This Time Tomorrow(55)

Alice waited inside the hospital to check in. She recognized two of the men at the desk, London and Chris, who were, as usual, smiling and chatting with visitors as they passed over their IDs. When it was her turn, Alice stepped in front of London’s chair and smiled.

“Well, hello, birthday girl!” London flipped some invisible hair over his shoulder. “Look at you!”

The lobby of the hospital was airy and high-ceilinged, with a Starbucks at one end and a gift shop selling cheap stuffed bears and candy bars at the other. It was loud enough that no one else could hear you unless they were straining to listen on purpose.

“How did you know?” Alice asked.

London waved her license at her. “Also, I’m a psychic.”

“Right,” Alice said, embarrassed. “It was yesterday.”

“Go on up,” London said. “You remember where? Room is printed on the badge,” he said, and handed her license and her pass across the transom.



* * *



? ? ?

The hospital wasn’t unlike the San Remo, in certain ways. There were multiple elevator banks, and there were unmarked doors that led to places civilians weren’t supposed to go. People made eye contact as little as possible. Alice took an empty elevator to the fifth floor and walked through two sets of double doors, past the sitting area with the good view of the water and the steep gray palisades on the other side, approaching the George Washington Bridge. The hallways felt sterile, with hand sanitizer pumps every fifteen feet, but also not quite as clean as one would expect, with dust bunnies along the baseboards and people coughing into the shared air. Alice was cold, and pulled her jacket closed. She was close.

It didn’t seem fair. It was supposed to be that things were always the same going backward, in the other direction. Alice had assumed—she realized this as she walked down the final hall—that this part would be different, just as her basement apartment had been replaced with a sunny co-op complete with adorable children and a nanny. She had assumed that if things were fixed, things were fixed. Everyone died, of course. Everyone died in the end, at some unknown point in the future. People were supposed to die when their loved ones could nod and grieve and say, It was their time. What had Alice done, if not undone time? Whatever she had managed to accomplish in between her sixteenth birthday and this moment, it had changed everything else in her life, so why hadn’t it changed this? Alice arrived at the curtained-off room that belonged to her father. There was a dry-erase board on the wall just outside with his name and the names of the doctors and nurses on duty and all his meds. The television was on, and Alice could see the closed captions on the screen. It was the weather report. Warmer than average, highs of 65 today, 70 degrees tomorrow. We’ll see if it lasts until Halloween. Alice put a hand on the curtain and pulled.

Leonard was in bed. There were no tubes in his nose, no lines in his arm, nothing attached except a port in his forearm that dangled like a limp carrot top. His hospital gown was covered by a flannel bathrobe, flung over his narrow body like a blanket. The room was freezing, like always. Leonard’s eyes were closed but his mouth was open, and Alice could hear him breathing out of his chapped lips.

There were often people in and out of hospital rooms—that was one of the things that made the whole experience bearable. An endless parade of doctors and nurses and therapists of various kinds, and staff members who brought clean sheets. One was always dragged back to polite civility and small talk. A new name to learn, a greeting to offer. There was a woman there now, standing by the window. Alice thought that it was nice that she was taking a moment to look out at the Hudson before continuing to deliver fluids or lunch or check vital signs or remove the trash, whatever her job was. Alice took a step closer to her dad. The woman turned and smiled.

“Alice,” she said, and held out both her hands, grasping like little pale lobster claws. Alice dutifully reached back and let the woman hold her hands, but the woman wasn’t finished, and kept pulling Alice closer until their bodies were pressed flat against each other in a tight embrace. She was small and nicely dense, like a snowman, with a corona of graying curls.

“Hi,” Alice said. “I don’t think you’re a doctor.” The woman looked like every Upper West Side therapist she’d ever met, or a middle school principal, a profession that required both warmth and a firm hand. There was something familiar about her face, but Alice couldn’t place her. The cheese counter at Zabar’s. On line for popcorn at the subterranean Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. She looked like someone’s mother. Alice had a momentary panic that this woman was her mother, but no, that wasn’t possible.

The woman laughed. “Please, can you imagine? You know how well I do with blood.” She let go and sat down in the only chair in the room.

“How is he today?” Alice asked.

“He’s okay,” she said. There was a large tote bag at her feet, and she reached in and pulled out a pile of knitting. “Pretty much the same as yesterday.”

Alice turned back toward her dad. He looked yellow and pale under the fluorescent lights, with stubbled cheeks that were now more like a real beard than not. She touched his hand. “Hi, Dad,” Alice said quietly.

“How was the rest of your birthday? Kids make you something?” the woman asked.

“Good, yeah,” Alice said. She felt a poke in her back and whipped around, saw the woman holding an envelope.