The Heart

18

Sean and Marianne leave the room. Thomas is waiting for them in the doorway. They open their mouths but remain silent, it looks as if they have something to say — something they’ve agreed — so Thomas tells them: You can ask me anything, that’s why I’m here. Sean, articulating with difficulty, makes their request: Simon’s heart, at the moment it, tell Simon, when you stop his heart, I, you, I want you to say to him, we’re there, with him, that we’re thinking of him, our love, and Marianne interjects: And Lou, and Juliette too, and Grandma. Then Sean takes over again: The sound of the sea, so you can let him hear it, and he hands Thomas an iPod with earphones, it’s track 7, just press play, we want him to be able to hear the sea — strange loops in their brains — and Thomas agrees to carry out these rites, in their name, it will be done.

They start to walk away, but Marianne turns one last time toward the bed and what paralyzes her in that moment is the solitude that emanates from Simon, now as alone as an object, as if he had jettisoned his human essence, as if he were no longer linked to a community, connected to a network of intentions and emotions, but was wandering, lost, metamorphosed into an absolute thing. Simon is dead — she pronounces these words for the first time, suddenly horrified — then looks for Sean, doesn’t see him, rushes into the corridor and finds him crouching motionless against the wall, irradiated, just like her, by Simon’s solitude, crushed just like her by the certainty of his death. She squats next to him, cups his jaw and tries to lift his head, come on, let’s go, let’s get away from this place, when what she would like to tell him is: Come on, it’s over, Simon no longer exists.

* * *

His cell phone rings: Thomas unlocks the screen and hurries toward his office, suddenly wanting to plow ahead without delay, and Sean and Marianne, who are walking beside him, sense this acceleration, understanding instinctively that they must yield to it, and suddenly they feel cold: these same overheated corridors that dried their skin and their mouths before have become icy hallways where they button up their coats, lift their collars. Simon’s body is going to be spirited away; it will disappear to a secret place with limited access — the operating room — where it will be opened, stripped of its organs, sewed back together, and for a period of time — one night — the course of events will be out of their hands completely.

Suddenly the situation tilts toward a different sense of urgency; the pressure in their movements and gestures falls, it ceases throbbing in their consciences and flees elsewhere — to Thomas Rémige’s office, where he is already talking to the doctor from the Biomedical Agency; to the movements of the attendants who are transferring their son’s body; to the eyes that analyze the images appearing on screens; and also far off, to other hospitals and other departments, to other white-sheeted beds in other understaffed buildings — and now they no longer know what to do, they feel lost. Of course, they could stay in the department, sit next to a table covered with old newspapers and dog-eared magazines, wait until 6:05 p.m., when the second EEG will be completed, marking the legal time of Simon’s death, or they could go downstairs to get a coffee from the vending machine, they are free to do what they want, but they should keep in mind that a multiple-organ removal takes several hours, they must understand that it’s a long and complex operation, so they might well be advised to go home, perhaps you should get some rest, you’ll need all your strength, we’ll take care of him — and when they pass through the automatic doors at the hospital’s main entrance, they are alone in the world, and exhaustion breaks over them like a tidal wave.