Dive From Clausen's Pier (10 page)

The idea of Mike lying there
knowing
. My eyes filled, and I stood up and began pacing, fighting hard not to cry again. I’d once read an article that said women could be divided into two groups: those who feared they’d wind up bag ladies, ranting on street corners, and those who feared they’d end up in mental hospitals, crying uncontrollably. Now I knew which group I belonged to.

A little later, Dr. Spelman appeared at the entrance to the lounge. He came in and looked at me uncertainly, then suggested we sit down. “I’ve just been with Mike,” he said. “He’s very strong, your boyfriend. We’re going to move ahead on the cervical fusion.” He paused, and I wondered why he’d come in to talk to me; we’d never spoken privately before, and I was surprised he even knew who I was.

“I’m glad I saw you in here,” he continued. “It’s premature to think too far ahead, but here you are, so I’ll break my own rule. You’re the person Mike seems most concerned about, most aware of. The nurses have noticed that he’s a lot more alert after your visits than after his parents’, say. And just now he seemed to want to know where you were.”

“We’re engaged,” I said.

“Except that everything’s changed now, although that can be hard to keep in sight sometimes. I’d counsel you to go very gently these next few months. Rehab is very hard work—a lot of getting better is wanting to.”

He stood up and cleared his throat, and I felt my face burning; my fingers were actually shaking. As he walked away I imagined my own outraged voice calling after him.
You don’t know a thing about me
, it said.
Not one single thing
.

I stood up and headed for Mike’s room. Just outside, I paused for a moment and looked in. Mrs. Mayer stood at the foot of Mike’s bed, looking flushed but composed, but Mr. Mayer was weeping—sitting in the one chair, his glasses askew in his lap, his big hands cupped over his eyes. I stepped in and they all looked at me. Immediately Mike began blinking furiously, and I squeezed past Mr. Mayer and stood over him.

I’m sorry
, he mouthed. His gray eyes were hard on me, moving over my face, looking and looking for where I was now. Where, given what had happened to him? Where, given the months beforehand?

Forget all of that
, I longed to say—but not in front of his parents. And how to retract something I’d never spoken in the first place? Remorse boiled through me, but I couldn’t dwell on it now. I stepped forward and touched his forearm, then moved my fingers around to where he had some sensation. I stroked his skin. “Don’t worry,” I said. “I love you, don’t worry.” And grateful relief filled his pale face, coloring his cheeks and outlining his dry lips.

•   •   •

The day of the surgery arrived. From movies and TV I had an image of efficient bustle, all those people in masks and gowns; that fell apart when I heard Mr. Mayer talking about whether they’d go in from the front of Mike’s neck or the back. Knives cutting him open, his blood spilling … It was unbearable.
Don’t touch him
, I wanted to shriek. I knew the anesthetic was a risk in itself, but at least it would calm his terror.

We had one last vigil, this time near the OR. The Mayers, Rooster, and I. Finally, after almost three hours, Dr. Spelman came in and said, “It’s over. Everything went smoothly. He’s in recovery.” And we bowed our heads and wept, each one of us.

Only one person was allowed in and his mother insisted, so it was the next morning before I could see him. He was back in Intensive Care for one last day of observation, and as I made my way down the familiar corridor I realized this could be my last time here. The ring of cubicles, the nurses’ central work area, the hushed busyness and gravity surrounding the treatment of serious illness—it was a world I’d never expected to know, let alone so intimately.

I reached Mike’s cubicle and stepped in. He lay flat on his back, his head encircled by a steel band that had been attached to his skull with screws; taut struts joined the band to a bulky sheepskin vest he wore. “Oh, my God,” I heard myself say.

Mr. and Mrs. Mayer were nowhere to be seen, but Julie and John Junior were there, and they turned at the sound of my voice, exactly as Mike’s eyes found me.

“That’s the halo,” Julie said flatly.

The halo—the device to keep his neck from moving postsurgery. Somehow I’d expected something less medieval-looking: something more like a halo.

“Hi,” I said, and as I moved closer to him I felt something falter in me, some kind of courage or resolve. He looked somber, his face full of shadows. “How—” I said. “I—” My mouth was like cotton. “How do you feel?”

He licked his lips. “My head hurts,” he said hoarsely.

