Just One Day (25 page)

“That was a bust,” I tell them when we come out onto the pavement. The cloud layer
that has been sitting over Paris for the last few days has burned off while we were
waiting inside, and the day has turned hot and clear. “At least you can salvage the
rest of the afternoon. Get some food and have a picnic in the Luxembourg Gardens.”

I can see the idea is tempting. No one rebuffs it. “But we promised we’d be your wingmen,”
Kelly says. “We can’t let you do this alone.”

I hold up my hands in surrender. “You’re not. I’m done. This is a lost cause.”

Maps are taken out. Metro routes are debated. Picnic items are discussed.

“People mix up their patron saints, you know?” I look up. Wren, our pixie tagalong,
who has been all but silent all day, has finally spoken.

“They do?”

She nods. “Saint Anthony is the patron saint of lost things. But Saint Jude is the
patron saint of lost causes. You have to make sure you ask the right saint for help.”

There’s a moment as everyone looks at Wren. Is she some kind of religious nut?

“Who would be in charge of a lost person?” I ask.

Wren stops to consider. “That would depend. What kind of lost?”

I don’t know. I don’t know if he’s lost at all. Maybe he’s exactly where he wants
to be. Maybe I’m the lost one, chasing someone who has no desire to be found. “I’m
not sure.”

Wren twirls her bracelet, fingering the charms. “Perhaps you should just pray to both.”
She shows me the little charms with each patron saint. There are many more charms,
one with a date, another with a clover, one with a bird.

“But I’m Jewish.”

“Oh, they don’t care.” Wren looks up at me. Her eyes don’t seem blue so much as the
absence of blue. Like the sky just before dawn. “You should ask the saints for help.
And you should go to that third hospital.”

_ _ _

Hôpital Saint-Louis turns out to be a four-hundred-year-old hospital. Wren and I make
our way into the modern wing that sits adjacent. I’ve sent the others on to Luxembourg
Gardens without much of an argument. Sunlight filters in through the glass atrium,
throwing prisms of light onto the floor.

It’s quiet in the ER, only a few people sitting among rows of empty chairs. Wren goes
right up to the two male nurses behind the desk and that weirdly mellifluous voice
of hers breaks out in perfect French. I stand behind her, catching enough of what
she says to get that she is telling my story, mesmerizing them with it. Even the people
in the chairs are leaning in to hear her quiet voice. I have no idea how Wren even
knows the story; I didn’t tell her. Maybe she picked it up at breakfast or among the
others. She finishes, and there is silence. The nurses stare at her, then look down
and start typing.

“
How do you speak French so well?
” I whisper.

“I’m from Quebec.”

“Why didn’t you translate at the other hospital?”

“Because it wasn’t the right one.”

The nurses ask me his name. I say it. I spell it. I hear the tap of the computer keys
as they input it.

“Non,”
one nurse says.
“Pas ici.”
He shakes his head.

“Attendez,”
the other says.
Wait
.

He types some more. He says a bunch of things to Wren, and I lose track, but then
one phrase floats to the top: a date. The day after the day Willem and I spent together.
The day we got separated.

My breath stops. He looks up, repeats the date to me.

“Yes,” I say. That would’ve been when he was here.
“Oui.”

The nurse says something and something else I don’t understand. I turn to Wren. “Can
they tell us how to find him?”

Wren asks a questions, then translates back. “The records are sealed.”

“But they don’t have to give us anything written. They must have something on him.”

“They say it’s all in the billing department now. They don’t keep much here.”

“There has to be something. Now’s the time to ask Saint Jude for help.”

Wren fingers the charm on her bracelet. A pair of doctors in scrubs and lab coats
come through the double doors, coffee cups in hand. Wren and I look at each other,
Saint Jude apparently deciding to bestow twin inspiration.

“Can I speak to a doctor?” I ask the nurses in my horrible French. “Maybe the . . .”
I turn to Wren. “How do you say ‘attending physician’ in French? Or the doctor who
treated Willem?”

