Two days after Zach, my husband and I had all ended up at the same party (given by BJ’s Nepalese friends) I was organizing the large stack of recent poems that I had to send out to various literary publications, sitting in the middle of his living room floor with a stack of paper on each side of me, cover letters in my lap, while Zach was sitting on the couch reading fan mail recently forwarded to him by his publisher. We were quiet with each other, comfortable in silence like people who have been together for lifetimes. I paused every so often to look back at him and smile at the faces he made while reading.
It was during such a pause that I stood up from my secretarial duties and went to sit beside him. He tossed the letter in his hand onto the floor and nuzzled his face into my neck as I wrapped my arms around his shoulders.
“I love you,” I said into his temple, pressing my lips to his skin.
It hadn’t been said before. I hadn’t meant to say it then, but it was the only logical thing to say when all my insides went into a frenzy when he touched me. He was quiet, pressing himself into me. After a few minutes he pulled away, took my hand and looked at me with the face I knew meant he was very serious.
“Do you really, Katy?”
Spontaneous tears started streaming down my face and I had to bite my lip to keep from crying out in what felt like an equal mixture of pain and pure joy. I pulled my legs up so I could rest my chin on my knees the way I’d done as a child when I was nervous or very upset. He was staring at me, his eyes dark blue and round and cold, and he was quiet. And I had seen storms in the Caribbean, and I had seen sunrise in the Himalayas, and I had seen acres of citrus trees blossoming together in the rain, but I had never seen anything as beautiful as the man who was sitting beside me.
“Say it again.”
“I love you.”
He nodded, took my hand and spun my wedding ring around on my finger.
“Why?”
It was the kind of thing Zach would ask, the kind of thing he would have been spending hours or days trying to figure out on his own.
“Because my heart beats differently when you touch me. And I think about you endlessly. And you’re…” I shook my head, at a total loss for the words I needed. Instead of finishing my thought I started crying again.
“What about your husband, Katy? Don’t you love him?” His voice wasn’t cold or cruel, just honest and soft.
I shook my head.
“What?”
“No,” I whispered. “No, I don’t love him. I love you. Just you.”
He pulled me closer to him, wrapped his arms around me tightly and said into the top of my head, “It was hard seeing you with him. You looked happy—dancing, dressed like a little Hindu queen, with your husband’s arms around your waist. Perfect happy couple.”
He was speaking in a measured, steady tone but he was deeply hurt, I could hear that. His sadness struck a chord in me, set off fires of guilt and remorse. I didn’t want to hurt him. More than anything else in the world I hated to hear pain in his voice.
I shook my head. “I don’t love him, Zach. I don’t… let him… we don’t have sex. Not since Chicago.”
“Katy, that was what, two and a half months ago? How can you possibly…”
“We never really did, very much. Because I have a, um, a problem—when I was fourteen I was raped, and I have scars, so it hurts… and I…” I was sobbing against his chest and I didn’t know why. “The other night, when we got home, he was trying but I just kept thinking about you. I want you, not him.”
He wiped tears off my face and hugged me, murmuring that it was alright, that he didn’t want to hurt me, that it was all okay between us.
“I love you, too, Katy-girl. And I’m sorry. I just got jealous, but it’s okay now. You don’t have to cry.”
It seemed like I would never stop crying, but I felt myself smile, and behind my sternum my heart was bubbly and light again. I wanted to stay there forever, but I had to go home to my husband again. Zach and I were always being torn apart, and it was entirely my fault.
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The next day I went to Zach’s late; around seven p.m. right after BJ went into work. We watched a movie and talked for a few hours and then went into the bedroom when Zach could no longer keep his eyes open. He had been getting tired a lot more easily lately and I was worried about him and reluctant to leave him, ever. As he sat on the edge of the bed taking off his shoes I sat behind him, rubbing his perpetually tense shoulders.
“I shouldn’t be here, Zach.” I pulled my hands off of him, looked out the dark window and sighed; I wished I had nowhere else in the world to be but beside him.
“Why not? He’s not waiting for you at home, you know.”
“That’s not fair.”
“It’s true.”
