His teeth had a chemical clean quality, that very distinct "freshly scrubbed bathroom floor" feel. His demeanor reeked of sterile disinfectants and bleach. When I'd first met him, in the fecund bloom of May, while spring was all green and bright and teeming, he greeted me in the narrow corridor of that labyrinthine hospital. From his big head he flashed me a sanitized smile and thrust his cold hand into mine. I noticed immediately that his grip was too firm, too desperate to disarm, but I so much wanted to be palliated that I forgave this first impression. With a polystyrene grin he'd told me he would help me with all the necessary arrangements, all those nuances and trivialities that a man in my position need not trouble himself with. My wife, Martha, a healthy woman for as long as I'd known her, had fallen very ill with a fever. The doctors didn't understand it; the drugs were ineffective at treatment; and instead of improving, her condition was steadily worsening. I watched her wilting, burning away in that sick house for fourteen days. He'd arrived soon after the doctors had hinted at a new and experimental treatment for her mysterious malady. His name, the skinny-eyed drug rep sent by the pharmaceutical company to deliver brochures, statistical research studies, and information on the relative success of their drug, was Geoffrey Reed. "Let me reiterate,” he said smoothly, as though putting a child to sleep with his words, "some of the most brilliant minds in medicine are behind this treatment; men who have dedicated their lives to science; truly loyal Hippocraticians devoted to the eradication of disease."
G. Reed heralded these alleged harbingers of health and administered warm assurances that my darling Martha would have me alone to thank, were I to make the right decision of course, and sign her up for the drug's first human trial. Martha, at the time, was delusional, in and out of sleep and sweat-stained deliriums, drugged and dazed; she had been deemed "not of sound mind," so the choice rested squarely on my shoulders. I wrestled with great and terrible uncertainty during those two weeks and, recounting the days, I doubt I even slept at all. When I wasn't at that frightful hospital I was tormented by fits of painful possibility, memories of past happiness, the helpless chasm of fear I was sinking into. What little sleep I did achieve, with the help of valium, laudanum, wine and exhaustion, were given away to nightmare. I awoke one night, having dreamt it all to be a bad dream, and reached over to touch Martha, to take her in my arms and pull her toward me in a gesture of great gratitude, only to find, with crushing, aching emptiness, the vacuous hollow of cold sheets. But as tears welled in my eyes and my face twisted with sorrow, the sound of her sweet footsteps floated toward me from the bathroom. Smiling, smelling of powder and soap, she climbed into the bed and wrapped her cold arms around me, whispering: sorry, I'm back now, I didn't mean to wake you. "No, no," said I, my tears turning to joy, "I had the most awful dream.” Then, I woke up.
These cruel jokes, though, were only a taste of things to come. I'd made the decision, at the behest of Mr. Reed and the hospital's retinue of physicians, to proceed with the procedure. I reasoned thusly: none of the prescriptions prescribed up to that point had worked; Martha's condition was worsening and something needed to be done; were I to do nothing, if I failed to act, Martha would surely die. I wondered, in those wincing, sunfilled days of spring, when the gloating greens and proud purples propagated and pollenated around me, whether I was doing the right thing. That recurrent question hung around me always as a grim full moon of uncertain color, wholly eclipsing the sun. It was in these pained days that Geoffrey would arrive and, as though having glimpsed some emotional barometer of my wellbeing, he would barge into the hospital room in his very proper and very peaceable self-inviting way and apply liberal consolation to my aching doubt. I didn't know it then, but he had his hook already in my cheek. His words injected themselves into the swollen tissue of my mind, patrolling like white blood cells, hunting for doubt, preying on hesitation. "If it were you lying there, Mr. Erdido, what would you have Martha do?”
"I would never wish Martha to be in the position I am in now, Geoffrey; I am beside myself.”
"Ah, yes, of course, I didn't mean to imply such a thing - excuse me for my carelessness. What I meant to emphasize, though, albeit with poor elocution, was that you are beside Martha, not yourself. I know she would be here by your side, too; my question was rhetorical. You want her to pull through this - both of you are ready for recovery. Remember the night you spent together in France, the year after she called off the engagement, when you were both unsure it was the right time?” This moment is important. It was here that he boldly pounced on my vulnerability and recalled to me a story I had not yet relayed to him. Yet he continued: "She had moved to Paris, you were beside yourself with grief and longing when you realized you'd made a mistake.” My mind lurched uneasily in my head: I don't remember telling you that Geoffrey, but surely I must have, or else how could you know? "You flew to Paris, having gotten her address from a mutual friend, and showed up dejected at her door. You said something to her that night and won her back, something that brought the two of you closer together than ever before." Sitting there with him I began to feel weak and dizzy, maybe from too many sleepless nights and too much laudanum. The air around me seemed to wrinkle and throb as the blood pulsed and thumped in my skull. The slowly decaying hospital flowers began to nauseate me. "It formed a bond so powerful that you both pledged only death could tear it apart. Do you remember what you said, Mr. Erdido?"
