The Children's Hospital

88

The botch was eating at Rob’s body, drying out his liver, hollowing cavitations in his spleen. Every time she touched him, Jemma pushed at it, but he became a little more degraded every day. Soon he had sores she could not wipe away, and a barking cough that sometimes brought black mud into his mouth, and he got harder and harder to wake from his dreamless sleep. It didn’t seem to bother him. He never complained about the cough, or said that his bones were hurting, though the black gall infiltrating his marrow was as plain to her as the nose on his face. That was getting misshapen, too, botch like fungus eating at his septum to give him the saddle-shaped nose of an ancient syphilitic.

“I feel great!” he always said, when she asked. She was in perfect health, but felt awful, perhaps, she thought, in sympathy to him. It was in her, too, she was sure, even though she couldn’t see it. She shouldn’t have had the pain in her wrists, or the cloudiness in her eyes, or the headaches, or the itchy rash on her bottom, not symptoms, either, of the pregnancy — two hundred and eighty days at sea and two weeks past her due date those were all backache and swollen feet and feeling eternally huge. And it wasn’t in her brain, so she had no excuse for all her strange and deplorable behaviors. She wasn’t crazy from the botch, not a feral Jemma, not senseless from disease, but still she excused herself on account of it, and drew on the excuse of weariness with the long struggle. I deserve to be a little crazy, she thought. Who wouldn’t be? There was no one to judge her, anyway — Rob lacked the faculties and Pickie had not woken in days — except Ishmael, who would hate her no matter what she did.

She did everything for her own comfort, excusing herself like a glutton feasting with a cold — I need this, she kept saying to herself, every time she looked at Rob, a little more decayed, silently suffering, happy as a retarded clam, still beautiful to her no matter how sick he got. She took to wearing hats plundered from the stock of happier times, Vivian’s pillbox and Monserrat’s beret and Dr. Snood’s bowler and Dr. Tiller’s beaddazzled cloth-and-leather headdresses. She’d put them on and hand out merit slips to the sleeping children, thinking she remembered just who had received how many demerits from Dr. Tiller, and keeping a pretend tally of how many she had yet to undo.

She made feasts she was too depressed to eat, set tables for lost holidays and imaginary holidays never to come, seated older kids at the table — some of them had become waxy and posable — and made Rob sing songs to them and eat food from all their plates. She made him pile babies on her in the nursery, spreading herself on the floor while he put them carefully on top of her in layers, until she lay quiet and still in a bubble of hot breath. She dressed them in fancy outfits and took them for stroller rides on the ramp, pretending it was years ago or years from now, that this was her baby asleep in the stroller, his chin on his chest, his feet bouncing as she rolled him through a different world or a new world. She started peeing in empty corners, or empty beds. In the middle of a nurses’ station or in the middle of a reconverted OR — the gleaming puddle on the sterile white floor was very satisfying.

She made Rob dance with her for hours at a time. The angel had an archive of songs that they couldn’t possibly exhaust, and she’d play them anywhere. The angel herself couldn’t sing worth a damn, but she had all the voices of the old world stored in the bowels of the hospital, and she’d recorded the survivors, secretly and not, at their own singing — Dr. Tiller’s stern “I Like Paris in the Springtime,” Dr. Sundae’s slow but passionate “Day by Day,” and Vivian’s “Do Right Woman,” which started out rather ferocious, but ended small and meek and sweet, too much like surrender to be at all like Vivian. It was Jemma’s favorite, in those last days. Rob seemed to like them all equally.

“I’m so happy,” he told her. They were dancing on the roof, in the faint, early shadow of the sycamore. She held him around the waist and pressed her face into his neck; his arms were over her shoulders, a hand placed on each of her shoulder blades. They rocked back and forth, foot to foot, the same old dance, not very different at all from the days when he was entirely alive.

“Me too,” she said. This was not how she had imagined they would spend their final days, and yet there was a sort of golden retirement glow over moments like this. They were lazy, and slow, and when they were in them she felt like they had nothing to do, and nowhere to go, and that they were just waiting, and would be waiting forever, for death to take them away together.