“You tell yourself he’s so noble, that he’s got some great calling,” he said as he used his strong arms to move himself further onto the bed. “But he’s not home because other things are more important to him. That’s the truth, whether you want to realize it or not. If you think you need to leave, you can go. You don’t have to be here.”
I kicked off my shoes petulantly, set my alarm for an hour later and crawled over to his side of the bed to curl up, cat like, by his side. He kissed my forehead, pulled me against him and we fell asleep.
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The next afternoon, the world fell apart.
My husband and I were in the living room watching a movie and trying to be civil to each other when the phone rang. He went into the kitchen to answer it.
Still sulking from our argument the night before, Bijendra handed me the phone with a strange look on his face. “It’s your boss.”
I got the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that I always got when the two men in my life came too close to one another, tried to smile at my husband as I took the phone. “Hello?”
“Katy?” Zach’s voice was trembling, his speech slightly slurred. “I think I need to go to the doctor. I think… I’m sick.”
My heartbeat doubled, I was dizzy as I jumped up to look for my shoes. “What’s wrong?” I tried to keep my voice steady and calm. Oh, please, please, please, God, nothing serious—Oh, Jesus, Shiva, Krishna, I don’t care who you are, just please make him okay tomorrow.
Bijendra, hearing the panic in my voice, muted the television and followed me into the kitchen so he could listen to my conversation.
“Huh? Oh, I’m sorry, I just… I don’t feel right. My head hurts. And… my fingers are…weird. I can’t… can’t really, um, concentrate. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“I’ll be there in five minutes. You should call your doctor, okay? And call me on my cell if you need me before I get there. I’m leaving right now. Don’t worry about it, don’t worry about anything. I will be right there, I promise.”
He sighed. “Thank you. Okay.”
Bijendra, suddenly in his lab coat, put a hand on my forearm as I tossed the receiver onto the couch. “I’ll drive you.”
“I don’t…” No good could possibly come from this. This was a very bad idea.
He plucked the keys from my hand with an air of finality. “You’re upset—you’re too emotional to drive. And I’m a doctor. Alright? Get in the car.”
He was a doctor, he had a point there. He was a brilliant doctor, even. And he would fix it, whatever was wrong; I knew that he could make it better. I smiled at him and nodded. “You’re right.”
“Yes, imagine that.”
On the way to Zach’s apartment Bijendra asked me several questions about Zach’s medical history which I was largely unable to answer. I’d known him for a year before I even knew why he was in a wheelchair in the first place, and in the months since then there hadn’t been any progression of his illness, so I wasn’t overly involved in his healthcare. All I could do was recite the days he had physical therapy and the names of the neurologist, therapist and nurses who called in prescriptions. The tone of Bijendra’s voice while he asked, and the way he nodded at my answers when they weren’t shrugs told me he was forming a diagnosis while he drove. He was a scientist, after all; he assessed and acted. He was admirable and clear headed. He was forcing me to remember why I had fallen in love with him.
“He’s having an exacerbation. You know what this is?” He turned my Volvo onto Highland Avenue and I nervously flipped up the lock on the door, anticipating my break for it.
“No. Not really. It’s MS, right?”
“Yes, it’s the nature of the disease—comes and goes. I’m surprised it’s taken so long to act up again. He might be very ill right now, Katy. He has family here?”
I shook my head. “A sister, a few hours away. His mom’s in Baltimore. Why?”
The presence of my husband the doctor was no longer sufficient to calm my terror. I thought that at any moment I would probably choke to death on my own tears.
Bijendra shrugged. “You may think about calling them. They’ll admit him tonight—he may be in hospital awhile. Also, he may not be up to living alone when he goes home.”
“Why not? What’s wrong with him?” My voice betrayed me; Bijendra took one hand off the wheel and brushed the tears from my cheek.
“I’ll find out, okay? Don’t worry; you worry so much. We’ll take him to St. Vincent’s. He’ll be fine.”
A few minutes later I was sprinting out of the elevator. Bijendra, with his long stride, was right behind me but much calmer. I fumbled with my key in the lock for a few seconds before I could make it work. Rushing inside the apartment, I found Zach in plaid pajama pants and a sweat-stained t-shirt, barefoot. He never went barefoot, unless he was in the bed or the shower, so I was alarmed by it. He was sitting in his wheelchair with his arms held out slightly in front of him. His hands were shaking and it appeared to be a struggle for him to keep his arms from falling. I went over to him and kneeled down by his side; put my hand on his cheek.
