Steady

I was glad for the smell from Sheila’s coffee cup; it helped cover up the hospital’s antiseptic tang. The scent of coffee rose from the trash can, too, where I saw more cups. Her hair, long and red, was tangled and snarled; her skin sagged, sallow and dry-looking, off her bones. I couldn’t tell when she’d last slept. Good. She deserved it.

I’d come straight from the airport, and my skin itched from the dry air on the plane. Still, I forgot that when I saw Jacob. I hadn’t seen him in a couple years — Sheila had convinced him to move to Denver after they married; I’d stayed behind in D.C., where I was finishing school and interning on Capitol Hill — but I’d always pictured him strong and handsome, his teeth brightly white, his hair shining and thick, as he’d been when he left. Now he looked shrunken, dwarfed by the machines looming around his bed. His face was raw with scrapes and cuts, and a trail of bruises ran down one cheek and onto his neck, obscuring his sharply square features. One eye was swollen shut, and a few inches of tape held closed stitches above his eyebrow. Small tubes ran into him like shriveled tentacles, a larger one down his mouth, pumping air into and out of him.

“How long?” I asked her. I saw her eyes tighten when she looked at me; faint lines like spider webs radiated from her mouth. She looked away.

I asked again. “How long?”

“Eleven hours. He got out of surgery eleven hours ago,” she answered. “They said they did all they could.” With her left hand, curled into a fist, she began softly hitting her thigh, as if marking out seconds.

I walked past her, to the window, and set down my garment bag. Outside the grey sky looked flat as paper. She’d known what I’d meant; this was just her way of making me beg for it. Jacob wouldn’t have let her do this, I was sure, but now he couldn’t stop her. I saw a blue sedan run a red light before I turned back to her.

“How long do they say he has left?”

Her hand opened as it came down on her thigh now, and I heard the slap against her jeans. Her silence felt less deliberate now. Sheila was bad with pressure; she never knew what to do. At their wedding reception three years ago she drank too much and threw up twice. Jacob had laughed and toasted her again, but I had been embarrassed on his behalf.

When she did look at me, her gaze was clear and hard. The hospital din — nurses talking, machines beeping, phones ringing — receded. For a moment it felt like we three were alone, not just in our own room, but on our own island, in our own world. As if the sounds washing against us were just reminders of a distant shore.

Her voice, when it came, sounded thinner.

“We don’t know.”

***

A little over ten years ago, when I was 12, I sprained my ankle. Jacob and I were home alone; our parents had gone to a movie. Jacob was in his room, I was watching television in the den, dressed in pajama shorts and a T-shirt. The three years between us had never felt so large as they did then.

I’d been watching a cartoon from our younger days turned up loud, hoping Jacob would hear it and come out and join me, so we could be together. I missed our friendship of our early years. I should have been studying, as I’d promised my parents, but the books in my room seemed so heavy, so tiring, and I couldn’t think of them without feeling my eyelids droop.

I felt a shadow on me, and I looked up. Jacob, still dressed in jeans from school, stood with his back turned to me, speaking to me over his shoulder.

“Come on,” he said, and knelt. “I’ll give you a ride.”

I laughed. “I’m too big now,” I said, both proud and chagrined at the new height I’d gained that summer.

“Oh, I can still handle you,” he answered. I saw the flash of his smile, teeth glinting like little promises. He could charm his way into anything.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “One last time.”

I stood up on the sofa. The brown cushions felt like animals under my feet, soft and plush and yielding. I climbed onto his back and felt his arms, warm and wiry, around my half-bare thighs, and I wrapped my arms around his neck. My chin rubbed against his hair, I could smell the shampoo on his hair, the same kind that I still used.

Jacob hoisted me higher, his hands twined around my feet, then took off running. Our bodies moved together and I laughed in delight. I was glad he had convinced me after all.

As he ran through the hallway he puffed a little. His arms squeezed my legs closer around his trim waist. “Man, Ange, you’re filling out.”

“I am not!”

He laughed. “Yeah you are. Watch, you’ll be all hot and I’ll have to beat guys up over you.”

