“It seems to me that somebody’s had too much cake,” her father said, announcing it to everyone, and suddenly they were all laughing at her.
“I’ll take her back up,” Calvin said. When her father put her down Calvin held out his hand and she took it. He led her up the stairs, one step at a time, and when she saw the candle glow at the end of the hall she thought they would go back to his room. But they went back to hers, instead. Her cake was sitting on her night table, the candle barely still alight.
“Blow it out,” he said.
“But the thingie.”
“Ruined,” he said. She started to cry again. She hadn’t ever totally stopped. “Just eat your cake,” he said.
“Let’s try again,” she said. “I won’t scream.”
“Too late. Now it’s not time anymore. Now it’s just another night. Now it’s just a candle and now they’re just cuts and now it’s just a cake. You better blow it out or you’ll miss your chance for a wish.”
She bent her head and struck, remembering to wish this time, wishing as many wishes as she could hold at once in her head: Let it taste as good as it looks, let there be a pony under my bed tomorrow morning, let the toilet speak to me, let the cake never end, let me and him share it all night tonight, and let him never go, not anywhere, not ever.
17
One thing which ought to animate us to perpetual contest with the devil is that he is everywhere called both our adversary and the adversary of God. For, if the glory of God is dear to us, as it ought to be, we ought to struggle with all our might against him who aims at the extinction of that glory. If we are animated with proper zeal to maintain the kingdom of Christ, we must wage irreconcilable war with him who conspires its ruin. Again, if we have any anxiety about our own salvation, we ought to make no peace nor truce with him who is continually laying schemes for its destruction. But such is the character given to Satan in the third chapter of Genesis, where he is seen seducing man from his allegiance to God, that he may both deprive God of his due honor, and plunge man headlong into destruction. Such, too, is the description given of him in the Gospels, where he is called the enemy and is said to sow tares in order to corrupt the seed of eternal life. In one word, in all his actions we experience the truth of our Savior’s description, that he was a “murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth.” Truth he assails with lies, light he obscures with darkness. The minds of men he involves in error; he stirs up hatred, inflames strife and war, and all in order that he may overthrow the kingdom of God, and drown men in eternal perdition with himself. Hence it is evident that his whole nature is depraved, mischievous, and malignant. There must be extreme depravity in a mind bent on assailing the glory of God and the salvation of man. This is intimated by John in his Epistle, when he says that he “sinneth from the beginning,” implying that he is the author, leader, and contriver of all malice and wickedness. But that’s me. I couldn’t write a better personal ad myself — depraved, malicious, and malignant seeks same for mysterious purpose. Years and years I spent carping at the ruin of the world — as if innocent fallen creation was oppressing me — never realizing (and I’m supposed to be so smart?) that it was my own ruin, that it all proceeded out from me, all the corruption, all the brokenness, even the lies — I told them myself; I send it all out and it comes back, magnified a thousand times, a punishment for me.
18
Rob knew it was stupid, to miss someone who was still alive, when so many people were dead. Every day he spent time looking over the water, remembering his sisters and his mother — for ten minutes or twenty minutes or a half an hour he would stare, now and then mumbling a prayer very softly (he was praying over the water but didn’t want to give the appearance of praying to the water, though there were some who were doing that already, people who discovered once the world was drowned that worldwide catastrophe had all their lives been one of their secret desires, and who treated the killing sea like a god) until his pager went off, inevitably, summoning him to a phone or back to the unit. He never went more than a couple of hours without whispering a name, Gillian or Malinda or Gwen — the last his mother’s name, which he had never spoken while she was alive. He thought of them on the hour, but he didn’t pine for them like he did for Jemma.
Most of the time she was only three floors away, but it felt like she was on another continent, and if they happened to be apart for a whole twelve-hour shift, he grew sadder and sadder by the hour. He learned the difference between sadness and grief that way, missing his girlfriend and missing his family — it hurt in different places. Missing his mother and his sisters was a dull ache — he would never get used to it, but he was already living with it. Everybody was already living with that. But he felt Jemma’s absence more acutely, a sharp pain in the bones of his chest that, when it was raging, would only go away when he pressed her against him.
“I love you,” he’d say to her, in some closet or empty conference room or in the cold rooms where they stored the blood. It seemed so much more urgent now, to say it all the time. There was a pressure that rose from way down deep in him, which those words safely vented, and yet more and more that was not enough. He would put his cheek against her ear and say it, and still there would be the pushing from inside, so he’d have to add, “So much,” or “More every day,” or else just say it again and again, “I love you, I love you, I love you,” until she squirmed away.
He was on call in the new combined unit, and little urgencies kept him running up and down the stairs that connected the NICU and the PICU all night long, but when his need was great enough, he slipped away down the hall, telling the nurses he was just running down to the lab to track down some results. He and Jemma had failed to synchronize their call schedules, so she was home sleeping, or just as often sleeplessly wandering the hospital, when he was working. He went in very quietly. The room was dark and she lay quite still on their bed. He meant just to watch her for a while, to touch her would be to wake her, and then he would have to explain what he was doing there. But as soon as he sat down his pager went off. He was as quick as any intern on the draw, his hand flying to his waist to quiet the thing before it had barely peeped, but it was enough to wake her.
“You again,” she said, opening her eyes and then closing them again. She turned and put an arm across his lap.
“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Tell that fucking nurse I said to shove a preemie up her ass.”
“They’re being nice tonight.”
“Huh. Must be a full moon. What are you doing here?
“Nothing.” She was quiet again, and he was sure she had fallen asleep, and so he said, “Hey… hey… I…” But her hand shot up to silence him, quicker than he had silenced his pager.
“Don’t say it,” she said.
Down the hall and up two stories, Vivian and Ishmael were sitting chastely on the edge of her bed.
“You’re special,” he said.
“Not like you. Only one of you in the whole hospital.”
“I don’t feel very special,” he said. “Not in a good way, anyway. I just feel weird. Didn’t you see everybody looking at me?”
“Of course. You’re famous.”
“Who is that guy? What’s he doing here? Why did he live, instead of my brother?”
“Maybe they’re glad to see you. Glad that somebody else made it.”
“Or instead of my father. Or instead of my uncle.”