He wraps his arm around me. Any minute now, the nurse is going to come in and yell at us. But until then, I’m not budging.
“The other fantasies,” I ask. “The less tame ones…?”
I feel Wyatt’s grin against my neck. “I had a particularly racy one about painting spells from the Book of Going Forth by Day.”
“That’s aterriblefantasy.”
“Your naked body was my papyrus.”
I laugh. “Tell me more,” I say.
—
ON THE SECONDday, I have another CT scan. There’s no reaccumulation of the clot, and no intracranial air. All in all, the doctor says, it looks like I will make a complete recovery. I stay under observation for another day.
Miraculously, my phone survived the crash, with only a cracked screen—which means I’ve been able to talk with Meret. Brian told her I needed to stay in the hospital for a few days, and I have a friend taking care of me. That, I realize, is so generous Meret doesn’t even question it. She is FaceTiming with me the first time I sit up on my own in bed, and when I take a walk around the floor, pointing out the patient lounge with the television stuck permanently on Boomerang en Español, and the nurse that looks like Alec Baldwin. She is with me when the doctor unwinds the bandage and I first scrutinize the neat little scar in the shape of a question mark, held fast by glue and staples. My hair has been shorn on one side only, which she says makes me look like Natalie Dormer inMockingjay,and she googles it to show me. She wins her first singles match on the tennis team and phones me on the ride home because she is so excited.
Whenever Meret calls, Wyatt steps out of the room. I know it is to give me privacy, but also because he is terrified to have his first interaction with her be over a screen. Or maybe he is just terrified to have his first interaction with her, period.
I am always careful to smile and to be upbeat, even if my head hurts or I’m tired. Meret is always careful to talk about superficial things. When the conversation begins to get strained, we can both feel it, like when you move over a frozen pond and edge back from the spots where the ice is too thin.
Each time, before we hang up, Brian asks to speak to me.
He scrutinizes me, and tells me I’m looking better. I relay what the doctors have said. We run out of words, because I will not mention Wyatt to him, and he doesn’t seem willing to volunteer information about how he’s spending his days. It’s familiar but just a little off, like when you are watching a movie on TV and the sound doesn’t quite match the mouths of the actors. He isn’t angry and he isn’t sad; I can’t quite put my finger onwhathe is. Studiouslyeven,maybe. Waiting.
On the third day that I’m in the hospital, Meret doesn’t mention Brian. “So,” I say. “I guess I should talk to…”
I don’t know what to say.Your dad?
“Oh,” Meret interrupts. “He’s not here.”
“Okay,” I say. It isn’t surprising that he’s at his lab, and yet, somehow, it is. Somehow, I expected him to be there, just because I was asking.
After we hang up, I stare at the phone in my lap, thinking of Brian’s brilliant mind. I wonder if he learned this lesson fromme:that something has to leave before you realize it is missing.
—
FOUR DAYS AFTERI nearly died in a plane crash I board an aircraft again.
Because there was no air in my follow-up CT scan, the doctors give me a cautious thumbs-up to fly, since it’s a short flight and there are neurosurgeons in Boston who can take care of any complications. Wyatt buys a silk scarf from the gift shop for me to wrap around my head, although it doesn’t really conceal the fact that half my head is shaved and the other half is not. I think I will never be able to make myself step onto that jet bridge, yet I turn out to be less anxiety-ridden than I expect. I find myself looking at the other passengers as they stow their carry-ons and buckle their seatbelts. Do you know how lucky you are to be flying with me?I want to say.The worst has already happened; what are the odds it will ever happen again?
When we land, though, I grip Wyatt’s hand so hard that my nails leave marks in his skin.
How many times have I come through Logan Airport—back from a trip to Orlando with Meret, or a conference in London with Brian—yet this is the first time I’ve been here with Wyatt. It’s the first time I’ve been anywhere with Wyatt, really, other than Yale or Egypt. Having him in the spatial dimension of the city I call home is jarring.
It makes the most sense for Wyatt to check in to a hotel. We decide to rent a car, because when I had emailed Brian from Cairo, I had told him where mine was parked at the airport, so that he could reclaim it.
At the Avis counter, a clerk with a Boston accent as thick as soup asks Wyatt if he wants a full-size, a compact, or a subcompact.
“You Americans with your size obsession,” he says. “Compact is fine. I’m not compensating for anything.”
The clerk doesn’t even bat an eye. “If your wife is driving, I need her license, too.”
It’s an assumption, but it stops us cold. “I…I’m not driving,” I stammer. I can’t, not for a couple of weeks, but it’s also easier than saying I’m not his wife. It makes me think of Wyatt bellowing his way into my hospital room, because he wasn’t my next of kin. I’m nothing to him—not legally, not practically, not in the way the world recognizes. This hammers home for me, firmly, the gravity of where we are headed.
“Just me, mate,” Wyatt tells the clerk. He hands off his credit card—miraculously, his wallet also stayed in his pocket during the crash—and wraps his arm around me. “Isn’t Boston all about lobsters?”
“Um, yes?”
