Jessica Chiarella - And Again

“Okay,” Dr. Bernard says, on his feet as well now, stepping between us. “I think we all need to take a minute here.”

“Yeah, sure, doc,” Connie says. She’s sitting with her arms folded, unreadable. I’d think she was bored, if I didn’t know her so well. Linda’s face is half covered, her nose and mouth eclipsed by both of her hands.

“You think I don’t know who Sam Foster is?” David yells, flushed down to his collar, the veins standing cable-rigid in his arms as he gestures at me. I realize, for the first time despite the nights that we’ve spent unclothed together, that David has become physically formidable in these months since the transfer. “Your self-righteous journalist boyfriend? You think I don’t know where he got his information? Where he got my name?”

This is not my fault. He cannot possibly make this my fault. I’m worried, suddenly, that I might cry. It was a lifelong annoyance, the tendency of my old body to dissolve into stupid, useless tears when I was angry. That particular weakness seems to have trailed me into this new form, and it makes me doubly furious, as I swallow against the raw ache in my throat, that this body has retained all of the wrong things.

“Well I certainly didn’t tell him that you’ve been trying to keep SUBlife from getting FDA approval.” Good, my voice has some volume now. I think Linda may be crying, but I can’t stop. “What is it, David? Is it okay with God that you saved yourself as long as you make sure no one else can?”

“You rotten bitch.”

I can’t recognize any of the man I’ve known in David. I have known his wants, the way every bit of him feels. But I’ve never before known his anger, the venomous rage in him. He’s probably more alive than I’ve ever seen him.

“All right, that’s enough,” Dr. Bernard snaps. Then one quiet voice comes through, clearer than all of the rest.

“What are we going to do?” Linda asks, raising her face from her hands. She’s not crying, after all. I wonder what it would take to make this woman cry, this woman who has withstood more horror than the rest of us can imagine. “Did you see the people outside? How are we going to be able to meet here, with them out there?”

David laughs, a bitter sound. He reaches down and picks up the newspaper at his feet. “This? This means that everyone knows what’s happening here. You honestly think we’re going to be able to keep meeting after this? Come on, Linda. That’s naive even for you.”

“Get out, David.” It’s Connie who speaks. She’s calm. Her face is a study in well-controlled wrath, and it’s a fearsome thing to behold. “Get out of here. This is over for you now.” We are all still, waiting to see what comes next.

“Fine. Fuck it,” David says, pulling a cigarette out of the pack in his jacket pocket and lighting it up right there, his pose careless, flouting the rules. There he is, the boy who would joyride in stolen cars as a teenager. No wonder I was drawn to him. “It’s not like this was doing any goddamn good anyway,” he says. Then he drops the barely smoked cigarette on the floor, stomps it out with the toe of his shoe, and heads for the door. Dr. Bernard sits back down, smoothing out the fabric of his dress pants as if he’s been in a scuffle. I, too, drop into one of the open seats.

“What do we do now?” Linda repeats, looking from Dr. Bernard to Connie to me.

“I’ll confer with the other doctors involved in the study,” Dr. Bernard says. “This is a serious breach of confidentiality. And if the lottery was compromised, it might put the whole study at risk. The FDA votes in only a few months…” He chews on the inside of his cheek as his eyes land in middle space, vacant with the furious calculations that must be going on in his head.

“No one else recognized him?” I ask, but no one answers. I am left to wonder what it means, that I’m the only one who knew exactly who he was, all along.

I run into Linda at Trader Joe’s. At first, I can’t place her. She’s out of context, away from the hospital and the rest of the group, dressed in ill-fitting jeans and a baggy T-shirt. She has her kids with her, a skinny, sullen-looking girl in a Chicago Sky T-shirt and a boy whose smile reveals half-grown-in front teeth. We spot each other at the same time, at opposite ends of the aisle. At first we both hesitate, unsure of the rules, if we’re allowed to acknowledge each other after everything that has happened. But then Linda starts toward me and so I maneuver around other families with carts until we meet in front of the shelves of dried fruit.

“You look tired,” she says by way of greeting. It’s forever our function, it seems, to evaluate and comment on each other’s physical appearances. She glances down at her kids. “This is Katie and Jack. Kids, this is Hannah. She’s a friend of mine. From the hospital.”

I give them a little wave, trying my best to portray normality as best as I can, as if I’m the person who must confirm for them that their mother wasn’t abducted by aliens or grown out of a pod. It makes me wish I’d showered today, rinsed some of the thick grease out of my hair. They look at me blankly, unimpressed in the way only children can be.

“Why don’t you two go get those ice cream bars that you like, hmm?” Linda says, shooing them toward the freezer cases. She sighs when they’re out of earshot. “I hope it’s ice cream bars they like. It’s so hard to keep up with all of it. Jack’s cutting me slack, but it’s still eight years’ worth of stuff I don’t know.”

“It’ll get easier,” I reply.

“Sometimes I get the distinct sense that Katie is angry with me. And I can’t tell if it’s because I was paralyzed in a bed all their lives, or if it’s because I decided to wake up and change everything without asking them first.”

“They probably just need more time to adjust,” I say, because I have little else but platitudes to offer Linda. I am as lost as she is, knocking around my empty apartment, watching daytime TV in my pajamas, sleeping in taxing, fitful shifts. This is the first time I’ve ventured outside in days, and it’s only to replenish my stores of peanut butter and potato chips. I have yet to find this body’s upper limits when it comes to the consumption of junk food, but I’m not one to back down from a challenge. “I’ve been watching Stratford Pines ,” I say, offering a consolation for my lackluster advice.

“Oh, isn’t it great?”

“It is,” I say, because while it is indeed a terrible show, there’s something satisfying in its simplistic melodrama. It’s easier to think of the world as a place where love and hate and betrayal are threads that do not cross, instead of existing in a constant jumble, a knot I cannot even touch, much less try to untangle. “I’m trying to figure out who the stalker is.”

“If you’ve been watching as long as I have, it gets pretty easy to figure out,” Linda replies. “But I won’t spoil it for you.” I’m struck by how different she is now, how present and capable compared to the woman who would barely speak after the transfer.

“Have you heard from any of the others?” I ask. I imagine Linda and Connie meeting in a coffee shop, or in the bright sunlight of a park somewhere. They’re not at the hospital, at least, not on Thursday afternoons. I know because I’ve been going there, staking it out, just in case I spot one of them. But no one comes. Week after week, I stand there alone.

Linda shakes her head, looking pensive, wistful even. “No. I haven’t heard from either of them. Not since the last time. You?”

I shake my head. “Though, I keep waiting for a call from David’s lawyer, for violating the confidentiality agreement. Ruining his career.”