The remains

Chapter 78

The nurse came back in with my lunch, which she set down on the table beside me. I couldn’t bear the thought of eating. Attached to the nurse’s clipboard was a strip of paper. She pulled the piece of paper off the board and held it in her hand. Just a small strip of litmus paper about the size of a cigarette, its tail end painted with pink.

When the nurse glanced at Caroline, I could only assume that she took her for my mother, and Franny for my brother.

“I have some good news,” she announced. “You’re going to have a baby.”

For some reason I could not explain, the news didn’t throw me into the least bit of shock. The effect it had was good and kind. It made me feel warm inside; it made me feel healed.

Caroline came to me, hugged me without getting in the way of the wires.

“From out of the bad comes the good,” she whispered in my ear. “Where there is death, there is life.”

I believed her.

In my mind I’d thought about all the people I’d had relations with over the past twelve months.

Michael. He was the only one. I pictured him doing what he loved-working at his laptop, biting the nail. I saw him sitting at a small table sipping cappuccino outside a Paris cafe; I saw him working at a desk inside a New York City hotel room. I felt him lying beside me in bed, our bare feet touching.

Michael, don’t die.