"The infarction looks to be transmural," Dr. Ohnan tells Janice, and clarifies: "Right through the gosh?darn wall." He tries to show her with the skin and flesh of his fist the difference between this and a sub?endocardial infarction that you can live with. "Ma'am, the whole left ventricle is shot," he says. "My guess is there was a complete restenosis since this April's procedure up north." His big face, with its sunburnt hook nose and jutting1 Australian jaw2, assaults and confuses Janice in her sleeplessness3 and grief. All this activity of the doctor's hands, as if he's trying to turn Harry4 inside out for her, now that it's too late. "Too late for a bypass now," Dr. Olman almost snorts, and with an effort tames his voice into its acquired Southern softness. "Even if by a miracle, ma'am, he were to pull through this present trauma5, where you and I have healthy flexible muscle he'd just have a wad of scar tissue. You can replace arteries6 and valves but there's no substitute yet for live heart muscle." He exudes7 controlled anger, like a golfer who has missed three short putts in a row. He is so young, Janice groggily8 thinks, he blames people for dying. He thinks they do it to make his job more difficult.
After last evening's visit from the Penn Park police (how young they seemed, too, how scared to be bringing their ugly news; the Deleon hospital had called them finally because neither the number of the condo phone nor the number they got for his driver'slicense address from Information would answer, she had been out showing a young couple some properties, one a split?level in Brewer9 Heights and the other an old sandstone farmhouse10 over toward Oriole; the police came into her driveway the minute she got home, their twirling blue light licking the limestone11 walls so all the neighbors must have wondered) and then telephoning to reach Mim, who wasn't answering her phone either, and to get seats for herself and Nelson on some kind of night flight to Florida, with Eastern still mostly out on strike and everything going in or out of Atlanta cancelled or delayed because of the hurricane, and then the drive to South Philly and the airport, the miles of Schuylkill Expressway under repair, and among all the confusing barrels with reflective tape Nelson's taking a turn that wound them up in the dead middle of the city right there by Independence Hall ? it seemed to happen in a minute ? and then the hours of waiting with nothing to do but soothe12 Nelson and read newspapers people had abandoned on the plastic chairs and remember Harry all the ways he was from the day she first saw him in the high?school corridors and at the basketball games, out there on the court so glorious and blond, like a boy made of marble, and then the empty condo, so tidy except for the stacks of old newspapers he would never throw out and the junk?food crumbs13 in the wicker easy chair, but no traces of another woman in the bedroom, just that book she got him for last Christmas with the sailing ship on the jacket, and Nelson right beside her overreacting to everything so she almost wished he had let her come alone ? after a while the mother in you dies just like heart muscle she supposes ? and a few hours of ragged14 sleep that ended too early when the boys began to mow15 the greens and the men began to play, with Nelson actually complaining at breakfast that there weren't any Frosted Flakes16, just these bran cereals that taste like horse chow, after all this Janice felt much like her husband did emerging from his long drive on Labor17 Day weekend, as if her body had been pounded all over with sandbags. In the hall, the newspaper was delivered to the door on this as on every other day:
South Carolina
Dr. Morris, the old one, Harry's doctor, must have heard she is in the hospital; he comes into the waiting room of the intensive cardiac care unit looking himself not so well, spotty and whiskery, in an unpressed brown suit. He takes her hand and looks her right in the eye through his rimless19 glasses and tells her, "Sometimes it's time," which is fine for him, being near eighty, or at least over seventy?five. "He came in to me some days ago and I didn't like what I heard in his chest. But with an impairment like his a person can live two weeks or twenty years, there's no telling. It can be a matter of attitude. He seemed to have become a wee bit morbid20. We agreed he needed something to do, he was too young for retirement21."
Tears are in Janice's eyes constantly ever since the blue police lights appeared but this remark and the old man's wise and kind manner freshen them. Dr. Morris paid closer attention to Harry toward the end than she did. In a way since those glimpses of him shining on the basketball court she had slowly ceased to see him, he had become invisible. "Did he mention me?" she asks, wondering if Harry had revealed that they were estranged22.
