodness that we may be filled by Him, the slaves of sin that He may give us freedom, blind that He may enlighten, lame that He may cure, and feeble that He may sustain us; to strip ourselves of all ground of glorying that He alone may shine forth glorious and we be glorified in Him? These things, and others to the same effect are said by us, they interpose and querulously complain, that in this way we overturn some blind light of nature, fancied preparatives, free will, and works meritorious of eternal salvation, with their own supererogations also; because they cannot bear that the entire praise and glory of all goodness, virtue, justice, and wisdom, should remain with God. The first part is easiest. How many times have I put off all virtue? Over and over I have rolled off virtue and justice and wisdom and goodness like so many pairs of rubber underwear. Then I stand there, naked, perverse, depraved, and wait to be clothed, but no matter how many hours — you can stand there all night — it never happens. I can look back with my perfect memory and there was never one moment, never one, in my whole life where I didn’t labor under it. The knowledge of my depravity is the only thing that makes me special — not the bad dreams or how I can leave my body on the roof and fly down the river dipping my hands in the water (and they are wet when I come back) or how I can make time slow down or how I know the future or how I can tell the best souls (and I know mine is small and wrinkled, wizened not wise) or how I can make my eyes change color if I stare in the mirror at them for long enough — that I have always always always known, and have never for a moment been able to forget, that there is something terribly wrong with me.
13
