What Michaela wants is immaterial: Gerard restored to health.

  Michaela pauses to read a description of Orpheus and Eurydice on a poster outside the opera house. How cruel, the legend!

  As Orpheus leads Eurydice out of Hades he has to release her hand without explanation as he walks, not beside her but ahead of her; in confusion Eurydice feels this as a rebuke and doubts his love, cries out his name; Orpheus turns heedlessly to comfort her, as a husband would comfort his wife—and in that instant, Eurydice dies.

  Because Orpheus so loves Eurydice, he forgets the admonition not to turn back to her when she calls after him.

  Even as Eurydice despairs of Orpheus’s love, his love for her guarantees that he will destroy her.

  The old legends. What is most human in us will be our curse, and will assure our damnation.

  ABOUT THIRTY FEET AWAY AT the edge of the square, partly hidden by pedestrians, Michaela notices a bizarre male figure. This person is not in her path but perpendicular to her path. A man of about Gerard’s age with a wispy gray beard, disheveled gray hair. Shockingly he appears to be wearing a hospital gown. An IV tube hangs from one of his (badly bruised) arms. Smears of blood on his clothing. His ghastly-white legs are bare and he is wearing paper slippers!

  Is this Gerard, somehow? Michaela stares in horror.

  Michaela knows that this person isn’t Gerard. Could not possibly be Gerard. And yet—Michaela stares.

  She would call to him but her throat has shut up. Her swollen tongue fills her mouth, she cannot speak.

  Gerard!—the name is choked, inaudible.

  There is a surge in the crowd, the forlorn figure in the stained hospital gown is lost to Michaela’s sight. Michaela tries to follow after him but has no idea where he has gone.

  It feels to her that Gerard in his hospital gown, an IV tube dangling from his arm, is carried away from her as in a rush of water.

  Wave upon wave, churning water.

  Oh but it’s ridiculous! That this (homeless, mentally ill) person could in some way be Gerard, her husband. A distinguished scholar, a Harvard professor, fellow of the Santa Tierra Institute for Advanced Research . . .

  But if it is Gerard you must lead him out of Hell. You must not abandon him.

  Michaela turns away, shaken. Must leave, must return to the hospital immediately, this is a summons. Walking swiftly, beginning to trot, panting running up the steep hill she soon sees the stucco facade of the Santa Tierra Cancer Center rising before her, majestic.

  Rows of windows glittering like eyes obscuring the sky.

  22

  The Vigil: Night

  At first he’d sent you home at 10:00 P.M. each night. Seeing that you were exhausted, and needed sleep: Go back to the house, darling! I’ll see you in the morning.

  Each day very long. Though not (yet) interminable.

  Kissing your hands, kissing your tremulous eyelids, kissing your lips as you leaned over him suffused with love for him.

  He’d be fine, Gerard insisted. He’d smiled, even laughed. It is the hospitalized husband’s particular pleasure to laugh at the wife’s fears for him which are (he is sure!) exaggerated.

  He would watch news for a half hour: TV, computer. CNN, MSNBC, PBS, BBC. He would finish the New York Times. Then try to sleep, turn out the lights by 11:00 P.M. Mornings began at dawn in the hospital but no need for you to come before 8:00 A.M.

  Though usually, you would arrive by 7:30 A.M.

  At that time much was practical, pragmatic: which books he wanted you to bring for him, which tasks he hoped you might do for him, calls to make for him, research to do for him (online, but also at the Institute library). Take-out food (Chinese, Italian, Middle Eastern) it was your task to bring for him, and for you, to eat in place of the (mediocre) hospital food that roused him to such scorn.

  But soon, Gerard would cease complaining about the food. Soon, he would cease being interested in food. He would cease asking for books. He seems to have ceased working on The Human Brain and Its Discontents whose scattered pages you take care to reassemble and place for safekeeping on a high closet shelf without comment.

  Vaguely Gerard says that when he’s “out of the damned hospital” he will return to the manuscript and finish it.

  You will help him, you assure him.

  Yes—by and by!

  WEEKS LATER IF GERARD IS AWAKE when you prepare to leave for the night he will lift his head from the pillow weakly, plead with you: Don’t leave just yet, Michaela! Stay with me . . .