I scrunched my eyes closed and buried my face in his hair. This year, the seventh grade, I had begun to look at the boys in my classes differently. My body was still scrawny, childish, but something had begun to stir in me. I kept my eyes closed until I felt warm air wash over my face. The kitchen. Mom had left a roast in the oven for us.

I wanted to forget all this talk of boys, of growing older. Jacob was slowing down when I most wanted to feel the world go quickly by. “Faster,” I urged him. “Faster.”

He hoisted me up again and picked up speed for a moment. He turned his head a little to look back at me, grinning and raising an eyebrow. But that look was a mistake: He skidded, leaned to the left, struggled, righted himself, then overbalanced in the other direction. I threw an arm out to catch a wall, but that tipped us over further. He fell onto my ankle. A fire tore through me, a whip stroke of pain, and I screamed.

***

Sheila kept her seat next to Jacob, so I went to sit by the window. She held his hand as I read the paper, peering over its grey edge to watch them sometimes. She never moved, so I never did, either. What did his skin feel like now, I wondered. Sometimes she leaned into him and murmured in his ear, but I couldn’t hear what she said. He made no response to her. My parents had called from New York; they had cut short their vacation in Thailand, were on their way back. But not yet. Now it was only the three of us.

After an hour like this a man in a white coat came in. He nodded curtly to Sheila and me, then peeled back the sheets and hospital gown covering Jacob. I craned my neck to see, then got up and walked to the bed. I saw what Jacob’s car had done, then: an ostomy bag on his abdomen, the feces watery. Tubes running into his side, the plastic tinged with red, as if blushing at this exposure. And his penis, small, ugly, pierced by a tube carrying his urine; I had never seen it before, and I fought nausea, revulsion at the sight of it like this.
The man’s hands were peach-colored on Jacob’s ashy skin. He poked and prodded. He tapped Jacob’s stomach, a hollow thunk answering him back. Sheila watched the man, but I couldn’t stop looking at Jacob.

“Who are you?” I asked. I wanted to reach out and touch Jacob, his body, see if it was really him and not some wax dummy put in his place.

The man did not look up at me. “Dr. Gregory.”

Sheila was still holding Jacob’s hand; she was trembling, like a rabbit. She pulled his hand closer to her now and pressed it against her breast. When I saw her chest move quickly up and down I realized my own breath had quickened, too. I reached out for his other arm, as if to steady him. It was swollen and turgid around the needle taped to his forearm, and the skin felt stretched thin. Sheila had emerged from the car unhurt. They’d told me Jacob had been driving, but I didn’t believe it.

“What are you doing to him?” I asked.

The man continued working his hands over Jacob. “I’m examining him,” the man answered. He lifted his head this time, and I saw his nostrils flare. We stared at each other, his nostrils wider, wider. I squeezed Jacob’s hand and felt his bones shift like falling dominoes. Still we waited and stared. Finally the man pulled his white coat closer to his body, so that his name, stitched in navy blue above his pocket, showed more prominently. “I’m a student of Dr. Nickels. Jacob’s doctor.”

“So you’re not his doctor?”

“No, I told you, that’s Dr. Nickels.”

I didn’t know who was who, who was Jacob’s doctor or not. But then, I bet this Gregory couldn’t tell which one of us was the wife, either. For all his taps and pokes, he knew as little as we did. Less. He didn’t know Jacob, not from a few minutes checking tubes and cuts, and he never could. For a moment I let myself think only Jacob and I were in the room.

“Get out,” I said.

“What? Get out? Look, lady, I need to –”

“I don’t care. Get out and send a real doctor in.”

His nostrils deflated in the second before he turned and walked off. His stride now looked like a scurry, and his feet made brushing noises as he left. Sheila had her head on Jacob’s shoulder, his hand still to her chest. From that position she looked across the ruined landscape of flesh. She didn’t look at me, just stared down his body. I released his hand and pulled down the faded blue hospital gown, pulled up the featureless white sheets. He looked a little closer to whole this way.

***

My ankle swelled until it was nearly the size of a grapefruit. Jacob didn’t have a driver’s license, and anyway, our parents had taken the car to the movies. Jacob tore through the phone numbers our mom had left us, dialing number after number.