I nodded, and it was a moment before I realized: he’d spoken. The tube in his throat was gone. The ventilator was off, its hiss extinguished. “You’re talking,” I said. “You’re off the ventilator?”

He didn’t answer, and Julie said, “They’re weaning him off it, a little at a time.”

“You’re an angel, Mike,” John Junior said. “Get it? The halo?”

Mike remained impassive, and I saw Julie give John a little kick. “My throat hurts,” Mike said after a moment. “I’m thirsty.”

I looked at Julie. “Can he drink?”

She shrugged.

“I’ll go see if you can have something to drink,” I said. “I’ll be right back, OK?”

He was watching me carefully, his eyes wide and glassy. “Don’t.”

“I’ll go,” Julie said quickly, and once she was gone he closed his eyes; when he opened them again, they’d gone dull.

In a few minutes Julie came back, followed by a nurse I’d never really talked to; she had an angry look on her face. “What are you doing?” she demanded, and for a second I wasn’t sure whom she was addressing—she was looking straight at Mike. “One of you has to go. Now.”

The three of us glanced at each other. Since Mike’s awakening, the two-people-at-a-time rule had been relaxed, along with the ten-minutes-per-hour rule. Joan had told us they’d rather Mike had someone with him, even if it meant shooing us out for procedures.

“He hasn’t even been out of surgery twenty-four hours,” the nurse said. “Let’s give him a rest.” She went and stood over Mike. “Ten more minutes, then you’re back on the vent.” She turned back to us. “I’ll be back in a minute and one of you better be gone.” She stalked out of the room, her white shoes squeaking on the floor.

“Bitch,” Julie said.

I turned to Mike and smiled. “I’ll come back later, OK? In a few hours?”

“Don’t go.”

Julie picked up her purse. “We’ll go.” She adjusted the strap on her shoulder and looked meaningfully at John. “Mom and Dad’ll be back soon, Mike, OK?”

John followed after her but then lingered at the door. “Can you have ice cream? I could bring you some later if you felt like it.”

I looked at Mike. “Would you like that?” I said, my voice false and bright. “Butter pecan?”

But he didn’t respond—he just watched until John had disappeared.

I looked at the screws going into his head, then quickly looked away. It was important to talk to him, but what could I say? He didn’t care about ice cream. Or how hot it was outside, or any stupid thing I could think of.
Everything’s going to be OK
. It wasn’t.

He made a noise in his throat, as if he were trying to clear it but couldn’t very well. “Could you kiss me?” he said.

I was stunned.

“I wish you would kiss me,” he went on, “Carrie.” And it was only then, when he said my name, that the real, long-missing sound of his voice finally reached me, his distinctive, low voice, which had been silent so long. Tears streamed from my eyes. How was it that I hadn’t thought about his voice at all, hadn’t missed it?

He was waiting, and I wiped the tears away with the sides of my forefingers, then dried my hands on my pants. I lowered my face but then stopped, unsure how to avoid the halo. What would happen if I touched it—would it hurt him? Slowly, carefully, I pressed my mouth to his cheek, then pulled away.

He had pursed his lips and was holding them together. He stared into my eyes until I bent again and pressed my lips to his. I was about to straighten up when I felt his tongue against my mouth, soft and warm and infinitely familiar.

C
HAPTER
7

Four days later Mike started rehab, and suddenly everything was different, down to the tiniest detail, down to the
wallpaper
—in the rest of the hospital it was covered with yellow and peach flowers, but here there were teal and raspberry streaks, as if cool tones might help soothe the agony of fighting your body. Here the nurses wore pantsuits and were brisk and businesslike, even a bit military. “Let’s go,” they’d say, and there’d be no time for protest, they’d have you going, whether it was into your wheelchair, onto your other side, or up to eat.

Rehab was exhausting. Evenings, if he had the energy, Mike told us about it: the tilt table he had to lie on to prepare for sitting up; the range of motion exercises they put his limbs through—rotations and flexions and extensions; the rigorous program of weight shifts and more weight shifts to protect his skin from pressure sores; the assisted coughing, where a nurse would press on his chest while he exhaled. It was like a full-time job, and he hadn’t even gotten onto the mats yet, hadn’t even started occupational. Sometimes he seemed so overwhelmed he couldn’t even talk. He’d just lie there while we chatted with each other, his face drawn with fatigue.

