Telling Lies

Chapter Three

My brother, Marc, came home from Vietnam in a bronze box with a bronze star on his chest. I was barely sixteen. I remember edging up to his coffin, expecting him to throw open the lid, shout boo and laugh and pass out some of the righteous grass he had promised to smuggle home. An elaborate prank would have surprised me less than watching his box disappear, seals intact, under a load of gray cemetery dirt.

On December 20, 1969, Marc died. Now he had been dead for exactly as long as he had lived. Twenty-two years. The two halves of his life, measurably the same, seemed so unequal; one too short, the other endlessly long.

Now here was Emily, his twin in life, perhaps in death as well. It was a strange and horrible irony.

I edged over to the bed and found Emily’s hand under the sheets. Her icy fingers didn’t respond, but I held on to them anyway. “Emily?”

“She can’t hear you,” Nurse Barbara whispered.

“How do you know?” The situation was so weird I couldn’t take it in. What I wanted to say to this nurse was, “Emily always hears everything.” Instead I put my face so close to Em’s that her soft gauze turban brushed my cheek. “Em, it’s me, Maggot.”

“Honestly, Miss MacGowen, she can’t hear you.”

“What’s happened to Emily?”

Trinh Freedman hovered at the end of the bed. “I’ll get Doctor Song.”

I looked at her, stopped her flight toward the door. “What happened to Emily?” I demanded.

“We’re not authorized to say.”

“Authorized, hell,” I snapped.

“I’ll get Doctor.”

I appealed again to Barbara, but from the anxiety in her face I knew there was no point in pursuing it.

Under the fluorescent lights, Emily was impossibly pale. There was a network of fine lines around her eyes I had never noticed before. In my mind’s eye, she is still the young woman on the cover of Time, fresh and earnest and powerful. Here in front of me was Emily the middle-aged woman. How was it possible I hadn’t noticed the passage?

Emily’s mouth was drawn into a hard 0, like a maiden aunt puckered for a duty kiss. I felt I should kiss her.

“Maggie MacGowen?”

I wheeled at the deep voice behind me. He was dark and slender, a tall Asian wearing a crisp white lab coat.

“Doctor?” I said.

“Albert Song.” He extended his hand. “I’m glad you made it so quickly.”

“I can’t believe this.”

“None of us can.”

“What happened to Emily?”

Dr. Song narrowed his black eyes. “You weren’t told?”

“No.”

“Who contacted you?”

“No one. I just came. Please, tell me.”

“Emily was brought in a few hours ago.” He whispered, “She was shot.”

“Shot? Gunshot?”

“I’m sorry.”

“How?”

He shook his head. “She was found in an alley off Gin Ling Way.”

I thought again of Marc’s coffin disappearing into the ground while I waited for him to jump out. Emily teased, but she never played practical jokes. This whole scene made no sense and I would not buy into it. I crossed my arms. “Not Emily.”

“So pointless,” he said. “Whoever did this had to be some newcomer to the streets. Every bum in town knows that Emily Duchamps will give him anything he needs.”

Except for one thing. I turned away from Emily to ask: “Was she raped?”

“No,” he said.

I leaned over Em again, searching for some reaction. “Is she in pain?”

“We don’t think so.”

“Tell me everything.”

“We don’t know much, police don’t either. She was shot from the side, probably taken unawares. A single bullet pierced the skull, passed through her right temporal lobe and exited over her left eye.”

Through her brain? I looked at her profile, our father’s profile, until it was blurred by tears.

“I’m truly sorry,” Albert Song said. “Emily is a singular treasure.”

“How bad is it?”

He turned his attention to her, delaying his answer. He laid his palm along her cheek and flashed a light into her right eye. When he spoke again, his words came slowly, full of sad knowledge I thought he was reluctant to share.

“Right out of medical school, I would have told you it was hopeless. But I’ve learned never to predict with brain injuries-I’ve seen too many miracles.

“She’s strong,” he continued. “She’s world-class stubborn. If she wakes up, who knows? We’re amazed she’s made it this far without mechanical intervention.”

