The Forgetting Place (14 page)

November 15, 2009

S
he stood in the kitchen doorway, watching him fumble with the dial that controlled the heating element for the range. He was wearing a hoodie with a sweatshirt underneath, his body hunched slightly at the waist, the arms held close to his chest when they weren't busy with other tasks.

“You shouldn't be here,” Jason told her. He turned, and she could see that he was sweating—
a good sign,
she thought—his body's attempt to counteract the fever.

“I'm your sister. It's my responsibility to look out for you.”

“You're going to get sick, too.”

“I've had my flu shot.”

“But you don't know that it'll work,” he replied, and she had to admit to herself that this was true. The swine flu pandemic had begun in Mexico, then quickly spread to the United States. Initial outbreaks had been particularly severe in Texas, New York, and California, but by now there'd been confirmed deaths in all fifty states. Three days ago, the CDC reported an estimated twenty-two million Americans infected—close to 15 percent of
the entire population—with a death toll of around four thousand. It was terrifying, and when both Jason and Amir had fallen ill within the same two-week period there was nothing to do but come and watch over them.

“When's the last time you took something for the fever?” she asked.

“An hour ago.”

The fact that he was obviously still burning up filled her with dread, turned her mind to images of the thousands of new tombstones that had been set into the earth over the past eight months.

In the next room, Amir was in even worse condition. When Jason had called to tell her that Amir hadn't been out of bed in four days, that this morning he'd been delirious—mumbling about bombs and subway trains, conversing with his dead mother—she'd gotten into her car and driven the forty-six miles to their apartment in thirty-five minutes flat. Now that she was here, watching her brother—his body shaking with chills, his gaunt face the color of limestone—she realized that Jason hadn't been completely honest with her. He hadn't told her that he was sick as well—that he
had been
for days—and that it was the fear that he, too, might slip into delirium, leaving no one to care for Amir, that had made him call.

“Whatever you took an hour ago isn't working,” she told him. “You need to take something else—Tylenol or Motrin.”

“I took them both. And we've been taking Tamiflu for three days now.” He crossed the kitchen, opened a cabinet to retrieve a box of tea bags, and on his way back to the range stumbled and nearly fell. She stepped forward to steady him. “
I'm contagious. Don't touch me,
” he said, but she paid him no mind.

“Forget the goddamn tea. If it's so important to you, I'll make it.”

“It's what he asked for—this morning,” he told her, “before he became confused. I was thinking it might bring him around.”

“He should be in the hospital.”

Jason shook his head. “I took him to the ER three days ago. So many sick people, far worse than us. The doctors and nurses seemed overwhelmed. They gave us a prescription and sent us home.”

“But he's worse now, and so are you. If he's delirious, he should be—” She stopped, not wanting to argue. She would assess him. If Amir was as bad as Jason said, she'd call the ambulance herself—
insist
that he be hospitalized. She turned off the stove's burner, took Jason by the arm, and led him to the couch in the other room. “Sit. If you fall down, I'm going to have a hard time picking you up off the floor.”

He complied, lowered himself onto the sofa. She removed his shoes, hoodie, and sweatshirt, then pivoted his body into a horizontal position, placed a small pillow beneath his head.

“I need a blanket. I'm freezing,” he protested.

“You're running a fever. All the clothes don't help.”

He mumbled in response, then closed his eyes and lay still as the sound of his breathing grew long and regular. She watched for a moment, then went down the hall to the bedroom.

The room's lights were controlled by a dimmer that had been turned low but not off, and she could see Amir lying on the bed in the semidarkness. The apartment was heated by central air, and it should've been no warmer here than in the rest of the place. But she could feel the temperature shift as she entered the room and—as ridiculous as it was—she was certain the extra heat was
coming from the human body in front of her. She walked to the side of the bed, the temperature seeming to click up a degree or two as she neared him.

Impossible,
she thought, then went ahead and believed it anyway.

He was lying on his left side, his eyelids only three-quarters closed, his mouth gaping slightly. Either he or Jason had removed his shirt and rid the bed of heavy blankets so only a thin sheet remained.
Good,
she thought, as she slid the sheet down to get a better look at him. Whereas Jason had been sweating, Amir's skin was desert dry, and the heat—
Jesus,
the heat coming off him did not seem compatible with human life.

