The Queen of Hearts(51)
Then, from somewhere in the void, I felt a hand clasp mine and squeeze briefly before letting go. “Oh, Zadie,” Emma murmured in a voice I’d never heard before. She hesitated and then drew me against her. She and Graham linked their hands behind my back and around my front, hugging me in the middle until I wasn’t sure where I ended and they began. To my surprise, Emma pressed her cheek against mine, letting my tears wet her face as the three of us clung to one another, rocking slightly back and forth, oblivious to the party raging all around us.
Chapter Twenty
A FORCE FIELD OF PAIN
Emma, Present Day
There were 147 steps between the pediatric ICU and the Family Conference Room. I knew because I counted as I walked, and when I reached the conference room, I turned and retraced my steps. This time the count was off by two: 149. I’d have to redo it, both ways.
It took five minutes to confirm the total—147, correct the first time—but I added a third retracing to be sure. It didn’t help: no march to the gallows had ever been heralded by such dread. I reached the door of the family room for the third time, but I could not raise my hand to knock.
After they’d finally dragged me from the Packard child’s bedside, I’d hurled the contents of my stomach into the nearest trash can. I could feel my mewling stomach now, acid eating away at the lining, consuming me from within. I tipped my head backward and began to count the rectangular ceiling tiles.
Something no one knew: in med school, I began to have panic attacks. I didn’t know that’s what they were; I thought I suffered a form of hereditary insanity, my mind turning inward on itself in a cannibalistic fury. Black formless dread would seep over me like an unexpected immersion in a cave; I couldn’t catch my breath and sometimes I couldn’t feel my body. Gripped by sharp talons of terror, I’d have to hold on to the nearest object to keep from being swept away into the void.
Eventually, I learned what was happening, and the doctor at the student clinic, an early practitioner of Eastern meditative medicine, taught me techniques to soothe myself back from the brink. What worked for her didn’t necessarily work for me, but I figured out I could calm myself by counting, or by physically arranging items into a logical progression by size, or sometimes by repeating a phrase in my mind until it became meaningless. And if I could, I’d run. Sometimes I ran for ten miles or more, the thudding repetition of my steps one more thing I could count.
So there I stood: thirty-six years old, number one in my medical school class, the top choice of my acclaimed surgical residency, the recipient of a perfect score on Part 3 of the USMLE, a surgeon, a wife, a mother; there I stood, outside this bland beige door, my head tilted so far back it hurt, frantically counting and recounting the dingy speckled tiles of the hospital’s ceiling, the numbers churning and blurring in my mind, as I waited for a relief that I knew would never come.
Chapter Twenty-one
NONE OF THEM HAS EVER BEEN HUNGRY
Emma, Present Day
“What did you just say?” I could hear other voices behind Zadie’s: a low-level buzzing, phones ringing, an outraged baby yelling. Of course: she worked on Thursday mornings. I should have called her before she got to work, but I’d spent the last few hours rocking back and forth in my call room, leaving Sanjay to mop up the other patients from last night. “Emma, what did you say?”
“I need to see you,” I whispered. My throat felt broken.
“I’m at w— Okay. Okay,” she repeated. Her voice changed. “I’ll see if Melanie can cover my morning patients. Are you at the hospital?”
I forced myself to speak audibly. “Yes,” I said. “Call room.”
“I’m on the way.”
I hung up, glancing around dumbly as if seeing my surroundings for the first time: gray-beige walls, a twin bed fashioned from a chemical-emitting laminate, industrial maroon carpet. The call rooms were awful, but they were palatial compared to the rooms in which I’d been raised. Usually, I tried not to let myself dwell on the subject of my humble origins, but in my present circumstances, any topic would have been an improvement.
It was one of the many ways I separated myself from others. The women who surrounded me now were urbane and sophisticated; they thought nothing of dropping two grand on a handbag; this was true even of many doctors where I worked. They bought art. They lived in beautiful homes. They were cerebral, including the stay-at-home moms. They read Man Booker winners and science journals; or at least they read the clever, intricate wordsmiths of Vanity Fair and the New Yorker. At dinner parties, they could discuss foreign policy and the corporate world, casting their polished voices with assurance. Their parents were doctors or CEOs; the older ones had shiny, beautiful children at Carolina or Duke or one of the Ivies; the younger ones had fair-haired cherubs in smocked clothing. They owned heirloom china and silver. They knew how to write a proper thank-you. They understood how to manage nannies and housekeepers. None of them has ever been hungry.
On the exterior, I blended with them perfectly.
I did now, anyway. When I first got to college, I thought I’d outgrown my childhood: I read voraciously. I spoke correctly. I was careful not to betray my upbringing. But the things I didn’t know about a fine life were legion.