The old doctor's sharp Scots gaze pierces her for a second. "Very fondly," he tells her.
At this hour in the morning, a little after nine o'clock, with dirty breakfast trays still being wheeled along the halls, there is no one else in the ICCU waiting room, and Nelson in his own agitation23 keeps wandering off, to telephone Pru, to go to the bathroom, to get a cup of coffee and some Frosted Flakes at a cafeteria he's discovered in another wing. The waiting room is tiny, with one window looking toward the parking lot, damp at the edges from the lawn sprinklers last night, and a low table of mostly religious magazines, and a hard black settee and chairs and floor lamps of bent24 pipes and plastic shades, they don't want you to get too comfortable, they really want the patient all to themselves. While she's in this limbo25 alone Janice thinks she should pray for Harry's recovery, a miracle, but when she closes her eyes to do it she encounters a blank dead wall. From what Dr. Olman said he would never be alive the way he was and as Dr. Morris said, sometimes it's time. He had come to bloom early and by the time she got to know him at Kroll's he was already drifting downhill, though things did look up when the money from the lot began to be theirs. With him gone, she can sell the Penn Park house. Dear God, dear God, she prays. Do what You think best.
A young black nurse appears at the open door and says so softly, yet with a beautiful half?smile, "He's conscious now," and leads her into the intensive?care unit, which she remembers from last December? the central circular desk like an airport control tower, full of TV sets showing in jumping orange lines each patient's heartbeat, and on three sides the rows of individual narrow bedrooms with glass front walls. When she sees her Harry lying in one of them as white as his sheets with all these tubes and wires going in and out of him, lying behind the wall of glass, an emotion so strong she fears for a second she might vomit26 hits her from behind, a crashing wave of sorrow and terrified awareness27 of utter loss like nothing ever in her life except the time she accidentally drowned her own dear baby. She had never meant never to forgive him, she had been intending one of these days to call, but the days slipped by; holding her silence had become a kind of addiction28. How could she have hardened her heart so against this man who for better or worse had placed his life beside hers at the altar? It hadn't been Harry really, it had been Pru, what man could resist, she and Pru and Nelson had analyzed29 it to the point of exhaustion30. She was satisfied it wouldn't happen again and she had a life to get on with. Now this. Just when. He called her stupid, it was true she was slower than he was, and slower to come into her own, but he was beginning to respect her, it was hard for him to respect any woman, his mother had done that to him, the hateful woman. Though all four of their parents were alive when they courted at Kroll's she and Harry were orphans31 really, he more than she even. He saw something in her that would hold him fast for a while. She wants him back, back from this element he is sinking in, she wants it so much she might vomit, his desertions and Pru and Thelma and all whatever else are washed away by the grandeur32 of his lying there so helpless, so irretrievable.
The nurse slides the door open. Above his baby?blue nose tubes for oxygen his blue eyes are open but he doesn't seem to hear. He sees her, sees his wife here, little and dark?complected and stubborn in her forehead and mouth, blubbering like a waterfall and talking about forgiveness. "I forgive you," she keeps saying while he can't remember for what. He lies there floating in a wonderful element, a bed of happy unfeeling that points of pain now and then poke33 through. He listens to Janice blubber and marvels34 at how small she grows, sitting in that padded wheelchair they give you, small like something in a crystal snowball, but finer, fine like a spiderweb, every crease35 in her face and rumpled36 gray saleswoman's suit. She forgives him, and he thanks her, or thinks that he thanks her. He believes she takes his hand. His consciousness comes and goes, and he marvels that in its gaps the world is being tended to, just as it was in the centuries before he was born. There is a terrible deep dryness in his throat, but he knows the sensation will pass, the doctors will do something about it. Janice seems one of those bright figures in his dream, the party they were having. He thinks of telling her about Tiger and I won but the impulse passes. He is nicely tired. He closes his eyes. The red cave he thought had only a front entrance and exit turns out to have a back door as well.