There was a thermometer lying on the nightstand to her right. It was an old-school version, a thin glass tube of mercury. She picked it up, shook it out, and lifted his right arm just enough to place it into the armpit. While she waited for the mercury to rise, she went to the adjoining bathroom and turned on the cold water in the tub. If the fever was a hundred and five or greater, she decided, she would figure out a way to get him in there. She stood for a moment, listened to the sound of running water.
Don't let him die,
she told herself.
Call an ambulance if you have to, but don't let him die.

There was a half-full bottle of Tylenol capsules in one of the drawers, but she didn't think she'd be able to get him to swallow the medication in his current condition. Liquid or even suppositories would've been better, but the capsules were all she had. She set the bottle on the counter anyway—just in case—then returned to the bedroom.

Amir's body was in the exact position it had been in five minutes before. There was something ominous about that, as if rigor
mortis had set in even though the heart continued to pound away. She plucked the thermometer from under his armpit, the skin so dry it clung briefly to the tube before letting go with a soft pop. There were black numbers etched in the glass. She turned it to see where the mercury had settled, and her first thought was that the damn thing wasn't reading properly because the red on the inside of the tube stretched from one end to the other. The highest number was one hundred and seven degrees Fahrenheit. The mercury was well past that.

“
Shit,
” she whispered, grabbed him by the arms, and pulled the upper half of his body over the edge of the bed. He was a lean man, not more than six feet tall, but his inert body was heavier than she'd anticipated. The fever rolled off him in slow undulating waves. As she wrapped her arms around his chest to drag him from the bed, he moaned something unintelligible in her ear.

“Come on,” she said, hoping he might stand, and backed away from the bed with his upper body in her grasp. His legs and feet cleared the edge of the mattress, then fell to the floor with a loud
thwack
. The jolt yanked her forward. Her body reflexively countered the movement, but she overcompensated, fell backward onto the hardwood floor. Her ass took most of the impact, hitting the floor with a cracking sound that could've come from the wood beneath or her own pelvis and tailbone, she wasn't sure. She felt the pain, though, blossoming from her sacrum, spreading across her lower back, and a quarter second later her head struck the boards, everything going white and quiet.

She lay on her back—teeth clenched, breath quick and shallow—until the worst of the pain subsided. All the while, Amir's limp body, clad only in boxers and a suffocating shroud of sickness, lay on top of her without moving. She realized he might
already be dead, or close to it. The body can go on even when the brain ceases to function, and more than anything else it was the dead weight of him that frightened her. She rolled him off, managed to stand, then bent down, grabbed him by the wrists, and dragged him across the floor toward the bathroom. The muscles of her lower back screamed in protest, but she could hear the cold water running into the tub behind her, the sound of it giving her something to focus on besides her own agony and the heat from the body she was hauling. When she made it to the tub she sat him up against the side, then sat on the lip herself, one foot in and one foot out of the water, and hoisted him up and over. His waist and torso entered the tub with a splash, and a wave of water sloshed over the side onto the tiled floor, lessening her traction. She'd thought his eyelids might fly open at the cold shock of the water, but he barely stirred. Kneeling down beside the tub in jeans that were now soaked and clinging, she placed one hand on Amir's chest to keep his head from sliding down below the surface. She shut off the faucet, looked back through the open doorway into the bedroom, her eyes searching the night table for a phone.
Should have called 911 from the start,
she admonished herself, but for now she was stuck, keeping his head above the water so he wouldn't drown.

“ . . . we will be . . .”

Her eyes returned to his face. His lids were partially open.

“ . . . the judgment hand . . .” he croaked, his voice the sound of tires on gravel.

“Hey,” she said, putting a wet hand on his forehead. “Glad to see you're with me.”

He wasn't with her entirely. His gaze slipped past her, as if focusing on someone behind her, a face he could see just over her
right shoulder. It was unsettling, him talking to someone else in the room when it was only the two of them. She felt the urge to follow his gaze, but knew that there was only the mirror behind her, that it would be nothing more than her own reflection staring back.