“I wish every day could be as pretty as this,” he said, though the day was no different from the last days and weeks; every morning started with fog, every afternoon was sunny and bright, every evening came at the end of a spectacular show of cloud. The air was always cool, not too salty, and clean-smelling, and every once in a while a strange odor came riding on her wind. It took her a whole week to realize it was the smell of land.

“They all can be,” she said. “They all will be.” But when she was thinking rationally she realized that she had no idea what was coming, and when she thought about how she had always been too afraid to imagine a future for them together, she wondered if that was why they weren’t going to have one now.

“Today I sat on a big bouncy ball,” he said. She said nothing, only held him a little tighter. She meant to let him go, just then, imagining a place on his back, a place to press that would release him. He would fall into all those parts again, and then they would crumble, while she watched, to ash. She would do something crazy — stuff her mouth with him, or spread him on her hair as she ripped her clothes. Then she would lie down and… she didn’t know what came next. It was like looking into the future and seeing another end of the world, all she could imagine coming afterward was blank white space, an emptiness that hurt just to think about. She held him tighter in her arms and tighter in her mind, sending a rush of fire through him — it was so subtle now, and so powerful, and still so useless.

“Why are you crying?” he asked her.

“Because I’m so happy,” she said.

“I’ll do it too!” he said, but she wouldn’t let him.

Two more times that day she felt almost ready to do it; during lunch she felt she could have reached out to press his nose and say, Enough. Then just as they were settling down for a nap, she made him lie down on her and put her hand again in the small of his back, her fingers settling on the button that would set him free. But when she thought of it, it didn’t seem like freedom, for his body to fall apart and dissolve. It just seemed like killing him.

So she drew his arm over her like a blanket, steadying it with her mind when she felt it loosen in the socket. He didn’t complain, but breathed softly against her neck and said it again—“I love you so much.” Never mind that he said it to Pickie Beecher, and the angel, and every replicator, and to twenty different flavors of ice cream. Now he was saying it to her, in his voice, and it was no effort at all to pretend like it was really him — it felt like him and sounded like him and smelled like him — that he was not dead, that it was ten weeks ago, or ten months ago. They lay in her little bed, due within the hour at the hospital for evening shifts, but reluctant — to the point of immobility — to move.

She slipped into a dream of him, hardly different, at first, than the reality — they were in bed, he was nestled against her back, an arm across her neck and another over her belly, his hand open against her, his palm centered over her belly button. It reminded her of the old dreams of her brother, where a sense of the extraordinary hovered over the most mundane activities; they played cards or washed dishes or she sat on the grass and watched him throw a lacrosse ball against the house and it was only just before she woke, or even after she woke, that she remembered that he was dead, and that this had been a visitation.

Here I am, Rob said, behind her.

There you are, she agreed, running a finger along his arm.

But not really, he said. They tell me to say, Let me go. They tell me to say, Burn the gruesome effigy. They tell me to say, It is an abuse and an abomination, what you are doing.

It’s so nice, she said, to lie here. She had no idea what he was talking about, but sensed that she didn’t want to know.

I won’t say it, though. What the fuck do they know? None of them have been in love. None of them have the slightest fucking clue. If they ever did, they’ve already forgotten. Look at all the shit that went down, before, and tell me who gives a flying fuck that Jemma kept a picture of me?

I’m supposed to be at OB rounds in a half hour, Jemma said. Do you think they’d notice if I don’t go?

A picture, a doll, an abomination? What’s the fucking difference? Haven’t any of you ever been lonely? Haven’t any of you ever missed somebody? What do any of you know about it, anyway?

Who would notice? All I do is get numbers. Even if they let me anywhere near the delivery, I just get shoved aside at the last minute. Guess how many cervixes I’ve felt in the past two weeks? Exactly one, and that was my own. I complained to the chief and do you know what she said? Can you guess what she said?

