The Virtues of Oxygen (2 page)

“This,” he said, patting my head, “is not damaged at all. And this is where the world exists anyway. Don’t ever forget that
, Vivian.”

I didn’t forget it. I never could. Sometimes it was the only thing that kept
me alive.

CHAPTER 2

A
s Holly ran the vacuum under Vivian’s iron lung, she tried to imagine a hospital ward filled with long rows of them, their inhabitants breathing in and out with stunning regularity. She wondered how many of those patients, besides Vivian, were still alive so many decades after the wards h
ad closed.

“Listen, you can’t go wrong with cash for gold right now,” Vivian said loudly enough to be heard over the vacuum. She turned her head, the only part of her that emerged from the machine. “You missed some crumbs . . . follow my eyes . . . right there . . . People need the extra cash, and they don’t mind getting rid of broken earrings or bracelets. It’s a public service
in a way.”

Classic Vivian, Holly thought as she vacuumed. Always assuming she knew how the ambulatory conducted their lives based on what she viewed on te
levision.

She turned off the vacuum and wound up the cord. Vivian had had very little personal experience with jewelry, broken or otherwise, Holly thought, although she did sometimes ask one of her volunteers to put earrings on her for special o
ccasions.

“You sound like a commercial,” Holly said over one shoulder as she wheeled the vacuum to its home base in the hall closet. “And from experience I can tell you that cash is never extra. At least not in
my house.”

Vivian blew a stray hair away from her face. “I have a good feeling about this, and Bertram Corners needs a new business to perk up that miserable little downtown. This place will have a retail operation, too,” Vivian said. “So you’ll meet with hi
m, right?”

Holly came back into the living room, tucked her hair behind her ears, folded her arms, and looked down at Vivian. She sighed. “What’s his na
me again?”

“Racine,” Vivian said. “Like the city in W
isconsin.”

“Is that his re
al name?”

“I t
hink so.”

“I only ask because growing up I had a friend named Niagara whose parents thought it was cute to name their child after where she was conceived. If everyone did that, my name would be
Bertram.”

Vivian snorted. “Bert
ram, ha!”

Holly smiled, gratified as always when she made Vivian laugh. She picked up a hairbrush from a tray near the heavy steel gurney that supported Vivian’s iron lung and brushed the hair around Vivian’s face. Her blond highlights were growing out, revealing a band of white around the hairline, which, Holly thought, rimmed Vivian’s face aptly, like a nun’s wimple. Vivian’s life-sustaining machine—though it looked more like a one-man space capsule than a lung and wasn’t made of iron, as its name suggested—had cloistered her more effectively than any religious in
stitution.

“You’re assuming I’ll do it,” Holly said, knowing full well that she would agree. She couldn’t say no to Vivian, with whom she shared a bond that went way beyond her volunteer status, though she couldn’t quite name it. They weren’t family, weren’t the same age, or in remotely the same circumstances. They weren’t colleagues either. But when Holly spent time with Vivian, she felt she was in the presence of a spirit akin to her own. They shared a peculiar mix of sentimentality and cynicism, as well as a mutual love for
avocados.

“This is a rare opportunity, Holly. You’d be helping me out, and you can earn some extra money—I’ll pay you for the time you put in. The boys will be ready for college before you
know it.”

“I help you because I’m your friend,” Holly said. “You don’t have to give me
anything.”

“But I worry ab
out you.”

Holly flinched at the irony of that statement coming from a sixty-three-year-old quadriplegic who hadn’t been able to breathe on her own since she was a child. She picked up the water bottle with a straw that Vivian used to stay hydrated and took it to the kitchen to replace the tepid water with cold. She could see from the kitchen window that it had started to rain. When she returned, Vivian was still talking as if Holly hadn’t left
the room.

“. . . and you know my track record,” Vivian was saying. “I just need an extra set of eyes and ears—and maybe some working arms and legs—to watch over t
he store.”

“I could do that without being paid,” Holly said. “Just to help
you out.”

