The heart, p.4
The Heart, page 4
The ringing ended, and the call went through to voicemail. Marianne closed her eyes, and saw the warehouse in her mind’s eye. In particular, she saw Sean’s treasured taonga, shining golden-brown on the metal hanging rails that ran along the wall: the clinker-built skiffs from the Seine Valley, the sealskin kayak made by the Yupik in northwest Alaska, and all the wooden canoes he had made there—the biggest of them had a finely sculpted stern like those you find on waka, those outrigger canoes used by the Maoris in their ritual ceremonies; the smallest was light and supple, the hull made of birch bark and the interior covered with strips of pale wood, Moses’ basket when he was left on the Nile to save his life, a nest. It’s Marianne—call me back as soon as you get this message.
* * *
Marianne crosses the lobby. It seems to take her forever, each footstep weighed down by urgency and fear. Finally she reaches the huge elevator, which takes her belowground, to a wide landing, the floor paved with large white slabs. She sees no one, but hears women’s voices. The corridor turns sharply, and then she sees a crowd of people, walking in different directions, sitting, standing, lying in mobile beds parked against the walls. Something happens and there are murmurs, complaints, the voice of a man losing his patience, I’ve been waiting here for an hour, the moaning of an old woman in a black veil, the weeping of a child in his mother’s arms.
A door is opened. Inside she sees a glass desk. Behind it, another young woman, sitting in front of a computer screen: she looks up, her face round and very open. A student nurse, she cannot be more than twenty-five. Marianne says the words I am Simon Limbres’s mother, and the young woman frowns, disconcerted, then swivels on her chair and addresses someone behind her: Simon Limbres, young man, admitted this morning, know anything about it? The man turns around, shakes his head and, seeing Marianne, says to the nurse: Call the ICU. The woman picks up the phone, has a brief conversation, hangs up, nods, while the man comes out from behind the desk in a movement that sets off a surge of adrenaline somewhere in Marianne’s guts. Suddenly she feels hot. She loosens her scarf and unbuttons her coat, wipes the sweat from her forehead, it’s like a sauna in here. The man offers his hand. He is small and frail-looking, his neck thin and creased, like a small bird’s, inside the overlarge collar of a pale-pink shirt. His white coat is clean and buttoned to the top, with his name tag in its correct place on his chest. Marianne shakes his hand but can’t help wondering if this is how hospital staff greet all visitors or if this ordinary gesture somehow manifests an attitude on the man’s part—solicitude or something else—motivated by Simon’s condition. She doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to hear anything, not yet, that belies in any way the unspoken statement “Your son is alive.”
The doctor leads her through the corridor toward the elevator. Marianne chews her lip as she follows him: He’s not here, he was admitted directly to Intensive Care. His voice is nasal-sounding, the tone neutral. Marianne stops, staring at him, her voice broken: He’s in Intensive Care? Yes. The doctor moves soundlessly, his footsteps small in his rubber soles, his white coat seeming to hover above the ground, the waxy skin of his nose gleaming in the fluorescent light, and Marianne, who is a head taller than him, can see his scalp through the thin covering of hair. He crosses his hands behind his back: I can’t tell you anything, but come with me, they’ll explain everything, I assume his condition required admission to that department. Marianne closes her eyes and grits her teeth. Suddenly her whole being draws back. If he says anything else she will scream, or cover his big mouth with her hand to shut him up, please stop, I’m begging you, and then, as if by magic, he leaves his sentence unfinished, dumbfounded, he stands in front of her, frozen to the spot, his head wobbling above the pink shirt collar, and, stiffly, as if made of cardboard, his hand rises, palm up, toward the ceiling, in a vague gesture that somehow expresses the contingency of this world, the fragility of human existence, before falling back down to his side: They’re expecting you in ICU. As they arrive in front of the elevator doors, their conversation comes to an end; gesturing with his chin to the end of the corridor, the doctor concludes in a calm but firm voice, I have to go, it’s Sunday, the ER is always crazy on Sundays, people don’t know what to do with themselves. He presses the call button, the metal doors open slowly, and, suddenly, as they shake hands again, he smiles at Marianne, a bleak smile, goodbye, Madame, be brave, and turns back toward the sound of shouting.