“Hey.”
“Do you see them?” he asked, letting his hands fall into his lap and turning to face me. “I can’t really move them. They just shake like that. Is it cold in here?”
I shook my head. “No, I think it’s about eighty-five degrees.” I put my hand to his forehead, felt the heat with my wrist and turned to Bijendra. “BJ, he has a fever.”
“How are you, Zach?” He asked as he walked up to us.
Zach smiled perversely and grunted. “I feel like shit, man. How are you?” If he had been thinking clearly I was pretty certain he would have been furious with me for bringing my husband with me to his apartment. In his current condition, though, making him displeased was the last worry on my mind.
Bijendra took a thermometer from the pocket of his lab-coat and slid it into Zach’s mouth.
“Why do you carry a thermometer? You’re a neurosurgeon,” I was confused.
“I don’t carry it,” he said, reaching into another pocket for a pen light. “I took it from the drawer in the kitchen while you were on the phone. Move—you are in my way.”
He bent down, almost in half since he was so tall, told Zach to follow the light with his eyes. I stepped back, leaned against the wall where I assumed I would be out of the way. He asked Zach to try and make a fist, touch his nose, say the names of all the months in reverse order, none of which Zach could do. Watching Bijendra administer an impromptu neurological exam was surreal. He was very good at what he did and it was impressive to watch; but it was wrong, in so many ways, for it to be happening here, with Zach. I was torn between pride, anxiety and a strong, unfocused desire. Later, when things were calmer, I still wouldn’t be able to decide which of them I’d felt so drawn to.
The thermometer beeped. BJ looked at it and then shoved it back into his pocket. He looked up at me. “We need to go.”
I walked up behind Zach and leaned down to say into his ear, “Can I push you?”
“I can’t do it,” he said softly, closing his eyes against the reality he didn’t know what to do with.
I stroked his hair for a split second. “You’re okay, honey. I promise you’re okay.” God, if you make me a liar I swear I’ll hate you forever.
Bijendra closed the door behind us, locked it with my key, which I’d left hanging there, and followed us to the elevator. I desperately wanted a minute alone with Zach; I wanted to comfort him and I needed to take comfort from him, but I couldn’t. And in the next second I was so grateful for Bijendra that I wanted to cry; I was sure it would all work out fine just so long as he was there, in charge of things. The elevator spit us out into the lobby, and two guys in baseball caps stared as we got off.
“What?” I snapped at them, ready to vent my emotional turmoil on anyone I could. They averted their eyes and ducked into the vacated elevator.
“You need to calm down,” my husband admonished me. “You’re not helping anything if you’re getting hysterical.”
I glared at him. When we reached the car, Bijendra opened the back door and asked Zach if he could transfer by himself. Zach shook his head and BJ made a move to help him. I stepped in front of him, told him to open the trunk. He wanted to argue with me about the economy of time, but something in my face made him think better of it.
I pushed the wheelchair up to the door of the car, made sure it was as close as it could be. Then I took his feet off the rests and placed them on the ground. I’d meant to get him shoes and forgotten; his feet, turned in, thin and pale, looked sad against the dark asphalt of the parking lot. I crawled into the car and then leaned over to him, put my arms around him and asked if he’d be okay if I pulled him in. He nodded. It was not a graceful action, but it worked somehow. He was weak and he unable to grip with his hands, but he had enough strength to hang on to me, so that in several jerky movements I was able to get him onto the seat of the car; then I leaned over him to lift his thin legs under the knees and bring them into the car with us. I didn’t want BJ lifting him out of the chair and into the car; I couldn’t have stood it and I don’t think Zach could have, either. BJ shut the door behind us and put the wheelchair in the trunk. I stayed in the back seat, holding Zach’s hand while he leaned against me, mostly limp and silent. Where our skin was touching, his was burning hot and sticky, though he was shivering. I wondered what his temperature was, and why BJ hadn’t told me when he took it.
“Bijendra,” I said.
“Yeah?” His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror.
“Jwaro?”
“Ek say chaar.”