No one has ever been in love but us.

Those are premium vaginas, Dr. Claflin. Not for just anybody to stick their arm into. Can you believe it? Maybe if I’m extra-special good, they’ll let me polish one of them, eventually.

No one, not ever. Not in the old world, and never in the new. We are alone, and have always been alone. There’s nobody but us, and has never been anybody else. Stay with me here, forever.

You don’t have to tell me twice, she said, scooting closer into him, and closing her eyes.

Stay with me, he said. Don’t fall asleep.

Of course I won’t, she said, but it was already happening — she was sleepier and sleepier, inside the dream, and just before she went she realized what was happening and tried — no use — to claw her way back.

When she woke up he was dead. She hoped she was still dreaming, and hoped that when she looked over the edge of the bed she’d see dark ocean instead of the blue carpet, but this was her bed, in her room, in her hospital, everything the same as how she’d left it before her nap except for the burden of ash atop the sheets, and the feeling in her belly centered somewhere under the baby — stone, aching loneliness, aching sadness.

She stayed away from their room, after that. It was not home anymore. She never wanted to see the black ashes in their bed again. There was a lot of stuff in there, now, the accumulated gifts of their marriage and the fifteen baby showers that had been thrown on her behalf, but all she took with her was the pencil case and Pickie, loaded out of the tub and into a stroller.

She could have moved in anywhere she wanted, into the luxurious apartments of Drs. Tiller and Snood, or the spartan room where Father Jane had slept on a cot, or Vivian’s space salon, but though these rooms were empty, they all seemed full — too crowded with ghosts to yield any room for her. She was restless, anyway, and couldn’t sleep, no matter how hard she tried. She felt she could not get comfortable except by getting the baby out. She’d toss from one side of a bed to the other, feeling hot and then cold, wiggling her toes in a frenzy, wanting to sleep and sleep, and wake when the whole thing was finally over — she was so sure it would be soon, and yet every time she got out of another bed, it was still that same day. No rest for the wicked, said Dr. Snood, making a scraping, shame-on-you gesture with his two forefingers.

“Fuck off,” Jemma said, the extent of conversation she had with any of them, all the faces that lay over her own when she looked in the mirror or the windows, and the bodies that stepped out of walls, or rose out of the replicator mists. She didn’t know if they were real or not. She was trying her hardest not to imagine them, and yet they kept coming. Up until that day she thought she was just pretending to be crazy, but now she wasn’t so sure.

“Stop following me,” she said to Dr. Tiller, who paced her on the ramp.

We are all still with you, she said. We have not gone anywhere. Like you, we are just waiting.

“Wait someplace else,” Jemma said, feeling defeated when she took off the marvelous do-rag and threw it over the seventh-floor balcony.

It’s all because of you, said Jordan Sasscock. Why didn’t you save us? Why didn’t you try harder?

“Why don’t you try harder to go away?” Jemma asked him, down under the shadow of the toy. He kept talking but she didn’t listen — it was only blame and she didn’t need to hear it — because she was telling herself all the time that she was just pretending to be crazy, that the baby-piling and the random urination was all an act, and even seeing these ghosts was just an act. They were echoes conjured in the air by her supremely powerful imagination. Yes, it was the most powerful imagination in all of history, in all of the universe. Her father had always said it would get her into trouble. “That’s what’s wrong with you,” he told her. “Why would you ever do anything, if you’re happy just to dream about it?”

Try it, then, Jemma: try to hold every one of them in your mind, all the lost lives, the whole imperfect world, like a sick body only wanting a convincing story of health to make it better. It shouldn’t be any harder to change the world than to change one sick child. Equally impossible, they should be equivalent miracles. You give a push, and one thousand ghosts condense in the halls, along the ramp, on the roof. Another push and the children are awake and playing. Another and the sea is full of struggling, dying bodies. Another and you open your eyes, alone in the empty hospital except for Ishmael, looking down at you from the speaker’s platform. He is naked and flushed, his huge penis standing up stiff against the railing, peeking over to stare at you, too.