* * *
Be brave, he said. Marianne repeats this word to herself as the elevator takes her to the next floor up. How long it is taking her to get to Simon, the damn hospital is like a labyrinth. The walls of the elevator cabin are covered with medical advice and union announcements. Be brave, he said, be brave, her eyes are gluey, her hands damp, and the pores of her skin are dilating in the too-warm air, ruining her features. Screw bravery, screw this stupid heating system, she can hardly breathe in this place.
* * *
The Intensive Care Unit takes up the entire south wing of the ground floor. Access is strictly controlled—there are signs on all the doors forbidding entry to non-personnel—so Marianne waits in the hallway, eventually leaning against a wall and letting herself slide down until she is squatting, her head moving left and right, the back of her skull hard against the wall, lifting her gaze toward the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling. Closing her eyes, she listens: still those voices busily teasing or informing each other from one end of the corridor to the other, still those rubber-soled feet, ballet slippers or ordinary sneakers, those metallic chimes, alarms going off, the wheels of carts rolling on the floor, the continual hum and buzz of the hospital. She checks her phone: Sean hasn’t called. She decides to move—she can’t just wait here—and, standing in front of the double fire doors edged with black rubber, stands on tiptoes to look through the window. All is calm. She pushes the door open, and enters.
He knew instantly that it was her—the stunned look, the staring eyes, the way she chewed her cheeks—so he did not even ask if she was Simon Limbres’s mother, simply offered her his hand with a nod: Pierre Révol, I’m the senior doctor here, I admitted your son this morning, please come with me. Instinctively she walks on the linoleum floor with her head lowered, not even glancing sideways in case she sees her child at the back of a dark room. They walk side by side for twenty yards in the lavender-blue corridor, and then there’s an ordinary door with a label the size and shape of a business card stuck to it. She doesn’t notice the name.
Today, Révol forsakes the Family Room, which he has never liked much, and receives Marianne in his office. She stands for a moment, then sits on the edge of the chair, while he walks around the desk and sits opposite her, in his swivel chair, chest thrust forward and elbows to the sides. The more Marianne looks at him, the more she forgets the people she has seen so far in her time at the hospital—the woman with the monobrow at reception, the student nurse in the ER, the doctor in the pink shirt—as if they were merely links in a chain leading her to this face, their features superimposed one upon the other to form a single face—that of the man sitting in front of her now, about to speak.
* * *
Would you like a coffee? Surprised, Marianne nods. Révol stands up and, turning the other way, picks up the pot from the coffee machine, which she hadn’t seen, and—silently, with broad, sweeping gestures—pours the coffee into two white plastic cups. Steam rises from them. He is playing for time, searching for the right words; she knows this but does not object, although she feels a paradoxical tension, because time is dripping away, like coffee into the pot, while she is fully aware of the urgency of the situation, its seriousness, its closeness. Now Marianne closes her eyes and drinks, concentrating on the burning liquid in her mouth, dreading the first word of the first sentence—the doctor’s jaw tensing, his lips opening, stretching, teeth appearing, the end of the tongue flickering into sight occasionally—that tragedy-soaked sentence that she knows is about to be spoken. Everything in her withdraws, stiffens, her spine pressing against the back of the (wobbly) chair, her head driven back: she would like to get out of here, run to the door and escape, or disappear through a trapdoor opening suddenly beneath her feet, so she can enter a black hole of forgetfulness, so no one in this building can find her, so she need never know anything other than the fact that Simon’s heart is still beating; she would like to flee this cramped room, this sordid light, and run away from the news. Because no, she is not brave. She is slippery as a snake, would do anything to make him reassure her, say her fears are unfounded, tell her a story—a suspenseful story, sure—but a story with a happy ending. She’s a disgusting coward, but she does not back down from her stance: each second that passes is a hard-won treasure; each second slows her approaching fate, and, observing her writhing hands, her legs knotted under the chair, those closed eyelids, swollen, darkened by the previous night’s makeup—a streak of kohl that she applies with her fingertip, in a single movement—seeing those murky-jade, watery irises, the trembling of those splayed lashes, Révol knows she has understood, that she knows, and so with infinite gentleness he allows the time before his first word to stretch out, picks up the Venetian paperweight and rolls it in the palm of his hand, the glass ball sparkling under the cold fluorescent light, flashing colors over the walls and the ceiling, lines of light like veins, moving across Marianne’s face, teasing her eyes open. And this, for Révol, is the signal that he can begin speaking.
