Joan Is Okay(35)

Madeline, I said, as a warning. Madeline, hang on, we can get you a stress ball.

But it was already too late.

When your feet can’t dangle off the seat, flying can feel a lot like sitting. When your armrests are being shaken by a co-worker, sitting can feel a little like flying.

As the entire chair rocked, I was back on that plane with my grainy apple slices. It was comforting at first, the rattling of all my limbs, the sloping around of my cheeks, the confusion as my brain sloshed in its own fluid like pickled vegetables in a jar, but eventually, I had to ask Madeline to stop shaking me and my chair. I was already nauseated.

My last resort was to head into the director’s office without a scheduled appointment. He was in the same position as before, seated at his desk, the view behind him the same set of bridges and cars, planes landing and taking off. He glanced away from his computer at me and seemed startled, as if he’d seen a ghost.

What are you doing here? he whispered. You’re supposed to be on leave.

Tomorrow.

He nodded solemnly and asked if there was anything he could still do for me. Nespresso? A handshake?

I asked to stay and he said that decision was out of his hands.

But what if I never told anyone and just never left. I could order a sleeping bag and store it under my desk. Shower with wet wipes.

They’ll make an example out of you, he said.

How? I asked. It wasn’t possible to make an example out of a model minority.

The director doubted it too but still urged me not to take any chances. What HR frequently said to them, the directors, about the proper running of a hospital: if you do not respect the corporate form, the corporate form will not respect you. He repeated this with a shudder.

Good news is that it’s just six weeks, he said. Go see your family. Go to Greenwich. Take naps, walks. Time will fly.

I couldn’t quite picture that, time flying six weeks or forty-two days at a time, unless I was put into a coma.

And when you come back, which you will, all this will be behind you and I’ll prioritize you for any shift you want.

I thanked him for his continued and unwavering support.

He said it was the least he could do.

Then I said something that surprised even myself.

Director, the first time I put on my white coat, it felt like home. From having moved around so much and with no childhood or ancestral home to return to, I didn’t think myself capable. I didn’t prioritize home or comfort, because if everyone did, then immigrants like my parents, brother, and sister-in-law couldn’t exist. Home was not a viable concept for them until later, and it wasn’t a concept for me until the day I put on that coat, this coat. I pulled at my white lapel to show him. From then on, I knew that my occupation would become my home. To have a home is a luxury, but I now understand why people attach great value to it and are loyal to defend it. Home is where you fit in and take up space.

My director rubbed his eyes. He said he was touched by what I said and insisted on shaking my hand.

His campfire-for-hair secretary had come to the door already, had lightly tapped to say that his next appointment was here, and without realizing, I’d extended my hand forward toward some invisible flame. Bending over his desk to shake my hand with vigor, the director said that while we still had to follow protocol, once I was back in full force he would put my face and those words on a brochure. Because if I could feel at home in this hospital, then more physicians like me would come.

I spent my last hour at the hospital with ECMO and pushed its cart to a window overlooking Morningside Park.

This park has seen changes, I told ECMO. My doorman says that just ten years ago, no one went into this park past dusk alone. There were areas shrouded from view by overgrown trees and shrubbery. Long stretches of bumpy asphalt, twisted metal fencing, and sudden cliffs, playgrounds with no kids and gunshots heard at night. But in recent years, an immaculate green lawn was put in, a new baseball diamond, a kidney-shaped pond with turtles, floodlights at night for safety. In summer, the park was nice to run through, and when I first moved here, I had taken a few jogs, up into the secluded terraces that at a certain point opened up to a sprawling view of the city.

ECMO, I said, you would love it. It’s tidal volume, that view.

Tidal volume is about half a liter. It’s the amount of air in a single breath taken at rest. How to remember this term, I had written in my handouts, is to imagine yourself sitting on a beach. The beach is empty and the sand is clean. You watch the tides roll in, tides that are controlled by the moon, that big rock orbiting us out in space. You put your chin on your knee and inhale, exhale. This is the kind of quiet breath we mean.



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MY BEREAVEMENT DAYS BEGAN with television, alternating between local news, the weather, the home shopping network, cooking competitions, and daytime television that played reruns of old sitcoms and shows about nothing.

Kramer barges in, takes out from Jerry’s fridge half a pound of deli meat, two slices of thick bread, and makes himself a sandwich. After taking one bite of the sandwich, he spits the bite out. Too mushy. Leaves the sandwich there on the counter and barges out.

Kramer eats a chocolate cupcake. He writes the word cupcake down on a small slip of paper that will be his running tab at Jerry’s apartment and that will now allow Kramer to take whatever he wants.

Jerry calls Kramer “Hobo Joe.”