I slipped into despair. I couldn’t help it: he was never going to walk again. He was going to live life from a wheelchair
—watch
life from a wheelchair. I showed up to visit, but it was hard for me to talk, hard to smile. I did talk, I did smile—but I felt fake. At home afterward, I sat still for hours sometimes. Or I sewed.

The Saturday of Paddle ’n’ Portage came, and Jamie arranged for us to meet Rooster and Stu there. I had no desire to go, but I also had no desire not to, so I agreed.

She picked me up at my apartment and we walked over to James Madison Park. Paddle ’n’ Portage was a Madison tradition, a yearly canoe-cum-footrace that drew competitors from all over the Midwest, serious athletes and weekend runners, hundreds of people ready to paddle halfway across Lake Mendota and back; then to run
carrying their canoes
up the hill, halfway around the Capitol, and down the other side; and finally to paddle another course on Lake Monona.

Rooster and Stu had staked out a picnic table. The park was beyond crowded, all the contestants plus the observers, bikes tangled against trees, kids running around with bottles of water to offer up once the race was on. Near us, two men stretched on the browning grass, while just beyond them a woman offered an open tin of sunscreen to her partner, who dipped his finger in and smeared neon yellow on his nose. There were dozens of canoes on the small beach.

Jamie planted her hands on her hips and surveyed the crowd. “Check out that one,” she said eagerly.

“The blond guy?” Stu said with a smile.

“His
canoe,”
she said, giving him a swat. “It’s really cool.”

A voice over the loudspeaker announced that the first heat was about to go, and Jamie and I climbed onto the picnic table so we could see. A gunshot sounded, and the canoes hit the water, thirty or forty of them, their destination a sailboat anchored off Picnic Point. We watched them moving across the water, but after a while it got hard to see who was winning and soon even to know who was still heading away and who had already turned back.

“Why do I forget binoculars every year?” Stu said.

“Why do I come every year?” Jamie countered. She climbed down and sat on the table, her feet on the bench. After a moment I sat, too, fanning myself against the heat. It was already at least ninety.

“I’m bored,” Jamie said. “Let’s do something, let’s go to Chicago.”

“What, now?” I’d been planning to head for the hospital after the race.

Jamie shrugged. “Why not?”

Stu laced his fingers and stretched his arms over his head. “It’s not a bad idea,” he said. “Three hours in an air-conditioned car sounds good no matter what’s on the other end.”

Jamie nodded, eager now. “We could hang out at Water Tower for a while and then get pizza or something and drive back.”

“Hanging out at Water Tower,” Stu said. “That sounds suspiciously like shopping to me.” He turned and looked at Rooster. “What do you say? We could check out a movie or something, then meet these guys for pizza after.”

Rooster had been watching me closely, standing there with one foot on the picnic bench, his elbow on his knee. Now he straightened up. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” Jamie cried.

“Because of Mike?” he said. “Remember him?” Glaring at me, he said, “I can’t believe you were even
thinking
about it.”

“I wasn’t,” I said, but in fact I had been: thinking less about Chicago than about the freeway, farmland racing by while someone else punched the search button on the car radio. What was
wrong
with me?

Jamie bit at the edge of a fingernail. She pressed her lips together, then let them go again. “Maybe we should all do something tonight anyway. Have pizza or whatever. After the hospital. I think we should.”

Rooster shook his head.

“Why?”

“I have a date.”

“A date?” Stu said. “Call the papers, it’s a miracle.”

“Shut up,” Rooster said, but he was smiling suddenly, his teeth white against the pink of his face.

Jamie leaned forward. “With?”

“Joan,” he said.

I looked at Jamie, then Stu. “Nurse Joan?” I said. “From Intensive Care?”

He nodded.

I couldn’t believe it. Joan had to be at least thirty, and then there were her looks: that fragile pale skin and her long blond hair and her height. Rooster’s usual date was the kind of girl who’d be cast as the loyal best friend in a movie, not exactly pretty but spunky and with a bit of a mouth, which was where things generally went wrong as far as Rooster was concerned. Actually, his usual date was no one.