His wife's familiar and beloved figure has been replaced by that of Nelson, who is also unhappy. "You didn't talk to her, Dad," the kid complains. "She said you stared at her but didn't talk."
O.K., he thinks, what else am 1 doing wrong? He feels sorry about what he did to the kid but he's doing him a favor now, though Nelson doesn't seem to know it.
"Can't you say anything? Talk to me, Dad!" the kid is yelling, or trying not to yell, his face white in the gills with the strain of it, and some unaskable question tweaking the hairs of one eyebrow37, so they grow up against the grain. He wants to put the kid out of his misery38. Nelson, he wants to say, you have a sister.
But does he say it? His son's anxious straining expression hasn't changed. What he next says, though, shows he may have understood the word "sister." "We phoned Aunt Mim, Dad, and she'll get here as soon as she can. She has to change planes in Kansas City!"
From his expression and the pitch of his voice, the boy is shout-ing into a fierce wind blowing from his father's direction. "Don't die, Dad, don't!" he cries, then sits back with that question still on his face, and his dark wet eyes shining like stars of a sort. Harry shouldn't leave the question hanging like that, the boy depends on him.
"Well, Nelson," he says, "all I can tell you is, it isn't so bad." Rabbit thinks he should maybe say more, the kid looks wildly expectant, but enough. Maybe. Enough.
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jutting
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| v.（使）突出( jut的现在分词 )；伸出；（从…）突出；高出 | |
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jaw
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| n.颚，颌，说教，流言蜚语；v.喋喋不休，教训 | |
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sleeplessness
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| n.失眠，警觉 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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trauma
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| n.外伤，精神创伤 | |
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arteries
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| n.动脉( artery的名词复数 )；干线，要道 | |
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exudes
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| v.缓慢流出，渗出，分泌出( exude的第三人称单数 )；流露出对（某物）的神态或感情 | |
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groggily
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| adv.酒醉地；东倒西歪地 | |
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brewer
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| n. 啤酒制造者 | |
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farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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limestone
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| n.石灰石 | |
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soothe
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| v.安慰；使平静；使减轻；缓和；奉承 | |
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crumbs
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| int. (表示惊讶)哎呀 n. 碎屑 名词crumb的复数形式 | |
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ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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mow
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| v.割（草、麦等），扫射，皱眉；n.草堆，谷物堆 | |
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flakes
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| 小薄片( flake的名词复数 )； （尤指）碎片； 雪花； 古怪的人 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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clobbers
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| n.狠揍， （不停）猛打( clobber的名词复数 )；彻底击败v.狠揍， （不停）猛打( clobber的第三人称单数 )；彻底击败 | |
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rimless
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| adj.无边的 | |
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morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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retirement
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| n.退休，退职 | |
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estranged
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| adj.疏远的，分离的 | |
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agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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limbo
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| n.地狱的边缘；监狱 | |
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vomit
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| v.呕吐，作呕；n.呕吐物，吐出物 | |
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awareness
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| n.意识，觉悟，懂事，明智 | |
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addiction
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| n.上瘾入迷，嗜好 | |
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analyzed
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| v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析 | |
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exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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orphans
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| 孤儿( orphan的名词复数 ) | |
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grandeur
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| n.伟大，崇高，宏伟，庄严，豪华 | |
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poke
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| n.刺，戳，袋；vt.拨开，刺，戳；vi.戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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marvels
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| n.奇迹( marvel的名词复数 )；令人惊奇的事物（或事例）；不平凡的成果；成就v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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crease
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| n.折缝，褶痕，皱褶；v.(使)起皱 | |
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rumpled
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| v.弄皱，使凌乱( rumple的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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eyebrow
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| n.眉毛，眉 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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