She laughs. “Well, I think that was the original problem.”
“True, true.”
Her releases her hand, and she’s acutely aware of how naked it now feels.
“Do you want to come in?” Peter asks, gesturing inside. “I was about to have a cup of tea.”
He says this like it’s the most ordinary thing in the world.
“Yes. Yes, I do.”
She steps over the threshold, into the foyer, where the room opens dramatically, punctuated by a large, hanging gilded chandelier. For a moment she feels like Cinderella entering the ball. But, as she surveys her surroundings, taking in the grand staircase, an old-fashioned mailbox system, and a mahogany drum table—an item Michael purchased a few years back—she reminds herself she’s more like Perdita in Shakespeare’sThe Winter’s Tale.
It is in the Knox, after all, that according to family lore, her great-great-grandmother was born, a baby out of wedlock.
Taylor
The following day, Taylor works a four-hour afternoon shift at the hospital. Her head throbs—next time she should pass on Sam’s whiskey—but she didn’t want to call out sick. The first chance she gets, she asks a colleague to cover for her. Then she bolts upstairs to the ICU.
To Vivian.
Outside Vivian’s door there’s a group of doctors in discussion, and Taylor strains to hear.
Serial CT scans, subdural hematoma, minor distal radial fracture, rib fractures.
No new information, then.
She feels the outline of the key in her scrub pockets; shehascome to check on Vivian, but she’s also there to return the key. Her embarrassment over having kept it has only grown by the light of day.
The doctors finally move like a flock of birds down the hall, and once the room is empty, Taylor slips inside.
Vivian is lying in the bed, her beautiful head partly shaven where the ICP monitor—the probe measuring brainpressure—attaches like an alien’s antennae. Her chest rises with air that the ventilator pushes through a tube into her lungs, and then it recoils. A cocktail of medications infuses through spaghetti lines to keep her sedated and treat the brain swelling. Her fractured wrist is secured in a splint.
Taylor almost wants to cry, seeing Vivian this way. When she arrived, she seemed so alive, like she’d transported through a portal from the world outside—the world where peoplelived, where life hummed and the earth rotated on its axis—to their hospital world, where people become part machine,less human. Tethered with tubing and on beds that slowly rotate to prevent bed sores. Bruised, edematous.
But even though Vivian now belongs to that all-too-familiar world of sickness, there are still glimpses ofherbeneath it.
A lingering waft of Chanel N°5. A tiny clump of black mascara on her eyelash, still present. Shadows of her expertly smudged eyeliner. The wine-colored nail polish, now chipped on several fingers.
“T.J.” Her Aunt Gigi startles her; she is standing outside the door, holding a paper cup of coffee in one hand and a nursing census sheet in the other. “You came to check on your patient?”
“Hi, Aunt Gigi. Yeah.”
“She’s stable, for now.”
“That’s good.” Taylor does a visual sweep of the room, looking at Vivian’s machines and monitors, and then the surrounding walls. She notices an “About Me” poster hanging on the wall, empty. Usually, these posters are filled out by loved ones in detail and plastered with photos. Taylor frowns. “Doesn’t she have family? Have any visitors been in?”
“No family yet that we’ve located,” Aunt Gigi replies, and then adds, “You know, you did good with her yesterday, T.J. Youshould feel proud. It was not an easy situation, but you handed it well. You acted quickly.”
“Thanks,” Taylor says, with an authenticity she does not feel.
An overhead speaker rings out: “Code Blue, room 614. Code Blue, room 614.”
“Gotta run,” Aunt Gigi calls out over her shoulder as she hurries down the hall.
Taylor sighs and pulls up a seat alongside Vivian. Studies her. Underneath the swelling, her face is lax, slightly pink. Even smoother than the day before, if that’s possible.
How is Vivian alone? Why is no one with her? How is someone so beautiful not surrounded by others? There should be at least one handsome man by her bedside. Perhaps even a few boyfriends who aren’t aware of one another’s existence.