The nurse must understand some English because he rubs his chin and goes back to the
computer. “Ahh, Dr. Robinet,” he says, and picks up a phone. A few minutes later,
a pair of double doors swing open, and it’s like this time Saint Jude decided to send
us a bonus, because the doctor is TV-handsome: curly salt-and-pepper hair, a face
that’s both delicate and rugged. Wren starts to explain the situation, but then I
realize that, lost cause or not, I have to make my own case. In the most labored French
imaginable, I attempt to explain:
Friend hurt. At this hospital. Lost friend. Need to find.
I’m frazzled, and with my bare-basics phrases, I must sound like a cavewoman.

Dr. Robinet looks at me for a while. Then he beckons for us to follow him through
the double doors into an empty examination room, where he gestures for us to sit on
the table while he settles on a rolling stool.

“I understand your dilemma,” he replies in perfect British-accented English. “But
we can’t just give out files about a patient.” He turns to look directly at me. His
eyes are bright green, both sharp and kind. “I understand you’ve come all the way
from America, but I am sorry.”

“Can you at least
tell
me what happened to him? Without actually looking into his chart? Would that be breaking
protocol?”

Dr. Robinet smiles patiently. “I see dozens of patients a day. And this was, you say,
a year ago?”

I nod. “Yes.” I bury my head in my hands. The folly of it hits me anew. One day. One
year.

“Perhaps if you described him.” Dr. Robinet feeds me some rope.

I snatch it up. “He was Dutch. Very tall, six foot three—it’s one point nine in metric.
Seventy-five kilos. He had very light hair, almost like straw, but very dark eyes,
almost like coals. He was skinny. His fingers were long. He had a scar, like a zigzag,
right on the top of his foot.” As I continue to describe him, details I thought I’d
forgotten come back to me, and an image of him emerges.

But Dr. Robinet can’t see it. He looks puzzled, and I realize that from his point
of view, I’ve described a tall blond guy, one person among thousands.

“Perhaps if you had a photograph?”

I feel as if the image I’ve created of Willem is alive in the room. He’d been right
about not needing a camera to record the important things. He’d been there inside
me all this time.

“I don’t,” I say. “Oh, but he had stitches. And a black eye.”

“That describes a majority of the people we treat,” Dr. Robinet says. “I am very sorry.”
He stands up off the stool; something clinks to the ground. Wren retrieves a euro
coin off the floor and starts to hand it back to him.

“Wait! He did this thing with coins,” I say. “He could balance a coin along his knuckles.
Like this. May I?” I reach out for the euro and show how he flipped a coin across
his knuckles.

I hand Dr. Robinet back his euro, and he holds it in his hand, examining it as if
it were a rare coin. Then he flips it up in the air and catches it.
“Commotion cérébrale!”
he says.

“What?”

“Concussion!” Wren translates.

“Concussion?”

He holds up his index finger and turns it around slowly, like he’s spooling information
from a deep well. “He had a concussion. And if I recall, a facial laceration. We wanted
him to stay for observation—concussions can be serious—and we wanted to report it
to the police because he’d been assaulted.”

“
Assaulted?
Why? By whom?”

“We don’t know. It is customary to file a police report, but he refused. He was very
agitated. I remember now! He wouldn’t stay beyond a few hours. He wanted to leave
straight away, but we insisted he stay for a CT scan. But as soon as we stitched him
up and saw there was no cerebral bleeding, he insisted he had to go. He said it was
very important. Someone he was going to lose.” He turns to me, his eyes huge now.
“
You
?”

“You,” Wren says.

“Me,” I say. Black spots dance in my vision, and my head feels liquid.

“I think she’s going to faint,” Wren says.

“Put your head between your legs,” Dr. Robinet advises. He calls out into the hall,
and a nurse brings me a glass of water. I drink it. The world stops spinning. Slowly,
I sit back up. Dr. Robinet is looking at me now, and it’s like the shade of professionalism
has dropped.