Your son is in critical condition.
* * *
Hearing those first words—limpid tone, calm tempo—Marianne’s eyes, which are still dry, rest on Révol’s, which hold her gaze, while he begins his next sentence and she composes herself. His words are crystal clear without being brutal—his semantics correct and precise, largos woven into the silences, pauses that closely fit the deployment of meaning—and spoken slowly enough that Marianne can repeat each syllable she hears internally, engrave them in her memory: Your son suffered a cranial trauma in the accident. The scanner shows a major injury in the frontal lobe—he touches his hand to his skull, to the side of his forehead, to illustrate what he means—and this violent shock provoked a cerebral hemorrhage. Simon was in a coma when he arrived at the hospital.
Révol takes a sip of his now-lukewarm coffee. Across from him, Marianne has turned to stone. The telephone rings—one, two, three times—but Révol does not pick it up. Marianne stares into his face, absorbing it whole: silky-white complexion, mauve rings under transparent gray eye bags, heavy lids wrinkled like walnut shells, a long and mobile face—and the silence swells, until Révol speaks again: I’m worried—the sudden, inexplicable loudness of his voice surprises her, as if someone has nudged the volume control—we are carrying out examinations at the moment, and the first results are not good. Even though his voice makes an unknown sound in Marianne’s ears, and instantly accelerates her breathing, it is not enveloping, it does not sound like those horrific voices that purport to comfort while leading you to a mass grave; on the contrary, his voice designates a place for Marianne, a place and a line.
He is in a deep coma.
* * *
The seconds that follow open up a space between them, a naked and silent space. They wait on the edge of this space for what seems a long time. Marianne Limbres begins to turn the word “coma” slowly in her head while Révol once again approaches the darkest part of his profession. Still rolling the paperweight in the palm of his hand—a veiled and solitary sun—he thinks that there is nothing as violent, as complex as this: placing himself next to this woman so that they can, together, penetrate that fragile zone of language where death is declared, so that they can move forward, in synchrony. He says: Simon is not reacting to painful stimuli anymore. His eyes are nonreactive and he is in a vegetative state; with regard to his breathing, we are beginning to see fluid accumulating in his lungs, and the first scans are not good. He speaks slowly, his phrases punctuated by intakes of breath: a way of making his body, himself, present in his words, a way of adding empathy to this clinical sentence. He speaks as if carving the words into stone, and now the two of them are face-to-face, confronting the truth—this is it, the ultimate face-to-face—and it has been accomplished unswervingly, as if speaking and looking were two sides of the same coin, as if they had to face each other as much as they will have to face up to what awaits in one of the rooms of this hospital.
* * *
I want to see Simon—voice distraught, eyes and hands wandering. I want to see Simon—that is all she had said, when her cell phone rang for the umpteenth time from the depths of her coat pocket: the neighbor who’s looking after Lou, Chris’s parents, Johan’s parents, but still no word from Sean. Where is he? She sends a text: Call me.
