The Last Romantics(38)

Renee pulled back as though slapped and did not reply. She kept walking.

What a fucking waste.

Later that night, at home in bed, Caroline snoring faintly in the bunk below, all Renee’s life choices arrived for her in stark relief. She was eighteen years old, six weeks away from high-school graduation, five months from starting at the University of Connecticut in an accelerated premed program for which she’d won enough scholarship and grant money that Noni would pay nothing. Renee had worked so hard to excel academically, to keep her body lean and strong for cross-country, to keep an eye on Joe and her sisters, to watch Noni for signs of relapse into depression. Had she expended so much energy and time on these pursuits that something precious had slipped away? Her adolescence was nearly over—what did she have to show for her teenage years?

Caroline, Renee knew, had not wasted a minute of her time. She and Nathan were practically married already. They held hands in the hallways and on the street. They went to movies together, Nathan driving the ratty green Volkswagen Bug he’d been given by a dying uncle, Caroline installed in the passenger seat like a queen. Caroline had been on the pill for a year now. All the nights Renee had stayed in to study, all the parties she’d missed, all the beers she had failed to drink—these choices struck her now as safe and, yes, wasteful. And whatever it was she had wasted, she would never get it back.

That night Renee thought about the tan, smooth stomach of Brett Swenson and the senior prom that she did not attend and the ways in which she had already closed herself in. One small voice in her head wished she could go back and say, Yes, Brett, bring me to prom and feed me schnapps and vodka and take my virginity in the slippery, heated backseat of that rented limo. But the louder voice wished she could go back to that hallway and punch Brett Swenson in the face for making her question herself like this.

*

A buzz came from the triage nurse: a new walk-in patient designated urgent but not life-threatening. A thirty-eight-year-old white male in overall good health. No medications. Laceration on the left palm with persistent blood loss.

“Sorry, Renee, you’re the last doc standing,” the nurse said.

Renee groaned. “On my way.”

When Renee pulled open the curtain, the patient was sitting on a gurney holding his left hand with his right. His name was Jonathan Frank and it was the tenacity of his bleeding that struck her first.

“What happened?” Renee asked. Jonathan’s left hand was wrapped in a dish towel soaked with blood. Brilliant drops of red fell to the floor as Renee unwound the cloth to get a better look at the cut.

“Just a bread knife. Newly sharpened,” Jonathan answered. He looked pointedly at the woman standing beside the gurney. “No one told me.”

The woman rolled her eyes. She wore a long green dress under a longer black coat. A large diamond sat on her ring finger, throwing a tiny rainbow onto the blue curtain that divided this examining space from the one beside it. “Who decides to have a bagel after five courses at Jean-Georges?” she said. “Who?”

“Are you on any medication?” Renee asked Jonathan.

“No.”

“No blood thinners?”

“No.”

“And when did this happen?”

“Thirty minutes ago.”

“More like an hour,” said the woman. “I’m worried about him. He’s such a bleeder.”

“When have you seen me bleed, Simone? When, in the last ten years?” Jonathan Frank’s face was tight and neat, with short dark hair that rose in a little crest over his forehead. He was tall, over six feet, Renee guessed by the length of thigh that extended past the gurney’s edge, and thin as a pole vaulter. His whole person seemed drafted by an architect: it was precise, efficient, self-contained.

“Maybe your wife should step outside,” said Renee.

“She’s not my wife. She’s my sister. My older sister.”

The woman sighed dramatically. “Fine, bleed to death, see if I care. I’ll be in the waiting room.”

Renee continued working on the cut. The sister was right: Jonathan bled copiously. Renee was concerned about his inability to clot, and so she recommended he be admitted for further tests.

“Admitted?” he said.

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’m sure you’re very good at your job. But I’ll be fine.”

Renee released his hand. “Hold it up like this,” she directed. “Listen, at the very least you’ll need stitches. Quite a few. And probably physical therapy so you can keep full mobility. A wound like this can cause the hand to curl inward as it heals.” Renee made her hand into a horrible claw shape. She was exaggerating, but she hated this brand of skepticism. Sometimes male patients asked how old she was or if her superior was available to give his opinion.

“What do you do for a living?” Renee asked.

“I’m a carpenter. I make furniture,” Jonathan answered.

“So you work with your hands.”

“Yes, but I have an assistant. A really excellent assistant.”

“Tennis, then?”

“Do I look like a tennis player?”

Renee stepped back. “You do, actually.”

“No tennis. I box.”

“Box?”

“I’ve broken my nose twice.”