“But this was a year ago,” he asks in a blanket-soft voice. “You lost each other a
year ago?”

I nod.

“And you’ve been looking all this time?”

I nod again. In some way, I have.

“And do you think he’s been looking for you?”

“I don’t know.” And I don’t. Just because he tried to find me a year ago doesn’t me
he wants to find me now. Or wants me to find him.

“But you
must
know,” he replies. And for a minute I think he’s reprimanding me that I ought to
know, but then he picks up the phone and makes a call. When he’s done, he turns to
me. “You must know,” he repeats. “Go to window two in the billing office now. They
cannot release his chart, but I have instructed them to release his address.”

“They have it? They have his address?”

“They have
an
address. Go collect it now. And then find him.” He looks at me again. “No matter
what, you must know.”

I walk out of the hospital, past where the cancer patients are taking their chemotherapy
treatments in the late afternoon sun. The printout with Willem’s address is clenched
in my fist. I haven’t looked at it yet. I tell Wren that I need a moment alone and
make my way toward the old hospital walls.

I sit down on a bench alongside the quadrangle of grass, between the old brick buildings.
Bees dance between the flower bushes, and children play—there’s so much life in these
old hospital walls. I look at the paper in my hand. It could have any address. He
could be anywhere in the world. How far am I willing to take this?

I think of Willem, beaten—
beaten!
—and still trying to find me. I take a deep breath. The smell of fresh-cut grass mingles
with pollen and the fumes from trucks idling on the street. I look at the birthmark
on my wrist.

I open the paper, not sure where I’m going next, only sure that I’m going.

Thirty-four

AUGUST

Utrecht, Holland

M
y guidebook has all of two pages on Utrecht, so I expect it to be tiny or ugly or
industrial, but it turns out to be a gorgeous, twisting medieval city full of gabled
row houses and canals with houseboats, and tiny little alley streets that look like
they might house humans or might house dolls. There aren’t many youth hostels, but
when I turn up at the only one I can afford, I learn that before it was a hostel,
it was a squat. And I get that sense, almost like a radar communicating from some
secret part of the world just to me:
Yes, this is where you’re meant to be
.

The guys at the youth hostel are friendly and helpful and speak perfect English, just
like Willem did. One of them even looks like him—that same angular face, those puffy
red lips. I actually ask him if he knows Willem; he doesn’t and when I explain that
he looks like someone I’m looking for, he laughs and says he and half of Holland.
He gives me a map of Utrecht and shows me how to get to the address the hospital gave
me, a few kilometers from here, and suggests I rent a bike.

I opt for the bus. The house is out of the center, in an area full of record stores,
ethnic restaurants with meat turning on spits, and graffiti. After a couple of wrong
turns, I find the street, opposite some railroad tracks, on which sits an abandoned
freight car, almost completely graffitied over. Right across the street is a skinny
town house, which according to my printout, is the last known address of Willem de
Ruiter.

I have to push my way past six bikes locked to the front rail to get to the door,
which is painted electric blue. I hesitate before pressing the doorbell, which looks
like an eyeball. I feel strangely calm as I press. I hear the ring. Then the heavy
clump of feet. I’ve only known Willem for a day, but I recognize that those are not
his footsteps. His would be lighter, somehow. A pretty, tall girl with a long brown
braid opens the door.

“Hi. Do you speak English?” I ask.

“Yes, of course,” she answers.

“I’m looking for Willem de Ruiter. I’m told he lives here.” I hold up the piece of
paper as if in proof.

Somehow I knew he wasn’t here. Maybe because I wasn’t nervous enough. So when her
expression doesn’t register, I’m not all that surprised. “I don’t know him. I’m just
renting here for the summer,” she says. “I’m sorry.” She starts to close the door.

By now, I’ve learned
no
or
sorry
or
I can’t help you
—these are opening offers. “Is there someone else here who might know him?”