She leaned forward slightly, her thighs pressed against the side of the tub, and something in the right front pocket of her jeans pressed back. She fished it out, surprised for a moment to be staring at her own cell phone.
It got wet in the tub. It won't work,
she thought, but when she dialed 911 and hit SEND she could hear ringing from the small speaker.

“ . . . of God,” Amir whispered, and closed his eyes once more. She wasn't paying attention to his ramblings now, only to the female voice on the other end who was asking for the nature of her emergency.

“Medical,” she said. “I need an ambulance.” And she gave her the address.

“I'm dispatching an ambulance to your location now, ma'am,” the operator assured her. “They should be there in a few minutes.”

“Thank you,” she said, and after answering a few more questions hung up and placed the phone on the toilet beside her. Her hand returned to his face. She spoke his name, tried to rouse him, but his eyes remained shut this time and she decided to let him rest. The water seemed to have quelled his fever a bit, but he was still delirious.
He's been talking about bombs and subway trains and conversations with his dead mother,
Jason had told her earlier over the phone. And just a moment ago:

. . .
we will be . . . the judgment hand . . . of God
.

She took in a breath, let it out, studied the soft placid lines of his face. “You are not checking out on us today, Amir Massoud,”
she told him. “You will
not
be the judgment hand of God, but will remain with the living awhile longer.”

He uttered a snore in response. She shook her head, placed her forearm on the side of the tub, rested her head upon it. She could hear the approaching siren of the ambulance now, and the relief washed over her, a conviction that Amir would survive this illness that had already taken so many.

Six months later he would be dead—not from influenza, but at the hands of a different fate altogether—and there was no way of knowing that her very presence that evening had set the chain of events in motion, that it would have been better had she never come at all.

A
fter speaking with Jason, I'd gone to my office—a private place to sit and think—but was surprised to find the door partially open when I arrived.

I paused, looked left and right but saw no one else in the hall. I put out a hand and pushed. The door swung another forty degrees on its hinges before bumping into something lying on the floor just inside.
A body; it will be a body,
I told myself, but when I reached inside and flicked on the light it wasn't a person but an overturned chair. I considered calling security, but whoever had gained access—forcibly, from the look of the doorknob—was clearly gone, leaving my ravaged desk and file cabinets in his wake. Anyone who's had their home burglarized would understand how I felt: frightened, dismayed, yes—but also angry. There are few spaces in this world that are ours alone, and when one of those spaces is broken into—violated—the emotional response it elicits is something primal.

I stood there with my hands shaking, looking around at the wreckage. Papers lay everywhere. Two of the desk drawers had been yanked from their recesses and were lying facedown on the floor. My framed diploma, medical license, a few pictures I'd
hung on the wall to make the place feel more like home, were all smashed and either lying on the thin gray carpet or hanging at precarious angles from their remaining hooks. My progress notes from my meetings with Jason were gone, I had no doubt. But there was more to it than that. Whoever had done this could have easily taken what he'd come for and left. There was no need to trash the place. This wasn't a mere break-in. It was an assault, an act of malice, and it was aimed directly at me.

So here it is,
I thought,
a message that cannot be misconstrued.
But when I went to Wagner to report it, his demeanor was dismissive.

“I agree,” he said, barely looking up from his papers. “It's unfortunate that the room was vandalized. We'll of course have security investigate the matter.”

“We should report it to the police,” I said.

“There's not much the police can do about it,” he responded, putting his pen down and lifting his eyes to meet mine. “Whoever did this was probably a patient. We can't really charge them with a crime. And besides, hospital security is our responsibility. It's an internal matter.”

If I'd been harboring any lingering doubts about Wagner's involvement, those doubts all but dissipated. I could feel tears of frustration trying to surface, and I pushed them down, not wanting him to misinterpret them as a sign of weakness.
Keep a low profile. Don't do anything to attract attention,
Remy had instructed me, so I nodded, told Wagner I'd appreciate it if security could look into the matter.

“Of course,” he said, bringing the tips of his fingers together in front of him on the desk. “I'll take care of it right away.”

“Thank you, Charles,” I said, then excused myself to go attend to my patients.