The sensation worsened when I tried to answer his question and recount what I had said that night in Paris. It was in December when I flew to France, during a deadly cold winter. My flight was nearly delayed because of a storm; heavy rains and hail. In the air, flying in the dark over the middle of the ocean, the plane was bombarded, pebbled and pelted by glass marbles so large I thought I would die. It didn't disturb me that I might perish from a mechanical failure of some kind - a wrecked propeller caught and tangled on an icy cloud - it bothered me that I might meet my demise and never again lay my eyes on Martha. She would find out about my final flight, taken in secret in the dead of night, transporting all my stowed away hopes, the lost envoy of my love, from a stiff lipped friend with one hand placed on her forearm and the other over a trembling chin as she faced the insuperable news of my end. The pain of my death would succeed me and echo outwards like a ruptured, ripped open star, the baleful light of which would unleash itself blindingly upon the tender eyes of my beloved. With my hands turned to talons, gripping at the pale plastic armrests of my airline chair, I thought surely I would lose my mind on that tussling plane, so deep was my despair. Through violent bouts of turbulence I roused myself from the seat against the wishes of the fat-faced flight attendant, and pushed toward the bathroom, praying for a pocket of peace. A vertiginous falling sensation tugged at my heart, sweat dappled my brow and, gasping for air, I reminded myself that even if I didn't make it, even if the only news that reached her was of me NOT reaching her, at least she would know that I had lost my life in the pursuit of love. Yes, at least she would have that, I told myself. Braving the glares of first the flight attendant and then the owl-eyed, fidgety man sitting beside me - whom I had to cross to arrive safely back at my seat - I secured a kind of shelter from the storm, managing to withstand the frozen sicles hung like daggers from my heart.
The details of my landing and taxiing to Martha's door can be omitted, for they are not worth mentioning. Of what interest is the back of a taxi driver's big head? Spurred by the night's briskness and the excited anticipation of a child on Christmas morning, I practically ran through the cobblestoned streets, my feet a fine mimicry of fast shooting pistols or the galloping hooves of intrepid horses. The closer I came to her home the more energized I became. Rushing through snowy streets like a sharp breeze, darting and dashing, I could barely contain myself. Finally, with a pounding heart and windburnt face I rang her door. Martha answered with a glass of water in hand and, upon seeing my face, dropped the glass into a small rolling orbit as she rushed into my arms. "Peter, Peter, is it really you," she asked, burying her face into my chest. I held her tighter than I had ever held anything, as though it were possible to squeeze the juice of love from her bones and anoint myself in them. The warmth of her quaint apartment rubbed itself against us in the doorway like an affectionate cat at our feet, dispelling the cold that had blown me there. I kissed her and my blood began to thaw and expand into the deserted veins and arteries in my chest, and so elated was I, so perfectly happy, that I realized I hadn't answered her question. In truth, even now I cannot remember with what I had replied. Our bodies did the talking.
While I relived that whirlwind memory, as it fluttered past on hummingbird wings inside the aviary of my mind, he sat before me with folded hands placed in his lap upon a crossed leg, smiling, nodding. With infinite skill he feinted and swayed and dodged my detection, that elusive manipulator, always evading the grasp of apprehension. If only I had known; if only. Whatever protest I had put to him, whatever concern or question I could muster, he defused and allayed expertly, hurling boomerangs of optimism at me, leaving me alone with my myopic and foolish doubts. There was all of this, but also, like a massive orbiting Jupiter, my unwavering loyalty to Martha guiding my hand throughout. I do not say this to make excuses for my actions, those checkmate choices that felled my queen and left me toppled and outplayed, but rather to convey to you the frailty of my faculties during that time.