“Saskia,” she calls. From the top of a stairway so narrow it looks like a ladder,
a girl appears. She climbs down. She has blond hair and rosy cheeks and blue eyes,
and there’s something vaguely farm-fresh about her, as though she just this minute
finished riding a horse or plowing a field, even though her hair is cut in spikes
and she’s dressed in a woven black sweater that is anything but traditional.

Once again I explain that I’m looking for Willem de Ruiter. Then, even though she
doesn’t know me, Saskia invites me in and offers me a cup of coffee or tea.

The three of us sit down at a messy wooden table, piled high with stacks of magazines
and envelopes. There are clothes strewn everywhere. It’s clear a lot of people live
here. But apparently not Willem.

“He never really lived here,” Saskia explains after she serves me tea and chocolates.

“But you know him?” I ask.

“I’ve met him a few times. I was friends with Lien, who was the girlfriend of one
of Robert-Jan’s friends. But I don’t really know Willem. Like Anamiek, I just moved
in over the summer.”

“Do you know why he would use this as his address?”

“Probably because of Robert-Jan,” Saskia says.

“Who’s Robert-Jan?”

“He goes to the University of Utrecht, same as me. He used to live here,” Saskia explains.
“But he moved out. I took over his room.”

“Of course you did,” I mutter to myself.

“In student houses, people come and go. But Robert-Jan will be back to Utrecht. Not
here but to a new flat. Unfortunately, I don’t know where that will be. I just took
over his room.” She shrugs as if to say, that’s all.

I drum my fingers on the old wooden table. I look at the pile of mail. “Do you think
maybe I could look through the mail? See if there’s anything with a clue?”

“Go ahead,” Saskia says.

I go through the piles. They are mostly bills and magazines and catalogs, addressed
to various people who live or have lived at this address. I count at least a half
dozen names, including Robert-Jan. But Willem doesn’t have a single piece of mail.

“Did Willem
ever
get mail here?”

“There used to be some,” Saskia replies. “But someone organized the mail a few days
ago, so maybe they threw his away. Like I said, he hasn’t been around in months.”

“Wait,” Anamiek says. “I think I saw some new mail with his name on it. It’s still
in the box by the door.”

She returns with an envelope. This one isn’t junk mail. It’s a letter, with the address
handwritten. The stamps are Dutch. I want to find him, but not enough to open his
personal correspondence. I put the envelope down on the piles, but then I double-take.
Because the return address in the upper left-hand corner, written in a swirling unfamiliar
script, is mine.

I take the envelope and hold it up to the lamp. There’s another envelope inside. I
open the outer envelope and out of that spills my letter, the one I sent to Guerrilla
Will in En-gland, looking for Willem. From the looks of the stamps and crossed-out
addresses and tape on the envelope, it’s been forwarded a few times. I open up the
original letter to see if anyone has added anything to it, but they haven’t. It’s
just been read and passed on.

Still, I feel overjoyed somehow. All this time, my scrappy little letter has been
trying to find him too. I want to kiss it for its tenacity.

I show the letter to Saskia and Anamiek. They read it and look at me confused. “I
wrote this letter,” I say. “Five months ago. When I first tried to find him. I sent
it to an address in England, and somehow it found its way here. Same as me.” As I
say it, I get that sense again. I’m on the right path. My letter and I landed in the
same place, even if it’s the wrong place.

Saskia and Anamiek look at each other.

“We will make some calls,” Saskia says. “We can certainly help you find Robert-Jan.”

The girls disappear up the stairs. I hear a computer chime on. I hear the sounds of
one-sided conversations, Saskia on the phone. About twenty minutes later, they come
back down. “It’s August, so almost everyone is away, but I am sure I can get you contact
information for Robert-Jan in a day or two.”

“Thank you,” I say.

Her eyes flicker up. I don’t like the way they look at me. “Though I might have found
a faster way to find Willem.”

“Really? What?”

She hesitates. “His girlfriend.”