“Fuck off,” you say, not sure if he is real.

“You did it,” he says. “It was you all along. I’ve been saying it was everybody else, but it was you, who did the worst thing.”

“Fuck off.” You make a sign at him, something you make up on the spot, a twisting motion of your fingers that’s supposed to make him disappear in a puff of smoke.

“How could you do it? How could you think no one would notice? How could you think it would be let to pass? You did that thing, and then you’re surprised when the world has to end on account of it?”

“I bet you say that to everyone.”

“Look!” he says. “Look at what it’s like! Look at what you make me do!” He claws at his eyes, then. You can feel it when he digs them out of the sockets, pulling at the nerve until it stretches and snaps. You sit down heavily, head in your hands, saying the magic words:

“Fuck off! Fuck off! Fuck off!” And it works. When you look up he is gone, not a trace of him on the balcony, no blood, no eyeballs, and when you hear his distinctive shrieking it seems to be coming from very far away.

She stayed in the lobby until well after nightfall, sitting under the toy with her legs crossed and her hands folded over her belly, listening to its crankings and susurrations, following the shiny metal ball as it fell down the many yards of winding chute, and the twirling metal ribbons that celebrated the return every time the ball came back to the high basket. About an hour after dark the ghosts began to come on like lights all up the ramp, and shortly after that they began to wave and call to her.

Come up, they said. Come up. It’s almost time.

“Fuck off,” she said quietly, but they didn’t go away, and eventually she rose unsteadily and started the climb. They were kinder now, not so likely to yell at her or insult her. There you go, said Dr. Sundae, shooing her farther up the ramp as she passed the third floor. Upward and onward, said Dr. Walnut, showing his pointy brown teeth in a warm smile. Almost there, said Dr. Snood on the eighth floor, when she stopped a while, more because there was a sense of finality about being on the roof that she didn’t much like, and she felt they were trying to tell her something, these imaginary creatures, with the friendly cheerleading that had replaced the scolding and the disappointed sighing — they all knew she wasn’t ever going to come down again.

It was warm outside. The date, she knew from obsessive twirlings of her pregnancy wheel, was the twenty-second of May, but it felt more like deep summer, with the moisture in the air and the heat in the wind. She listened hard for crickets, but heard only Ishmael’s sullen weeping, coming from underneath the sycamore tree. She held up her hand in front of her face, shielding herself from him, and walked on the edge of the roof, where a ghost brighter than any other was kneeling by the edge of the roof. From far away she thought it was Calvin, because he had a huge knife in his hand, but when she got up close she saw that it was Rob.

“You’re not supposed to do that,” she said. “Somebody already did that.”

We’re all supposed to do it, he said. We were always supposed to do it. We all have to do it, now. Are you ready?

“No.”

Well, that’s no excuse, he said. That doesn’t change a thing about how things are. That doesn’t delay things but for a second. We’re almost there. Don’t you see it? He pointed out over the dark ocean. Thick low clouds hid the stars and the moon, but she thought she could see a different kind of darkness thrown up against the horizon where he pointed.

“It’s not for you,” she said. “You don’t have to do it.”

Ready or not, he said, lifting the knife and twirling it just like she had always imagined Calvin must have, though who knew if he made a flourish, or just got on with it? She only had the coroner’s report to go by, its solemn tones seeming somehow reverential of this extraordinary living dissection, mentioning the bell and the candle and the iron brick and the chain but not guessing at their meaning. Rob brought down the knife and cut swiftly into his belly. Jemma was ready to watch the whole thing — she’d seen it in her head so many times, already — but no sooner had he cut himself then he disappeared. The ghosts went out and she felt the pain, different from the endless false contractions of the past weeks, it started in her back and seemed to push her to her knees before she even felt it, a knife in her belly, and she knew she was alone on the roof except for Ishmael, still wailing and wailing under the tree.