The Children's Hospital

73

Dr. Snood interrupted Dr. Chandra at his suicide. He hadn’t meant to do anything of the sort. He was chasing down a child who had been sassy to him, one of the old rickets family, a seven-year-old who had abandoned a wagon full of laboratory specimens to spoil in the lobby. “I don’t feel like it!” she’d said, when Dr. Snood had commanded her to haul the thing to the lab, and she had torn up her demerit and thrown it on the ground as soon as she’d received it. He wanted to catch her to give her a talking-to, stern but gentle. She was a child, but who among them were children anymore? There was no leisure for any of them now, not for the young or the sick or the weak, not for the weary and not for the depressed. He could frame that in a way a seven-year-old could comprehend. It would be a very fulfilling talk. He was sure they would both go away from it revitalized.

He lost the child on the eighth floor, and when he put his head into one of the old BMT rooms, now an abandoned ballet salon, he saw Dr. Chandra standing in the window.

“Don’t,” he said, loud but not too loud, afraid of scaring him into the jump. Dr. Chandra drew back his foot and turned around.

“You,” he said.

“Yes,” said Dr. Snood. “It’s me.”

“What are you doing up here?”

“I had a feeling someone was going to do something stupid. I… sensed it.”

“Nothing stupid about what I’ve got planned.”

“You’ve got that poised-in-the-window look of somebody about to kill himself.”

“Exactly. The only stupid thing is having waited this long. I’m almost too late, and you’re making me later.”

“Come down from there. We’ll figure something out.”

“You go ahead your way, Doctor. I’ll go mine.”

“Wait! At least tell me why.”

“You can probably get it from the context,” he said, not turning around.

“Maybe I’m not as smart as I look.”

“I guess I could believe that. Here’s the short version, then, because I think I just threw a PVC. I’m about to die anyway, I never did any of the shit I was supposed to do, and it’s the only thing that would make me happy.”

“But if you’re going to…”

“It’s not the same, is it. Is it?” He turned his head to look at Dr. Snood. “If I do it then I do it. If it just happens then it just happens, and then my whole life I’ll never have had done anything. I was supposed to do it years ago. Years ago, and now it’s almost too late. Okay? Will you go away now?”

“That’s not it,” said Dr. Snood. “I can tell when people are lying to me.”

“Well, that’s what I’m offering. You’re free to presume whatever else you want.”

“You’re just tired of the work. Well, we’re all tired of the work, but we’ve got to keep up with it. What other choice have we got?”

Dr Chandra spread out his arms beside him in a downward sweep, as if to say, Behold! Then he turned back to face the water.

“Wait a minute,” Dr. Snood said. “I think I’ve got an idea.

“Fuck,” he said. “It’s starting. I can’t move my foot. What do I have to do to get a push?”

“You think something will change because you do it, or someone will be happy? You think the botch will go back into whatever box it came out of, just because of this? You think you can start over again, somewhere else?”

“Just one little push,” he said.

“Are you lonely?” asked Dr. Snood, not thinking before he spoke. Two people had already died this morning, and he couldn’t stand another, especially a suicide, of which they’d thankfully not yet had a single one. “I’ll be your friend. Are you tired? You can sleep in my bed. Are you sad? I can be very amusing.”

“Maybe if you just blew on me,” he said.

“Are you lonely?” he asked him again, reaching up high to lay a hand on his shoulder. “I’m lonely, too,” he said. “We all are.”

“What’s wrong with you?” Dr. Chandra asked. “Why are you touching me?”

“I don’t like suicide,” he said. It was true, but it was the wrong thing to say.

“I see a whale,” Dr. Chandra said, and drove an elbow into Dr. Snood’s face, and pushed himself forward. Dr. Snood reached after him, but not quickly enough, or not sincerely enough, and Dr. Chandra fell. He broke on the surface of the water instead of falling through it, and floated there in piles of greasy ash that would coat the windows on the third floor for days.