Everything After(5)

“Sometimes I feel like we’re sin eaters,” Emily said, quietly. It was something she’d been thinking for a while.

“We’re what?” Reuben asked.

“Sin eaters,” she repeated. “When my mother died, I learned everything I could about death. And back in the Middle Ages there were these people whose job it was, after someone died, to eat their sins. Not literally, but they’d have to eat a meal that was believed to have absorbed the sins of the dead person. It made it so that the person who died was pure enough to go to heaven. Their soul had been cleansed by the sin eater. Sometimes I feel like we’re sin eaters, consuming stories instead of food.”

Reuben and Priya were quiet for a moment. Then Priya spoke. “I want to be a sin transformer,” she said. “I want to take the shit that happens to people and help them use it to become someone stronger.”

Emily sighed. “Sometimes that happens,” she said. “But sometimes shit doesn’t make you stronger. Sometimes it’s just shit.”

“Fact,” Reuben agreed.

Emily wondered, as she had been more and more often lately, if this was a job she could do forever. She happened to be good at it, or so people said, but she wondered how long she could eat people’s sins, help people sort through shit, before it would overwhelm her. She was worried it already was.





5



Emily was packing up at the end of the day, opening and closing her hand to see if she could stop it from aching, when her cell phone vibrated. It was Ezra: Not sure when I’ll be able to leave. You okay hanging out with me for a little? I told Malcolm’s dad I’d stay until he got back.

Emily replied: Of course. Her fingers really ached, which meant it would rain soon. Even though there wasn’t scientific backing for it, Emily knew it was true. The fingers on her right hand always ached before it rained, ever since her accident in college. And every time they did, she blocked thoughts of the beautiful music she used to play, the way it moved her soul. She’d chosen a different path.

Thank you, Ezra wrote back. I love you so.

Malcolm had been three the first time he was under Ezra’s care—he and his family came from Philadelphia to be treated in New York because his parents had heard that Dr. Gold was the best they could do for their child; he had the most up-to-date research, used the newest methods. Malcolm had been in remission for three and a half years, and now he was seven and not doing well. His mother had gone to Philadelphia to be with his brothers and sister for a few days and was coming back tonight.

Through her position at NYU, Emily had worked with Malcolm’s family a few times when he was in treatment years ago—she spoke to his siblings about how they felt about Malcolm’s illness. Those kinds of discussions overwhelmed her, though, and she hardly ever saw patients at the hospital now. But it was nice to still be able to walk the hospital halls to find her husband with whatever patient he happened to be spending time with at that moment.

Instead of taking a yellow cab, Emily walked the thirty minutes to the hem-onc wing of the children’s hospital, through Stuyvesant Square Park, past Peter Cooper Village, and up through NoMad, where the buildings seemed to be growing taller each day, rivaling the skyscrapers she could see peeking up from Midtown and Murray Hill. When she arrived, she found her husband sitting by Malcolm’s bedside, holding the little boy’s hand. Ezra’s lips were moving, but it was only when Emily got closer that she could hear what he was saying—what he was singing, actually, his voice a pure tenor. It was one of his favorite Beatles songs, about blackbirds and broken wings flying once more.

Emily didn’t say a word. She stood in the doorway listening to her husband sing to a little boy who was sedated, who was intubated, whose life he was trying to save. Emily closed her eyes and thought of Malcolm’s siblings, the ones she’d spoken to; they’d felt so helpless, so angry. Ezra’s voice was clear and perfectly on pitch, fine-tuned in college a cappella groups and playroom jam sessions with his patients. He hardly ever sang at home, but Emily wished he would. She could listen to him sing forever. Then his voice caught, and Emily opened her eyes. He was crying—and her heart felt so full that she wasn’t sure she’d ever love him more than she did in that moment.

She took up the end of the song, finishing it for him, softly singing the lines about waiting for the moment to arise. That imagery always spoke to her the most.

Ezra looked at her in the doorway; she could see the tears in his eyes. And she realized. “Malcolm’s the patient you didn’t want to talk about earlier.”

Ezra nodded and wiped his eyes. “He is. There’s nothing left that I can do.”

Emily pulled a chair up next to him and sat down, wrapping one arm around his back, steeling herself for him, making herself his anchor. “You don’t need me to tell you that science can’t always cure everyone. That all you can ever do is your best, but sometimes it won’t be enough.”

“I know,” Ezra said, leaning his head against her. “That’s why Einstein believed in God.”

“That’s right,” she said. “That’s why Einstein believed in God.”

“It still feels like a failure,” he whispered.

“Oh, Ez,” Emily said, pulling herself close to him, wrapping her arm around him tighter.