One hundred and four. That would explain his concern, and Zach’s burning skin.
“I don’t know what that means,” Zach mumbled into my shoulder.
I squeezed his hand. “We’re almost there. You’re going to be fine.”
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Zach was admitted immediately, bypassing even the triage nurse, thanks to Bijendra’s reputation and aptitude for barking orders. He had Zach placed in the Neuro-ICU, where he (and, therefore, I) would have the most access to him. Zach hadn’t called his neurologist, so BJ did that, too, while a nurse and an orderly helped get Zach into a bed and I sat in the corner with my arms wrapped around my waist trying to look supportive and calm. Fifteen minutes after we got to the glass-walled room Zach’s neurologist came into the room looking displeased. He had apparently been roused by his pager as he lay napping in a vacant room and was tousle-haired and had pink eyes. He nodded at Bijendra as he approached Zach; I did not exist.
“So, Mr. DiMarro, what seems to be the issue—other than your not showing up for your infusion last month?”
Zach looked at him, sighed and closed his eyes. I sat up straighter in the chair I’d pulled up to his bedside. My husband stood silent in the doorway, holding open the curtain with his bony elbow.
“I don’t like them. And I hadn’t had new symptoms for,” Zach made an obnoxious noise with his lips, “I don’t know. A long time. Long, long, long. Anyway, that stuff’s bad for my liver, you know?”
Dr.Mallory was not happy. “We’ve discussed the function and importance of Novantrone, haven’t we, Zach? And I think your liver has more pressing concerns, considering your lifestyle choices.”
Zach nodded. “Can I take a nap?”
“I think that’s an excellent idea, in just a little while. Can you two give us a moment, please?”
I smiled wanly at Zach as I was led by hand out of the room and into the hallway. It smelled like Lysol and it was mortuary cold. It was way too bright for that time of night, and little beeps issued from curtained-off cubby holes every few feet off to my left. I leaned against the wall, pressed my eyes shut and sighed. I wanted to sink into the wall, to become one with it, an inanimate object that only witnessed pain and never had to feel it for myself. I was gone inside myself for a moment, consumed with worrying about Zach. Then I felt arms around my shoulders; I was being squeezed suddenly, out of my anxious stupor. I looked up at Bijendra, barely recognizing him and knowing only, for a second, that he was not Zach. When I started to cry Bijendra held me; I felt guilty, disgusted with myself and unable to do anything but stand there, sobbing silently into his chest while Zach lay five feet away, oblivious.
“He has an infection, I think—no, I’m sure. Maybe just UTI or sinus, that causes the fever. They’re going to start IV antibiotics,” his voice was firm and cool, there was no fear in it. I hung onto his words, begging him mentally to keep talking. “These will work fast. He’ll feel better by morning. Possibly the infection and fever have caused the exacerbation—I mean that he may be back to normal in a day or two. He’s delirious, I think, from the fever and not his MS. The problems with his arms and fingers, he may have them for a day, a week, maybe forever. We’ll have to wait for that, see what course it takes. Okay?”
I could tell by his facial expression that I was supposed to feel better now. It was so matter of fact for him; it was just science. He wasn’t devastated by words spoken in a hallway. I envied him. He was looking down at me, concerned.
“You can stay here,” he said much to my astonishment. “I think you should call the family. But since they’re not here, you can stay with him, they’ll allow you—if anyone argues with you, have them page me.”
I just nodded.
He smiled at me, touched my cheek warmly as a nurse breezed by us and into the room next to Zach’s. “He’s lucky, to have you for a friend. You know that?”
I stood on the tips of my toes and hugged him tightly. “Dhanyabad,” I said into his neck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
He laughed shortly. “So much emotion. He’ll be fine, I told you. I do my job, the rest of them will, too. You can keep the car, ok—I have a patient to check on while I’m here. I’ll call a cab.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am. I’ll call you in the morning, okay?”
I nodded at him again. He told me he loved me and gave me my keys before he walked off. He seemed satisfied with the “you, too” I mumbled after him. For a moment I stood there, watching him walk off with the confident swagger that had drawn my attention to him years earlier; I expected to feel arousal, or some kind of nostalgia, but I was only still sick from worry.
