The Children's Hospital

34

Dr. Chandra was waiting for the bells to start ringing. Yes — great big Catholic bells, ringing throughout the hospital. Drs. Tiller and Snood would clutch their ears at the sound of them, and cry out, and then melt like wet witches. Or maybe their heads would just explode. “It’s the end of an era!” he’d say to anyone who would listen. Internship was over at last. There should be a parade, at least.

“Don’t you think there should be a parade?” he asked Rob Dickens, who shared with him the task of writing the final notes for all the charts in the PICU. It was a stupid, unnecessary job, but Tiller had insisted. Skipping a day’s notes was a mortal sin in her book, and after the big miracle these charts had languished with blank pages for a week.

“Or something,” Rob said. “I just keep writing, All better now. I don’t know what else to say.”

“That’ll do,” said Dr. Chandra. “”We have to do something. Everything’s different. Everything! I mean, look at you. Just look at you!” He gave Rob a solid thump with his fist.

“I think people are still getting used to it,” Rob said, rubbing his chest where Chandra had hit him.

“Well, two people aren’t enough for a parade, but we have to do something. You can’t just let something like this pass. Do you know how many nights I prayed, Let it be over and get me out of here and save me from this place? And I always said if it could only come true then I would finally believe in God.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Rob said. “And there are other reasons to believe, you know, besides just getting what you want.”

Chandra shrugged. “Well, it’s probably easy to believe when you’re dating Jesus.”

“She’s not…” Rob started, but he didn’t know how to finish. He knew for a fact he wasn’t dating Jesus, and yet he did not know how to describe what Jemma was. It was impossible, already, to describe what she was to him. Now it was just something more strange and more wonderful. “I guess it’s all part of the plan,” he said finally. “That’s how I’ve gotten by with it up to now. It’s something so huge… it’s as big as the whole galaxy, or as big as everyone who ever lived, and even bigger than that. And how are we supposed to understand, when it’s that big? How are we supposed to understand, when we live and everybody else drowns? How are we supposed to understand, when somebody does a miracle? You either trust Him or you don’t, and you put your head down, and muddle through.”

“Dude,” Chandra said, smiling and looking happier than Rob had ever seen him. That was a miracle, anyway, to make glum Dr. Chandra grin and skip and clap his hands like an ingénue candystriper. “That shit’s all over. The days of putting your head down and muddling through are over. Something else is coming now.”

“Well,” Rob said, “I see what you mean. But it’s different for me. It’s all part of the same thing. It has to be, or else the bad part is unbearable, and not even this”—he put his palm against his chest, meaning to indicate his body and his health and his life, everything that Jemma had restored to him—“is enough to make up for the bad part. You know?”

“All I know is that there should be a parade,” Dr. Chandra said, scrawling ALL BETTER in a last chart and snapping it shut. “We should throw Tiller or Snood or Dolores out the window. Or even Jemma, but that would be in a good way, like they do to the little short person when a crew team wins a race.”

“Not her,” Rob said.

“But something. We have to start with something.” Dr. Chandra walked to the window, opened it, and threw the chart out.

“Hey, Tiller’s going to throw a fit.”

“Fuck her.” He took another chart from the table and sent it sailing over the water. It skipped once on the surface before it sank. “What’s in here? A bunch of old news.” He threw another one.

“You’re crazy,” Rob said, and laughed.

“It’s not enough,” Chandra said, throwing one more chart. “It’s not big enough. If you help me, we can do something bigger.” He looked around the unit, fastening his eyes on one of the nurses busy redecorating one of the patient bays.

“I won’t help you do that,” Rob said. But instead of grabbing the nurse, Dr. Chandra went into another room and started to drag the bed toward the window.

“Come on!” Dr. Chandra said. “Don’t just sit there.” So Rob helped him wrestle the huge, heavy bed, up to the window, and together they pushed at it while two nurses shouted at them, one discouraging while the other encouraged. The bed became stuck when they had it half out. Rob pushed and pushed, but Chandra backed up and threw himself at the thing, hitting it with his chest and his arms, and then launching wild kicks at the foot rail, so it budged in spastic measures, and finally tipped, and fell. One nurse cheered, the other groaned. Chandra looked at the bed, floating a moment then sinking past the deeper reaches of the hospital, and said, “Good fucking riddance.”