The Fall of Never(23)

Josh waited, but no more came. He urged the doctor along: “What did she say?”

“She didn’t say anything, as if she’d never heard of the name but was thinking real long and hard about it…and then she grabbed me real tight around the wrist—grabbed me with her left hand, her paralyzed hand—and looked me right in the eyes and said, in perfectly clear speech, ‘Julian will be born dead.’ Then her voice went up in pitch, almost like a little girl’s, and she yelled, ‘We almost killed that f*cking dog!’ Then she fell silent and dropped back down on her pillow, her eyes closing immediately and her hand around my wrist falling limp.”

When Mendes finished, he rubbed his eyes with his fingers and exhaled shakily. Perhaps he was waiting for Josh to contest what he’d just said, or perhaps even react with utter shock or disbelief, but Josh did not. The truth was, Josh didn’t fully understand the gravity of what Mendes had told him. Wasn’t there some sort of delusion that went along with strokes, something Josh’s mom would have called a tumble of loose screws?

Mendes recognized his ignorance. The doctor said, “Josh, people who are paralyzed like that can’t just turn it on and off like a switch. Either they have motor control or they do not. It’s not an option, not like wiggling your damn fingers or choosing the type of tile you want to go on your kitchen floor. For the sake of argument, we’re talking permanent here.”

“All right…”

“Josh, my wife is five months pregnant. If it’s a boy—and I have a strong feeling now that it just might be—we’re going to name him Julian, after Marie’s father.”

Josh just looked at the doctor. In some distant part of his brain, he wondered how old Mendes was. It was nearly impossible to tell for sure. Carlos Mendes, with his dark eyes, dark skin, dark hair, dark aura. This man before him—this doctor—looked very, very frightened.

“I guess,” said Josh, “that I don’t need to ask if you’d previously told Nellie about your son’s name?”

The doctor exhaled with a shudder. “I’m not usually a superstitious man,” Mendes said, his voice quieter now, “but there are some things that can get lodged in the heads of even the most rational and cynical human beings. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“How do you explain it?” Josh asked him—then realized it had been Mendes’s intention to bring him here and ask him that very same question. “I’ve only known Nellie Worthridge for a few months,” he said, sounding almost apologetic. “I don’t know how…” But there was nothing he could say.

“Does she have any family that you know of? Any living relatives at all?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“How about close friends?”

“I’m not sure.” Then he remembered: “She told me once that she played bridge with group of women on Wednesday nights.”

“Bridge,” Mendes mused. He produced a third Lucky Strike from the pack in his breast pocket, lit it, and inhaled deeply.

“I’d think a doctor would know how unhealthy those things are,” Josh said, trying for levity.

“Knowing and caring are two different things,” said the doctor.

“True,” said Josh. “Could I bum one from you now?”




Forty minutes later, Josh pulled up a plastic folding chair beside Nellie Worthridge’s hospital bed. The old woman was asleep, or perhaps just resting soundlessly, and did not stir when he entered the room and sat down beside her. He watched her for an exorbitant amount of time, watched the reluctant rise and fall of her frail chest, her withered old hands folded neatly atop the bedclothes. Her left hand, he noticed, appeared somewhat gnarled and tense, painfully frozen. The tips of her fingers looked almost blue.

Startling him, a wan smile crept across the old woman’s face.

“Jesus,” he muttered under his breath. Then, in a whisper: “Nellie?”

“Dear?” she whispered back. Her voice sounded strained and was difficult to hear. The left side of her mouth did not move at all. “Dear?”

“Did I wake you?”

Her smiled only widened. Such a crooked, obscene smile, as if half her face was trying to scowl at the same time. Again, when she spoke, it was like she was sucking on a mouthful of chew. “I was just resting my eyes.” And then she opened them.

Why is it, he thought then, that old people’s eyes look so wise? Is it really possible that you can see all the years of knowledge they’ve attained just by looking into their eyes?

“The doctor phoned me,” he told her. “Said you were doing some weird stuff. How you feeling?”

“Could be better.” With some difficulty, she raised her right hand and extended it across her midriff to rest it atop Josh’s own. “Thank you. The nurses told me what happened. Thank you, Josh. Dear.”

“He said you sat up in bed and used your hurt arm.”

“I know.”

“You remember?”

“I remember him telling me that’s what happened.”

“But you don’t remember?”

She looked past him and at the window on the far wall. The blinds were pulled, but she stared at it nonetheless. And after two minutes, as if she’d summoned it, it began to rain. Josh heard it begin to patter gently on the glass.