  Yes! You will.

  Of course, you will.

  Won’t leave him until he has fallen asleep.

  Linger at his bedside, holding his hand, stroking his fingers, talking to him, reassuring him, until he drifts into the opioid sleep that has made his skin ashen, his face slack. His breathing erratic, hoarse.

  Dilaudid drip in his badly bruised right arm begun at 9:00 P.M., to render the patient unconscious, near comatose.

  Not the elusive Dr. N___ (deeply embarrassed by the prospect of his failure as an oncologist to keep his patient alive as he’d seemed to have promised at the outset) but soft-spoken Dr. S___ (palliative care nurse practitioner, female) has explained to Gerard and to you: the choice is between (excruciating) pain but clarity of mind and (narcotized, numbed) pain but a befuddled mind.

  Except: if you are in (excruciating) pain, you cannot really be clear-minded.

  Then we don’t really have any choice, Doctor. That’s what you are saying.

  I’m afraid yes. Yes, I am afraid—that is what I am saying.

  NO END. NO BEGINNING.

  Except of course there is: an end.

  Sick with guilt each night leaving Gerard. Sick with panic knowing that one morning you might return and Gerard will be gone.

  But they wouldn’t do that—would they? The hospital has your number(s). They would call to summon you in the night.

  Each night you remain longer in the room. Inertia has suffused your limbs. For Gerard does not want you to leave. For Gerard becomes visibly anxious when you prepare to leave. And then it is 11:00 P.M. when the hospital shifts to its nocturnal rhythms. Fewer footsteps, fewer voices, TVs stilled, rooms darkened. Passing darkened rooms on your way to the elevators at the end of the corridor you are ravaged by guilt.

  You have come to feel a particular unease, a mounting fear, seeing dusk deepen outside the windows of the room, slow movement of glittering lights miles away at the interstate highway. Lights of the city, lights in the sky, gradually fading as the room’s reflections swallow the world beyond the window.

  Gerard no longer watches TV. No longer cares for “news”—what once roused him to anger, disgust, dismay seems to make little impression upon him.

  And does he want to work on his manuscript any longer today, or should you put it away for him?

  By and by.

  Not a reply that is an answer exactly. But if you carefully rephrase the question the reply is, simply—By and by.

  IN A TRANCE OF EXHAUSTION descend seven floors to the near-deserted front lobby. Every detail of the elevator interior—the positioning of the lighted floor buttons, Day-Glo posters advertising the hospital cafeteria and gift shop, dull scratches and scrapings in the walls—is familiar to you as the inside of your eyelids though it is (simultaneously) (immediately) forgotten, erased from your consciousness, the moment you step out of the elevator.

  At the long front desk only one receptionist remains at this hour of the night to recognize you as the wife of a patient on the seventh floor: Oncology.

  G’night, ma’am. See you tomorrow!

  You smile, you wave. Always polite to smile, wave. Though your heart is broken you can smile, wave. Why the hell not.

  “IF YOU COULD STAY, Mrs. McManus. Maybe—tonight . . .”

  Your husband’s condition has not improved, it might be said that your husband’s condition is worsening so better stay the night. Starting tonight. For sometimes it seems that Dr. McManus is becoming confused, disoriented.

  Helpful to have a family member in the room at such times—the nursing staff explains.

  (Try not to notice that the youngest nurse appeals to you with eyes of extreme unease. Is she frightened? For God’s sake of what—who?)

  Yes but there are no other family members, you inform them. Yes there is only the wife.

  Sometimes a very sick patient will eat if a loved one urges him. Please!

  Lifting a soup spoon to Gerard’s mouth, slowly, cautiously. Spoon clicking against recalcitrant teeth. Easy to spill, take care. Spooning tiny portions of yogurt, cottage cheese. Your favorite, darling: blueberry. Please try.

  Opens his mouth like a fledgling bird. Starving but cannot eat. Food makes him nauseated. Foods he’d liked well enough just last week, sliced bananas, Cheerios, apple juice now make him nauseated.

  Can’t swallow. Gagging. Pushing your hand away.