“Call 911,” I called from the sofa. My voice sounded too loud to me, maybe because I was trying so hard to hold back my tears.

“No, no,” he answered. “We can handle this. If we call 911 it’ll just freak everyone out, Mom and Dad, the neighbors, it’ll all be a mess. We can take of this, you know? Just the two of us, we’re good that way. We can do this.”

I nodded from the sofa, where my leg rested on a beige upholstered arm. “Yeah. You’re right. Just the two of us.”

Finally Mrs. Mundon down the street said she could take us to the hospital. She pulled up in her old green Pontiac, and Jacob helped me into the wide backseat. He put my leg in his lap to keep my ankle high, but the swelling continued. He tried to rub my ankle, but pain shot through me, and he massaged my calf instead. I felt warmth spread through me from his touch.

“You’ll be okay, Ange,” he said. He kept repeating that over and over until we got to the hospital, just a few miles away. He held my hand all through our time in the waiting room and then, later, as the doctor examined my ankle.

The hospital called the movie theater, and our parents rushed over. My god, was I okay? What happened? Was I all right? Yes, fine, a little accident, fine, I just need to get home. As soon as a nurse brought in a wheelchair I struggled off the examination table so we could leave. My mother made sure my foot was propped high enough, then draped her coat over me so I wouldn’t be cold. Jacob pushed my wheelchair out, one hand guiding the chair, one hand on my shoulder, under my coat, rubbing his fingers against my skin.

***

Finally Sheila left. I could tell she was going for a cigarette. Her hands were shaking, and I saw her pull a pack out of her purse as she got up.

As soon as she was gone I walked to Jacob’s side and took both his hands in mine. They were soft, the way I had always remembered his touch. His sandy hair looked like a monk’s tonsure around the uneven circle they’d hurriedly shaved onto his skull.

A man’s cough behind me startled me. Another man in a white coat, taller, older, a broader face.

“You must be Angela,” he said. “I’m Dr. Nickels.”

I nodded to him, but I kept my hands twined with Jacob’s. Finally Dr. Nickels stepped up to Jacob’s side and motioned me to move, so that he could begin. Again, the sheets went down and the gown went up, and again I could see what had become of the once-beautiful body. For a few moments I saw nothing but Jacob, not the doctor, not the room around us. Only Jacob.

“How’s he doing?” I asked. Nickels turned toward me. He was so close I could smell his breath. It smelled like sugar, like soda.

“We’ve talked a lot about his condition with his wife. It’s probably best that we keep to one point of contact in the family,” he said. “I’d suggest you ask her.”

“His wife isn’t here. I am,” I answered.

“We really think it’s better that way, Angie, keeps everyone from hearing different things at different times.”

“Angela,” I said. I heard the shortness of my breath in my name. “My name is Angela.”

He looked at me a moment longer, then snapped the gown back over Jacob. He didn’t replace the sheets.

“Ask his wife,” he repeated, and strode out.

***

I told my parents that I had tripped coming down the stairs. Just a turn of the foot, caught on the carpet or something. No big deal. Just as Jacob and I had practiced in the hospital. Behind their backs he gave me a discreet wink and a thumbs up. My ankle throbbed, but I was grateful for the pain, the way it had brought us together. It was a small price to be close to him again, like when we were little.

Late that night Jacob slipped into my room. I had slept on and off, but when he appeared silhouetted in my doorway, I was awake.

“How are you?” he asked. I could tell he was wearing his baby blue bathrobe, the fuzzy one, though he came no closer.

“Okay,” I answered. My voice sounded so little. I tried again. “Okay,” I said more loudly.

He came in and sat on the bed. For a moment he took my hand and began rubbing it, tracing swirling designs on my skin, then squeezed my hand between both of his.

“Thank god. I was really worried about you.”

“I’m okay,” I said. I was pleased by his care. “But it still hurts a lot.”

“I’m really sorry.”

I shrugged. “It’s okay. It was my fault too. And it really was an accident.”

He reached over to ruffle my hair, then leaned in to hug me. A few strands of his hair fell into my open mouth. They tasted rich and sweet. His cheek was warm on mine, his embrace tight. As he pulled away I turned my head toward his. My mouth met his mouth, my tongue met his lips. He did not move, and I pushed my tongue past his lips, into him. I closed my eyes. He tasted like cake icing.