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The sun was just rising when Zach woke me up with a soft, slightly gravelly, “Katy, are you sleeping?”
I lifted my head from my arms and looked at him. “Not really, no. How are you?”
His blue eyes were big and serious. He was scared. “I can’t feel my fingers. I can make them move, if I really think about it. But I can’t feel them. I can’t type. I can’t really focus my eyes…” his voice trailed off and he sighed. “I don’t think I want to deal with this. I don’t want to deal with any of this.”
I took his hand in both of mine and squeezed it hard. “Can you feel that?”
“Just a little.”
I stood up, then sat back down near the head of the bed. I put my hands on his face, leaned down and pressed my forehead to his. “Can you feel this?”
He nodded. His face was hot again suddenly, as tears started to run down from his eyes. I had never seen him cry.
“I can type,” I said. “I can do whatever you need me to.”
“What about your husband? I think he saved my life.” His voice sounded like something was tearing it slowly out of his body.
“He did his job; he did what he loves. And I never said he was a bad man… he’s just not you, Zach. I’m… not going home to him.” I felt a little high when the words finally left my body after months of wondering when I would be able to say them.
He shook his head forcefully. “No, Katy. You’re not going to make that decision right now. Not under these conditions.”
“I already made the decision, Zach.”
“If you leave him, if you want to come be with me, I don’t want it to be because you feel sorry for me; I don’t want you to leave him so you can play the nurse for your crippled boyfriend. It’s not going to be like that.” His voice broke and he pulled away from me, leaning into the wires that connected his chest and back with the beeping machine on his left that illustrated the movement of his heart with little green mountains and valleys.
I just looked at him for a moment, and then said slowly, “Do you think that’s all I feel? That I pity you?”
“I don’t know, Katy. I really don’t. I know we’ve been together for months and you’ve never told him. And I know he’s never once thought of me as a threat, not for a second—I’m just the dork in the wheelchair, his wife’s little friend. Who he had to come rescue in the middle of the night, no less. It’s a beautiful scenario, Katy. I ought to write a book about it. If I ever get to write again.” The sarcasm in his voice polluted the air between us.
“You’re hysterical.”
“Wouldn’t you be?”
We were quiet for a few minutes. The blood pressure cuff on his arm inflated and deflated again. The IV dripped. We listened to the noises of the equipment and then I said, “I called him, last time he was in Nepal. I called his parents’ house, and then I called the clinic his father runs. But he had gone out of the city for a few days, and there was no way to reach him by phone. I wanted to tell him. I kept writing this stupid letter, over and over again like an eighth-grader, but somehow it never got sent, so I was just going to tell him on the phone. I wanted to do it, you know? I wanted it to be over with, and I couldn’t wait any longer for him to come home.”
He looked at me, eyebrows drawn together. “You never told me.”
I shrugged and continued. “It was a week or more, before he finally called. And, you and I had had that fight—that stupid fucking fight about that stupid little girl. So I didn’t tell him. And then he came home, and… I was… scared, I guess.”
“We don’t have to have this conversation right now, Katy.”
“Yes, we do. I need to tell you. I have a bank account that he doesn’t know about; it’s not impressive at all, but it’s something of my own. We got the house in his name, anyway. And he has his citizenship now, he doesn’t need me for that. I made my last car payment two weeks ago.” I took a deep breath. “I called my friend Candice, she has divorce papers ready. All I have to do is go see her.”
“I know it’s not that simple, Katy. I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty.”
“It is that simple.” I laughed. “It is. I just didn’t realize it before last night. I don’t love my husband, Zach. I did, once; but, maybe I mostly just loved his culture, and his talents, and there’s only been room for you ever since we met. I’m going to tell him. Today. Later.”
I brushed tears off of his face with the tips of my fingers and kissed his eyelids, the bridge of his nose, his temples, everywhere I could reach and know that he could feel.
“Are you sure?” He whispered. “No, Katy, look at me. This might be as good as it gets.”
I kissed him, hard and long and with all the passion I had left in me after the long night. I kissed him knowing full well that someone might walk in at any second, that that someone might be Bijendra. Nothing else mattered.
“I’m sure,” I told him, cradling his head in my arms and kissing him lightly again. “I don’t care about anything else.”