The rain began coming down so heavily that Holly had to raise her voice to be heard inside Vivian’s small Cape. When the first clap of late-summer thunder hit, both Holly and Vivian, out of habit, looked toward the ceiling to see if the ancient brown water stain had grown, even though the roof had been fixed long ago. It troubled Holly that no one had ever painted over the stain, which was about the shape and size of a
Frisbee.

“Of course I need to pay you. It may take a lot of your time on the weekends, especially right after the store opens,” Vivian said. “Water
, please.”

“I’m not a lawyer or anything,” Holly said as she held the straw up to Vivian’s mouth. “Am I supposed to pretend I’m your assistant? Your ac
countant?”

Vivian took a long sip, then pushed the straw aside with her tongue. “You just make sure that Racine takes me on as an investor. Then you handle the paperwork, help find a location, and supervise the operation. He’ll be more on his toes if he thinks I’ve got someone watching out for me. It’s the way of t
he world.”

Holly put the water bottle on the tray, certain that Vivian knew less about the way of the world than she though
t she did.

“I’ve always wanted some brick and mortar in my portfolio,” she said. “And if it goes well, maybe I’ll buy the whole shebang and put my name on the sign: Vivian’s Gold Emporium. I can se
e it now.”

Holly smiled at the thought of Vivian the gold tycoon, but she still wasn’t sure she should take money from her, even for work. She didn’t want a financial entanglement to change their f
riendship.

“I’m not saying I couldn’t use a second job,” Holly said, a sigh escaping involuntarily. “Chris would turn over in his grave if he saw the house. It’s
a wreck.”

“It’s not your fault, sweetie. Or Chris’s. No one expects to die that early. Except for me. I expect to die every day, and then I surprise myself by stayi
ng alive.”

Holly didn’t think she’d last a day if she couldn’t even drink water without assistance. Though she never said it out loud, it sometimes made her unbearably sad that Vivian could only see the world from her horizontal position inside the lung. She couldn’t imagine how it would feel to be perpetually abed, forever parallel to the floor, unable to move anything except her head and neck, feeling nothing in her limbs or torso. The first time they met, Holly had been shocked by the sight of the massive machine with its stainless steel brackets and its yellow enamel cylinder, though now it seemed as normal to her as a couch or a ref
rigerator.

Thunder boomed overhead. Holly walked toward the living-room window to look at the rain, which was pummeling the sidewalk and creating puddles on the lawn. Whenever she moved around at Vivian’s, she felt bizarrely conscious of the dexterity of her hands, the muscles in her legs, the rhythm of her unassisted breath. She went back to Vivian’s side and positioned the water bottle at her lips again, and Vivian took ano
ther sip.

“You need to stay alive,” Holly said. “Bertram Corners would lose ten points off its average IQ if you weren’
t around.”

Vivian laughed and then coughed, a noise that always made Holly
nervous.

“Are you okay?” Holly said, hovering over Vivi
an’s face.

Vivian cleared her throat. “I’m fine. Do you mind turning on the TV? I think they’re showing an old
American Gladiators
tournament. I’m thinking of using the show as a metaphor for the contraction of the American dream on my podcast t
his week.”

Holly picked up the remote and turned on the television, then angled the screen positioned over Vivian’s head so that she could see it. In the intermittent lightning flashes, the yellow enamel reflecting from the iron lung made Vivian’s skin look even more sallow t
han usual.

“Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be me?” Vivian asked over the television c
ommentary.

Holly sat down, surprised that Vivian had never asked that question before in the many years she had been among the volunteers who supplemented Vivian’s medical team. Vivian could never be left alone, even when she was sleeping, because the slightest bit of mucus or phlegm could block her
breathing.

“I think I would have given up a long time ago,” Holly said, wondering, as she often did, how Vivian had survived as long as
she had.

Vivian pressed her lips together, a private little smile that said Holly’s answer was just what she knew it
would be.

“You may think so, but the human will to live is primal. Think of the people who lived through the Holocaust, surviving on a bowl of soup a day, wasting away, the threat of death hanging over their heads every minute. If you were me, I think you’d be right where I am now, wondering if you’ll get one more day, then watching the days add up to years, and the years add up to decades. And you just keep going, because what else ca
n you do?”

