Leonard Michaels - Sylvia

Sylvia didn’t wake, but she continued to breathe normally. Her face turned once in my direction, following me as I crossed to the other side of the bed. It seemed her mind was alert and she knew I was in the room, and yet she was taking in my presence through a void, as if from another planet. I watched her for hours. I held her hand, smoothed her hair. Mainly, I just sat beside her bed. I believed she could hear me, feel my touch, sense movement, and that she was perfectly conscious and alert, but simply couldn’t respond. She was suspended, floating in a strange sleep. When she awoke, she would remember everything. Now and then I left the room and dozed in the hall, on a wooden bench.

For two nights and days, I sat with Sylvia or tried to sleep on the bench, afraid to leave the hospital before she woke up. I thought it was dangerous to leave her; too unlucky, too risky. I’d be out in the city, far away, doing nothing to sustain her. My presence was necessary; touch, voice, thoughts.

The Spanish doctor drew me into an office on the second morning. He said again that Sylvia would recover, but he was more sober, more judicious. He said it was a medical miracle that she was alive, but I mustn’t expect too much. She’d been unconscious for a long time. No telling if she had suffered brain damage. “She might no longer be the person you remember.”

I noticed, for the first time, that he was very young and had a round face and thick, curly black hair. He made an impression of physical compactness, energy, and warmth. I began to sense the qualities of his personality, his desire to be kind, and something about his idea of himself as a doctor. He was probably younger than me, but speaking in a fatherly manner, doing what he believed he should, trying to prepare me for the worst that could happen. I didn’t believe Sylvia had suffered brain damage.

During the third night, as I slept on the wooden bench outside her room, I was awakened by terrible shouts in a German accent—“Seel-vya”—and the sound of hard slaps. I rose and looked into the room. The doctor who had refused to do the tracheotomy was bent over Sylvia, shouting her name and slapping her face, as if she were a very disobedient child who refused to wake up. I pitied him, but I hated him, too, and wished him ill. Sylvia didn’t open her eyes.

The next morning I went downstairs and sat in the reception area. A black man and two women, perhaps his wife and his sister, stood waiting there. They were nicely dressed, as if to show respect for the hospital. The Spanish doctor appeared. As he walked toward them, his round face opened with expectation, like their faces. For an instant it seemed he was about to receive news from them. But it was he who spoke.

“Your daughter died. I am so sorry.”

I then understood his expression. He’d imitated what he saw in their faces, their expectation, to show that he felt as they did. It was instinctive, a reflex of imitation, he wasn’t deliberately showing anything; he was simply feeling as they did. The black gentleman said, “She only fell down the stairs.” The women embraced each other and cried, and then the man cried. I felt sorry for all of them and for me.

I restrained my own tears. The thought came to me that there had been a sacrifice. A woman had died. Therefore, Sylvia would now wake up. Too bad it had to be this way, but in God’s scheme of things, there is terrible justice. Sylvia and I would soon be leaving the hospital.

I thought, If I were rich, I’d give a fortune to this hospital for the many who would receive its care, and the many who would cry. I was adrift on dreams of myself as a seer and immensely generous benefactor, and though I was sure I could run a fast mile or lift great weights if necessary, I was very tired. Somebody found me wandering about the halls. I was told to go home, Sylvia would be all right. I could go home, take a shower, change my clothes. I left the hospital. It was okay to shower.

While I had wandered in the hospital and sat beside Sylvia’s bed, I’d hardly noticed the days passing. Mornings were a vague brightness. Electric lights went on and it was night. I stood now in plain, cold sunlight and was surprised to see that the city hadn’t ceased for a minute. Streets flourished. There was noisy traffic. People were everywhere. A taxi pulled up. I got inside. For an instant, I didn’t know what to say. Where was I going? I gave the driver the address on 104th Street. We sped west. As the meter clicked off the seconds, I studied the driver’s license, his name and photo, clipped to the dashboard. It shivered with jolts sent up from cobbles and holes in the frozen asphalt. Through the taxi windows, I saw steam lifting from vents in the street and the exhaust pipes of automobiles. I looked at people on the sidewalks, each of them extravagantly particular. A mustache, like a black horizontal slash, crossed out a man’s mouth, forbade attention to his weak chin. A woman wearing sunglasses, furs, and heels held a little terrier on a leash. It trembled and sniffed the concrete, seeking a place to squat.

It felt good to see familiar things, but all of it was faintly colored by fear. I’d been told Sylvia would be all right. Nevertheless, I remained vigilant. I remembered the unchanging stillness of Sylvia’s face, how she didn’t look back at me. Then I remembered a doctor who had arrived late the second night. His name was Warsaw. He made an impression of great competence and, as if challenged personally, he showed concern to understand Sylvia’s condition. He asked, “What exactly did she take?”

“She said ‘Seconal.’”

“Can you find out for sure?”

From a phone booth in the lobby, I dialed Roger Lvov. I didn’t want to talk to him, but I had no choice. He’d know what Sylvia took. Sylvia told me they had taken drugs together, and I remembered that he’d given her drugs in the past. His phone rang for a long time. I hung up, dialed again, let it ring for a while, then hung up and dialed once more. At last someone picked up the phone. A man said, “It’s after 3 a.m., Hamilton. You’re so fucking needy, so fucking tedious.”

In the background, Roger said, “Give it to me.” Then, speaking into the phone, in his choked, gasping voice, he said, “If you call me names, Hamilton, I won’t talk to you. What do you want?”

“Sylvia overdosed. She’s in the hospital.”

Silence.

Then Roger said, “Yes.”

“The doctor wants to know exactly what she took.”

Silence.

I heard a match being struck. Roger inhaled, exhaled. “What did she tell you?”

“Seconal.”

“That’s right.”

“Forty-seven Seconals.”

“That’s right.”

I hung up and went to find the doctor. Then I sat beside Sylvia’s bed. The conversation with Roger only confirmed what Sylvia had said, but I kept repeating the words to myself, like an obsessed detective, as if a solution to the whole mystery of my life might suddenly occur to me. Seconals. That’s right. Forty-seven Seconals. That’s right.

When the taxi crossed West End Avenue, I saw the building we’d left three nights ago, the ambulance waiting in the street with its hysteria of flashing lights. I remembered the rush across town to the hospital.

Feeling about in my pants pocket for money to give the taxi driver, I realized I had no keys. I rang the manager’s bell. She let me in and then gave me an extra set of keys. “Your wife is coming home soon, too?” I nodded, thanked her for the keys, walked upstairs.

The cat with the broken tail was gone. Someone had probably released it in the street. For a few minutes, I stood at a window and watched the street, as if I might spot the cat. I remembered standing at this window one night and hearing a sound in the sky. I’d looked up and seen geese, high above the city, in a V formation, heading north.