For a moment neither of us moved. My room seemed to narrow to a pinpoint in my vision. Jacob stiffened, his body rigid. In that suspended time either there was nothing to hear or I could not hear at all.

Then he bit me, his teeth clamping down on my tongue. Blood filled my mouth, the metal of it taking Jacob’s taste from me. For a moment I laid still, then the blood trickled down my throat, and I began to cough, a harsh scraping noise. I heard Jacob hawk up the saliva from his throat and spit, then spit again. I looked down and saw the droplets of blood flecking my chest.

Finally he stopped and turned to me. He must have seen the blood as well, because he reached toward my night stand and handed me the box of tissues there. I held the tissues up to my mouth; I could feel the paper sticking to my bleeding tongue. Each time I soaked through a tissue, he handed me another, collecting the used ones. Once the bleeding stopped he took the last tissue from me and stood up. I saw his hands form into fists around the tissues, so tight that the blood smeared his hands. He raised one fist up, as high as his chest.

“Don’t,” I cried, trying to pull the blanket up to my face. “Don’t hit me. Please, don’t hit me Jacob, I love you.”

Again the sense that the only thing in my room was him, so that nothing else existed. Finally his hands relaxed slightly. I let my blanket fall from my face.

“I love you,” I whispered.

“Angie,” he answered. One bloody hand lifted an inch or two toward my face, then stopped.

“Angie,” he began again, his hand lifted higher now. I felt it fall on my face. The touch was so soft it was barely more than a whisper, but still his hand felt warm as a furnace to me. “I’m really sorry.”

Then he got up and walked away. He closed my door behind him when he left. My tongue, my mouth, my face, my body. I was all on fire.

***

I heard Sheila snore from the other bed in the room. She’d crawled up there a while ago. I had tried to get her to go home, to leave the two of us alone, but she wouldn’t go.

At least she was asleep. I walked over from my chair at the window to Jacob’s bedside. I pulled the curtain around his bed so that no one could see us, and I leaned in closer, to look at him. His beauty had begun turning in recent years. He was beginning to get jowls, his stomach was going soft. His flesh was weakening. I pulled back the sheets and laid my hand on his thigh, under his hospital gown. His skin felt cool, too cool. Where had all his heat gone?

Things had changed after the accident with my ankle. Not when others were around; in front of my parents or our friends he was the same, teasing me about boys, advising me about high school, pointing out how my body was changing. Sometimes I felt like he even touched me more, a hand on mine, a quick hug, a pat on the shoulder. Once I saw him watch me as we separated from an embrace, a small, half-triumphant smile on his mouth as his hands lingered on my back.

But only in front of others. If we were left alone, he avoided me. If my parents asked him to watch me again for a night, he said he had an assignment to do at the library, or some other excuse. I knew he was lying, even if my parents believed him. I tried to have girlfriends over on those nights, or partners on school projects. Anyone else, so he would stay. It was the same when he came home from college on winter or spring or summer break.

My hand moved up his leg. I had never done this before. I dug my nails in for a moment, felt the way I could have taken out a handful of him. I saw a drop of water fall onto his arm and realized my face was damp. He had been the one to do this to me, to make me like this. To make me love him this way, as I always would. My Jacob.

With my face was next to his, I could see the landscape of cuts across his skin. We were only an inch or two apart. I would have felt his breath on my cheek if not for the ventilator tube. There was always something keeping us apart.

Quickly, I leaned in closer and opened my mouth. His upper lip was soft and salty. I tasted it for only a second before closing my teeth around it. For a moment I felt the flesh resist me; then it gave way, and I felt his blood on my tongue. Just a tiny drop, barely enough to feel it. Just enough to know that I could have done more, could have done whatever I wanted. When I stepped back I saw the imprints of my teeth on his mouth; they would fade soon, I knew. No one would see.

I turned away from his bedside and walked back to the chair at the window, picking up the newspaper again. I saw Sheila turn over in the other bed, her face creased from the wrinkles in the sheets. Behind us I heard the whir and hiss of Jacob’s mechanical breath, steady, steady.