* * *
Révol looked up. Now? You want to see him now? He glances at his watch—12:30—and replies, calmly, I’m afraid it’s impossible at the moment. You’ll have to wait a while: he’s in treatment right now, but as soon as we’ve finished, you will of course be able to see your son. And, placing a yellowish sheet of paper between them, he continues: If it’s all right with you, we need to talk about Simon. Talk about Simon. Marianne tenses. What does he mean, “talk about Simon”? Are they going to fill out one of those forms like they often do in hospitals? List the operations he’s had?—adenoids, appendix, nothing else—the bones he’s broken?—a radius fractured in a bicycle accident the summer he turned ten, that’s all—any allergies?—no, none—diseases he’s contracted in the past?—that staph infection the summer he turned five, which he told everyone about because that fabulous name (Staphylococcus aureus) made it seem so rare; the mononucleosis he suffered at sixteen, the kissing disease, the lovers’ disease, and his lopsided smile when teased about it, the strange pajamas he wore then, like a pair of Hawaiian bermudas matched with a quilted sweatshirt. Are they going to list his childhood illnesses? Talk about Simon. The images speed through her mind and Marianne panics: a baby with roseola lying on a garter-stitch baby blanket; a three-year-old boy with measles, brown scabs on his scalp, behind his ears, and that fever that dehydrated him, turning the whites of his eyes yellow and his hair sticky for ten long days. Marianne speaks tersely while Révol takes notes—date and place of birth, weight, height—and seems in fact not really to care about those childhood illnesses once he has written on his form that Simon has no particular background of serious diseases, rare allergies, or malformations of which his mother is aware. At these words, Marianne becomes flustered, a memory flash, ten-year-old Simon on a school ski trip, afflicted with violent stomach pains, and the doctor who examined him palpating his left side and, assuming it was appendicitis, diagnosing an “inverted anatomy,” the heart on the right side, not the left, etc., a statement that no one questioned, and that fantastical anomaly had turned him into a special person for the rest of that ski trip.
Thank you, Mme Limbres. Then, after smoothing the sheet down with the flat of his hand, he returns it to Simon’s dossier, a pale-green folder. He looks back up at Marianne: You can see your son as soon as we have completed the examinations. What examinations? Marianne’s voice sounding suddenly alert in the office, and the vague idea that if they are conducting examinations, then all is not lost. The glimmer in her eyes warns Révol, who makes an effort to bring the situation under control, stemming the tide of hope: Simon’s situation is developing, but not in the way we would want it to. Marianne’s face registers the pain of this blow. Ah, she says, so how is Simon’s condition developing exactly? In speaking like this, she knows she is leaving herself open to another blow, that she is taking a risk. Révol inhales deeply before replying.
Simon’s injuries are irreversible.
* * *
He has the unpleasant sensation of having kicked this woman when she was down, of having delivered a death blow. He stands up. We’ll call you as soon as we can. Then, in a louder voice, Does Simon’s father know? Marianne stares at him and answers he’ll be here this afternoon—but Sean still hasn’t called or texted, and suddenly she is seized with panic, begins wondering if maybe he isn’t in the warehouse today, or at home, if maybe he’s gone to Villequier or Duclair or Caudebec-en-Caux to deliver a skiff, or if he’s at the rowing club on the Seine, in fact maybe at this very moment he’s trying out the boat with the buyer, and they’re rowing, sitting on the sliding seat, Sean watching and quietly making remarks, impressing with his expert terminology, and little by little Marianne sees the river narrowing between high, mossy rock walls covered with plants growing out horizontally, giant ferns and fleshy vines, peat moss and acid-green grass all tangled up along the vertical cliffs or bowing toward the river in leafy cascades, then the light dims, the geography leaving only a narrow corridor of milk-white sky above the boat, the water becoming heavy, flat, slow, the surface aswarm with insects—iridescent-turquoise dragonflies, transparent mosquitoes—the river turning bronze, scattered with silver reflections, and suddenly, in horror, Marianne imagines that Sean has returned to New Zealand, that he is rowing up the Whanganui River, from the Cook Strait, leaving from another estuary and another city, and heading inland, alone in his canoe, fully at peace, the way she had known him, gazing straight ahead; he rowed steadily, passing Maori villages along the riverbank, climbing down the waterfalls, carrying the light boat on his back, advancing ever northward, toward the central plateau and the Tongariro volcano, where the sacred river drew its source, retracing the path of migration to the new lands. She can see Sean precisely, she can even hear his breath echoing in the canyon. Everything is calm there, suffocatingly calm. Révol watches her, concerned by the panic he can see in her eyes, but when he says I’ll see you with him, then, when he arrives, Marianne nods, okay.