It took but a brief afternoon to make the arrangements, existing now as only a flurry of memories; reams of paperwork and pen-ink; signatures; disclaimers; more signatures; impenetrable viscous jargon; duplicates and triplicates; manila folders; itineraries. Martha was to be transported to a private facility where care could be taken to ensure proper administration of treatment, superior monitoring and evaluation, onsite laboratories, and around the clock personal nursing and attention. I was hesitant about this, of course, because surely the hospital to which she was presently committed already provided all of these services, but Geoffrey had assuaged this concern by pointing out how much more difficult it would be to relocate a team of specialists than to move a single person. Of course, of course. And all of it without cost - because this was to be the first human trial, and the efficacy of the drug was not yet known, our payment was our participation.
Everything was set into motion, and had been for some time, I would later find out. I was made aware of the term of the treatment: exactly three days, with a ten day recovery and observation period for blood draws, cognitive assessments and overall physical fitness examinations. Martha would be moved first thing in the morning. The corporate-owned care center was located outside Stanford, a short flight from Lyesdale. We were to meet at the hospital at 8:00AM and ride with Martha in an ambulance to an airport where a jet would be waiting. I kissed her febrile forehead and followed Geoffrey into the half-lit hallway. You've made the right choice, always remember that, he said, placing his pale hand onto my slumping shoulder and smiling so sharply that I thought he’d stab me with his mouthwash-blue eyes. I nodded and walked through a nearby exit thinking his remark strange, without being able to explain why, exactly.
That night, back at the house, I packed suitcases for our stay. I packed Martha’s first; inside the valise I included a few blouses, one of which was a favorite of hers, two pairs of shoes (for comfort and fashion), a cozy white sweater (should she be cold), sunhat, (sun)glasses and a beautifully tailored, black, polka dotted dress. As I gorged the valise on her belongings I felt time slowing down around me, becoming liquid, and I become more absorbent, ready to receive a revelation: I was packing for a trip that wasn’t real. This was not a vacation, it was a stay in a sanitarium. I was deluding myself, thinking if I planned for good fortune and a speedy recovery that I could somehow will it to be true. A memory of myself as a child scurried out from under an old rock to shame and repulse me; sitting alone in my room cross-legged, on young naive bones, chanting: I can fly, I can fly, thinking that if I really believed it, really believed it, I would lift right off the floor. Foolish youthful hope. No, I thought, our hope should be hawk-winged always, for without it, we are merely prey; to fear, to despair, to ourselves, crawling around on all fours in filth and long-tailed squalor. I threw some clothes, socks and underwear into my suitcase and placed them beside the door, ready for the morning journey to the hospital. I reached for my wallet, a dreadful thing given to me by a friend, partly in jest, with an attached coin-purse that I kept to spare him an insult. As of late I'd found another use for that little flap which had never actually seen a coin - I stored my pills inside; those little pellets that helped me remain calm and placid during these tumultuous times. But when I placed my hand through my pants I was greeted by a hollow pocket. Had I taken it out and placed it on the kitchen table? I checked, it wasn't there. The bedside table? Not there, either. Where could it be? The car? I rummaged through my suitcase and then the house frantically, becoming more panicked, more desperate the longer it took me to find it. It was as though my entire existence would be completely invalidated if I were unable to find the thing. All of my sanity, personhood, my identity, all of it, depended on this one pocketable piece of leather. I felt that if I couldn't find it, I too would disappear along with it.
I rocked back and forth at the edge of the bed, my head bowed in my hands, tearing through the fabric of my mind and tossing memories and recollections aside like dirty clothes, digging into my cortex with the exuberance of a dog searching for a once buried treasure. Then, like a bolt of lightning: the hospital, beside Martha's bed. I was nearly certain I had left it. I needed to return, if only to confirm I wasn't mad.
I grabbed the keys from the kitchen table and briskly made my way to our car. As I drove, speeding along on sinuous roads full of blind curves and small dashed lines, I wondered what I would do if the wallet wasn't there. The night was oddly hazy and soot-stained, a brownish dust swirled through my headlights like little particulate moths beating themselves to death against the glass. All at once from around the turn there came a sudden screeching sound and a javelin of light pierced my eyes. A white van slid skidding around the bend. I slammed on my brakes and veered out of its way to avoid it. With a racing heart I watched the van nearly smash into the driver's side door of my car as it flew past, squealing, horn blaring, vanishing into the other side of the turn. What kind of depraved, mad, reckless, wretched bastard would steer a vehicle that way? The horrible thought of Martha waking from her fever to find me dead, taken by twisted hunks of smoldering metal and broken glass, briefly inspired a frightful fit of rage and murderous mania in me. After peering into the review mirror and looking back over my shoulder several times as I considered pursuing the driver of the van, I collected myself and drove toward the hospital to retrieve my wallet. What happened next, I still struggle to understand.