“If she wakes up?” I couldn’t hear her breathe. “Are you saying that if she wakes up she’ll be okay?”

“Okay?”

“Will she be able to practice medicine?”

“No.” His dark eyes had gone very liquid. “Miracles don’t come that big. There is significant damage, loss of brain tissue.” I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

Every day of my life, I still missed Marc. There was so much I wanted to tell him, so many things we needed to discuss. I still listened for his voice every time I opened the door to our parents’ house, waited for him to jump out and do something new and annoying to me. He had left me too soon and I had trouble forgiving him.

I’d had Emily for twenty-two years longer than I’d had Marc. The time made no difference; it was still too soon to lose her.

I stood beside her, trying to make her cold hand warm, trying to make her respond to me. I couldn’t hear myself breathe.

I wiped my eyes and turned to Dr. Song. “What now?”

“She seems to have stabilized,” he said. “We installed a shunt to relieve some of the pressure on the brain, and maybe it helped. I’m glad you’re here to represent the family. We don’t have facilities to properly treat Emily further. If she remains stable until morning, you might consider moving her to Cedars-Sinai or UCLA.”

“I hate talking over her as if she isn’t here,” I said.

“If she could hear, she wouldn’t mind.” Dr. Song had been looking around for something. Barbara, the attentive nurse, picked up a clipboard and handed it to him.

“Do you want the forms now?” she asked.

“The forms?” He took the clipboard and flipped through the attached pages. “I heard that Miss MacGowen stopped by Lee’s bakery. I thought maybe the coffee would do her good.”

I had forgotten the white bag clutched against my coat. I held it out to him. “Heard how?”

“Community grapevine. Mr. Lee called and said you were on your way.”

“How does he know me?”

“Emily brags about you. The whole neighborhood watches your films, even without Chinese subtitles.”

“Oh, Em.” The room became a spin of white until my feet seemed to lose contact with the floor. Dr. Song caught me by the arms before I fell and sat me on the edge of Emily’s bed.

“I’m eternally sorry.” His voice was husky.

“Doctor,” Barbara prodded. “The forms?”

“Right.” He took a breath and passed me the clipboard. He spoke quickly, getting something unpleasant over with. My ears were ringing so it was difficult to concentrate on what he was saying.

“Take your time,” he said. “But not too much. Emily listed you as next of kin on her personnel records. The hospital needs your signed consent for the surgery we have already performed, just to cover our ass. The other, well, I know this is a tough time to be making decisions. You’ll want to talk with family, maybe a lawyer. But I’m warning you, time is of the essence. So far, Emily is holding her own. But if there is a crisis, she stops breathing unassisted, or she goes into cardiac arrest, and we don’t have a signature on your desires about medical intervention, then the hospital board will make the decisions for you.”

“Can I trust them?” I asked.

“You can trust them to do what’s safe for the hospital. They’ll plug her in.”

I moved further onto the bed and squeezed Emily’s foot through the covers. She didn’t react. Even when I pinched the corn on her little toe, there was nothing. I looked at the forms, a blur of black-and-white legal mumbo-jumbo. I read the word respirator a few times, and the words food and water. The question was not what I wanted, but what Emily would have wanted me to do in her interest. I thought I knew, but who can be sure?

Albert Song looked at me expectantly.

“What’s in the frontal lobe?” I asked.

“As to function? Thinking, judgment, reasoning.”

“How about speech?”

He nodded. “And speech.”

In profile, Emily truly was incredibly like our father. I imagined them sitting side by side on the back deck of our parents’ house in the Berkeley Hills, staring up at Grizzly Peak or out across San Francisco Bay, locked together in endless silence. I knew what my father would advise.

I signed the consent for the surgery that had already been performed. Then I checked no in the box next to mechanical respirator and yes in the box next to food and water. I signed the bottom with my legal name, Margot Eugenie Duchamps MacGowen, and handed the clipboard back to Dr. Song.

“Here,” I said. “But ask me again in the morning.”