  Enough, Michaela. Stop.

  He is forgiving you. Yet, he is (sometimes) (often) furious with you.

  YOU WILL KISS GERARD, you will take some solace from the fact, though it is a minor, mild fact, that Gerard kisses you in return, if but weakly. And then, summoning your strength to climb up onto the bed and lie beside him, taking care not to jostle him, not to interfere with the IV lines in his arms. Snug, snuggling. Curving your arm over his body, firmly. Your head beside his head on the pillow. Gently nudging his head. Your breath seeking a rhythm with his.

  Declaring that you love him. You will never leave him. You are his wife—Michaela.

  The most delicious sleep washes over you. For you are very, very tired. Shut your eyes, begin the free fall into darkness.

  Love you, will never leave you. Love love love you will never leave you, that is a promise.

  BEGGING—BREATHE! PLEASE, DARLING.

  One long Möbius strip of time—interminable.

  Since you’d driven Gerard to the ER one morning in late January. Beside you in the passenger’s seat complaining in a jocular voice that you are overreacting—exaggerating—as usual. Gerard allows you to know, between fits of coughing, that he has been humoring you, that is all.

  At the ER they will (he predicts) examine him, run a few tests and then release him. His problem is nothing more serious than the damned chronic asthma exacerbated by the hot dry New Mexico air but treatable with medication.

  Smile, try to believe. Your husband’s illness is entirely your imagination. It is not real, it has not the power to kill.

  Yes but you are grateful that he is humoring you. A husband’s love for his wife—humoring her.

  Sleep on the vinyl couch a few feet away from your husband’s bed. For now all pretenses have been torn aside, crumpled and discarded like a sheet of thin crackling paper on an examination table after it has been used. You will stay the night because the nighttime nurses have entreated you. Because you understand, you dare not leave.

  Not comfortable on the vinyl couch, too short for your height but no matter: you won’t be able to sleep in any case. Conscious of machines in the room. And of your husband’s hoarse labored breathing.

  Try not to count breaths. Try not to count seconds between breaths.

  But where are we? What is this place?

  SALINE DRIP. OXYCODONE DRIP. DILAUDID DRIP. Hydromorphone drip. Kidney stent. Pulmonary embolism. Adenocarcinoma. Venous thrombosis. Gastrointestinal consultant. Gallbladder ultrasound. Echocardiogram. CT brain scan. MRI. fMRI. Radiation, chemotherapy, immunology.

  Transition to hospice care.

  ANOTHER NIGHT, though (yet) the same night.

  You are lying on the couch covered by a thin hospital blanket. And a heavy-knit sweater. You are not undressed, you are wearing shirt, slacks, cotton socks. Your head pounds with pain and with a reverberation of pain and you are certain that you haven’t slept during the interminable night yet you are being jolted awake by Gerard alarmed and belligerent sitting up in his bed a few feet away though heavily sedated yet Gerard has been wakened by pain or by panic or by terror crying—Hello? Hello? Hello? What’s going on here?

  A voice not Gerard’s voice. A voice high-pitched, tremulous with fury you would claim you’d never heard before.

  What’s going on here? Where is this? Hel-lo! HELLO!

  You are very frightened. You have never seen your husband so agitated, his face so contorted. Try to comfort him but he flings off your hand. Assure him that nothing is wrong, you are here with him, you are in the hospital in Santa Tierra with him where he has been ill, but he has been receiving the best medical care . . . In his excited state Gerard doesn’t hear you. Staring at you without seeming to recognize you.

  You!—you!—you . . .

  Before you can stop him Gerard has lifted the sheet from his lower body, seizes the catheter tube and tries to yank it out of the tender stub of a penis. Muttering, cursing as you’ve never heard him before in commingled fury, despair.

  Struggle with the distraught man, grasp his arm, Gerard has lost weight in the hospital but still he is strong, stronger than you and he has the advantage of indignation on his side—What’s this godamned thing! Take this out, get rid of this! You are astonished, this furious tearful man is not Gerard. You struggle with him, try to explain. Where he is, why he is here. Why you are here with him, you will take care of him . . .