Holly looked down at her pale, freckled hands—hands that merely typed and therefore revealed none of their labor—and realized that Vivian couldn’t even see her own useless hands, had never turned the ignition of a car or touched the face of
a lover.

“Do you ever wonder what it would be like to be me?” Holly asked. Her voice sounded tired eve
n to her.

“You specifically? An overworked editor? A widow trying to raise two teenagers? A middle-aged woman who needs a dye job even more than I do? No, but I do wonder how my life would have been different outside the lung. If I had the use of my b
ody . . .”

Vivian looked as though she had something to say but changed her mind. She sometimes caught herself before making one of her inarguable pronouncements, and Holly admired this i
mmensely.

“I’d probably be watching this same show, only sitting upright and eating
Doritos.”

They both laughed, and Holly turned her attention again to the TV screen angled above Vivian’s head. “Who
’s ahead?”

“Venom. The man is nothing but muscle. Look at him. He
’s a god.”

He looked to Holly like one of those rubber action figures, distorted and overly shiny, but she nodded. “Whatever
you say.”

Another thunderclap echoed outside, and Vivian turned her head toward the window. “Could you check to make sure the light on my generator is on? I’ll need it if the power
goes out.”

Holly followed a long cord from the iron lung to the generator. The light was
flashing.

“The light’s on,” Holly said. “But it’s
blinking.”

“Blinking is
not good.”

Another round of lightning illuminated the room like a flashbulb. Then every light, every electronic beep, every faint hum of current abrupt
ly ceased.

“Vivian, oh my God,” Holly said. “What
do I do?”

“Don’t panic,” Vivian said, pushing out the words. “Call 911, then check the generator again. It should kick on automatically, but I don’t
hear it.”

Holly pulled out her cell phone, dialed 911, and told the dispatcher to send help immediately. She knew that every policeman, firefighter, and paramedic in town would be at the door in a matter of minutes, but that didn’t prevent the panic that gripped her chest. She ran back to the
generator.

“The light’s not even blinking now,” Holl
y yelled.

“I’m losing pressure,” Vivian said, her voice a step lower in pitch. “You’ll have to hand-
crank it.”

“Where is it?” Holly said. “They showed me in training, but I’ve never had t
o use it.”

Vivian nodded toward a device on the side of the lung, which Holly began to turn with as much strength as she had. The crank resisted her efforts. It felt to Holly as if the internal mechanisms h
ad rusted.

“Keep turning,” Vivian said, now in a loud
whisper.

Holly leaned into the crank, using her weight to help her pull it down and then getting under it as much as she could to bring it back around. Vivian started to let out rasping noises that sounded as if she were breathing in repeatedly without breathing out. Holly felt her own breath getting more and more shallow. Sweat broke out under
her arms.

“Hang in there, Vivian. They’ll be here soon. Stay
with me.”

Vivian nodded weakly as sirens finally overtook the thunder outside. Two firefighters came through the door and went straight to the
generator.

“Toggle the switch,” Vivian said hoarsely, though Holly could barely hear her over the sirens and the thunder. “The on-of
f switch.”

Two policemen came in next, and one took over from Holly on the hand crank while the firefighters banged, and swore at, the generator. Holly ran over and held Vivian’s head in her hands, terrified that she wasn’t getting enough oxygen to her brain. She was turning slightly blue around the mouth. Her eyes were closed and her breaths were weak, rattling versions of the robust and even ones her iron lung pumped o
ut of her.

“We’re losing her,” Holly yelled at the firefighters, who had started arguing about the best way to fix the generator. “Do s
omething!”

One of them tried toggling the switch again, and the lung suddenly let out a long hiss as though it had been holding its own breath. The machine began to pump away at Vivian’s lungs like a bellows. In a few minutes, the blue faded from Vivian’s lips, and her breathing became less strained. She said nothing, but Holly could see the relief in her eyes, which must have mirrored the relief i
n her own.