The Queen of Hearts(67)

I drank it in: his baby softness, the invisible tether between us, the undeserved adoration he always showered on me. I thought about whether I’d give him up if I could bring back Eleanor Packard, and the thought of losing him was so terrible tears came to my eyes. This is what I’d say to Boyd and Betsy, if I could: I understand what you lost.

I understand what I took from you.

And somewhere, somehow, in the vast universe above me, I felt Graham’s presence. And for the first time since he died, I was able to set aside my self-loathing long enough to remember him with more clarity. He’d have been the most wonderful father.

I’d like to think if he could have seen me and Henry, he’d be smiling.





Chapter Twenty-eight


A LITERAL WINDOW TO A BROKEN HEART





Autumn, 1999: Louisville, Kentucky


   Zadie


James and I froze, but there was not even a second’s reprieve for Emma. She clapped her hands over her mouth, a high, thin sound escaping around the edges of her fingers. She stood, then stumbled over to the corner of the room, her cheeks glazed with two crimson patches, as she still tried to hold in sound with her hands.

I started to rise, but the chaplain was already there. She was saying something to Emma in a low voice. “What happened? What happened?” James was asking, but my vision went swimmy for a moment, and by the time I could focus again, Emma and the chaplain were gone.

Dr. Elsdon wordlessly conferred with Nick, one emotive eyebrow locked in question mode. Nick nodded. “Her friend,” he confirmed. Dr. Elsdon manually pushed his inquisitive eyebrow down with one abstracted finger and surveyed me and James.

We were crying. We both stared out straight in front of us, bewildered by our tears, especially in the presence of the powerful and unfamiliar chair of the ER department, but we were as helpless as babies to control ourselves. James ineffectually swiped at his streaming face with one gangly arm, which prompted Dr. Elsdon into action; he sprang out of the room on a mission to find tissues.

As soon as he was gone, Nick sank to his knees in front of us, his handsome face anguished. He bowed his golden head and took my hand, saying, “We did everything, Z. We tried for more than an hour. He was still alive when he came in, but barely. I swear they had to force me to stop. Please tell her I’m sorry.”

I cried some more.

Graham. Last week: the last time I’d seen him. Mingled sounds drifting down the hallway of our apartment: a booming baritone, with an exaggerated crescendoing gargle at the end of each line, mixed with the splattering noise of water. Elvis, he was singing Elvis in our shower. The water cut off, and I’d listened, amused, as Elvis forgot for the twentieth time that he was too tall to exit through the flimsy shower door without banging his head on the horizontal support bar.

“Ow! Motherf—” The twinging sound of the support bar vibrating from the impact. Muffled curses, then more singing, softer now that he was no longer competing with the shower.

I cried more. I could see him clearly, emerging from the bathroom clad in a too-small towel. He’d startled as he caught sight of me, his warbling Elvis cutting off midword, but then he recovered. His face changed to that patient, focused expression he often had. He looked happy.

“What happened?” James asked again, his voice thick.

I realized I knew what Nick was going to say a beat before he said it, but I couldn’t imagine why.

“He took his own life,” said Nick gently. “Shot himself in the chest.”

“In the chest?” said James through a barrage of tears. Even a third-year med student knew that if you wanted to die immediately and painlessly, you had to take out the brain stem. Shooting yourself in the chest was in every way bad: messy, not always fatal, and there was no guarantee of instant loss of consciousness. To be sure, shooting yourself in the head had its chance of horrendous unintended consequence—perhaps it was this that had influenced Graham, since every trauma surgeon had gruesome stories of some would-be suicide who had only managed to blow off his face. They often failed to aim properly (or, even likelier, they flinched at the last second). But a bullet to the chest! It wasn’t a common means of suicide. Both James and I were stricken with the image of Graham surviving long enough to suffer agonizing regret.

“Are you sure he did it to himself?” I said through my sobs. “Couldn’t it have been someone else?”

“He was in the quad, Zadie. A dozen people saw it,” Nick said grimly.

“Oh God,” said James. “Oh no.”

Watching him now, it dawned on me that, next to Emma, he was probably Graham’s closest friend in our class. Along with sadness and horror, his honest face was emblazoned with guilt. I reached out to him and pulled him to me; we grasped each other in a weepy, shattered embrace. “James,” I choked. “James. It’s not your fault.”

James pulled away. He seemed unaware he was making a weird, high keening sound. Even through my own pain—oh God, I had to get to Emma—it was wrenching to see a man trying so hard to stop crying, especially James, with his bearded face now resting on his skinny arms. Nick was blinking rapidly, his beautiful jaw set, turning away so as not to have to look at him.

Dr. Elsdon skidded back into the room, laden with enough Kleenex to manage an army of flu victims. He took immediate measure of us and beckoned to Nick. “Help her find her friend,” he ordered.