  Your gentlemanly husband, Gerard McManus! Unshaven, ashen-faced, scanty gray hair in tufts like the hair of a madman, eyes glaring with hatred of you.

  Fuck this! Fuck all of this! You!

  Ring the nurse’s bell! Ring again, again.

  No answer for long terrible minutes as Gerard threatens to throw himself out of the bed, tearing tubes out of his arms, dislodging the catheter. You are sobbing, pleading with him. Reduced to begging him even as Gerard slaps at you, strikes your shoulder with a fist. You—what are you doing to me! You—who are you!

  At last in a panic you abandon the distraught patient and run out into the corridor. Run, run!—to the nurses’ station. Telling a startled-looking nurse that your husband is frightened and excited and doesn’t know where he is, you are afraid that he will hurt himself, he will throw himself out of bed—“Please send someone! Right now! Oh please—help us.”

  NOT ABLE TO STAMMER—I am terrified of him.

  Terrified of what is happening to him. To us.

  23

  Prosopagnosia

  He’d always been good with faces. Remarkable visual memory for people he hadn’t seen in decades, former students, post-docs whose names he could summon within seconds. As a very young child he’d taken pleasure in memorizing mathematical tables—multiplication, division. Later, the periodic table. Vocabulary lists, foreign words and phrases. Maps of the world. Anatomical charts—bones, tissues. Areas of the brain—(and there are many). An acute visual memory for places he hadn’t seen in years, trails he’d hiked only once or twice, preserved somehow in his brain with oneiric clarity.

  Michaela, whose memory was softer, less defined, impressionistic and wayward and determined more by emotion than logic, envied him, and was at times astonished by him.

  Yes, darling. But I’ve forgotten much more than I’ve remembered. Much much more!—Gerard laughed, deflecting praise.

  (Should Michaela have been hurt by the way Gerard deflected her praise of him? As if she were—merely—flattering an important man, as others might do? A curious sort of modesty, Michaela thought: accepting praise was to Gerard incurring debt, and incurring debt from any source made Gerard uneasy.)

  He’d entertained Michaela with tales of a famous neuroscientist friend who suffered from such severe prosopagnosia, or face blindness, he couldn’t recognize his own reflection in a mirror or photograph. (Later, Michaela would learn that Gerard’s friend was Oliver Sacks with whom he’d collaborated on several projects as a young experimental scientist at Columbia.)

  Not recognize his own face? This seemed to Michaela hardly believable, in a person (like Sacks) otherwise so highly functioning.

  Gerard assured her, it was so. The way in which neurons “recognized” faces was scarcely understood, it was so rapid and usually so accurate.

  Prosopagnosia—a neurological pathology in which neurons did not fire, and did not “recognize.” Some are born with the condition, some develop it as a result of illness or impairment to a part of the brain. And some simply acquire it with age.

  HIS EYES ARE OPEN, and they move—warily. There is a glisten of intelligence in them. There is the old glisten of irony, self-awareness.

  No. It is a glisten of fear, terror. He has no idea where he is, what he is “seeing.”

  Perhaps he sees nothing except gradations of light, shadow. He sees “figures”—shapes—that move and dart about, senselessly. Perhaps he no longer hears as he once did. Hearing your voice he does not understand that it is “your” voice or even that it is a “voice.”

  Seeing you he is not seeing “you”—he is seeing beyond you.

  24

  Hospice/Honeymoon

  Like a (short) thread through the eye of a needle, swiftly in and swiftly out.

  Once the word is uttered—hospice. A seismic shift, the very air becomes thick, humid.

  At the periphery of your vision, a dimming. As the penumbra begins to shrink.

  In time, it will become a tunnel. Ever diminishing, thinning. Until the remaining light is small enough to be cupped in two hands. And then, it is extinguished.

  For when hospice is uttered, it is acknowledged—There is no hope.

  No hope. The words are obscene, unspeakable. To be without hope is to be without a future. Worse, to acknowledge that you are without a future—you have “given up.”

  When the word hospice was first spoken—very carefully, cautiously, by a palliative care physician—it was not clear that either you or Gerard heard it. If you heard, you didn’t register it.