The Queen of Hearts(68)

Although I had no memory of leaving the room, or entering the Catacombs, somehow we emerged into the lobby of Christ the Redeemer, where the light seemed insanely bright and the people were scurrying around with offensive normality. Nick, who had been babbling—wondering if Graham would have left a note, wondering if I had thought he’d seemed depressed—badged our way into the ED, in the hope we’d find Emma there, because I refused to do anything or even say anything else until we’d located her. Graham’s body was still in the trauma room. Nick steered me away from it, but after we checked the family room and the waiting room and even the chapel without success, I knew Emma had to be there. As I got closer, I thought I heard Emma’s voice inside—distorted and raspy, but still recognizably Emma’s—and I flung aside the curtain and ran in.

She held Graham’s hand. There was no sheet covering his face and no one had closed his eyes, so he gazed up sightlessly at her, his face a dusky blue. An endotracheal tube lilted up from his mouth. His chest was exposed and it had been opened on the left, with a rib spreader still in place: a literal window to his broken heart. Then, at some point in the frenzy to save him, someone, probably Nick, had decided to extend the incision to the right, so his sternum had been sawed in half. Emma was not looking at his mangled chest, however; she was focused on his hand.

“Did you feed Baxter this morning?” she asked in a toneless voice without looking up at me. “I promised him we’d take care of Baxter.”

“Emma,” I said, helpless.

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know why he was asking me to take care of Baxter.”

“Emma. Can I hold you?”

“I didn’t know this would happen. I didn’t know. I didn’t know. We have to keep the dog, Zadie. He wants us to keep the dog.”

She began stroking Graham’s large bloodless hand with her own pink ones, rocking back and forth. I was paralyzed. I stood rooted to the middle of the room, watching Emma rocking next to the ravaged immobile thing that was Graham.

The curtain swished aside and Nick came in. Emma looked up at him, almost with a look of hatred. He went to her and, without hesitation, pulled her up and into him, burying her face in his big shoulder, one hand gently bolstering the back of her wobbly head. With the other, he reached into his pocket and threw me a set of keys. “Take these to Ken. He’s in the ER. He’s going to pull my car around and take you two home. I’ll bring Emma out front in ten minutes.”

I nodded and mutely started for the exit.

“Zadie,” Nick said softly. I turned back.

He met my eyes above Emma’s heaving form. I love you, he mouthed.

—

Ken Linker, one of the fifth-year surgery residents, marched me through the ER. People looked at us and occasionally called out, the drama of Graham’s death either unknown to them or already receding. Again I was stricken with the reality of a world proceeding along with or without you. How could everything seem so normal to other people?

We reached the quad. It was a lovely autumn day, with brilliant sun showering the large square brick-rimmed beds of late-fall flowers. Cascading orange and yellow leaves were caught in swirling currents of sweet, crisp air, dancing and pirouetting merrily before bowing themselves out on the flagstone of the quad’s surface. Nature was, as always, indifferent, but the humans present were another story. Unlike at the vast hospital, things were not normal here at all, since this was the site where Graham had chosen to end his life. The precise spot where it happened was evident, as there was still a police presence, complete with crime scene tape and misshapen black bloodstains, along with a slowly gathering crowd of medical students. They milled around in shocked little huddles, gazing in disbelief at the sticky pools of congealed blood, which were as discordant on the sunshiny courtyard as an assault rifle at a preschool. I saw Rolfe and Landley at a distance, facing away from the crime scene tape; both of their faces dropped into their hands, Rolfe’s dark head and Landley’s fair one hanging parallel to the ground.

I took a step backward as something loomed up in front of me. A small distraught tornado—Hannah—blew into me, almost knocking me over in a teary hug. She was, predictably, incoherent. Her face was swollen to unrecognizable proportions, an anguished balloon at its bursting point.

“Maybe I should take her home too,” Ken offered uneasily, as Hannah attempted unsuccessfully to speak. “What service is she on?”

I answered slowly, “. . . Trauma.”

Oh no. Oh no. Hannah was on Nick’s service. She would have been paged and gone to the trauma room; it was probably her first-ever trauma code. She would have been there as Graham was brought in, and she would have realized who he was, and she would have been watching as they cracked his chest and fought to save him. She would have seen him die.

Although I’d been too stricken to comfort my best friend, I had no hesitation with Hannah. I gathered her up, rubbing her shoulders as Hannah clutched me. I managed a nod to Ken, who said, “I’ll let X know I’ve got her too. She can take the day off. If you guys can wait for a few minutes, I’ll swing by with the car right over there.” He gestured to a roundabout at one end of the quad and hastily retreated toward the garage.

“Oh God, Hannahbear,” I murmured into Hannah’s soft hair. “I’m so sorry. Did you go in to the code?”